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.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a professional baseball pitcher more than anything in the world.  I’d go outside and throw a tennis ball against my front steps and play every ricochet as if it were a batted ball.  I’d write out a lineup of the Cubs vs. whomever they happened to be playing that day, and I’d play out a full nine inning game.  I even recorded the stats for every player.  If it rained out, I’d wad up a pair of socks and hit them around my front porch with a wiffle ball bat – still keeping copious stats.  Now that I think of it, this is the first time I’ve ever admitted this in public.  I imagine my wife has never been prouder of me.

When I got older, I graduated on to pickup games at the schoolyard near my house.  I played little league, high school, and eventually college baseball.  I worked as hard as I could, and I always kept the goal of becoming a professional front and center in my mind.  I worked out six days a week (wish all that work was evidenced a bit more obviously now days), and I went to pitching lessons in the offseasons.  I knew what I wanted, and I worked with every bit of who I was to get there.  There was only one problem.  I wasn’t good enough.

I always had visions of throwing a baseball 95 miles per hour, but despite all my concerted efforts, I never managed to break 82 on the radar gun.  I just didn’t have the physical ability to do so.  I could have tried harder, I guess, but I’m not sure there was much more with which to try.  I could have gone to more clinics, lifted more weights, done more drills, ran more miles, or even watched more tape, but in the end, I don’t think it would have made a difference.  My body just wasn’t made to throw as hard as I wanted it to.

I believe there’s something very significant here.  We all have obvious physical limitations.  When we look at kids today, it would be absurd to expect them all to perform the same on any given physical task.  Think of what would happen if we said that every kid in 8th grade had to run a 6 minute mile.  Or that every 5th grader had to be able to do 25 pull-ups.  Or even 5 pull-ups.  It would be absurd.  Now think of the obvious parallel to learning.

Why is it when it comes to learning that we expect every kid to be able to perform at the same level?  When will we realize that kids are just as different mentally one from another as they are physically?  Not all kids can think at 95 miles per hour.

I know some people will disagree with me.  There are those who think all kids have the capacity to pass all of our given standards on performance assessments, but think about how fundamentally wrong that is.  If all kids can pass the standard, then what kind of rigor is built into the standard?  It would be an obvious sign that our expectations were too low as there would be at least 25% of the students who wouldn’t even have to try to achieve passable marks.  Conversely, if the standard was more rigorous and required much more effort of the students, there would be a percentage of the population who couldn’t possibly achieve passable marks.  It’s an indefensible notion to think that we can build tests that are appropriately difficult for all students and that all students can potentially meet the standard.

Some would say that I’m advocating for lower expectations for our kids.  I would counter just the opposite.  I expect every student in our world has the potential to achieve and perform at the very best of his or her abilities.  That he or she can apply all of his or her skills and thinking to any problem at any time.  To me, that is the absolute highest expectation there is.

If my goal in playing baseball had really and completely been to throw 95 miles per hour, I would have been a complete failure.  I would never have measured up, and I would have grown to resent the game.  Instead, I gave every bit of what I had, and I just enjoyed playing the game.  I believe we need to be very wary of setting up expectations that all students should be expected to perform and strive for the same goals.  If we do, too many students will think themselves complete failures, and they will grow to resent learning.  Instead, I think we need to let kids give every bit of what they have and just enjoy the process of learning.

Thanks to Anne Ruthmann for the Flickr image.

I remember the first time I heard the term, “backchannel.”  I was at NECC, and I was immediately struck at how the word seemed somehow geekily mystic.  It took me a bit to realize the term was really just synonymous with chat.

According to the define function of Google, a backchannel is, “the practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside live spoken remarks.”  In practice, it is simply a chat room established to carry on conversation during a presentation.

I absolutely believe the concept of a backchannel has an inherent dual-edge sword nature to it.  As mentioned in my last post, there is a distinct danger to utilizing a backchannel.  The danger is that if not executed in the right fashion, the distraction and bifurcation of attention can potentially lead to a complete dismissal of the content being presented at a given venue.  I’ve seen occasions where there are no less than eight backchannels for a room of scarcely over 20 participants.  The result is noise.  Distracting noise that leads to a great missing of the point.

I could go on about my perceptions of the negative regarding this topic, but I’d rather not.  Because I think there’s more good here than bad.  I actually think creating a backchannel in the right way has the potential to be one of the biggest game changers we’ve seen in recent memory.  I’m quite excited about it, to be honest.

One of the most oft cited educational edicts in the past ten years is that we shouldn’t have our students sitting in their seats listening to a presentation of information for too long.  I believe this applies to adults as well.  Interestingly enough, this edict is often espoused by a speaker or consultant who has come in to spend a day teaching teachers this highly valuable bit of information, and they do so by having teachers sit at terribly uncomfortable lunch tables or folding chairs for hours without breaks.  I believe therein lies the definition of irony.

Think of the possibilities of establishing a backchannel.  People interact with the information being presented in a way that allows for an expansion of learning and information retention.  This could happen anywhere information is being presented for a prolonged period of time: inservices, classrooms, even churches.  I came across this article recently discussing how a church in Texas is using Twitter during their service as a form of a backchannel, and it simply solidified and validated how important this could be and how widespread this practice could extend.

Allowing people to interact with each other and the information in a focused way affords participants the opportunity to learn more and focus more on the content.  Instead of sitting passively, succumbing to the temptation to take mental meanders, participating in a backchannel brings a collaborative element that actually increases mental attentiveness.

This summer I started utilizing a backchannel with the courses I taught for my district, as well as for the graduate class I teach for Judson University.  That experience, along with my recent experience at the IL TechCon, has led me to conclude there is a right way to go about doing this.  I believe the following 3 guidelines should be followed when setting up a backchannel.

1.  Have a moderator.  I don’t mean a censoring, dictator-type moderator who is trolling the room looking for people to bust for saying inappropriate or perceived off-topic statements.  I mean a moderator who helps facilitate the conversation.  Maybe you want to call this person a facilitator instead of moderator, it’s up to you.  I think having an open-minded administrator take on the moderator role at a teacher inservice could help keep the discussion somewhat on topic, while also giving the participants at least a moderate level of accountability so the conversation doesn’t digress into a “Wow, this is cool.”  “Yes, it is.”  “I think it sucks.”  Don’t scoff, even adults can be reduced to this level of astute prepubescent intellectualism given the opportunity.  The moderator should also post frequent statements summarizing main points the presenter is saying.  Wes Fryer did this at TechCon, and I found it extremely beneficial.

2.  Have only one main backchannel.  Some people don’t like this idea.  They want everyone to have the freedom to create their own channel, but I think that is quite problematic.  I want as many people participating as possible so the greatest potential for added value and diversity in thinking can occur.  I think it would be great if a conference set up one main backchannel, with individual rooms for each of the presentations at the conference.  This way, everyone would know where to go for discussion, and there wouldn’t be too much cross-pollination of separate presentations creating too much noise in a single room.  Conferences could publish the url of the main backchannel site in the literature handed out at the beginning of the conference, and people could commence discussing at the outset and continue until, well, forever.

3.  Use a site that can be archived.  If done well, people will be dropping links, references, and suggestions in the room, and it would be most beneficial to be able to return to the room to access those resources again in the future.  It would also allow people to be held accountable for things being said, and positions could be defensible should dissenting opinions be presented.

I think the idea of a backchannel is very difficult for some people to embrace as they fear allowing people to discuss during a presentation will draw attention away from what is being presented.  As I stated above, that can certainly happen, but if this is all done the right way, I think that risk is greatly reduced.  In fact, I absolutely believe this could help our attention-deprived culture get more out of sitting in seats listening to the dissemination of information for hours on end.  I think doing this in the right way will most certainly lead to a reinvigoration of inservices, and dare I even say, classroom lectures.   Just think about it, and try it out for yourself the next chance you get.  I think you’ll find the results might just change everything.

Thanks to Wesley Fryer for the Flickr image.

*One author’s note for this post.  I began writing this prior to attending the Illinois TechCon 08 conference, and that experience resulted in a major clarification in my own thinking about this issue.  I’ll explain near the end of the post.*

Sometimes I feel like being in the Ed Tech community is a bit like being in a scene from Spinal Tap.  Specifically, this scene.

I’ve noticed this growing phenomenon of people trying to get “that extra push over the cliff” lately.  Any conference I’ve attended in the past year has been so over live streamed, live blogged, Twittered, Plurked, backchanneled, and podcast, that I’m starting to wonder if people are catching any of the content being presented.  Seriously, how multi can people possibly task?

Now let me be clear about something, I absolutely believe in the power of participation and collaboration in today’s learning climate, but I also think we need to find a bit of balance.  How about just keeping the dial right around 6?  Your voice added to the voice of the presenter can certainly bring greater understanding and depth to a conversation, and of course every conversation is made better when it is more than one person talking to a flat wall.  The problem comes when the voice of the crowd overwhelms the voice of the content.

This phenomenon isn’t restricted only to conferences.  I think it’s growing increasingly more evident in podcasts as well.  The last three podcasts I’ve listened to have had classic moments of pregnant pauses as someone reaches the conclusion of a several minute monologue where he/she spills their soul about something he/she is very passionate about, only to be met with silence.  And then a profound statement of affirmation from one of the other hosts like “right on” or “yep.”  The noise of a chat room or the lure of the web was too much temptation, and the attention of the other hosts was whisked somewhere far, far away from whatever it was their counterpart was just espousing.

I think this push to hit 11 is also an issue with emerging tools.  It seems that many people are working hard to make sure they know a tool, or even a list of 100 tools in some cases, that no one else has heard of, and they present the list as such at conferences, workshops, etc.  There is all this noise added, and the result is that people end up feeling overwhelmed and inferior rather than empowered.  I saw a presentation by Dave Jakes recently that I think was much more fitting to the way we should be engaging all this.  He spoke of the organizational approach we should be taking to collaborative tools rather than listing all the specific tools he thought we should be using.  By so doing, he effectively kept the focus where it should be, and he kept the dial right around a comfortable 5.

Here’s my point.  When does the use of all these amazing, emerging technologies become counterproductive to the goal?  Do we really need to have 20 backchannel chat rooms for a session with 35 participants?  Should you as a podcast host be trying to read everything that is happening in a chat room, while searching the web, while trying to focus on what your co-hosts are saying?

As mentioned at the outset of this post, I did have an experience recently that I feel really helped bring clarity to this issue for me.  Specifically, the idea of having a backchannel set up for people to utilize.  In fact, I think using a backchannel in the right way can absolutely make a conference, workshop, classroom, a much better place for learning.  Wes Fryer recently set up a Chatzy chat at the IL TechCon 08, and I think the way that he did it was dead-on perfect.  I plan to write more about this in my next post, but for now, I can say the way Fryer set up the backchannel at TechCon made all the difference in the way I experienced and learned from the conference.  I think it could possibly be the same for students in education.

I was teaching a blogs and wikis class to a group of teachers a few weeks back, and I stumbled into an excellent conversation about how to teach and learn technology. We were discussing the topic from an adult’s perspective, but upon further reflection, I realize this conversation holds up when considering students as well.

The discussion essentially broke down into a very congenial debate. On one side of the ring we had the firm believers in the step-by-step tutorial method of learning. These people wanted each direction of each step for working with any specific technology broken down and presented in a handout that would serve as a reference point in the future.

On the other side stood the “throw them in the boiling water and remove them slowly” crowd. I believe that’s a near-direct quote from Dave Cormier when discussing a class he was teaching over the summer. This group believed we had to present the general framework and potential purpose/use for the technology, and then let people have at it. Jump in, get soaking wet, and call for rescue should the undertow prove to be too much and threaten a drowning.

I judiciously stood in the center acting as an unbiased moderator, pretending I hadn’t already chosen a side. I was doing so well until someone commented that if I had tried the “throw them in the water” approach entirely, this person would have walked right out of the class. That got me thinking. If they had stood up and walked out, would it have mattered? That sounds terrible, but stop and think about it.

When we give people step by step directions, do we ultimately end up enabling them to be dependent rather then freeing them to be independent? It’s like driving behind someone who is leading you to a place you’ve never been before. You concentrate on following each turn, but end up losing the context of the trip. By the time you arrive at your destination, you have no idea how you really got there. The analogy isn’t perfect, but I think it holds up.

When we walk students, be them adult or adolescent, step by step through doing something, do we not disable the natural sense of learning that would have taken place had we just thrown them in the water? There are certainly some foundational skills that need to be honed, and we should always be there to throw the life preserver, but come on, let’s at least give them a shot to swim on their own. I need to write more about this soon. It’s something that I’m working through, and I think it has significance in considering how I want to teach my teachers how to teach.

Thanks to James Cridland for the Flickr image.