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An Important Message

Jan 18

Parental involvement is one of the most important influencing factors for the educational success of students (source).

Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in the creation of the video above. The video was shared during a parental involvement evening at one of our elementary schools.

All of the students in the school were given a half-sheet of paper with the question, “How can your parent/guardian help you with your learning?” The answers in the video were the unguided responses from the students and represent a sampling of the 264 total responses collected.

I believe the essential message from the students was both clear and powerful. Students want the attention, investment, and care of their parents. They want to sit down and simply spend time with the most important people in their lives. You can see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices. It’s powerfully evident.

The content of responses themselves are also very interesting. The vast majority of students asked for help with reading, math, or homework.

This year, we significantly increased our students’ access to technology. We are now 1:1 in grades 5-8, and we have grade level carts of computers at each elementary building in grades preK-4. We are also having excellent conversations about how we should be changing the way we are engaging teaching and learning to create well educated students for the 21st century. I know many people don’t care much for the 21st century nomenclature, but I think it sets important context for our district and community as clearly, the world in which we live now is dramatically different than it was 20 years ago. As it will be when our students complete their formal education in the years to come. We are working to let that impact the way we create learning experiences for our students. We are only three months into the full implementation of this change, so I think this video provides us an excellent opportunity to set a baseline with this type of feedback from our students. I believe if we ask the same question one year from now, we will get a variety of different responses.

The video also presents us, as a district, with an excellent opportunity to consider and discuss the student responses. Are their responses what we hope they would be?

What is it that we hope they would ask their parents/guardians? What does what they say tell us about what we’re saying? Or doing?

If you were to ask your students the same question, what would they say? How could that inform your practice? Your district’s direction? Your focus?

Jumping In

Dec 06

Thank you to those of you who read and/or responded to my last post.

We’ve set the groundwork to start the discussion, but now it’s time to actually jump in. Which, I fear, is often the challenge with social media, ed tech, conferences, and the greater majority of exercises in education. It just sits down at discussion. The legs stop moving and only the mouths seem to work.

Let’s get beyond that.

Starting now.

I think this is a good place to begin. It’s only a brainstorming document, but I’m hoping it will lead to good discussion, which will guide where to go from here. I wish we could all find a way to just get together for a week and dig into some meaningful discussion about it all that would yield some output that could help guide the way technology is, and isn’t, being used in learning. Since we don’t have that luxury, I do believe we can make great progress using the means and minds we have available to us.

So, please add to this document. Invite others to add to it. Check back and react to what’s being built.

We can work collectively to decide where to go from here once the discussion starts taking place. We can negotiate the output. We can start to organize it all. Hopefully, we can find common venues to hold face to face discussions about it. Parts and all of it.

But we first have to begin. I’m hoping you’ll help.

There’s no doubt this will be challenging. It will be frustrating. It will take time. But, I believe it will be worth it.

I’m hoping you believe the same.

Time to Change

Dec 02

I’ve had many interesting discussions of late about technology in education. They’ve left me wondering.

About technology.

About education.

About how the one impacts the other. And the other, the other.

I’m very fortunate to have the opportunity to work in a district that is now offering our students incredible access to technology in their learning experience. I’ve long heard about the exciting possibilities afforded students in a 1:1 program, but now having the opportunity to be part of it first hand, I’m rather shaken by just how powerful this all might be. Because this could change everything. That’s not overstating it.

My question now is, what is everything? What is it that will change? What is it that should change?

For so long, the perceived value of an educational institution was the access to knowledge and information that being present in the institution provided. Teachers were the experts of content and poured forth that content upon the minds of the masses seated in desks before them. Whether you believe that to be right or wrong, that was the experience that nearly all of us had going through school. I was taught a chapter of something, completed worksheets about the something, took a test on Friday about the something, and forgot that something shortly thereafter. This perception of the value of education is no longer relevant to the reality of life. Likely, it never was at all.

When I was a kid, I was also beholden to others for the answers to many of my inquiries. If I was at home, and I wondered about something, I typically had to wait until I got to school or went to the library to uncover the answers to my questions. More often than not, that meant the questions went unanswered. Sadly, I was ok with that at the time.

Technology has fundamentally changed our level of access to anything. And, everything.

I’m now wondering how far this change can, will and should go. We’ve been having these conversations in my district. About moving beyond the digitization of old pedagogy.We’re collectively working to figure out what it means to have every student sitting with ubiquitous access to one of the most transformative and disruptive technologies in history at any given moment in the school day. About what that does to the notion of content. About how we can move to work in the lives of our students to create young historians. Eager scientists. Insightful mathematicians. Powerful authors.

That has me wondering.

What should technology change about the way our students engage learning? Truly and unequivocally change.

I think we need to start engaging this question in earnest. Because doing what we’ve been doing for decades, if not centuries, isn’t likely what needs to be done now. The landscape has changed. The tools have changed. The context has changed. We have changed. But in most cases, our approach hasn’t. Attending most conference sessions and professional development workshops on technology will demonstrate that almost immediately.

So, I’m hoping you’ll join me in this thought experiment. I’m also hoping we’ll be able to move it beyond an experiment quickly and put it into practice in a way that makes a difference for our students and their learning.

Give it some thought. I’m hoping, somewhere and somehow, you’ll share your insights.

I’m hoping we can get together, and wrestle with this idea. Collectively engage in the process and do the very difficult work that needs to be done. To reimagine what learning could look like. What it should look like. Because the technology really can, and should, change the way we are approaching learning.

It’s a huge task. But we have to begin somewhere. I believe we can do it.

I believe we have to.

Another Beginning: Storytelling through images

Jul 02

This is going to be tough. The starting. Because I’ve a lot to tell, and the pieces don’t line up in single file easily. Like a second grade class waiting for the drinking fountain after gym, I guess. Each idea wants to be first in line, and none of them want to wait to be last because they are all too thirsty. My apologies if I don’t choose well, and you suffer as a result as I begin trying to tell the story of how I tell stories through images.

I should probably start out with the bits you’re likely least interested in. My story. I’ll keep it brief, but I feel it’s important exposition for you to understand how I’ve traveled this road to date, and how much more traveling I look forward to ahead. I promise to end this first post with something you can actually take away and go play with and examine and experiment with as you walk on your road on your journey. And I promise to move forward from here and talk less about me and focus on the process of capturing images. If you want to skip all the exposition, feel free to just jump down to the “Something Useful” section below. Which, I know, is quite an assumption. That it will be.

I’ll start by saying I’m a very inexperienced hobbyist. If you are looking for serious professionals, I’m not that. I’ve grown to love the hobby, and I’d say I’m on the final step of nurturing the hobby into a full passion. But there’s still a whole lot I’ve to learn. There are many things I have no idea how to do. But there are things I’ve been shown or have figured out that I think could help you. If you do want to follow some professionals as they publicly share their expertise, I would highly recommend you check out Scott Bourne and Chase Jarvis. Scott does a tremendous podcast about all things photography, and Chase makes the kind of photos that I alway wish were mine.

I’ve also had the good fortune of making friends with some other hobbyists. There’s lots to be said about learning aside others as the sharing and trading of ideas along the way makes everyone the better for it. That applies to any learning, I’m sure. I was lucky enough to get connected with Melanie Holtsman, Ken Shelton, Karen Blumberg and Brady Cline early on. I’d recommend you do the same if you can. I always learn from them each time we get the chance to get together to make some photos.

Going back a bit further, I was greatly influenced early on by a good friend, David Pohlmeier. David needs to stop hemming and hawing and start taking photos again. He’s too talented not to. David was an art major, and what he has taught me about composition and seeing beyond just the viewfinder and lenses and technicalities of shooting has been invaluable. That’s the part of all this I hope to be able to help you all see as well.

Finally, I have to go back to the very beginning. I’d say this all really started the day my father let me borrow his 35mm Minolta to take to my 8th grade photography class. There is a sweet black and white photo hiding itself safely somewhere of me in my big skateboard hair with the Minolta slung around my neck in the first days of that class. And though that was the only actual photography class I ever took, it started something. Something that would lay dormant for 15 years until I got my first dslr camera when my wife and I found out we were going to be parents.

And with all of that established, I think we should get the real starting started.

As I’ve working through how I’m going to approach explaining my photography, and my recent explorations of video, I realize I can’t do it all in one post. I’d like to, at some point, address all the following items.

Composition
Exposure: understanding the relationship between shutter speed, aperture, and ISO
Metering
Lenses
Post processing
DSLR video
Light
Equipment

And after all that, I think I’ll start documenting my learning as I continue from here on my photography journey. So, let’s begin. For real.

Something Useful

The very first thing I have to tell you about capturing images, whether those be in the form of a photograph or a video, is probably quite predictable. Most people already know it. But I don’t think enough people actually put it into practice. Before you think about equipment, or technique, or any other aspect of capturing images, think about story. Because you don’t take pictures. You capture a story. You make something important, something that can easily be as powerful as words. This, for example, is what I believe to be more than a photo. There’s a story here.

So the next time you’re getting ready to make a photo, stop, even if it’s only for a brief second, to consider the story you want to tell. And let that dictate where you go next. Which may well mean you have to go somewhere you weren’t considering. Like right up in front of a bunch of people. You have to be bold. It took me a good long while to learn that. And there are still plenty of times I have to remember it. But if you’re going to be happy with the stories you’re making, you have let go of being timid. It’s a must.

Also, think about composition. This is absolutely paramount. I’m going to dedicate an entire post to this topic as it’s probably one of the most important parts of any of this. Just about everyone owns a camera of some sort, and 99% of those people could immediately make their photos 100% better if they considered composition. Two quick tips on this for now.

One, try not to ever center your subject. There are times when you will want to break that rule, but for the vast, vast majority of the time, get your subject out of the center of your shot. Read about the rule of thirds or the Fibonacci Spiral to help you see why you typically want to move your subject out of center.

Two, consider your perspective. Just as pretty much everyone alive has a camera of some sort, those same people often snag photos of kids. This is an excellent example of utilizing perspective. Because the majority of the kid shots you see are boring. Sorry, I know all the kids are cute, which usually saves the photo. Sort of. The issue is perspective. Because almost everyone takes photos of kids from a perspective we all see all the time. They take the photo standing up, from above the kid. But good stuff happens when we get down to their level. The photos gain a much higher level of interest. Like this. And it isn’t just with kids that this works. Find unique perspectives to shoot from. It adds a great deal to your story, and interest to your work. One more example.

I started with my first DSLR just about three years ago. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned since then. It’s been tremendous. I’ve put many fun hours into the hobby, but I feel I’ve grown quite a bit over this three year span. Getting good at making photos doesn’t take nearly as long as people think. But it does take commitment, effort, and a willingness to risk. If you’ve finished this entire post, clearly you have all three.

So, if I can go ahead and pretend I have any kind of power with which to assign you tasks of practice, I’m going to advise you do these things starting now. And maybe even you’d be willing to report back what you’ve found and what you’ve learned and what we can all learn from your learning as you put these into practice.

Your assignment.

Forget about what kind of equipment you are using or what kind of equipment you wish you were using for a few days. Let’s work to get the most out of what you have at hand.
Be bold about capturing your story. Stop worrying about getting a few steps closer, and just get to the spot where you need to be.
Think about your composition. Unless you’re being extremely intentional, stop centering your photos.
Think about your perspective. Get down on the ground with the kids to take the photos. You might have to apply the first part of this assignment, but get bold and get low. Lower perspectives are almost always more interesting.
Join our Flickr group. I set up a group for us all to use as we learn together. Look at other images, ask other people questions, comment on other’s images, and above all else, participate.

Assignment Update 7/3: I think it would be good to actually give people a task to accomplish. So, if you want to join us, here’s what you can do. Join our Flickr group, and add two or three photos practicing the items above. Give a brief explanation about your shot and what you were working to accomplish. If you’re working on composition or perspective, explain that to us and tell us what you believe the shot accomplished. Then, we can give you feedback on the shots.

I’m really, really looking forward to this journey we get to take together. Now, let’s get moving.

Up next: My next post will shift over to video. I’ll break down how I made the #engchat 2011 video from approach technique.