Quote: "Americans need talents and abilities that are not available at a lower price elsewhere on earth. (Zhao, "Preface", Section 70, para. 3) Question: What are those talents and abilities that we can teach and nurture that cannot be as readily produced elsewhere in the world? Connection: One of the district administrators that I have recently talked with explained that we need to train students to be able to do tasks that require "non-repetitive, high cognition skills." Zhao explains that we're fighting a losing battle if all we try to do is compete with nations which are capable of more efficiently mass producing a low-cognition, high repetition work force. Epiphany: Preparing students for the future means more than simply teaching students so that they are more competitive than their international counterparts. We are teaching students to be functional in a world where so much traditional work is becoming automated by machines. If all we do is teach students skills that are repetitive and low cognition, we are preparing them for a future wherein they can be easily replaced by increasingly intelligent machines. Quote: "No Child Left Behind required that all states develop rigorous curriculum standards in math and reading following its passage, and in science by 2005. Today all 50 states have developed such standards and grade-level expectation" (Zhao, Chapter 1, Standards and Accountability, para. 3). Question: What is wrong with having standards and holding school accountable for teaching those same standards? Connection: I have had far too many conversations with colleagues who found NCLB distasteful to downright offensive with its emphasis on testing. I would often counter that there is nothing wrong with trying to be more rigorous and holding ourselves accountable. Epiphany: In the past I have thought that in absence of standards and testing there would be complacency. Yet I entered the teaching profession knowing nothing but an NCLB teaching environment. Zhao has effectively described the shortcomings of the philosophy underlying centralized educational reforms like NCLB. Too often we pursue rigor and centralization by sacrificing student talent diversification and the more humanistic elements that should be at the core of any education. Quote: "Clearly, American education has been moving toward authoritarianism, letting the government dictate what and how students should learn and what schools should teach" (Zhao, "The Road to Educational Dictatorship", para. 1). Question: Has the push for national standards resulted in better, more rigorous standards that will benefit all students? Connection: I have often looked contemptuously towards those states or individuals who resisted the implementation of Common Core Standards. I thought that resistors were merely right wing ideologues who did not want to have their freedoms taken by the government they so feared. Epiphany: I can now look with some understanding towards those who are not fully convinced that Common Core Standards are the panacea for education. The problem is, as most likely spouted by Bill O'Reilly and the Fox Network, that centralization is not the solution. I am reluctant to put myself the company of the aforementioned, however centralization and authoritarianism. does lead to systems incapable of recognizing the individual and strength of diversity. Quote: "We thus face a choice of what we want: a diversity of talents, of individuals who are passionate, curious, self-confident, and risk taking; or a nation of excellent test takers, outstanding performers on math and reading tests" (Zhao, "An Imperfect System That Others Seek to Emulate", para. 4). Question: Is it possible to find a balance between nurturing diverse talents and making sure that all students have the fundamental math and reading skills necessary to function in society? Connection: As skeptical teachers, we are at times dismissive of test scores. We may say things like "These scores don't necessarily reflect the actual learning of our students or capture their other non-quantifiable skills." Epiphany: Zhao destroys many assumptions that we make by putting standards and test results at the core of our teaching. He explains how this approach is being abandoned by high performing, Asian nations. While they adopt our approach we take theirs. Yet, test results are do not correlate to better national outcomes in terms of competitiveness and other measures such as GDP. It is a bit of a gamble to place so much emphasis on the skills that standards and testing can achieve. Resources Zhao, Y. (2009). Catching up or leading the way American education in the age of globalization. Alexandria, Va.: ASCD.
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As a technology learning coach I was tasked with leading and developing a Technology Integration Plan for my site. One of the goals that I wrote into this plan was to help students become producers as well as consumers of online content. I want my students to be fully immersed in an online community where they too are empowered to share their points of view and other ideas. Austin Kleon’s book Show Your Work affirmed the need to pursue this goal. In it, Kleon demonstrates the necessity and simplicity of continuously creating and contributing to our online communities. Online communities have the potential to give us so much more when we decide to take on a participatory role rather than sit on the sidelines. Of the 10 ways that Kleon suggests that we share our creativity, the two that most resonated with me were: “3. Share Something Small Everyday.” and “4. Open Up Your Cabinet of Curiosities.” I, and many students that I know, often get caught up waiting for the perfect idea to strike or for a polished finished product before deciding to share. When instead we decide to share small bits and pieces on a regular basis we overcome our inhibitions and apathy and become more practiced in writing and producing. I have seen this happen throughout this summer with my own writing. I can now say that I am more confident in sharing with an online community which is an integral part of my learning journey. Some day I might be able to gather my ideas into a larger compilation, or be able to “turn flow into stock.” In the meantime, I send out smaller dispatches which I hope will spur others to exchange ideas with me. Maybe we’ll both better better as a result of our exchanges. I am fortunate enough to be put into the position where I am allowed to learn from others via conferences, my reading, and other professional learning networks. In a sense, these experiences make me a curator for my “Cabinet of Curiosities.” Kleon explains that “We all carry around the weird and wonderful things we’ve come across while doing our work and living our lives” (p. 317). One of my tasks is to share what I have curated in order to help others see possibilities to spur their creativity. All of these activities should take place using the social media tools which make creating, collaborating, and sharing possible and powerful. Each tool has its own sharing protocols, etiquette, strengths, and limitations. Some of these attributes are products of the app’s design and some are attributes of an unwritten consensus amongst the users. This summer I have come to acknowledge the usefulness of many social media tools that I had previously written off. Now I realize, after cultivating my professional learning network, that tools like Pinterest can be used to curate, create, and share in extremely innovative ways. As I approached George Couros’ blog entry “Snapchat and Education” I wondered if I was about to do another about face for Snapchat, a social media tool that had written off. Couros helped me understand the appeal Snapchat has for a younger generation. He explained that part of the appeal is that adults cannot as readily understand or inhabit this space. Not to worry though because “Not every technology needs to be “edufied”” (“Snapchat in Education”). While Snapchat might not find its way into modern teaching any time soon there is no doubt that picture sharing can have a legitimate purpose within education. Hence, Instagram enters the equation. In “Instagram Scavenger Hunt,” English Teacher Caitlyn Tucker explains how she used Instagram in order to trace context of The Joy Luck Club, a book she was reading with her Honors English Class. What I found most profound in this exemplary lesson is that Caitlyn took the learning outside of the classroom in a very real way. For Caitlyn’s students The Joy Luck Club was no longer a distant work of literature but a story with roots in the real world. English teachers such as Caitlyn and myself are constantly seeking ways to connect students with the literature we share. There is no better way for establishing this connection than taking students to the same streets where the protagonist also walked. It provides an empathetic connection that nothing else can match. That students were expected to document these connections and epiphanies via Instagram was a teaching stroke of genius. Students were no longer playing a passive role by simply reading. They were being asked to participate in Amy Tan’s world by sharing their own observations. I will sure try to emulate a similar learning experience, although Instagram is filtered in my district I will seek out similar photo sharing platform that is allowed in VUSD. Students need a means to share their learning in very real ways. A picture and its thousand words can say so much on behalf of our students. The larger takeaways are that social media tools can make sharing and creating thrive but not every tool needs to be used. Yet however we may choose to proceed we must get into the habit of creating and sharing often and doing so to the best of our abilities. Resources Couros, G. (2014, October 27). Snapchat and Education. Retrieved July 21, 2015. Kleon, A. (2014). Show your work!: 10 ways to share your creativity and get discovered. New York, New York: Workman Publishing Company. Tucker, C (2013, February 25). Instagram Scavenger Hunt. Retrieved August 22, 2015. Quote: "In the twenty-first century, however, knowledge becoming less of a question of "What is the information" and more of a "Where is the information"" (91).
Question: How do we teach students that the answer to this question involves a lot more than a Google search? How can we move them beyond seeing Google as the be all/end all of internet research? Connection: This brings us closer to Sugata Mitra's 2007 TED Talk, Kids Can Teach Themselves. Kids don't need us to tell them the information as much as they need us to show them how to find and retrieve the information. And more, importantly, help them to figure out what to do with the information once they have found it. Epiphany: We are continuously marching forward towards a future in education where we won't be able to tell students this is what you have to learn but rather this is how you can learn. Quote: "Through play, the process of learning is no longer smooth and progressive. Instead, there is a gap between the knowledge one is given and the desired end result" (97). Question: How do we get students to differentiate between this definition of play and work? Connection: It is an incredible feeling when work feels like play and vice-versus. This is some what what my last school year felt like. After nearly a decade of teaching, the last school year left me feeling extremely invigorated. Part of the reason may have been that I was learning how to code and solder alongside my students. Another reason, to piggy back on Thomas and Brown, may have been that there was still so much to discover while in our foundational year and in the process of discovery there was much experimentation. Epiphany: Play is what happens in between what we know and where we're trying to get. Experimentation is a synonym for play where we try on different potential solutions in order to try to arrive at desired result. Is it analogous to putting on dad's shoes and tie and role playing our parents in order to get our little brother's to follow our lead? I think so. Quote: "Geeking out asks the question: How can I utilize the available resources, both social and technological, for deep exploration?" (108) Question: How does one know if they have achieved true geek status? Connection: This class-we are using one another as resources as well as seeking out other resources made possible through technology in order to explore what it means to be a leader in education that has a heavy technological focus. Epiphany: For me, more important than thinking about the end goal, "Geeking Out," is considering that arriving here lies on a continuum. Spending time "Hanging Out" and "Messing Around" on Facebook may be legitimate means to arriving to this end goal. Quote: " The personal is the basis for an individual's notions of who she is (identity) and what she can do (agency) [...] The notion of "the public" is singular and it implies a sense of both scale and anonymity. The notion of a collective is more narrow. Collectives are made up of people who generally share values and beliefs about the world and their place in it, who value participation over belonging and who engage in a set of shared practices" (56) Question: How does one maintain both scale and anonymity? Is a social media service like Facebook best left in the domain of the personal, the public, or the collective? Is it possible to ascribe these definitions to a particular web service or does it depend on how the particular user chooses to use the service? Connection: I considered all the different ways in which I participate in online communities and with social media and I found that none of my contributions to the personal, public, or collective fit neatly into any one of these definitions. Epiphany: It's definitely useful to attempt to define the different roles and expectations of each of these structures as we try to more clearly distinguish what is appropriate for our netiquette. It seems that we're all confused as to what is acceptable and where. Additionally, internet companies have repeatedly jeopardized our safety and reputations as the personal is co-opted by the public. If we make a decision to not blend our spheres, at least to whatever extent this is possible, I think we may save ourselves lots of difficulty in the future. It is especially interesting to consider that learning occupies both the personal and the collective. Quote: "At the time, the web provided a forum for public presentation, and search engines provided an organizing principle for finding and sorting information. But from the beginning blogs have been all about personal expression" (63). Question: Are social media web services like Facebook and its predecessor Myspace, merely the evolution of the personalized blog or did they create a whole new paradigm for web interactions? Connection: Blogs should provide a space wherein the voice and personality of the author is required. I believe that the success of the blog is somewhat determined by the cult of personality. Regardless of how good the author's ideas are, if you cannot relate to him or her chances are you won't want to visit his or her blog again. Epiphany: This is yet another example where the medium somewhat dictates the message. Or better yet, this is an example of where the medium was able to re-shape the entire purpose of internet. Today the web is nothing if not an attempt to be personal. Many have realized the social needs of humans and have been able to utilize these needs in order to not only interconnect information but more importantly to connect people. Quote: "Explicit knowledge, as we have seen, lends itself well to the process of teaching-that is transferring knowledge from one person to another. You teach and I learn. But tacit knowledge, which grows through personal experience and experimentation, is not transferrable-you can't teach it to me, though I can still learn it" (77). Question: Is there still a place for the teaching of explicit knowledge? How does one facilitate the learning of tacit knowledge? Connection: I found this to be the most powerful concept from the entire book. By trying many different things we becomes more tacitly powerful. I have never been one that could memorize facts very well but I feel that since I have tried so many different things I have able to acquire a sense of intuition that gets me through many other new experiences. Epiphany: Experience and experimentation are everything in contemporary learning, and they go hand-in-hand. By creating genuine and novel learning experiences, students learn by doing and "figuring it out." These are the skills that they will need in order to face a novel future unlike anything that we can even fully anticipate. Resource Thomas, D., & Brown, J. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, Ky.: [CreateSpace?]. Quote: "The same kind of community emerged around Star Wars Galaxies for the college students. They turned to one another to understand their experiences and the course material to make the whole thing relevant to their lives. They started to see the difference between learning and being taught" (32). Question: How can gaming improve my learning and that of my students? Connection: During my first read of A New Culture of Learning I was thinking to myself, “I got it already. The world is rapidly changing due to technology. Social media and gaming have been legitimized in education.” Michael Wesch and Will Richardson both said different variations of essentially the same thing. Still...I’ve tried to play Minecraft and Call of Duty and these games barely sustained my attention. However, as I looked more closely, beyond the anecdotes of how gaming can save us, I realized that there was larger point being made. Epiphany: Additionally, Thomas and Brown explain that “In a world of near-constant flux, play becomes a strategy for embracing change than a way for growing out of it” (2011, p.48). By introducing play into the classroom, Thomas and Brown are lowering the stakes for experimentation and failure. Play allows for trial and error, and a general sense of enthusiasm. Conversely, tests require set knowledge acquisition and rote memorization, which is hardly ever fun or adaptable to the speeds required in the present. One of the implications being that if I want to continue learning with my peers in an online environment, I just may have to learn how to play and enjoy Minecraft after all. Quote: "The goal is for each of to take the world in and make it a part of ourselves. In doing so, it turns out we can recreate it" (38). Question: Is there an inherent danger in consuming and shaping a our own worlds instead of interacting with others? Does this only further entrench the self-centered "me bubble"? Connection: This type of world consuming and recreation is precisely what is happening in this MA program. We are building a community around similarly minded individuals, learning from one another, curating resources, and ready to transform our schools. Epiphany: The point that I took from this new culture of learning is that we’re all integral parts of our own learning experiences. In this new culture of learning we have the ability to curate, create, and cultivate communities which spawn and shape information. Information is no longer solely the domain of the hegemonic printing press. It is an amorphous entity, constantly in flux, growing with billions of connected people sharing their opinions and ideas. Time and efforts are wasted while we compare the accuracy of Wikipedia against that of the printed Encyclopedia Britannica. What seems of greater importance is that we realize that knowledge and information is living and evolving in a constant dialogue happening throughout the world at every moment. Understanding this much, the teacher’s job description is forever mutated beyond recognition by digital, crowdsourced, and Google-able information (yes, some of it may be toxic). Quote: "A farmer, for example, takes the nearly unlimited resources of sunlight, wind, water, each, and biology and consolidates them into bounded the bounded and structured environment of garden or farm. We see the new culture of learning as a similar kind of process-but cultivating minds instead of plants" (19). Question: How do gather resources within boundaries without succumbing to the standardized testing model? Connection: I have been able to create a farm-like learning ecosystem where students have access to resources and then use them to cultivate their own minds. This happens often in my maker studio. Epiphany: Douglas Thomas and John Seely’s analogy of the farmer really helped me to understand my role as a teacher in the age of limitless information. The farmer uses his practically infinite resources in order to create a harvest. A teacher, on the other hand, uses the resources of information, connectivity, technology, and students etc. We bring these resources together in our classrooms (our farms) or a symbiotic ecosystem with the hopes of cultivating minds. We must create the parameters and teach students how to access and use their resources. Beyond that, just like in a plant ecosystem, the hardiest plants/students are those which are best able to adapt to their changing environment, and those which are able to make the best use of their resources. Consider the saguaro cactus. Resource Thomas, D., & Brown, J. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, Ky.: [CreateSpace?]. I’ve gone from grudgingly accepting that social media has a role to play in my life to watching hipster videos about the latest iteration of said media at light speed. EDL 680 has taken me on roller coaster ride far outside the bounds of my comfort and I'm feeling like I’m on the verge of a major discovery. Still… I’m reluctant to positively qualify the social media experiment. When I tell my friends about my recent conversion to Twitter, for example, and share my excitement about getting 60+ likes and retweets, I often feel the need to back this up with a statement like, “but it’s totally professional. For me it’s not about self-promotion.” Instagram brings me to a tipping point. I want to share my observations about teaching and the world at large and I do believe that images make any point all the more poignant. I have been accused of being somewhat of a hipster and that’s usually not a compliment. I’ve brewed my own beer, grown a beard, and enjoyed listening to banjo twanging bluegrass music. At least I’ve always been able to say that I’m not one of those tech-hipsters. Yet as I watched this video I realized that creativity works by embracing the modern tools of self-expression. I tech-followed our Professor Jeff Heil during ISTE last week. My favorite observations of his on this event were on Instagram where he shared pictures of the State Penitentiary, Magic Gardens, and Rocky steps. I appreciate Jeff as an innovative professor but his Instagram account rounds him out as a pretty interesting human being who not only wants to transform education but also live life to its fullest. He is, to use thirteen year old Logan LaPlante’s hackschooling philosophy, continuing to hack his own learning to achieve greater happiness. I feel like Twitter doesn’t want to know about our more human sides. At one ISTE presentation the speaker explained that if you follow someone on Twitter who shares pictures of the bagel he had for breakfast, then that’s your fault for following him. At that moment I made a mental note to only be serious on Twitter. Instagram may be the antidote. Now, I don’t want to only eat marshmallows for breakfast. Sometimes I like a healthy breakfast so it’s good to know that professional Twitter still has a place in my life. However Twitter alone won’t give you the full understanding of the person because as Casey Neistat explained, “The magic of Instagram is that you get to peer into the lives of really interesting people.” Just as we start to take in Casey's lessons to heart he reminds us that the life of a social media platform is about the same as the life expectancy of a hamster. Which leads me to ponder, what is ultimate purpose of learning something so ephemeral? Is it to be in with popular culture or is it about something else? To me it about embracing constant change and flux. I believe we’re all interesting people with ever-evolving ideas. How we choose to express this self can be done on a canvass of infinite tools, paint brushes, and hues. I think that Instagram may be the brush that will help me do this at the moment. Resource Neistat, C. (2012, October 2). Instagram i love you. Retrieved July 6, 2015. I am choosing Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization as my choice book selection. I am very curious about different cultures and I am particularly curious about the evolution of Chinese society in the present. Many of the reports that I enjoy reading from China are often illustrations of how Chinese culture attempts to adopt "western" traditions such as heavy metal and wine drinking. My reading has led me to believe that in the process of its modernization China is borrowing scrupulously from other nations as it continues to establish itself as an economic superpower.
Yet, as it this nation becomes more comfortable in the centerstage, I also believe that it will create a new way of leading by synthesizing many cultures, just as all other emerging powers have done in the past. I am curious to learn how China is synthesizing American-style education, where it diverges from its approach, and how it will begin to contribute to our understanding of teaching and learning. The title Catching Up or Leading the Way seems to imply an either/or scenario where two nations are jockeying for the alpha position. I wonder if this is necessary. Will it be possible to live in educational symbiosis with China? Maybe the book will address these questions and many more that I have. This is why I choose read this book. It’s very unfortunate that we often ask our students to do things which we don’t enjoy doing ourselves. I, for one, can’t stand being lectured to for long periods of time, especially when the lecture has little relevance to my life or interests. I have been forced to sit through too much different professional development which nearly bored me to tears. In these situations I might have completely lost it if I had not had my smart phone on me. However, as the article “A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 student for 2 days - a sobering lesson learned” reminded me, we often ask our students to endure this type of treatment day after day in our classrooms.
I have drawn a few conclusions from the contradictions between how we want to be treated as teaching professionals and how we often treat our students. First off, as teachers we seem to be completely tuning out of our empathetic wavelength. We cannot comprehend when our students don’t get our content or maintain their composure when we teach them in ways we hate to be taught. Also, we don’t strive enough towards a creative alternative teaching approach. It takes a lot of work and risk-taking to arrive at an alternative approach and we often complacently default to the teaching style we’re most familiar and comfortable with. Understanding this, I too would like to make a few pledges to my students that I would like to regularly teach by:
I think it’s safe to say that much will change when the school year begins again in the fall. I cannot wait to revisit this reflection throughout the year, when I’ll have to remind myself to not be complacent and to be more empathetic. I can only hope that I’ll be able to say that I did fulfill my pledges to my students when the year finally wraps up. Resource Wiggins, G. (2014, October 10). A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days - a sobering lesson learned. Retrieved July 5, 2015. The center of our school day at VIDA includes "design labs" whose purpose it is to reinforce the design thinking process or otherwise promote student creativity. My contribution to design labs has been Curiosity Hacked. Curiosity Hacked is a "non profit organization [...] that focuses on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) education, skill building and community engagement with the aspiration to help our children develop the skills that they are truly interested in." Through Curiosity Hacked I have discovered a lot about my evolving teaching style and beliefs about learning. Like Logan LaPlante, I consider hackers to be “innovators [and] people who challenge and change the system, to make them work differently, to make them work better.” I have now had the opportunity to orchestrate the Curiosity Hacked experience for two different classes of 6th grade students. My students have learned, among other play-like topics. how to solder, code, design and print 3D models. As I wrap my mind around what a “maker/hacker” education offers I realize that it gives students the opportunity to pursue subjects which they are interested in and allows them to take control of their own learning. So in a few words, I totally ascribe to Logan’s hackschooling philosophy. I also “don’t use any one particular curriculum and I’m not dedicated to one particular approach. I hack my education.” Unfortunately, even though I work at a innovative school and with innovative curricula, I still approach teaching too traditionally in many ways. It’s not easy to embrace a new paradigm, especially one that borders on potential anarchy. Often when I try to vary my curriculum so that students can work on whatever best addresses their own interests I end up with pandemonium on my hands. Students are not used to self-regulating their learning and teachers are not completely comfortable letting go of control. Watching Logan’s video again reminded me of how I have to continue adapting my teaching style. I need to better aide my students in becoming, driven, self-motivated students who are not afraid to pursue their passions and design their own educational experiences. I’m at a crossroads where I’m ready to continue relinquishing control so that students are better able to pursue their own passions and direct their learning. I believe that the only rules necessary in Curiosity Hacked, beyond those pertaining to safety and respect, are that whatever students choose to do they must be prepared to learn, create, and share. I also want to spur my students’ imaginations so that they can begin to see the possibilities. I want, to borrow Logan’s metaphor, for my students to see the mountain and imagine the endless possibilities and lines so that they can get to the powder. |
AuthorIn this blog I will share my perspectives of the learning and materials from EDL 680, already a very inspiring course that I am taking for MA in Educational Leadership Archives
August 2015
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