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Educators Need to Discuss and Learn…?

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, Blog, Education, Elementary, Internet, Leadership, Literacy, online learning, Parents, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Skills, Social Media, Standardized test, Teacher, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking on June 18, 2012| 5 Comments »

My last post, Hypocrisy in the Profession of Education, seems to have gotten quite a few people talking about educators needing to learn more. Of course there were some who disagreed, which is an inevitable consequence of blogging. One of the comments that caused me to think even more about this educator/learner topic was a comment that I had received concerning the methods I suggested might need a revisit of learning. Authentic learning and project-based learning were two that were specifically mentioned by a commenter. The comment was to the effect that these were methods of teaching that have been with us for years, so why would educators need to learn them? That set me to examining why, or even if, we need to revisit any of the things we should be teaching. What is different about: communication, collaboration, collection of information, critical thinking, and creation from 20, 50 or 100 years ago? Obviously, the function, and purpose of those skills remains the same, so what is different? Why are we being told our students need better preparation in these skills? If we have always taught these skills before with success, what makes it different now?

We always taught kids how to write and encouraged them to get published. This was the goal of any good writer, the success of publication. The idea of submitting transcripts to publishers in great numbers as a buffer against the inevitable rejection slips was also advised. For many English teachers their greatest pride came from having a published student. What’s the difference today? The computer is the publisher. There are no rejection slips other than an audience response. Kids understand this, but many educators are playing catch up if they get it at all. I recently listened to two college professors describe their writing program and not once did they mention the words “Blog”, or “Post”. Writing for a post for an audience is different than writing a composition for your teacher to read. This is an area that all educators need to discuss and learn.

We always taught critical thinking, and how to vet sources. We taught which newspapers and magazines were reliable, trustworthy sources. Today newspapers and magazines are disappearing. They are being replaced by 24/7, cable news cycles, websites, blog posts, and social media. There is much more of a need for critical thinking skills than ever before. There are fewer reliable sources to count on. The super-pacs have proven that sound bites and images are more persuasive than facts. Again, this is an area that educators need to discuss and learn.

Communication has always been taught. We have always had kids stand before the class and deliver reports and presentations. Science fairs in every county in America have kids communicating their data on poster boards. That happens with such frequency that Poster Board manufacturing became an industry in this country. How many job seekers will put “great poster board skills” on a resume’? Yes, I know there are other important things kids learn from this beyond the poster board, but why not take them beyond the poster board? Again, this is an area that educators need to discuss and learn.

Creation is the highest point on Bloom’s Pyramid. Some educators think that it is the peak of the pyramid because it is so hard to get to without mastering all the other skills. Some people may not think everyone is capable of getting to that peak of higher order thinking skills. We might find that the reason many students don’t reach a point of creating is that we have always limited the means they had to do so. We were only equipped to receive prescribed reports, oral projects, and an occasional video project. That has all been blown up by the evolution of technology and social media. Justin Bieber was barely in his teens when he launched and promoted his creations into a multi-million dollar industry. He did not use a report, oral report, or a video tape to do this. When it comes to creation, we as educators shouldn’t limit our students. Again, this is an area that educators need to discuss and learn.

Technology has evolved at a rate which has changed our culture as a society, and has had a profound effect on education. Society’s demands on what it expects from contributors has evolved, so that what we turned out as literate in the past, is no longer literate in today’s world. Even with that being said there are many who doubt it. There are schools that refuse to recognize technology as a factor in education. Again, this is an area that educators need to discuss and learn.

I am not attacking educators on this. Our society in general needs to discuss and learn. We need more people to be connected. Technology is not going away or standing still. It will continue to evolve whether individuals accept that or not. If it is a factor in our society as a tool for: communication, collaboration, collection of information, critical thinking, and creation, then we must teach our citizens how to use it as a tool. Our kids will be required to do so in their world, which is not here yet. It should change priorities in education as to what we teach and how we teach it. Authentic learning and critical thinking are now huge factors because kids are learning and interacting without the benefit of a classroom or a school. Education must not be limited by standardized testing. Our responsibility as educators is too great. These topics of discussion would best be served through leadership. Education administrators may need to prioritize these discussions over those of budgets and tests. These are the concerns that need to be driven by Professional Development. This is an area that educators and parents need to discuss and learn.

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Twitter Ties

Posted in Administrator, Blog, conference, Education, ISTE, Leadership, Literacy, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Social Media, Teacher, Teched, Thought Provoking, Twitter on May 18, 2012| 14 Comments »

For the “Connected Educator” Twitter can be a mainstay for information and sources. In order to build up a steady flow of information and sources, one need only to establish a list of people to follow on Twitter who put out the tweets, or messages, that contain links, URL’s, to that information or source. In Twitter terms these people are called “Follows”. They are the people one follows. An educator using Twitter for professional reasons would follow educators, since they put out education information. I follow over 1,600 educators, so my stream of information runs constantly through my Twitter timeline. No, I do not read every tweet.

The other side of the coin here would be those educators who follow me. They would be my “Followers”. Once I got over 300 followers it got to be a bit heady. I had to keep things in perspective. It was not a third world dictatorship with me as the leader of my loyal followers who awaited my every word. If I put out useful information and thoughtful advice, I found that I would attract more followers. The very best method to do that was to follow really great educators and retweet what they tweeted. That means I would tweet their tweet, but give them credit for it. I was valued, because I valued someone else’s thought or information. How cool is that. Kudos all around!

There are many ways to follow people. There are lists that people offer. Bloggers now have “Follow me on Twitter” icons located on their blogs. There are recommendations of people to follow from other tweeters. Twitter dedicates Friday as the day to recommend people to follow with a hashtag #FF placed on tweets making follow recommendations. The #FF stands for Follow Friday. Of course for the more popular or specific people to follow, there is always the “Search People” tool on Twitter. Probably the best method is to check who each of your follows follow. Take people from their lists of follows. The point is that one can strategically make a vast number of follows with far less effort than was once required.

The real connections with all of the follows, and followers however, come with the personal exchanges made between follows and followers. These are the important, meaningful connections. Exchanges of ideas and information are the goal, but more often the personal and social aspects are the things that bind individuals. Many of these digital connections become much more. This has added a whole new dimension to Education conferencing. Educators who are connected through social media will meet face to face with people they have been attached to online. Without ever having before met face to face, it is like old friends reuniting. It is truly a unique experience.

It is with this backdrop that I now address my latest experience with my Twitter emotions. As I said, my follow list exceeds 1,600, so I was looking for a quick way to cut that down in order to eliminate some of the noise created by huge numbers on my Twitterstream. That means that I was getting a great deal of chatter distracting me from more meaningful tweets and that was becoming less efficient. Of the 1,600 follows I may have 1,000 people with whom I have never ever had an exchange other than the initial “Hello, I am now following you”.

I happened upon an Application, or Twitter tool called Manage Flitter. It was designed to identify from a list of follows those who do not follow back. Now, I do not expect Regis Philbin, Chris Matthews or Anderson cooper (I know they are not educators) or any celebrity to follow me back. There are even education celebrities to be followed on Twitter and I have no problem with them not following back. My problem became evident when I saw how many people whom I admire, have retweeted and have interacted with, no longer followed me. Of course my head immediately said, “You have disappointed these people and let them down, so they dropped you and your offerings”. Of course that was totally irrational, but nevertheless I had to deal with that in my head. Although I was disappointed to be dropped by Daniel Pink, Deborah Meier, Alan November, and Sir Ken Robinson, I really should have been elated that they even followed me to begin with. Twitter is an amazing tool because people, for the most part, are accepted for their ideas and not their titles, but there is still a star system and a fan base culture below the surface. The really hurtful “no longer followings” however were those people who I spent many tweets on exchanging ideas and giving out sources. Of course it is ridiculous to feel this way, but this entire system is based on connectedness. When you lose that connection, questions come to mind.

While expressing my concern about Twitter on Twitter, two of my follows stepped up to console me. Mark Barnes, @markbarnes19 a great ASCDEdge blogger and Jerry Blumengarten, @cybraryman1, one of my long time connections. Mark suggested I Blog about the issue, which resulted in this. Jerry pointed out that Twitter has had problems with a bug that has people unfollowing others without permission to do so. You’re Not Crazy, After All: Twitter Confirms Unfollow Bug. Both of these guys helped me through this self-created crisis.

I think the whole point of this post is that the connections made on Twitter for the purpose of professional enrichment carry with them more than the idea of people just swapping links. Twitter is more than wanting to share what was for lunch. Of course that is part of Twitter, but it is more about personal connections. Unfortunately, that cannot be seen by looking at Twitter from the outside. I am always astounded at the number of people who have never used Twitter, but feel compelled to offer up their opinion of it. Now, would someone like to point up the Irony in the fact that I was upset at all those who were no longer following me, as I employed a tool to unfollow people?

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What If School Was More Like Twitter?

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, Blog, conference, Edcamp, Education, Email, Leadership, Linkedin, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Social Media, Standardized test, Teacher, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking, Truth, Twitter, unconference on April 17, 2012| 22 Comments »

Every educator knows what their school is like, but few really understand what Twitter is like. The Twitter experience, like school, is different for everyone. One’s contribution to the effort in either of these endeavors has a great deal to do with producing the outcomes. Simply put, the more you put in, the more you get out. That at least is the theory.

I am fortunate to have a very large base of educators that I follow on Twitter and an even larger number of educators follow me. This affords me an ability to see a great deal of activity on Twitter in regard to how educators use it on a daily basis. I wish all educators had Professional Learning Networks like mine, but it is not a style of learning suited for everyone. Nevertheless, I began wondering what it would be like if the types of sharing, collaboration, reflection and discussion that are continuing activities on Twitter could at least be attempted in the school building environment.

A bulk of the information exchange available on Twitter for instance comes in the form of links, or URL’s, which are internet addresses to pages of information. They could be announcements, articles, posts, videos, podcasts, webcasts, personal opinions, or books. I guess in a school setting each teacher could take articles, videos and books to exchange and discuss with other faculty members. Admins could find education links run them off on paper, and insert them in teachers’ mailboxes daily. Of course personal opinions are the mainstay for faculty rooms.

Another thing that Twitter offers us is the ability to respond to ideas and have a general discussion about those responses. Often times the authors of the ideas participate in those discussions. In a school setting, I imagine that the administrator could offer ideas for discussion, or bring in speakers and lecturers for the faculty. This is usually done at the beginning of the year to get everyone pumped up for the New Year. It would need to be done more frequently however in order to emulate the Twitter experience.

Reflection is very big on Twitter. Many tweets cause people to discuss and reflect. After a short period of time some educators address those same issues on blog posts. That of course is shared, commented on, reflected upon, and the process repeats itself. I guess in the school setting the Admin could propose a topic for discussion and afterward people could respond and reflect and if they chose to do so, come back with articles they had written on the subject to present to the faculty or place a copy in everyone’s mailbox.

Twitter offers a great deal of variety in opinion. An obviously unique element to this is the fact that Twitter is a global effort. Educators from around the world offer their opinions on some of the many subjects that educators have in common around the world. As an example, I am amazed at how universally standardized tests are recognized by educators to be counterproductive in educating kids. In the school setting it would be difficult to get a global perspective on issues unless the guest speakers were flown in from other countries. Skyping might be a great alternative.

A big, big Twitter plus is the access educators have to education experts. Conversations are had between regular teachers and education luminaries on a daily basis. Many of education’s leaders actively participate on Twitter in order to stay on the pulse of education, as well as education reform. Many of the people forming the national and international education discussions are gathering and sharing information over the internet using Twitter. In a school setting Admins could probably make calls to these same education leaders and set up at the very least Skype calls. The faculty could be assembled in the auditorium for the Skype call. The discussion after would be great.

Twitter is a gateway to many free online webinars and online conferences. It also keeps educators posted on local and regional Edcamps and conferences. Edcamps are a product of social media and a great form of Professional Development for educators. In a school setting the Admin could post a daily, weekly, or monthly calendar of events for professional development. The mailboxes again would be a wonderful method of delivery for this.

On Twitter there are constant discussions and references to pedagogy and methodology in education. As one example Twitter has been discussing the Flipped Classroom for almost two years at this point. I imagine that admins should be the education leaders of their schools and be up to date on all things education. Once they get any new trends they could present the idea at a faculty meeting. Hopefully, the discussions of pedagogy and methodology will spill over into department meetings and faculty room gatherings.

I know that schools are doing the best that they can, given the restraints of time and money, to involve their teachers with as much as they can, but it is not enough in a world where new information is formed by the ton in a matter of minutes. The idea of using technology as a tool for professional development has not caught on. The idea of being a “Connected Educator” is too foreign to too many educators. If this post is to be effective it will have to be printed out, reproduced, and circulated in teachers’ mailboxes in order to reach them. In this age of technology, that should be an embarrassment to the most educated people this country or any country has to offer.

Twitter is only one source for teachers to connect. It is the easiest to use, and the hardest to understand. Teachers need to get started connecting to other teachers. If Twitter is too difficult, try Google +, or LinkedIn, or start a blog that accepts comments. If what we are now doing as teachers was keeping us relevant and effective as educators , the words “Education” and “Reform” would not be linked together so often in so much written about education today. We have a need to connect with other educators. It must be an imperative! In the words of Ben Franklin, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

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Smart-Briefing and Zite-Seeing

Posted in Blog, EdChat, Education, Internet, ISTE, Leadership, online learning, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Social Media, Teacher, Teachmeet, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking, Truth, Twitter on April 6, 2012| 7 Comments »

There are few questions that I get from teachers about social media, or sources that I haven’t gotten in some form before over the last three or four years. Two similar questions that I get with frequency are: How do you know all that stuff? And where do you get the time to get all this stuff? My immediate response is that Twitter is my guide to relevant education sources. Those educators who are “unconnected” should know that many “connected educators” consider Twitter an indispensable source for all things education. Twitter if properly connected to thoughtful and collaborative educators is a virtual cornucopia of endless links for: Posts, Videos, Articles, Podcasts, Webinars, Websites, Lessons, Announcements, Original thoughts, Chats, and all else Education that the internet has to offer.

That being said; Where do all those “connected educators” find things to send out on Twitter? Many educators contribute their links to the Twitter Stream based on what they are personally doing within their field of expertise. Some of us are more generalists in education, or we are using Social Media to reform or, as I like to think of it, advance Education. My life in retirement from public education has become one big sharing fest with educators. It has gotten to a point where I am now reading about stuff not to use it personally, but to consider its value in sharing with other educators who may benefit from it. I am forever advancing links and ideas in math, and I have never been able to legitimately balance a check book.

Where does one find the time to locate all of these sources? This is a commonly asked question since lack of time to do anything is always on an educator’s list of shortcomings. In additions to tweets of other educators, I depend on two sources for keeping up with the huge amount of stuff flowing through the internet. One delivers posts to my email and the other delivers to my iPad. Delivery is an important element for me. I have an extensive amount of blogs feeding into Google Reader, but since I don’t open it up that often, I hesitate to open it at all for fear of facing the mountain of unread blogs. Dumb as it sounds, I often open Google Reader up just to mark all the blogs as read (without reading them) so the pile goes away.

The two sources that I count on most for collecting blog posts and delivering them to me in a brief form are SmartBrief and Zite. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but in tandem, I seem to be able to accomplish a great deal in surveying and sharing on the topic of education as it is delivered over the internet.

SmartBrief is a free service that offers a subscription delivered directly to me by email. It curates the very best education blog posts, and newspaper and journal articles dealing with education. It comes in a capsulated form that I can expand if I want to read the entire post. SmartBrief does this for other industries as well, but in the area of Education there are twelve separate SmartBriefs that deal with offerings from specific education organizations. Probably the best known to educators is ASCD SmartBrief. This is a link to all the Education SmartBriefs http://www.smartbrief.com/news/education. Again these are all free subscriptions that can be dropped, hassle-free at any time. The advantage is that it is delivered by email accessed by any device. It also has an iPad app.

My other source strategy is ZITE. I originally started off with Flipboard on my iPad, but after I discovered Zite, I have spent little time on Flipboard. I start the day with Zite and coffee. Like SmartBrief, Zite also provides a capsulated form of posts and articles that can be expanded on demand. Most, but not all articles are easily tweeted out using a tweet icon. The tweets pop up for easy edits before you actually seal the deal with a send button. Zite is a free app that one personalizes to desired topics that are delivered to your Zite site. There is a constant turnover with posts being added hourly. A week seems to be the longest any post will last. The posts are time-stamped by hours/days on Zite.

SmartBrief and Zite are both source providers that get me the latest and greatest in Education to share with others. Being a “connected educator” does give me the ability to take what others are sharing and pass it along to even more educators. Taking what is shared comes with a responsibility to give back as well. How much we give back varies with every individual. In order to maximize any of this, a strategy should be in place. Smart, and convenient sources like SmartBrief and Zite take us a long way into utilizing what little time we have to affect the most amount of positive collaboration.

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#ASCD12 Winding Down

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, Back channeling, Blog, conference, Curriculum, Edcamp, Education, EduCon, Leadership, Observation, PD, PLN, Professional development, Social Media, Teacher, Teachmeet, Teched, Technology, unconference on March 26, 2012| 8 Comments »

Putting together an education conference is a huge undertaking that is often overlooked, or at least not fully appreciated by the attendees. It is not that people are intentionally unappreciative, but they may not realize all that goes into the planning, and execution of such a multi-faceted endeavor. This conference requires a huge effort to solicit, register, organize, accommodate, and deliver over 400 sessions to over 8,000 attendees, and over 200 vendors throughout a four-day event. That is a huge undertaking that can only successfully happen with leadership and a team effort on the part of the planning organization. I am sure that as this conference comes to an end, planning for next year’s event will begin immediately.

After attending many conferences over the years, I have made some observations as to the specific traits of conferences. Some conferences for example are very tech-oriented. Some conferences have the same people returning year after year. Some conferences attract a large number of vendors, while others attract a large number of classroom teachers. Of course since ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) is populated by people who supervise and develop curriculum and that usually would involve the hierarchy of the education system. I guess they could be categorized as the movers and shakers of education.

If my observations are to be believed, this conference, compared to some others, has far fewer tech-using attendees. The cacophony of clicking keys of laptops is not heard in every session, although there are laptops and tablets. Smartphones are not glued to hands of the conference members, although there are many visible. Of course the tell of tells as to the tech use in this conference is the fact that people are not hovering and jockeying for position around limited electrical outlets for constant charging. All that considered, this is not a tech infused conference.

With the advent of social media a mark of a really impactful conference may be measured in the buzz created by the sharing of the conference through the venues of social media. If the Tweets and the Blogs abound with the sharing of events, ideas, and conversations generated by the conference it may be considered a success. If the attendees are not inclined to use the skills required to utilize 21^st century technology in sufficient numbers then there is no buzz. The conference remains local and never goes global.

Having some foresight on this issue, the leadership of ASCD took this into account in the planning of the conference. Some of the leading educators on Twitter who also have great blog followings were invited to attend the conference. They were afforded complete access to the entire conference with but one instruction; attend the conference and just do what it is that you do. Ten to fifteen of these educators made up the social media press corps for ASCD. They attended sessions, reflected upon what they learned, and shared their experiences of each of the sessions. Their followers spread the word further by re-tweeting tweets and commenting on posts. This cadre of connected educators created the buzz. This model is making the best of social media in order to take what has been a national conference to a larger audience than just the attendees. Educators, who could not be present at the conference, benefitted by the offerings of those who were in attendance. Through social media everything local is now global, and everything global is now local. I would thank the leaders of ASCD for giving us the opportunity to share their conference.

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#ASCD12 Opening Day

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, Back channeling, Blog, conference, ISTE, Leadership, PD, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Social Media, Teacher, Technology, Thought Provoking, Truth, Twitter on March 23, 2012| 7 Comments »

Over the next few days my blog will be a snapshot album of words describing what it is like to attend a premiere education conference, ASCD12. This is an experience that most educators rarely experience over the course of their careers. It is not an inexpensive proposition to send educators to national conferences. For some reason many districts use that as a reason to send the same administrators year after year to these conferences. I think administrators have the idea that their district leaders are best positioned to share all that is gleaned from the conference with the staff. Of course this is a generality and not every district does this. You may want to ask who from your district attends these conferences and how many have they been to over the years.

The cost of these conferences is steep. The organizations running them have to pay a big price for the venues required to accommodate the tens of thousands of educators and vendors who will walk through the doors. In addition to the cost of the conference, districts have to add transportation, lodging, and food for each individual. In the economic atmosphere of today, many districts may have trouble justifying the expense to those who have no understanding of the value of these conferences. Once again much-needed professional development is relegated to the bottom of the ever-changing priority list

A recurring theme of many of my posts has been how isolated the profession of education can be. Teachers always have the ability to share ideas on lessons, methods and pedagogy within their own building, but only if that building sports an open and collaborative culture. This collaboration enables change. If the building has a closed culture of people who do not collaborate and continue to support the status quo by hunkering down in the bunkers of their comfort zones, then little change will occur. Professional conferences have always opened up educators to change. Educators’ sharing of the latest in lessons and tools has always been the backbone of the conference. The collaboration and excitement pump up the lifeblood of the conference. The camaraderie of the participants as they grow closer through their interests over a few short days is the soul of the conference. Educators come away from conferences with creative juices flowing, collaborative spirit soaring, and their self-esteem rising. They then return to their schools to share, and, try as they might, they can’t duplicate the same feelings for their colleagues. That feeling, short-lived as it is however, cannot be denied.

Of course my position is always that the conferences are greatly enhanced by Social Media. This is a natural occurrence at some conferences. For some reason attendees at some national conferences use more SM than users at other conferences. Tweeting goes on at every session and every hallway. Back channeling presenters is commonplace. Blogs are pumped out during the conference. People who are virtually connected year round, come together face-to-face and are like long-lost friends uniting after years of being apart. Much of which I have described here is best appreciated by those who have actually experienced it at a conference, but as I have pointed out, it is an experience that most educators will never have.

Tonight as I attended the opening reception at ASCD12, I met a very special educator. We were connected through Twitter but had never met. Julie Ramsay, or @juliedramsay as I know her is one such educator whom has attended more than one conference. She and her husband spent their own money and time to attend the ASCD12 Conference. Julie also attended, again at her own expense, last year’s ISTE conference in order to enable her students to present there. They too paid their own way. That is a dedicated educator with a supportive family.

I was in a huge room with about 500 educators noshing on hors’d’oeuvres. I was sitting alone at a table tweeting out to see if anyone in the room was monitoring the Twitter stream. After a half hour, I deduced that this may not be the most Social-Media-savvy group. It was at that point that Julie and her husband found me through my tweets, and we met and shared. Twitter, the very thing that so many condemn as anti-social brought some of us together for face-to-face social interaction. I immediately wondered how to get the 500 other educators to get it. Several other social media users will be Tweeting and Blogging out moments from the ASCD12 Conference starting tomorrow. By modeling for other educators what it is that we all need to do in order to be connected educators, maybe we can connect more of us. This will increase collaboration and hopefully support change in a culture and system sorely in need of it. Follow the #ASCD12 hashtag through Monday

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“We Don’t Need No Stink’n Textbooks” #Beyondthetextbook

Posted in Assessment, Blog, Elementary, Leadership, Literacy, Mentoring, Parents, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Skills, Social Media, Teacher, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking, Truth, Twitter, Video taping on March 20, 2012| 38 Comments »

In order for educators to teach kids, they need something to teach. Exactly what it is that educators should teach has often been discussed and continues to be the focus of ongoing discussions for over many generations. The delivery of that content, in regard to what to teach, has never been of great concern, because the bulk of it came in the form of text, delivered in a book called the textbook. In the 50’s the education pioneers introduced film strips, 16mm films, and recordings to supplement the textbooks. The 60’s brought the video tape and the overhead projector. With the turn of the century came the disc technology, as well as a wider use of the internet. Today of course we use interactive white boards and document cameras. All of the new methods of content delivery however are, for the most part, just add-ons to the backbone of any curriculum, the textbook. Of course the publishing of textbooks became a multi-million, or billion dollar industry. The importance of Textbooks was reflected in school districts with their strictly adhered to textbook adoption policies. Textbooks are a big deal. It is a common experience of all educators and all parents. The textbook, along with the apple on the teacher’s desk, is an iconic symbol of education in America.

A decade into the new century we have a new way to deliver content. The internet not only delivers text, but allows it to be manipulated, transformed, evaluated, analyzed, merged with video and audio, created, and published. This goes way beyond that which could be accomplished by the printed textbook. It offers educators the potential for not only presenting content to a student, but allowing the student to actually interact with that content to demonstrate more than understanding, with the potential of actual creation of the student’s own content, as well as publishing it out to others for authentic feedback. Teaching the content is the process, getting students to use the content and independently obtaining, and continuing to evaluate and use more content should be the goal.

There are now a number of ways educators have to deal with content. On opposite ends of this list of learning tools are two extremes. The textbook, as we know it over the decades at one end, and Open Source Resources of the internet on the other end. As an educator I have never liked being shackled to a single, stagnant textbook. I am personally comfortable guiding students through Open Source learning. This however, is not the comfort zone of most educators. Comfort zones are the biggest impediment to education reform. I do realize that any effective use of the internet as an open source resource for educators to use for students would require a massive undertaking of professional development for millions of educators nationwide. I would imagine that the billion-dollar textbook publishing industry would have some say in this discussion as well, so the move in that direction would be slow in coming. I believe the challenge is to create the best solution in a mechanism that is recognizable as a textbook, but enables the functions of the internet to incorporate many more tools for learning.

Educators are now beginning to establish a voice through social media. Opinions expressed by educators through blogs and social media are now beginning to gain recognition in the national discussion of what is education to be. I think that is one of the main reasons that Discovery Education used some of the leading connected educators from social media as a focus group, or think tank, to discuss what is “Beyond the Textbook”? Discovery Education was looking to gain insights to their own attempt to devise or improve such a much-needed product. Of course another reason is to have the very same people create a buzz about whatever comes from this forum. Cynics would say that we were being used and manipulated by a corporation. I would like to think that we actually have gotten what we have been asking for, for decades; an educator’s voice in what education needs.

After a long day of discussion between about 16 invited educators and the same number of Discovery Education staff, we came up with several concepts. Most of what we suggested already exists in some form today. They are tools of the internet that could be incorporated into a mechanism for learning, assessing, and creating content. Here is a list of some of the suggestions of the components that the group valued and thought should exist in what should exist as we go beyond the textbook:

The mechanism will exist on the internet allowing 24/7 access with computer or mobile access.
Many forms of content may be included: text, videos, audio, animation, graphs, and diagrams
The ability for flexible content will be provided.
The teacher will be able to add or subtract material to meet the needs of the students allowing for differentiation.
Content will have highlighting and note-taking capability
Content will be linked to dictionary and encyclopedia for easy reference.
Content will have language translation capability.
Content will be linked to other supplemental material for further exploration.
Formative assessment will be built into lessons to assess understanding before moving on.
There will be a social media component for collaboration and feedback.
Students will be able to create content within the mechanism.
Student created material will be archived and shared
Student created material will be placed in an ePortfolio within the mechanism.

These were some of the highlights of what came from the assembled group. The group had elementary, secondary, and higher Ed representation. Most members were very active participants in social media and education Blogs. I cannot adequately express the admiration that I have for each of the people in this group, most of whom I have met before and all of whom I follow on Twitter. These are people I often recommend following on Twitter. I have also now added to my Twitter list many Discovery Education employees who are working toward implementing our suggestions in some form into their existing and ever-evolving product, techbook. I should note that this entire project was led by Steve Dembo of Discovery Education. It is my hope that other industry leaders will begin to go to the educator’s voice on social media for input and transparency in their development of new products.

Members of The Beyond The Textbook Forum included: @rmbyrne, @courosa, @NMHS_principal, @bethstill, @teach42, @dwarlick, @dlaufenberg, @mbteach, @audreywatters, @shareski, @sciencegoddess, @wfryer, @imcguy, @djakes, @jonbecker, @principalspage, @joycevalenza, @lrougeux, @halldavidson, and of course @tomwhitby

My apologies to anyone that I may have left out.

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What’s This #EDUCON Buzz?

Posted in Back channeling, Blog, conference, EdChat, Education, EduCon, Elementary, Internet, ISTE, Leadership, Observation, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Social Media, Teachmeet, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Twitter, unconference on January 28, 2012| 6 Comments »

There are certain education conferences that people look forward to attending each and every year. Certainly the big national conferences with thousands of attendees and hundreds of vendors are the conferences most familiar to educators. The state organizations usually draw big crowds of educators as well. At one time this is how educators networked and saw the newest of the new, and the best of the best. All of that is represented at big education conferences.

With the introduction of the internet, conferencing as an activity has changed. There is a transparency to conferences that was not possible before. Social Media has armed educators with the power to report out exactly what is happening at any conference. Not only are there tweeted comments about the conference, people often comment on specific sessions for all the world to see, blemishes and all. For those who closely follow conference tweets through the use of hashtags, there are many horror stories of presenters who crashed and burned, having each and every flame described to the world in tweets from the audience.

A specific hashtag is created for each conference, so that it can be discussed on Twitter. The symbol, # starts the tag with a few identifying letters to follow. For example: the hashtag for the upcoming ASCD Conference will be #ASCD12. Anyone tweeting from, or about that conference will tag their tweets with that hashtag. Anyone wanting to follow what’s going on at that conference, need only create a follow column for #ASCD12, and each and every tweet about the conference will flow through that column. I have found TweetDeck and Hootesuite to be the best Apps to use for this purpose. Social Media people are beginning to gauge a conference’s success by the positive buzz generated by tweeters. Social Media savvy organizations are beginning to understand this and are developing Social media strategies.

Of all of the conferences dealing with education, there is one very small one (I think between 3-400 attendees) that creates the greatest Buzz with the Social Media connected educators. The audience of attendees is made larger by the Livestreaming of sessions over the internet to those who couldn’t attend in person. For the last four years EduCon has taken place in Philadelphia sponsored by The Science Leadership Academy, which is headed up by Chris Lehman, an outstanding educator, leader, and speaker. This conference differs from most others centering about education. There are very few vendors. There are very few formal presentations. EduCon is based on discussions lead by discussion leaders. The leaders present the topic which they have some stake in or knowledge of, and direct the discussion from there. It is a simple formula with no bells or whistles.

There is another thing that makes this conference different from the rest of the education conferences. Most of those big one’s have been around for years, and are learning how to adapt to social media. #Educon in many respects was born through social media. Most of the educators in attendance are connected educators. It is almost a requirement for connected educators to tweet their impressions out about #Educon at every session they attend. When you look at a twitterstream for the #Educon hashtag it is not a trickling brook, but a white-water rapids of a river racing with tweets of opinion, reflection, information, and occasionally adoration. If all conferences were only judged by the buzz they created, the EduCon would rival or surpass all the top contenders. I am sorry I missed actually attending EduCon this year, but I am keeping up with the tweets. I look forward to next year.

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Edublog Awards Don’t Suck!

Posted in Awards, Blog, conference, EdChat, Education, Internet, Leadership, Ning, Professionalism, Social Media, Teacher, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking, Truth, Twitter on December 15, 2011| 7 Comments »

Last night was the Edublog Awards Presentation, also known as the “Eddie” Awards. This event happens once a year at this time honoring those who excel in the area of Educational Social Media. Categories include educators, students, groups, and vendors. It originally started out recognizing Blogs and Bloggers, but has now expanded to all forms of Social Media as Social Media itself has expanded. This is an example that schools should emulate; the ability to be flexible and change to meet the needs of an ever-changing and developing culture.

The Edublog process is simple. Categories are established with little description other than the title of the category, and people in Social Media nominate people in Social Media. They could nominate others or themselves. This year there were nineteen categories and thousands of nominations. After the nominations are posted, the voting begins, and continues, so that everyone has an opportunity to vote. Yes, that opportunity includes the ability to vote once a day for everyone as the voting continues. There are no judges; just nominators and voters. This is the element that has brought out the voices of discontent each and every year since 2004. Of course when this started it was a smaller community. With the advent of Twitter and Facebook, the Education Social Media community has grown to huge proportions, and, hopefully, will continue to do so.

The Presentation of the Edublog Awards is a virtual gala event. It takes place in a virtual room and all are invited to attend. It usually draws between 100-200 people. There is a dialog box where participants exchange pleasantries and jabs, as a fun time is had by all. Some of us jab and joke more than others. The event is hosted by Steve Hargadon, Sue Waters and this year Ron Burt. These people are also great contributors to the connected community of educators in their own right, beyond their Edublog contribution.

The best part of the presentation is when the winners take the mic for a very few short words. This is nothing like the Oscar speeches. Student winners always bring on the most Ooohs and Ahhhs from the audience as evidenced in the chat box. Last night one young, very young, winner took the mic to thank the group for his award. His name was Royce and obviously, Royce failed to tell his Mom about the award ceremony being held virtually. As Royce quietly thanked the group from what was evidently a computer in his room, his mother was heard yelling to him from another room “Royce it’s getting late turn that computer off”.

Now here is the not so funny part of this piece. The process, the awards, and even the nominees are often targeted by some disgruntled (for whatever reason) educators. These individuals find fault with and gripe about the process. They try to trivialize the award itself. They comment to the nominees that they shouldn’t use social media to tell anyone about their nomination. They sometimes even call for standardization of the awards with judges and criteria for assessment of sites. This has gone on every year that I have been involved in Social Media. Whatever happened to “A rising tide lifts all boats”?

I LOVE what the Edublog Awards represent. They recognize the hard work that individuals so unselfishly offer to a community. They recognize and publicize many education social media sites that might otherwise go unrecognized and unseen by those educators who need to see them most. They put a face to the text voices that we all see and hear every day. They enable connected educators to be further connected. Why would anyone object to any of this? I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that such people are in the very circles that I travel.

I was nominated in five categories and I did not win one award. I was so impressed by the people I was nominated with, that winning really did not matter. The idea that people actually saw me in the same light as the individuals that I shared the nominations with just blew me away. Of course, I would have loved to have won in every category and create an Edublog record that would last for years, but that did not happen. I was still proud to be involved. Everyone who won deserved all the accolades this award brings. These are people who have a vision and act on it. It is hard work, albeit a labor of love, to consistently put out a product for Social Media that remains meaningful to others. The best incentive to continue happens when public recognition in any form comes your way. The true reward however, is never in the Edublog Award itself. It is in the connections you make with others. Affirmation of those efforts by connected educators is always a shot in the arm.

Next year, if I am nominated again, I will tell all my friends and neighbors that I am an Edublog Nominee. After all this is social media and the social thing to do is share news with others. We do it every day. I will nominate people who are adding meaningful content to our community of connected educators. I will participate in the presentation ceremony to honor those who so deservedly receive their Eddie awards. This is truly a supportive effort to those who support us with ideas, links, and sources all year-long. I will also speak out publicly to those who find fault in these awards or the process. I will also publicly thank Steve Hargadon, Sue Waters, and Ron Burt for yearly designing, accumulating, tallying, and presenting all that they do to make the Edublog Awards happen. Now as Royce’s Mom’s voice still rings in my ears. It’s late, so I better turn off the computer. Congratulations to all of the Nominees and the winners of the 2011 Edublog Awards.

Here is the link to the Top Edublog Nominees and the winners, as well as the addresses to their sites: http://edublogawards.com/

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The Heck with Tech

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, Blog, cooperating Teacher, Education, Leadership, Literacy, Observation, PD, Pre-Service teachers, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Student teaching, Teacher, Teched, Technology, Thought Provoking on November 17, 2011| 25 Comments »

Ever since I started writing my blog, I wondered when I would reach the end of my road and run out of things to rant about. It seems that every time I approach that point, something pops up to get me started again. As luck would have it, two such events occurred today. One incident happened early today and the second came later in the day. Of course, for dramatic effect I will begin with the later.

Late in the afternoon I had an appointment with my dentist for a cleaning. It’s one of the many ways my dentist has arranged for me to pay his rent. I see my dentist quite often. When I arrived at the waiting room, the receptionist greeted me with a big smile and three pages of blank forms. She apologized for inconveniencing me, but THE LAW required her to have me fill out the forms. I immediately looked at her desk and asked what catastrophe had befallen her computer? She was puzzled. I told her that all of the blank spaces on three pages of forms were requiring me to complete information already in the computer. She agreed, but again said THE LAW requires us to have you fill out these forms. Again I said, “You already have all of this information and more in your data bank. Why am I being required to handwrite out on three forms information that already exists on your computer?” She quickly left the waiting room in search of a supervisor. I must admit, I might have been strongly influenced by the Occupy Wallstreet demonstrations that I had been following all day. They were also being shown on the TV in the waiting room. Was this my stand against THE LAW for the 99 percenters?

Emerging from the dental-technology-filled rooms in the back, the supervisor approached me. The first two words from her mouth were THE LAW, and then continued; require that you provide this information on these forms. Again, I said, “you have that information already.” She reluctantly wrote a line at the top of the top form” nothing has changed” and placed a check next to it. I signed the form.

The other incident, earlier in the day, was more education oriented, but just as vexing. As a matter of fact it was probably more egregious, because educators should know better in 2011, almost 2012. I observed one of my pre-service teachers today. She has a student teaching assignment in a high school English position. She delivered a great collaboration lesson and we were debriefing the lesson after the class. I asked about the next lesson planned for the class. She looked at me with a reluctant look on her face. I sensed that she was about to tell me something, that she knew, I was not going to be in favor of. She qualified her answer with the fact that she was obligated to do as her cooperating teacher directed her. I agreed, and again asked what was next, since she referred to an upcoming essay in her lesson. She came clean. The class is to handwrite an essay in class before we go to the computer lab so they can type the essay on the computer.

My students know that word processing enables kids to write at a higher level, and they are more likely to make corrections and rewrites when using a word processor. A word processor is not a typewriter. We write in a word-processing world and our students should learn in the same way. My students also know that this is my strong belief. However, I could not fault my student, since it is not her choice for the students, but that of their teacher. I have been burned in the past when I approached cooperating teachers on some ill-conceived methods used in class. I have learned to smile, say thanks, leave, and then have a long talk with my students in the safety of my own classroom.

If we, as educators, do not understand the reasoning and potential of technology, we will not use it effectively and then blame that inefficiency on the technology. It is too easy to use technology without understanding and find fault with it not fulfilling the implied promise. We assume everyone understands that computers collect, manipulate, and communicate data in any form needed. We assume everyone understands the power of computers in regard to writing, publishing, and communicating the written word. Unfortunately, I have come to believe that we cannot make these assumptions. We need to educate or educators if we are to have any hope to educate or children.