Learning Mix

Essential Questions

I’ve been rereading Heidi Hayes Jacob’s thoughts on the importance of essential questions in curriculum development. We’re currently in the throes of curriculum mapping at my school, so I was originally approaching the ideas from the perspective of my role as Computer Science department head.

As I read, however, I’ve realized that the points she makes are just as relevant if I don my other cap of technology director.

I’ve long had concerns about how schools have tended to approach technology. There has often seemed to be a buy-first, ask-questions-later mentality driving the process. I worry when schools invest in hardware, software, and infrastructure without a clear sense of how it’s going to be used or how it’s going to be supported. I’m not saying that everything needs to be planned ahead of time - the availability of the tools can certainly enable and inspire creative uses - but without thoughtful goals related to learning and teaching, educational technology so often seems to stop at word processing and e-mail.

With this in mind, I thought it would be a useful and interesting exercise to think about some essential questions related technology use in education. In no particular order:

• At what age should student computer use begin in school? At what age is one-to-one appropriate?
• Which computing platform(s) and why?
• Is technology additive, instrumental, or transformational?
• Is it important for schools to be “cutting edge”?
• What skills should all students be learning? What role does technology play?
• What would be the benefits of a computer programming requirement for all students? At what age should it begin?
• To draw from a recent post by Sylvia Martinez, how can technology enable students to Create?
• How do electronic communication and collaboration impact teaching and learning?
• To filter or not to filter?
• How do we tap the online tools students already use to create learning opportunities?
• Social networks as learning networks: How do we make it happen?

Well, that’s a start. I hope others come up with more.

Martial Arts: The Model Classroom?

For ten years I have run Taekwondo programs for students and faculty at the schools where I have worked. While I have long believed that martial arts training can be incredibly valuable for children and adults alike, some of my conversations at and since Educon have gotten me thinking about how the dojang (training hall) can be a model for the academic classroom.

“Model?” I hear you exclaim incredulously, “Isn’t martial arts training about as far from progressive education as possible, with its culture of blind obedience and drill-till-you-drop mentality?”

Actually, I don’t think it is.

First of all, just as in the academic realm, there are obviously good martial arts schools and not-so-good martial arts schools. When taught well, Taekwondo, which roughly translates from Korean as “the Way of Hand and Foot,” is about more than learning how to kick and punch. As the name suggests, training should be a journey to find the Way, a personal path to self-improvement and deeper meaning. Ultimately, martial arts training is about facing personal challenges, striving to overcome them with persistence and discipline, and learning from the lessons of experience.

Isn’t this really the goal of any good education?

As far as the question of blind obedience, this is an issue I address regularly with new students. I usually begin by talking about the custom of bowing, a particularly difficult concept for fiercely independent Westerners. The exchange generally looks something like this:

“Why do we all have to bow to you?”

“You don’t.”

“What do you mean? We start and end every class by bowing to you.”

“No, we start and end every class by bowing to each other.”

I go on to talk about the respect, responsibility, and trust that the bowing represents and communicates. Student bows to teacher in respect and to show that she is putting her trust in her teacher’s hands; teacher bows to student in respect and to accept responsibility for the trust that has been given him.

Isn’t that the relationship forged in any good classroom, albeit normally less explicitly?

Bowing inevitably leads to questions about why students address me as Sabumnim or the English equivalent, “Master,” and why all blackbelts are addressed as Sir or Madam. While these concerns give me the opportunity to talk about some of the history, traditions, and rituals of Taekwondo, more importantly they allow us to discuss the importance of checking the ego at the door and entering the dojang with an open mind - important prerequisites for any kind of learning.

We remove our shoes as a symbolic way to leave the concerns of the day-to-day world outside the dojang. We bow as we enter the training hall to show respect to the culture and traditions of Taekwondo. We address instructors and senior students with ritualized titles that express respect and acknowledge the rank of those more experienced than we. There is a very clear hierarchy in Taekwondo, but it is one based on the straight-forward criterion of seniority and represented by the color of the belt tied around your waist. It’s a culture that cultivates humility while still valuing and acknowledging individual achievement.

As for the question of drill, traditional martial arts are certainly filled with repetitive practice, but I would argue that the nature of this type of training differs markedly from the mindless rote learning that can be found in too many academic classrooms. Memorizing facts and figures doesn’t build skills, except maybe the skill to memorize. What’s to be learned by doing the same math problem - or even the same type of math problem - again and again? Doing the same blocks, strikes, and kicks over and over, however, is an essential part of Taekwondo training. So, how does it differ?

The performing of the physical technique is only the first level of learning. First a student learns the movement. As she continues to practice the technique, she comes to understand the body mechanics that allow her to generate maximum speed and power. After many hours of doing the same technique, the student no longer needs to think consciously about the movement; it becomes programmed into her body. The mind is freed to consider the appropriate tactics and strategies that make use of the technique. After many years of training, that same technique can become a means to release the mind entirely, a moving meditation where nothing exists except for the moment when mind, body, and spirit converge at a single point in time and space.

Okay, whoa, isn’t this whole mind/body/spirit thing getting just a little too esoteric?

Maybe. But I recently read the mission statement of a school whose stated goal is to educate the “head, hand, and heart.” What’s the difference?

Other aspects of Taekwondo training make it a compelling model for education. Key concepts of good teaching and learning are embodied in the martial arts: mastery learning, personalized instruction, peer coaching, regular feedback and assessment, and the application of skills in realistic settings.

There’s no class curve in the dojang. You work on a technique until you can do it to the instructor’s satisfaction, then you are tested on it (notice that you’re not tested on it until you’ve proven in class that you can do it), and then you continue to work on it even as you go on to learn new techniques. Throughout this process, you get regular, specific, personalized feedback and instruction, both from the instructor and from more experienced fellow students. As you progress, you also become responsible for helping less experienced students with their learning. On top of all this, you regularly have the opportunity to apply what you have learned in various realistic contexts, such as controlled sparring. Squaring off against a more experienced partner is a powerful opportunity for self-assessment.

As the teacher, my ultimate goal is for all of my students to be better than I am. To borrow an image from the 1970s television series Kung Fu, my hope is that they grow to surpass me and “snatch the pebble from my hand.” But I make it very clear from the start that I will not make it easy for them. My responsibility is to push them to do the best they can, to help them find something inside themselves that they didn’t know was there. I train along side my students because there’s no better way I know to teach focus, discipline, hard work, integrity, passion, self-control, and indomitable spirit than to model those behaviors day in and day out.

I think it’s valuable for students to see teachers struggle to solve a problem or push their own personal limits or try things they know they can’t do. Some martial arts teachers - and dare I say classroom teachers - try to cultivate a sense of awe or mystique about themselves. I’d much rather that my students see me as human, as a person who can’t do anything they’re not capable of doing if they’re willing to train long enough and hard enough to achieve it.

Once while we paused during a challenging workout, a student clearly had something on her mind. When I asked her what was wrong, she looked down and mumbled, “Nothing, sir.” When I pressed her, she finally blurted out, “The problem is, sir, we can’t even complain when you work us this hard because you do everything with us.”

They say misery loves company, but I’d say learning loves company even more.

Photo Storage

We’re currently using personalized wikispaces and edublogs at my school. While we’re getting more and more folks interested and on board, the handling of media on the sites is raising some challenges. For example, some uses are uploading photos (often huge, unoptimized photos) directly to their wikis and blogs while others prefer to link to images in their personal flickr accounts, but the free accounts sometimes limit what they can do.

So, it occurred to me that it might be useful to pay for a single pro flickr account (or one per division, or…?) with a single login to be shared by all faculty. I ran this by the tech department to look for holes in the logic, but I figured I’d tap the Edusphere to see if anyone had any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, cautions, or alternatives to offer.

Here’s what we’ve come up with so far:

PROS
- It’s inexpensive.
- Flickr is already a familiar tool.
- Unlimited storage, bandwidth, etc.
- It’s easy to use.
- This would be a good way to consolidate and archive school-related images.
- It offers simple image editing capabilities.

CONS/CONCERNS/QUESTIONS
- Teachers would share a single login.
- Could students have access as well?
- Does it raise privacy/copyright issues?
- Do the flickr terms of service allow this type of shared use?
- With many users, would it become a chaotic mess?

What are we missing? Any and all suggestions are welcome.

And all of this of course leads to the question of the best way to handle audio and video, so please feel free to offer ideas for that as well.

Thanks!

Motives

Three times in the last week I’ve heard people argue that teaching doesn’t change because teachers are afraid - or have too much ego - to give up control in their classrooms. While those teachers no doubt exist in the wild, I’m reminded of a quotation I stumbled across some years ago (but I’m afraid I don’t remember who said it): “Never attribute to others motives more nefarious than your own.”

I suspect that the real reason  so many classrooms tend to be teacher-centered is that a lot of teachers don’t know how to turn over the reins to students and still get through the material they feel obliged to cover.

Yes, I understand that therein lies the problem, but the reality is that the curriculum and expectations are often/usually not the teacher’s own. And I believe a futher reality is that most schools don’t know how to create truly student-centered, constructivist, project-based, creative learning environments that are rigourous, effective, and sustainable and don’t fall victim to the problems that doomed so many past attempts at progressive school reform.

As Chris Lehmann pointed out at EduCon, this stuff isn’t easy.

If it were, everyone would be doing it.

If versus Which

While I intellectually understood many of the differences between technology use in public and private schools, having the opportunity to attend EduCon 2.0 allowed me to experience those differences at a more visceral level. The conference was filled with smart, passionate, innovative educators from public schools across the nation, many of whom have to spend ridiculous amounts of time and energy avoiding, or leaping over, bureaucratic, financial, and technical barriers.

At one point I had one of those Ah-Ha moments in which you realize the blatantly obvious. Technology use in a well-established, well-funded, traditional independent schools is generally additive rather than transformational because it can be. By most standards schools like mine are already successful. Most of our students get a balanced education, graduate from high school, and go on to college - and many go to the “good” colleges they’re supposed to.

Over the course of the conference I began to think of this as the If College versus Which College divide. As many public schools are struggling to find ways just to get kids to graduate, their private school counterparts have the luxury to focus on getting their students into the right colleges (and fortunately more and more schools seem to understand that “right” has more to do with fit than status).

In which context is radical change most needed and technology most likely to be truly transformational?

EduCon 2.0

As EduCon 2.0 wraps up, my head is spinning, as it usually does at a great conference. I’ll try to carve out time over the next few days to reflect on my experiences. The first day was actually the preconference, where the early arrivers had the opportunity to visit SLA and hang out with each other. I met some great folks and had a chance to spend time with Chris Lehmann and talk to him about SLA. He and this place are impressive. What a great school in so many ways.

That said, I have to say it was interesting to see that what’s going on in the classrooms was not so different from what happens in other good classrooms I’ve spent time in over the years. I guess I was half-expecting to find Utopian classrooms of totally rapt students, master teachers, ground-breaking innovation, and technology-rich, student-centered lessons. I did see some of that, but I mostly saw passionate teachers of various abilities using a variety of progressive and traditional approaches to reach large classes of generally engaged students, many of whom were on task and some of whom were on Facebook. In other words, I saw the reality of most good schools. This is not meant as a criticism at all but only as an observation of my own preconceptions.

More to come.

Catching Up

Rather than talk about not writing, I’m just going to write….

Going to EduCon 2.0 at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia tomorrow. Chris Lehman was our virtual keynote speaker at the NEIT 2007 conference at Mohonk this year. I was incredibly impressed by what he had to say about progressive educations, student empowerment, and project-based learning, so I’m very exited to visit his school. And the conversations that are planned look great.

We’re in the throes of preparing for a technology evaluation at my school. More on that later.

Still twittering since the NEIT conference, but I’m still mostly a lurker. We’ll see if I get sucked in.

Computer Science in a K-12 School

I’ve been thinking about our technology in preparation for a Parent Association meeting, and I figured this would be a good opportunity to start writing here again. As I began this process, I had to admit that I’m not as involved in the Lower School curriculum as I would like to be and, frankly, ought to be. On the other hand, I’ve focused a lot on bringing Smartboards into the LS classrooms because I really think that’s where they are used in the most creative and constructivist ways.

In the LS, computer work is lab and classroom-centered. Instruction is a mix of skills training and content-related project work. Students learn word processing to practice writing skills and keyboarding and as a way to publish their poetry, stories, and reports. They use programs like MediaBlender, KidPix, Neighborhood Mapmaker Timeliner, Graph Club, and Inspiration to create projects and presentations in Social Studies and Science. MS Excel and programs such as MathBlaster help students explore concepts in Math. I have had little involvement in the development of these units; the curriculum was mostly in place when I arrived, and it seems to be working well.

The key now is to look at the entire K-12 Computer Science curriculum as a whole. We are currently in the process of mapping curricula here, so that should help the department examine what we are doing across the three divisions. There is already a great deal of dialog and coordination between the Middle and Upper Schools, but that needs to be carried into the lower grades as well.

Driven

At the last NYCIST meeting, someone began a thought with, “We all accept that curriculum should drive technology use and not the other way around.” Heads nodded in agreement, and I found myself nodding along out of habit. He was only stating what for so long has been the bedrock of educational technology theory, especially in traditional independent schools. We’re not trying to change what you do; we’re just giving you new tools to add to you kit.

I’m sure I’ve said those very words in the past, but lately I’ve had the sense that the ground is starting to shift under our feet. Maybe we’re finally entering an age in which technology is developing in ways that can make it truly transformational for education. In certain subject areas, technology clearly does have a direct effect on curriculum. Computer Science, certainly. Science, sure. I could probably find examples from each subject, but perhaps the conversation we should really be having is the one about how technology affects pedagogy - not necessarily what we teach, but how we teach it.

The current buzz is the need to teach students 21st Century Skills. Time magazine even did a cover story on How to Build a Student for the 21st Century. But what exactly are those skills? They are not computer skills per se but are instead the skills required to stay afloat in a technology-rich, information-driven, global economy/community.

So it’s not about content and curriculum; it’s about managing time and information and relationships. Students need to learn to communicate and collaborate and innovate and connect and think critically, creatively, and holistically. They need to learn to access the incredible resources that technology makes available, which means that schools need give students the opportunity and training to tap into those resources.

Is the traditional classroom giving students the chance to learn these skills? Even at one-to-one schools like mine are we taking advantage of the incredible opportunity to turn learning into something more vibrant and participatory? How do we do make time for more exploration in learning and still continue to build the foundation of core knowledge that students need? What does the school of the future look like?

Art Remixed

I visited the Barnes Foundation collection in Merion, PA last week. What an amazing place (and a fascinating controversy)! Barnes created his foundation as a school to educate people from all walks of life about art. He believed that art could change lives since, in the end, “art and life are inseparable.” It was not his goal to teach people the craft of painting ( “for that would be like teaching an injured person how to scream”) but to guide them to learn how to see.

I suppose that’s really the goal all good teaching — helping our students learn how to see. To see threads, connections, possibilities, and beauty in the world around them. To spot valid arguments and faulty premises. To separate fact from opinion, evidence from bias. To focus on the important details while still keeping the big picture in sight.

At one point in the audio tour through the Barnes galleries, the narrator described Cezanne’s impact on Picasso, explaining that Picasso did not imitate Cezanne’s work but “reworked its influences into his own unique forms.” Fast forward to 2006, and that same remark could describe what’s happening with blogging and the read/write web. Reading, writing, mixing, remixing. Learn from what others are doing, think about it, analyze it, synthesize it, internalize it, and go write about it.

Ultimately, though, it’s not about the product; it’s about the act of engaging in the process, of looking at what others are doing and then putting brush to canvas.