Learning Out in the Open

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Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:40:40 -0500

Upside Down with Standards

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:18:46 -0600

It’s that district mandated time of the week again: workshop day. It’s time to triangulate the world of standards and outcomes with the world of working with students. Notice, however, how few “student choice” workshop days there are or “learning & learner focused” days there are mandated in any given district.

In scouring over all of the academic standards and essential learner outcomes thoughts instead drift to the Upside Down Academy. It’s model, structure, and standards are all quite simple.

“The best way to learn is to try and teach.”

Learn something.
Pay attention to what you find confusing.
Come up with a way to make it less confusing / more fun for the next person.
It can be a blog post, video, dance, song, smoke signal, what ever.
Create a lesson and make it a little easier for the next person

I find the idea of planning learning environment with this kind of an outcome or this kind of a structure in place to be far more engaging than anything conceived of by a standards committee.

The technology exists to make this a reality. We just need the will to make it happen. And to have the savvy to reconcile that new world with what things like this.

It sounds like a challenge worth accepting, don’t you think?

Poetry and Crowd Seeding a Sonnet

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:21:00 -0600

In the upcoming unit I’m planning I am encountering something that teachers everywhere fear. No, not just Shakespeare; poetry. Go ask a teacher if they would like to go impromptu substitute teach in a poetry class. Go ahead. I’ll wait. No volunteers?

I’m one of those “weird” guys that actually likes poetry. Poetry has been a part of my life since before I was a teenager. Yes, for that long a time. But teaching poetry still gives one a sense of trepidation. So in the spirit of transparency I thought I would try a new approach in working with students writing poetry.

The process is one that comes from the writer Chuck Palahniuk. I recently heard him speak at the Fitzgerald theater in St. Paul Minnesota. He brought up a process of writing that he has spoken about and written about before he calls it “crowd seeding”.

To develop his themes, Palahniuk also conducts experiments in what he calls “crowd-seeding”: At parties he tells people what he’s working on and freely hands out his phone number to generate ideas….

All of his books are packed with this group expertise “so that you feel like you’re learning,” he says. It’s the Google-era technique of novel writing: social composition. “I’m simultaneously testing my material or premise with people and tweaking it,” he says. “Plus, it’s a fun game and gives people a role to play.”

This brings to mind a different author, one that I’ll be seeing in the near future, Jane Mcgonigal. Here’s a bit about where she is coming at the whole technology/education interplay:

Given that Mcgonigal says in her book that

All games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation

So I’m thinking, why not crowd seed the writing of a sonnet? One could even make a game of it.

Hopefully more to come…

Recalibration and "You're Doing It Wrong."

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 22:02:26 -0600

It’s been far too long. As I look up school year is over a quarter gone and very few blog things have been posted here. When a new iPhone came out Steve Jobs was criticized once for saying that problems of the device simply existed because “you’re holding it wrong.” This has gone on to become a meme in the technology world of “you’re doing it wrong.” Clearly when it comes to blogging and my workflow I’ve been doing it wrong.

A lot of the problems come from the differences between formative and summative work. This blog and the work that comes from it should be about thinking. It should be about learning. It should be open. But it hasn’t been. It’s time to change all of that now. It’s time to get back to process. It is time to uncover the learning. Below is a video that’s hopefully got me on the right track. Don’t think of it as a reawakening, look on it as recalibration.

Independent Reading List - Quarter 1

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:15:37 -0500

Click on the link below to access the reading list for the quarter. Once you have found a title that you want to read put your First Initial, Last Name under the “Reader” column. Be sure to bring in the signed permission slip as soon as you can.

Quarter One Independent Reading List

The "To Kill a Mockingbird" Review Post Overview

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:29:15 -0500

Eulogizing Bankruptcy and Lessons in Disruption

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 11:44:19 -0500

I went into Borders yesterday and bought a book.

Soon that sentence will no longer be a possibility. As many already know, Borders has lost it’s battle with bankruptcy and is moving into full-on liquidation. While others have done a far better job of parsing the days and ways that this came about there remain valid lessons in this case for education and other targets of market disruption.

The Relationship with the Internet

As Slate points out:

Borders famously flubbed its relationship with the Internet. From 2001 until 2008, it outsourced its online sales to Amazon, essentially handing customers over to the bigger, better site during the formative years of e-commerce.

The lesson for education?

Here is an example of outsourcing core competencies. Sites like Kahn Academy and e2020 can be valid supplemental resources for things like blended learning. But that is all that these should be supplemental resources.

Overly scripted or “curriculum in a box” programs like Read 180 can provide structure and a basis for instruction but there is an implicit message being sent to educators: We don’t trust you to handle it alone. Such prescriptive programs can lower morale but also affect the sense of community. Make no mistake, I still think that any teacher that feels that they can be replaced by a computer probably should be. But we should take care not to use web-based programs and curriculum in a way that removes learners from the community of education in a school because they will simply seek out another to be a part of instead.

The Future Is Digital and Will Need Curation

NPR comes on strong in it’s Monkey See blog with two points.

The first:

There is no other future for reading but a digital one, and getting misty about the decline of tangible books is an exercise in futility. Reading itself has never been more popular, even if formats are in flux.

The second:

Bookstores are very special places, even the behemoths. They provide a space for cultural dilettantism. You can get lost in them for hours, perusing covers and picking up obscure titles. They are dedicated to discovery and are curated by some of the most dedicated retail employees around (even to get hired at a large corporate chain, one is still required to exhibit a sharp passion for reading).

The lesson for education?

Educators have to embrace multiple forms of authorship when it comes to content for their students both in terms of source and creation. Saying that you are a digital educator because you have a PowerPoint or Twitter lesson just isn’t going to cut it. This isn’t to say that all students need to be educated to be the next Amanda Hocking - but they should be allowed the option to geo that route if their passion dictates it.

The second point brings up the salience of curation. This point concerns me the more I learn about student motivation in the face of increased accountability testing. Right now education’s focus is more “what’s on the test” than it is “what are my students passionate about learning.”

The Take-away

People have written about how much they are going to miss Borders and just as many have written about the mistakes that got Borders to this point. One could say that a series of bad decisions broke the chain. But the real take-away from an educational standpoint is that technology was either dismissed or discounted to Borders’ detriment. These are mistakes that education not only cannot afford to make but also possesses the means to surmount. If education embraces technology, and through it change, Borders will be a cautionary tale. If not it will become an outlier.

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The Spiral of Up-votes & Learning

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 20:53:46 -0500

Given the rise of websites like Reddit, Stumbleupon, and yes, Google+ this story from Gizmodo bears consideration. The premise:

Flickr user André Rabelo saw when he uploaded this b&w photo to a Flickr pool called DeleteMe!, which votes on whether a photo has any right being amongst the top classes of photography.

However, the joke was on the people commenting on “Rabelo’s” photo. The photo was actually one by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Yes, the Henri “father of modern photojournalism” Cartier-Bresson. But the plot thickens:

Over 500 comments have been added to Rabelo’s uploaded photo, and it makes for a hilarious yet thought-provoking read flipping through the pages. The first batch of comments from the DeleteMe! group some 68 months ago look rather foolish in hindsight, but not as foolish (in my eyes) as the bandwagon-jumpers who latched onto the prank once it was revealed, calling it “art” and a “masterpiece.”

This is kind of a case of “Schrödinger’s Photograph” - is something quality based on its observable merits? Or should the overall work transcend its constituent parts? Who decides what is “Art” or merely “art?” What about learning?

Given the rise of the aforementioned socially curated news and web content this story could be an outlier. While I love using Google+ and want schools to have the option of adding it to the Google Apps for Education suite, I have to take Rabelo’s photo as an admonition.

As an educator, the danger is to be a commenter of either extreme. Yes, there are many that want web 2.0 tools used in education, but when the discussion spirals out of the black & white which side should we be on? The one of process and ~~learning~~ Learning.

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Embrace Disruption, Embrace Community

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 22:44:22 -0500

There’s a great article at Slate right now called “Groundhog Decade” that details how the movie industry is failing to learn from the decade of market disruption that’s just occurred. The money quote:

If the studios were smart they’d go to the mat and create a massive one-stop shop for TV and movies, find a price point they can live with and then set programmers loose to make the thing as easy to use and ubiquitous as possible. Instead they’ve been wasting their time strong-arming the cable companies to help them on a new crusade against illegal downloaders—an unwieldy process that doesn’t address the root problem and won’t work.

My takeaway is that, like many media outlets the movie industry would be better off if it embraced the disruption as what it is; change. Instead of having articles, posts, and tweets about how to thwart the New York Times pay-wall, what if they went to an National Public Radio model of funding? What would this embracing of disruption look like in education?

We’ve all heard a lot about how education is going to be disrupted by technology. Most involve someone from outside of the education world invoking specters of fear by citing the rapid change in technology, mentioning flip thinking, and a reference to Khan Academy.

There are those who fear change in any profession. But could with disruption come realignment?

At the end of the school year I often stand outside the school with my fellow teachers to bid farewell to our students. It’s a great way to end the year, to bring things to a close. Without fail we often notice that the students that are the most reluctant to leave are the students who like to spend more time in the hallway than class. The students who refer to school as a prison have tears streaming down their faces viewing the prospect of nearly three months of freedom. These students are mourning the impending loss of their friends, their community.

Some of the students that are the most challenging students in schools still see it as their community. Some of the technologies that challenge education use social media; technologies that create and cultivate community.

Where some fear disruption I choose to see an opportunity for realignment.

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Minions in Grad School

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 06:48:22 -0500

This is a great short film by Nyna Wee at Stuttgart Media University. Think of it as the minions from “Despicable Me” grown up and in a grad program at Portal University. Listening to techno. Enjoy (via io9).

Cubism from Nyna Wee on Vimeo.

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Golden Ratios & Blended Learning

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:25:06 -0500

In planning a blended learning class for the upcoming school year a great deal of thoughts have been ricocheting around my headspace. Thoughts of project-based learning, inquiry in education, PLNs and other assorted acronyms having all had their exits and entrances. But recently there’s been an unlikely source cropping up; a cookbook.

One needs only to scroll back throb recent posts To realize that this writer is fond of both food and hastily taken photographs of recent cooking efforts. To that end I’ve been reading Michael Ruhlman’s book Ratio. In particular this quote stands out:

With the advent of the Internet, we have access to an ocean of recipes but relatively less information on food and cooking. Understanding ratios and technique is, for the home cook, a step toward becoming more independent in the kitchen. But ratios are just as important to chefs and other food professionals because they provide a launching point for the development of new dishes.

Technique will ultimately determine the quality of the end result. Ratios are the points from which infinite variations begin.

Isn’t this what educators should be striving to do? Shouldn’t education be about helping learners find their own ratios of learning and understanding? Far too often it feels as though we are more concerned with having students memorize one recipe and woe to all involved if that memory isn’t accurate. I’d rather my students have more time with activities that are reflective of their learning.

In a recent session of #edchat on Twitter the discussion topic was the Flipped Classroom. Some educators expressed concern over what a “flipped” classroom might auger for a brick-and-mortar school. In light of Ruhlman’s thoughts I’m going to close by standing by an earlier tweet:

#flipclass will make physical schools irrelevant the same way that personal cooking has made restaurants irrelevant #edchat

It’s time to get thinking about what ratios my students will learn and which ones I’ll learn from them.

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Plot Devices & Genre

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 10:15:14 -0500

Plot Device from Red Giant on Vimeo.

Sent from my iPad

Plot Devices & Genre

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 10:15:14 -0500

Plot Device from Red Giant on Vimeo.

Sent from my iPad

Preparing to Flip

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 16:42:35 -0500

So no sooner is the school year over but it’s time to begin planning things for the next one. The major challenge and opportunity is to flip my classroom. Next year one of my sections will be an on-going pilot of blending both traditional face-time curriculum and online curriculum. Here is an example of one of the videos I used to explain the concept to parents of prospective students:

My district has other intrepid teachers looking to embark on the path to a blended curriculum. In a workshop today I listened to some wonderful math teachers plan out how they would be engaging their students using this model. My mind kept coming back to Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Specifically, the changes that have recently been made to Bloom’s come to mind. The top of the pedagogical pyramid of thought used to be “Evaluation” or the judgement of products based on criteria.

Now, however the pyramid of Bloom’s has been revised to something more like this:

Which in preparing to “flip” and “blend” my classroom has me thinking of the following questions:

How can does one account for the “economy of focus” at work in most of today’s students in regard to technology?
How are the economics of technology access going to be addressed?
How can technology be used to accurately check for understanding during the off-site learning process?
What role do anticipatory sets and classroom activities take now in this model?

But I did catch two great quotes from the workshop coordinators.

The art of understanding something is different than the science of applying it.

and

Our motto with technology should be ‘if you can think it, it’s possible.’

I’m working with some good educators and I’ve got to keep thinking.

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[Learning Out in the Open] Jumping Back In

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 11:41:41 -0500

A great but chaotic school year is coming to a close for this writer. In the hopes of writing more this summer I’m attempting to switch-up my workflow using Blogsy on my iPad. This, in theory, should allow for more posts and less time spent on learning markdown coding while keeping the focus on transparency and learning. If this works, look for many more posts to follow. photo © 2008 Sarah Scicluna | more info (via: Wylio) — Posted By Mr. Smith to Learning Out in the Open at 6/12/2011 09:41:00 AM

Oil-infused Peppercorn Encrusted Tenderloin with Horseradish...

Sat, 28 May 2011 20:15:57 -0500

Oil-infused Peppercorn Encrusted Tenderloin with Horseradish Creme (Taken with instagram)

Take-aways and Poetry

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 01:45:41 -0500

If you’re not familiar with the unique music blog La Blogotheque it’s worth a look. Often the staging of the performance presents both a unique challenge to the band playing all the while helping to expose some aspect of the song or performers. Bands like Throw Me the Statue perform on the back of a ferryboat or Arcade Fire performs on a double-decker bus. What matters is that the form is mirroring the content. Below is an example from Local Natives and it’s got me thinking of how my students could do something like this when reading poetry…

<p>Local Natives | Who Knows Who Cares | A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.</p>

Seared Scallops, Artichokes, and Curry sauce (Taken with...

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:39:19 -0500

Seared Scallops, Artichokes, and Curry sauce (Taken with instagram)

Moodle vs Personal Learning Networks

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 02:37:04 -0500

This is the kind of post that gets a writer in trouble in various educational circles.

“I don’t like Moodle.”

There, it’s out in the open. It’s not to say that one can’t be successful with it; there’s a colleague in my building that lives by it and the achievement scores that result are great. But a thought keeps rattling around in my mind:

Schools are only good at assessing school.

The original speaker of this escapes me, maybe it’s Seth Godin or maybe it’s Sir Ken Robinson. But that this is in any way true still devastates me. Remnants of this quote popped into my mind when hearing students talk about Moodle. In coversations with students they’ve indicated to me that discussions and commenting on Moodle can feel “fake” at times.

It’s like it’s trying to be Facebook for school.

Anyone who’s worked with teenagers knows that there is a polygraph-like detection of condescension at any given moment. The student in the quote above was merely pointing out that they felt that Moodle was something from the adult, or school sphere that was trying desperately to mimic something from the real world. You know, the one that occurs outside of school.

Then there came the replies from my high-achieving students. These are students that are amazing; they’re one of the best groups in recent memory in my building. They will go on to study in colleges on the coasts and are far more responsible at their age than I was. They struggled to tell me good things about Moodle. Their main complaint however, wasn’t in content delivery or discussion. They didn’t like how they had to go back through logins to various pages to keep checking for possible changes and assignments. I don’t blame them.

Take a look at the myriad of tech-savvy people in business and education out there in the wide web. What are they using? Is it Moodle? No. There will be talk of Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) and Facebook, Twitter, or Google Reader. Now, after discussion with a colleague who’s far wiser than I, it’s clear that there are benefits and safety provided by Moodle’s “walled garden” approach. It’s a way of ensuring a controlled interaction environment. Yet it I go back to what my student said. My concern is the paradigm of information delivery.

Go log in to Facebook, Twitter, or your Google Reader account. What greets you? Why information! Every minutia of informational change that has occurred in your network since your last login is brought to your attention. The difference with Moodle is staggering. Students live in a time where there is an economy of focus. If as an educator, I want to connect to my students I have to justify why they should give their focus to interacting with me.

Maybe it’s not so much a case of Moodle vs Facebook as it is one of Moodle vs PLNs? I’ll have to talk with my students and see.

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It’s okay to be jealous of my Lucky Charms cupcake,...

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 22:22:35 -0500

It’s okay to be jealous of my Lucky Charms cupcake, really, it is. (Taken with instagram)