Synthesizing Education

I am anti-literacy. What I mean is that I am anti people taking the word “literacy” and placing it after another word simply to make it sound more important or “21st Century.” The other day I read something where “attention literacy” was used.

Are you kidding me?

Here’s the way I think about the overuse of words and ideas to the point where it becomes irrelevant.

When we think of something like “curriculum” many of us have a hard time stripping it down to a useable entity because “it’s all important.” Kindly understand that saying that “it’s all important” puts everything on the same level thereby making NONE of it important.

Same thing goes with attaching “literacy” (or any other word) to everything.

Stop doing it. We’ve beaten the dead horse to the point of it being unrecognizable.

Literacy: the ability to read and write.

Everything else is just a poor attempt at propagating an agenda that centers around an isolated interest rather than identifying what’s really important.

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Let’s be honest about something. We continue to perpetuate a culture that believes an individual is born with some inherent trait that allows them to be “good” at Math. We even talk to kids about how well they do in some subject areas as opposed to others.

This is all straight bunk. Even worse, we are only expanding on this belief with the infusion of new tools and technologies.

We deem it perfectly acceptable to hear someone say “I’m just not good with technology.”

We need to fight this mentality as a collective unit; not just on the technology front but on ALL fronts. We need to stop allowing kids to convince themselves that they aren’t “good” at certain subject areas and that working hard to learn a new skill, topic, theme, or idea is exactly what we have to do at some point or another with everything.

Face it: technology is the new math.

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Another brain dump.
It drives me mad when teachers say this to students:

How could you not know this?!?!? You were supposed to have covered it last year!

First off: it probably wasn’t all that important to begin with.

Does it worry me if students don’t retain important information and big concepts from year to year? Of course, but let’s consider another angle here.

In August/September, how many of us need to be reminded of specific protocol or intricacies that they have been using for several years? How many of us need to be retrained in online gradebooks, updating their web site, remembering their e-mail password, or signing up for certain supplies? I’m talking about day-to-day functions of your individual school building.

Seriously. Think about what goes on in the “back to school” activities in your building and how many people “forget” how to complete these functions.

You know that gap of time where school doesn’t exist called “Summer?” Well, it’s bad for retention. For the kids..and us.

Please feel free to share this with your colleagues who complain about kids not retaining information over the course of the summer. I’d love to hear their excuse.

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I was talking in the physical world today about a discussion I had in the virtual world about AP College Board courses and their reliance on the memorization of facts in order to prepare for a test (presumably for college credit).

Aaron, I don’t get how you can hate the College Board so much but still teach AP US History?

I get this question a lot, and my answer is rooted deeper than just AP courses. It pretty much sums up my view on a lot of things in life, but I’ve learned to answer this question with a question.

How does everyone feel about non-educators that ridicule the educational system and point out its flaws?

No one has the right to ridicule from the sidelines. If you want to make change, you have to be involved in the system to change it. It doesn’t matter if it’s critiquing AP curriculum, the educational structure, or any other facet of life for that matter.

If you want to change the rules, make sure you’re playing the game first. No one wants advice from the player who never even tried out.

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If you told me in January that my district was going 1:1 (we aren’t) next school year I would be jumping up and down with pure joy and excitement. If you told me today that my district was going 1:1 (we aren’t) next school year I would be jumping up and down with pure joy and excitement.

Lately, we’ve been investigating ways that we can work on getting technology into schools, and I have to admit that I’m starting to think 1:1 programs are dead for those districts that don’t already have them. Don’t get me wrong, I would LOVE to be in a 1:1 district and no one, given the chance, should refuse such an opportunity.

Enter the possibility of the $100 laptop. If the $100 laptop becomes a reality, more kids will have their own technology to use. Districts will still have to invest in some purchases for those that are unable to afford such technology, but I would imagine the numbers would be relatively low.

What does this mean?

• Districts can spend more on infrastructure and upgrading bandwidth in hopes that students will be bringing in their own devices for 1:1 use.
• Students will become more comfortable with using technology because of the “personalized” feel.
• Students will bear witness to a more diverse grouping of technology since not everyone will have the same device.
• Teachers will need to develop even more flexibility and adaptability for the same reason above.
• Districts will focus more on their infrastructure and capability of having all students online all the time.

There are more positives and, like everything else, a number of negatives that come with this type of mentality. School districts will be transforming themselves into “Panera Bread” with a dominant focus on connectivity rather than providing hardware.

If kids have better technology at home than districts can afford to outfit them with on a yearly basis then we can’t afford to prevent them from bringing it into the learning experience. It’s also much easier to justify a budget to parents by telling them that the money is being invested into ensuring connectivity at school instead of providing them with an item the kids already have.

What say you?

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Here’s another case of “putting the cart before the horse”.

At what point are we (meaning educators as a whole) going to jump on board with the use of social tools to talk with each other and improve instruction? I fear the answer to that question. Why? Because the problem isn’t a matter of “we can’t”. It’s a matter of “we don’t want to” or “we won’t”.

Now, I understand that there are various fluctuations and variables in the following examples, but consider the implications.

The best example (I am aware of) of teachers utilizing Web 2.0 tools to communicate and share ideas is “The Educator’s PLN”, which, as of 5/28/2010, has 4,033 members. Many of the members, I assume, are also very active in #edchat, which takes place on Twitter.

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from the New Jersey Council for the Social Studies, which high-lighted the Ning that has been started for the organization. After some investigating, it was created on November 16, 2009. Now, I am as guilty as the next person for not knowing about the Ning sooner, but how are there currently only 32 members? To put this in perspective, there are 16 members in the Social Studies department of my school alone and more than 30 in the district.

On Saturday, I was at EdCamp Philly at the same time that the New Jersey rally was taking place. I figured that while I was sitting at the conference, I could follow along the Twitter stream to see the impact of the rally (#NJrally). Do a search for the hash tag and you can be as depressed as I was. In the end, I had to follow along on NJ.com and mycentraljersey.com. You read that correctly. I had to rely on mainstream news media to publicize an event that was attended by 30,000-35,000 people.

The examples above, I think, highlight a growing problem that is not being addressed yet a number of us highlighted it in Tuesday’s #edchat.

If people do not see VALUE in tools then they will not feel a need to instruct students of their use. This means providing educators with concrete examples of how it can improve their professional and personal lives.

Bottom line: teachers will not instruct students on how to appropriately utilize social media tools until they (teachers) are utilizing them in their own day-to-day activities.

If we want to improve the quality of instruction of social media tools, then our biggest push should be providing teachers with value outside of the classroom otherwise it will never transfer to the inside.

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Thanks to Hadley Ferguson (@hadleyjf) for sending me this article from the Huffington Post by J.B. Pritzker titled, “Only Kids Can Fix This Economy”. Pritzker is specifically talking about investing in the President’s proposed Early Learning Challenge Fund and the important waterfall effect that it can have, but let’s take this title and go in another direction.

We don’t give kids enough of society’s problems to try and fix.

Currently, I am showing the movie “Crash” to my AP US kids, and we are talking about ways that we can improve the relations and interactions between people who have obvious bias. This topic is almost always swept under the carpet in school and society in general. It’s almost as though people believe we should ignore these topics and they will go away. How successful has that been so far?

Some of us have a predisposition that kids are “too young to understand” or “can’t develop their thoughts with enough clarity” to properly address the situation.

Why are we not asking kids like Filip Piasevoli to develop solutions to complex problems like the economy or the oil spill?

I love the argument “they don’t understand.” As far as I am concerned, neither did BP. If they did, then it STILL wouldn’t be a problem. Hell, by this point, the BP oil spill could have been an entire marking period worth of work having kids research and develop solutions that have had the same (or better) success rate as BP’s.

I just get amazed when we shun student participation simply because they are not “experts” in the field, but at the same time, we will praise the availability of knowledge through technology in the 21^st century. Seems like a double-standard to me, and just another case where we say one thing but fail to implement it on a practical level.

Progressive educators need to start introducing students to problems of the world. We need to guide them towards situations that they may be interested in developing solutions to like saving the Trenton Barracks (be a pal and sign our petition), stimulating the economy, or posing potential solutions to areas that interest them.

Do I expect them to solve all of these problems or even come up with feasible solutions for every one? Of course not, but is there anyone on the planet that we expect that from?

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Every once and a while I come across a thought, post, or idea that I can’t let go of thinking about. Lately, it has been Jerrid Kruse’s post “Relevance Is Not The Holy Grail”.

Here’s a quick line that has me thinking more and more about the topic of relevance in schools:

Understanding footprints in rock is not relevant to students, but every student had ideas & wanted to share their thinking as we tried to figure out some footprint fossils. We (teachers) are not future predictors.

My question whenever we talk about “relevance” is always: relevant to whom? In the case above, I contend that Jerrid’s students found their learning to be relevant to them, and I would be really interested to see if any of them went home to investigate fossils further (I bet some did). Jerrid’s students were finding their own relevance organically rather than being told it was.

Hence, Jerrid & Co. accomplished finding relevance without realizing it. Finding our own relevance may very well be one of the highest forms of intelligence, and it is something that rests entirely in the learner’s hands.

How can we TELL kids that a topic is relevant in their lives? Just because we deem something to be relevant doesn’t mean it looks that way in a kid’s eyes nor are they required to “fall in line” when we deem information relevant.

Relevance is something personal, and it is extremely subjective. You can’t tell someone what is relevant to his or her life. That would be completely defeating (and demeaning) the purpose of providing relevance in the first place.

Explaining why something is relevant also defeats the intention of good-natured educators to allow students to connect with a topic. Realize that when you are explaining as such, you are providing the student with the reason YOU believe the topic is relevant; not why it may (or may not be) relevant to him or her.

Relevance is looking more and more to me like a “Catch 22”. The goal is noble, but the reality is that we lose sight of it by focusing on it.

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I attended my first un-conference yesterday in Philadelphia (EdCampPhilly), and I was thoroughly impressed with the amount of emphasis that was placed on learning as an organic mechanism. This is exactly the type of environment that should exist in every classroom throughout the country.

I attended Dr. David D. Timony’s presentation on “Student Expectations of Teacher Expertise” and loved that the participants were engaging in conversation that revolved around a plethora of ideas about experts, perception, and teaching. I also enjoyed leading a session titled “Problems With Problem-Based Learning” that started out talking about the topic and wandered off into a number of diverging paths (not necessarily pertaining to PBL).

Any way you slice it, each session followed its own “flow” and wasn’t destined to cover an agenda, standards, or specific learning objectives. Instead, it was directed by the learners and each presenter played the role of facilitator.

Some people call these “teachable moments” as though there are only certain times where the learning should be directed by the learner.

The problem is that a lot of classrooms work really, really hard to prevent this kind of organic learning from taking place. We create elaborate lesson plans, intricate assignment sheets, and detailed rubrics that prevent the creativity and curiosity we are trying to cultivate. We utilize programs like PowerPoint (We Have Met The Enemy & He Is PowerPoint) that ensure we look at learning as a heirarchy with a specific order that needs to take place to ensure understanding of the teacher’s agenda. We “kingdomize” classes so that students can learn history or English or Science without ever having to think about how the three are interconnected.

All of the above prevents students from learning how to think and enforces dictating what to think.

At some point, we began to emphasize “classroom management” and structure rather than learning. It’s time to find a place in the middle of the continuum.

We need to allow every moment to have the structure (or lack thereof) of a “teachable moment”.

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What amazes me about the controversy over cell phone use in school is when the same people who want to take cell phones away from kids also want them to be engaged in their learning.

Actually, what those particular educators want is for students to be engaged in learning the way the teachers were engaged in learning during school. 

Pew Research Center released this article today titled “Assessing the Cell Phone Challenge”. The article provides some interesting information about political polling and cell phones, but my favorite part was the graphic below. The technology that some refer to as “an extension of the arm” is dominating and growing in mainstream use at a daunting pace. We’re continually publishing studies and data to prove it and predict where the trend is taking us (as though we really needed it).

Maybe it’s time that we stop making kids pay for the fact that they have technology available for learning that previous generations didn’t.

The Growing Cell-Only Population By Age

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