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Pedagogy vs. Andragogy

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, Anndragogy, Assessment, conference, Connected Educator, Curriculum, Edcamp, EdChat, Education, EduCon, Leadership, Literacy, Mentoring, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Social Media, Teacher, Teachmeet, Teched, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking on May 3, 2013| 32 Comments »

Over this last year I have been fortunate to have been sent to many education conferences on behalf of SmartBrief in pursuit of content and guest bloggers for SmartBlog on Education. It is a dream job for a retired educator and an education blogger. The intent is to always keep the educator’s voice on SmartBlog authentic and relevant. In that capacity, I have attended and conducted a multitude of workshops on various education topics. Since I am no longer in the classroom, and have no need to apply what I learn about current teaching methods in a classroom setting, I often attend these workshops as an observer, or even a critical observer in some cases.

In conference after conference, and workshop after workshop I have observed successes and failures in the methods employed by presenters to get their material across to their audiences. Of course my biggest criticism is that too many presenters view the people in the room as audiences, and themselves as some sort of entertainer. Of course a successful presenter is part entertainer, as is any teacher, but more importantly, he or she is there at a conference workshop to educate educators and that is a primary goal. For that goal to be met presenters might be better served thinking of the people in the room as learners, and employ their best skills as an educator. In fairness to most presenters, the best do just that.

Much can be learned as an educator by watching what works with a bunch of teacher/learners. Of course there are some who would argue that these are adult learners and shouldn’t be compared to kids. I used to think that as well, but I am not as sure, after all that I have observed.

I found one of the best explanations of adult learning in this article: “Adult Learning Theory and Principles” from The Clinical Educator’s Resource Kit.

According to the article Malcolm Knowles an American practitioner and theorist of adult education, defined andragogy as “the art and science of helping adults learn”.

Knowles identified the six principles of adult learning as:

Adults are internally motivated and self-directed
Adults bring life experiences and knowledge to learning experiences
Adults are goal oriented
Adults are relevancy oriented
Adults are practical
Adult learners like to be respected

After considering these principles and observing many of them first hand at these professional conferences, I started to wonder if the reason why these same principles do not apply to kids, at least on the secondary level, is because we prohibit them from happening in our education system. Do we limit our students learning by blocking access to the very things that motivate us as adults to learn?

Can Students be self-motivated and self-directed? As adults some might say we are “pursuing our bliss” therefore, we are self-motivated and self-directed. Are our students bereft of bliss, or are we blocking out their bliss?

At the more successful conferences providing adult learning environments I have observed many things that aided the learning of adults. The best conferences provided Internet access for all. This enabled adults to use varied and sundry laptops and mobile devices. I still revel at the memory of a room full of learners listening to Chris Lehmann at the Educon Conference as he placed notes on a white board. When he was finished with his illustrated point in the conversation, 40 adults stood up and took a picture of the whiteboard with their mobile devices (mostly cellphones) for later reference. Student classrooms might have over 40 students in them but how many are allowed to take pictures of the teachers’ notes?

Of course the resounding positive comments from any of these learning environments is that there is a love of the conversation, as opposed to the lecture. That is common at Educon and it is the mainstay of the most successful Edcamps. Of course that conversation method is not the focus of teaching kids. Most educators focus on direct instruction and lecture as the mainstay for their lessons.

Then there is the cry from a multitude of adult conference learners that they hold teacher-presenters in the highest regard, because they are authentic. They have been in the classroom, and have paid their dues, so to speak. When real classroom teachers talk about education, it is relevant and real. This is a common sentiment among adult conference learners. I guess that relevance is important to the adult learner. When it comes to the kid learners are they even given a smattering of relevance or are we steeped in curriculum some of which may have been around since the mid 1900’s?

Of course the biggest outcry from adult learners at conferences comes when they are subjected to PowerPoint presentations that are text-ladened and read to the learners word for word by the presenter. This is the most egregious of mistakes and often the initiator of an exodus by the adult learners from the room. What alternative do kid learners have given the same set of circumstances?

Maybe as adult learners we need to take a look in the mirror before we resume our role as teachers for kids. In the final analysis, I do not think that there are differences in the way we learn as adults, or kids, but rather the differences lie in the opportunities afforded to learn. If we respected kids more as learners, they might be more self-directed and motivated in their learning. If they are allowed to participate in their learning, they might take more ownership. What learner wants to own something that is not in his, or her interest to own? If we can understand better how we learn best, maybe we can alter how we teach to be the best.

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What happens in Vegas should be shared!

Posted in Accountability, Back channeling, conference, Connected Educator, Education, Internet, ISTE, Leadership, Mentoring, PD, PLN, Pre-Service teachers, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Social Media, Teacher, Teachmeet, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking, Truth, Twitter on April 29, 2013| 3 Comments »

I recently participated in what might possibly be a one-time experience for an educator, an education conference in Las Vegas. Of course that probably doesn’t hold true for Nevada educators. Solution Tree Publishing sponsored the Leadership Now Conference in Vegas. It was a Quality event with high visibility speakers keynoted the event.

The speakers at the event were Solution Tree authors and each was a leading expert in their area of expertise. They were also all affiliated with the Marzano/DuFour group. This was a big showing of the PLC at Work institute. For the most part I happen to be a believer in most of what they preach, so I was quite happy with the topics presented.

Of course the backbone of most of what was discussed was the idea of collaborative learning communities within individual school districts. I love the idea and I believe in the concept that collaboratively we all benefit more in learning and teaching. I do find the idea of stopping that collaboration at the district level somewhat limiting however. We need global networks of collaboration. We should not stop at the borders of our own school district or just the network of a group of paying participants of some larger group. Collaboration through social media is free and global. We need to explore and use it to our best advantage as educators and as students.

The First keynotes by Robert Marzano and Richard DuFour lasted an hour and a half each. They were lectures with text-ladened slides to keep the audience (learners) on track while laying out the research and philosophy of the grand plan. There was a printed and bound compiled text of the presentations along with worksheets for the learners. I actually weighed it. It was THREE pounds.

The highlight for me was the keynote by Sir Ken Robinson. He did a keynote that covered many aspects of several of his TED Talk videos. Although I heard much of it before, it meant more live, presented in sir Ken’s unique blend of humor, irony and common sense. This was a vast improvement over the last time I saw him at ISTE with a disastrous panel presentation after what seemed like a ten-minute keynote. In contrast to that, Sir Ken’s Solution Tree retrospective presentation was one to remember.

The workshops following the keynotes were again 90-minute lectures with text-ladened slides that corresponded to the three-pound, bound, text workbook. The material covered in the workshops was essential. The research seemed sound. It was all a common sense approach to the complicated problem of education reform. Each workshop was a clear presentation of how we might best approach what we are doing now in education with what we might be doing even better.

I only wish that they applied the same amount of time, research, and development to their methods of teaching and presentation as they applied to their subject material. First rule of PowerPoint: Don’t read from text-ladened slides to the audience, even if it is from a book written by you, the presenter. To do such a presentation differently is not going to be an easy task and it will probably take several iterations of a presentation to eliminate so much text from slides, but it will help the learners or should I say audience. Although there is a certain element of entertainment in education presentations they are designed to inform and teach. That means the seats are filled with learners and not audience members.

The workshop leaders of the workshops that I attended were wonderful, knowledgeable, and experienced educators. Leaders included: Rebecca DuFour, Tammy Heflebower, Timothy Kanold, Anthony Muhammad, Phil Warrick, and Kenneth Williams. The workshops that were most striking and helpful to me however, were the workshops of Anthony Muhammad. He dealt with changing the culture of the school in order to affect any meaningful change in the structure of the school. I found him to be a shinning star in a room full of stars. He was dynamic, engaging, and most of all gave out meaningful ideas to deal with the real changes for education reform with the most “elephant in the room” problems. He later gave a rousing, closing keynote.

The low point for me anyway came when they had the panel discussion at the end of the sessions of the second day. It was not very well attended by the participants of the conference. The panel was made up of the key members of the Marzano group. Of course the lead panel members gave the longest answers. It was the questioning of the panel that struck me to be rather archaic in our world of technology. The audience was asked to write questions on a piece of paper that would be picked up and delivered to the moderator. There was no microphone stand for open questioning. There was no hashtag back channel screen. The moderator was not monitoring an iPad for questions. I guess this was made difficult because there was also no Internet service for the conference, which should be a mainstay of any education conference.

Criticisms aside, I found this to be a very informative conference. I wish it could have been live streamed to the many connected educators who were following the conference hashtag over the three days. I think the Marzano approach to collaboration and addressing the whole system in order to affect change is a sensible and sound approach. I would simply love to see an updated methodology in their approach.

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Am I Who I Say I Am?

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, Assessment, Blog, conference, Connected Educator, Education, Internet, Leadership, Literacy, Observation, PD, PLN, Pre-Service teachers, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Teacher, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking, Twitter on April 18, 2013| 11 Comments »

I just spent the morning viewing a livestream from an Education Forum from Education Week. For those who may be unaware a livestream is a live transmission of an event over the Internet. This was a forum that recognized Education Leaders. It was titled Leaders To Learn From 2013. I think what Education Week did was great and I hope not to diminish their contribution. I do have some observations that I would like to share.

My friend and colleague Kyle Pace, @kylepace, was the person who drew me to this forum. Kyle is a connected educator known to tens of thousands of educators as a collaborative, connected educator who engages people with knowledge and information in the realm of technology in education. If any educator deserves an award for collaborative leadership, Kyle would top my list of candidates. It is a well-deserved recognition.

What struck me about the other award winners recognized for their leadership accomplishments that other educators are supposed to learn from was that we as an education community have not heard from them before? I realize that not all educators are connected through social media. It also seems to me as an observer of social media in education that it is often more difficult for Administrators to connect than teachers. There are reasons for that, both real and imagined, and I understand that. It would seem to me however, that if collaboration is part of a reason for recognition, the award winners should demonstrate some proficiency in modern collaboration as educators.

I also attended a Discovery Education forum recently where a number of Superintendents were recognized. When asked about their professional Social media involvement and collaboration, each claimed Twitter accounts and some claimed to have blogs. Of course sitting with Josh Stumpenhorst, @stumpteacher, we were able to quickly fact-check each of their claims to discover that most of them rarely tweeted and few had Blogs.

In a time when mobile devices can vet any speaker in a few seconds, people should not speak out of hand. In addition to education leaders, all leaders should get the fact that they can, and will be held more accountable for what they do compared to what they say. The world and information distribution has changed. Their failure to recognize that fact is testament to their relevance in a technology-driven society.

I have made my views on sharing as a professional responsibility known in many previous posts. A question from Dean Shareski really summed it up for me in regard to professional collaboration. What would we say about a doctor who found a cure for cancer or even a partial pathway to that end, but failed to share it with medical colleagues?

If educators are doing things in a better way, why are they not collaborating using the methods of today? Educators may not have the Journal of the American Medical Association, but we do have Twitter and we do have Blogs. I am tired of educators who espouse technology for everyone else, but fail to employ it for themselves and their profession.

Many Administrators use the Internet to vet out teaching candidates. They get to Google information about individuals that they are legally precluded from asking about in an interview. If that has become the standard then let’s have at it. We should look at everyone’s digital footprint including administrators. What is their educational philosophy as it is stated in the digital world? What does their Professional Learning Network include? What is it they have collaborated on in the Social media world? How effective are they in the very collaboration skills that they claim to have? How reflective are they based on their public blog? Do they hold to their principles in their public reflections?

We are moving forward in the way we access and obtain information. If an administrator has not contributed and that information is not obtainable, then that may be an indication of ability, or relevance, or both. At the very least it should be a red flag. I am not suggesting that any administrator who is not on social media is a Luddite. I am suggesting that the best leaders in an age of technology are those who understand it as a result of effectively using it, as well as modeling it for those who follow. We need to consider relevant collaborative skills as a requisite for administrative positions if we have hope for changing the system in positive ways.

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Does making change count?

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, Assessment, conference, Connected Educator, Education, PD, PLN, Professionalism, Reform, Teacher, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking on April 15, 2013| 10 Comments »

An advantage that I have as one who is fortunate enough to attend many education conferences, or special education events is the contact I have with many of the thought leaders in education. Of course most of those folks do not think of themselves as thought leaders, but just educators. The fact is that we are often defined by the perception of others. This holds true for institutions as well.

I was invited to attend a special leadership event sponsored by Discovery Education. My association with Discovery goes back to a think tank group that they had formed last year on “Exploring Beyond the Textbook”. This year’s event, Future@Now announced that all educators were being afforded free access to Discovery Education’s Techbook. There were a number of featured speakers, mostly progressive superintendents who are all doing wonderful things in education in their districts. Of course the highlight of the event was a killer presentation by a third grader, Mary Moss Wirt, a Digital Learner from Cary Elementary School in North Carolina.

The very best part of this event for me however was at dinner the night before. I had dinner and a two-hour conversation with Dean Shareski on education. Dean is an educator and education technologist I have followed on Twitter from my first month tweeting. I have always found him to be thoughtful, innovative, reflective, personable, respectful, and an educator I would like to hang with. This night I did.

The question posed by Dean that intrigued me was one that educators hear time and time again: What do we say to people who ask; how is education working if the cashier at a fast food place cannot figure out how much change to give me?

This was not easy to hear as an educator because this perception is one that many people have. The perception is that since kids can’t count out change for a purchase, our education system has failed. My take on the question however was one I had not considered before until we needed to address it in this discussion. I told Dean that I felt that people were making a judgment about an education system that no longer existed. They were basing their assumptions on their father’s education system. It was a system designed for people to be able to count out change for customers. That is a task that is simple to people who are products of that system and it was a skill reinforced in many jobs in society at that time.

That same system however also created many technological advances. It produced technology that removes the mundane task of calculating change, as well as the possibility of making mistakes doing so. There is no need for a cashier to calculate change when the register does it faster and more accurately. It also allows individuals with lower functioning skills to move into positions that previously required a knowledge, if not mastery, of a fundamental mathematical ability. What people are now doing is looking into an area that no longer requires either limited, or for that matter, any math skills, and condemning the education system for not providing it with people who have mastered some math skills.

Come to think of it even people with math skills become complacent with the accessibility of tech tools to calculate. This is one area where the rule of, “If you don’t use it you lose it”, applies well. Then again, if you don’t use it because you don’t really need it, so what?

I think when we look to assess our education system; we can’t look to the system, as we knew it in past generations. In the world of today the needs are different. Higher order thinking skills, critical thinking skills, communicating skills, collaborating skills, creative skills all need to be emphasized. The ability to critically think in today’s society is more important than calculation skills accomplished by cash registers. The higher order skills are what will prevent our democracy from being driven by sound bites as opposed to thought and reason.

If someone needs to be in a position where fundamental math to make change calculations is required, they will have those skills before they are hired, or they will be trained after. If those skills were not required, why would we expect those workers to be required to have them? I am not bashing the Math people here. Yes, many people need math and advanced math is where STEM is taking us. I guess giving the correct change may be a first step, but it is not a step for everyone as a gauge of education. If perception is reality, let us make sure that people perceive things as they are in a technology-driven, ever-changing environment. We no longer live an Ozzie and Harriet world of the fifties.

If we want people to have skills and knowledge beyond the demands of their jobs than we need to create a culture of learning. We need students at the very least to be curious about learning, and at best have a love for it. Drilling and testing will produce neither. We need to shift the goal of education from testing to learning and align the public’s perception of education with the reality of education in order to gain support for a common goal.

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If Twitter Is Not PD, What Is It?

Posted in Administrator, Assessment, conference, Connected Educator, Education, Internet, ISTE, Leadership, Literacy, online learning, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Social Media, Teacher, Teachmeet, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking, Truth, Twitter on April 3, 2013| 38 Comments »

I was recently contacted by Barbara Madden, a Missouri educator with a Mississippi dialect, who is conducting a survey of educators, who use Twitter for Professional Development asking for some feedback. Barbara had been in contact with a college professor who wanted to know the effect of Twitter as PD and it’s effect on student outcomes. That really got me thinking about PD and Twitter. I have heard many, many educators claiming that Twitter is the best PD that they have ever had. Others have said they learned more from Twitter than any graduate, or undergraduate education course they have taken. I would have doubts about both of those statements, or at the least questions about our higher education system if that were true.

Education has always been an isolated profession that called out for collaboration, but it did not have an effective way to collaborate. Department meetings and faculty meetings potentially provided limited collaboration. Education conferences were slightly more collaborative, but educators really had to put themselves out there to find ways to collaborate with other educators in an effective way. Collaboration is a very personal way for an individual to learn. It requires trusting other individuals, which is not easy for many, but it is also, for many people, the best way to learn.

Social Media is simply a conduit for connections. These connections then lead to collaboration. It enables connections to be made globally with ease and in numbers never before possible. It is this ease and quantity of connectedness that fosters collaborative learning on subjects that interest the connected participants. When educators are connected to other educators the natural discussion is education.

The way I look at it is that educators discussing education force each other to think and reflect on what it is that they do in education. Educators are a reflective bunch as a profession. It is the resulting change from all of this collaboration and reflection that enables educators to view what they have been staring at for so long with a new lens.

In addition to viewing things differently, a new level of relevance is added with technological advances being shared. Technology changes so fast that few can keep up with all that is going on. Collectively however, and through the power of collaboration, things are shared, discussed, and experimented with. This is all done with the safety net of collaboration. Failure becomes an option because do-overs become possible. It’s not about how many times you are knocked down, but rather how many times people help you back up. That is what educators do with Twitter.

If we were to measure anything, we would need to know what educators were like before Twitter to evaluate how they interact, reflect and teach or administrate after the Twitter immersion.

Can we measure how an educator views education differently after experiencing collaborative learning as a professional tool? If that experience changes that educator’s outlook, relevance, and educational philosophy, does it change that person as an educator? In what way do we measure that? How do we measure that in regard to its effect on the students’ outcomes? If a teacher is employing different methods of teaching that he, or she has never used before, how do we gauge that as effective or not? If a teacher has gained a better sense of confidence in the classroom, how does that translate to positives for students? Giving teachers the confidence in knowing that there are no longer boundaries to the questions they may ask, or the people they may ask them from may not be measurable. Twitter is more about ideas than titles. In the area of education Administrators, Authors, Teachers, Students, and Parents are all equals on Twitter. Exchange of ideas and experience is the currency of that medium. How do we measure the effect of that on education?

There is now a new gap in education. In a system riddled with too many gaps, this is not good news. Technology and social media specifically have provided tools that enable educators to connect, communicate collaborate and create. That ability makes a difference in individuals. It enables reflection and relevance. It is also creating two groups of educators, the connected, and the unconnected. The discussions of the connected seem to be focused on the future and moving toward it. The discussions of the unconnected seem to be steeped in the past with little or very slow-moving forward movement.

I do not think of Twitter as a tool for providing Professional Development, but rather a tool that enables collaboration. That leads to a curiosity, or more, a love for learning that takes some learners further down the road that all educators should be travelling. By any measure that must be a positive result for educators, that will impact their students in a positive way as well.

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PD: Will It Float?

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, conference, Connected Educator, Edcamp, Education, EduCon, ISTE, Leadership, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Teacher, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking, Truth on March 31, 2013| 19 Comments »

I have long been a David Letterman fan on any of the shows he has hosted. Over the years one of my favorite Letterman bits has been when he and Paul Shaffer would discuss the possible ability of a specific item to float in water. After their predictions the item would be tossed into a giant, transparent vat of water to determine who was correct. The results were apparent and immediate.

Professional Development has long been an element in American education. At one time things changed slowly so that the need for development seemed less a concern. The country’s shift to being a technology-driven society has increased the rate of change, forcing a need for a more rapid rate of absorption of developments for people in all jobs and professions, but especially education.

The difficulty in education is its goal; it is not just to educate kids about their past and how it relates to the present, but also what to expect in the future. Of course we have no idea what the future holds, because the present is moving so quickly. Consider for a moment the effect of Smartphones and iPads on our culture. iPad technology is but three years old and has had a profound effect on those places that have embraced it. Smartphones have been around a little longer and have taken longer to be accepted by educators, but they are creeping successfully into the system after changing forever how the country communicates and accesses information. All of the technology and its effects have had a great influence on how kids learn and are motivated to learn, as well as what it is they are learning for. In many cases teachers have no idea what they are preparing their students for because their students’ future will be different from our present, and light years from our past. These are all reasons for educators to be relevant in terms of what is needed to teach as well as how to teach today.

The question is: does the system address the need for relevance in education? Many systems require teachers to acquire a specific number of PD hours over a period of time by selecting and taking courses or workshops on topics pertaining to education. These choices are left to the individual teacher to select and obtain. Of course some obvious questions pop up here. If the teacher is not comfortable with technology will technology be part of that teacher’s training. If a teacher has not kept up with current trends and research in education, how will he/she make choices that will best benefit his/her students? Is the teacher versed well enough in technology to relate to the technological changes that effect our population? It always comes down to relevance. Is the teacher able to make relevant decisions based on experience in a technologically driven culture?

Rather than try to hold millions of teachers accountable for these questions, a better method might be to look to the districts and the education leaders. Are they maintaining relevance? Are they providing professional development to their staffs to maintain relevance? Are they supporting teachers with time to collaborate in order to incorporate what they should be doing. Have they gotten beyond the keynote lecture and hourly workshops once, or twice a year as their total commitment to teacher training?

Most educators consider Professional Development a key component to what they need to be an effective teacher. Most Administrators point to Professional Development as a key component to what their teachers need to be effective teachers. Most districts point to Professional Development as the key component to what their district needs to be an effective district. Yet after all of this, TEST Preparation and not Teacher Preparation is still the priority in American education.

Professional Development must be part of a teacher’s workweek. It must be prioritized, paid for, and most importantly PROVIDED. We should not expect anyone to take an uncomfortable path down into unfamiliar territory without some sort of guidance or leadership. It cannot be left up to people who may not know what it is that they do not know to decide on what they need to be effective.

A lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client, and physician heal thy self are commonly understood. Maybe we need a phrase for educators trying to educate themselves? The system of PD in most American schools has become another victim of a fast paced technology driven culture. It no longer works as it did. If we do not change and adapt to meet the changes in our culture, we will surely be irrelevant as an institution. Now here is my question: PD in its present form; Will it Float?

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The Business of Education

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, conference, Connected Educator, Edcamp, Education, EduCon, Internet, ISTE, Leadership, Observation, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Skills, Social Media, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking, Twitter on March 20, 2013| 9 Comments »

As I have traveled around this country participating in education conferences I have made several observations in regard to the effects of the Internet and social media on various levels of education as a profession, as an industry, and as an institution. These are often the topics of sessions at education conferences that draw thousands of educators in to look at, examine, talk over, consider, and move on. This all takes time and has been going on since tech was first introduced to education in various forms as tools for learning. It may be time to step back and look at the bigger picture.

As technology advances there are consequences for many industries that either fail to adapt, or whose product is replaced by what technology offers. Horse drawn carriages were replaced by horseless carriages. Typewriters were replaced by word processors. Instamatic cameras were replaced by digital cameras, which are now being replaced by cell phones. Photographic film is not found in any of the millions of stores from which it was previously sold in mass quantities. The news cycle no longer faces deadlines because of 24-hour news cycles. Newspaper and magazine stands have only a fraction of the offerings they had even five years ago. There is no longer a Kodak, Polaroid, Underwood Typewriter, or Newsweek magazine. They were all giants taken out by technology.

With all that, we as educators should have learned from all the examples of those industries that preceded us as victims in the advancement of technology. Why is education so slow in making decisions that would employ tech rather than resist it. Kodak was huge. It was in the “too big to fail” category. Its products included cameras, but its main product was film. Once digital photography moved into the industry it was a very short run to ruin.

The product of education is content. My path of reasoning must be getting clear about now. The key to content was always held by the academics to be shared by those who attended and prevailed in the education system. Teachers were the content experts. The Internet has now strained the value of content experts. Few content experts will ever be able to retain and command the content held by the power of the Internet. The shift that should take place in education is to teach students the skills to responsibly and critically access that content in order to create additional content.

We shouldn’t be guided by the demands of industry to teach skills that may not be in existence over the course of a student’s academic career. The idea that business can best direct the needs of learners is surpassed by the fact that business will only direct education to meet the present needs of business.

If education is to direct its own path and avoid becoming as irrelevant as a film company in a digital world, as educators we need to change. We can’t continue contemplating the use of technology for the sake of protecting our comfort zones. We need to update and restructure the way we administer Professional Development. We need to employ strategies to incorporate social media for collaboration. We need to better understand how to use technology to help us do what we do best even better. Our professional organizations need to move from the models of the past and lead teachers through professional development, discussion, and collaboration to a deeper understanding of their profession in a modern world. We are not a profession of the 1800’s, yet in many ways we carry ourselves and approach it that way. This to must change.

Professional development is a necessary component of the teaching profession. It must be part of every teacher’s workweek. It needs to be prioritized, funded and supported with time. Too many educators have no idea how much they do not know about their own profession. This will require a good amount of directed professional development, which is never popular with educators. Technology has changed things and continues to do so at an incredible rate of speed. If educators are to be effective they must be relevant. If harnessed, technology can be used to our advantage with proper training. If ignored, or not taken seriously by the entire profession, it could very well make educators irrelevant. Our education system is not too big to fail.

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So it is written…

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, conference, Connected Educator, cooperating Teacher, Edcamp, Education, ISTE, Observation, online learning, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Social Media, Teacher, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking, Twitter, unconference on March 18, 2013| 10 Comments »

After a marathon attendance at a number of education conferences this year I have stored up many observations on the approach these conferences use to engage educators in their profession. Since I began attending them over 35 years ago I do have some historical perspective. More often than not my experience on the planning of the “Education Conference” is: So it is written, so it shall be done! Many reshuffle the deck and deal out the same old hands. If we always plan conferences on what worked last year, progress will never catch up to relevance.

In our technology-driven society we have come to recognize that our students are learning differently. I would suggest that our educators are learning differently as well. That difference needs to be addressed by the conferences that help educate our educators. The reasons we as educators are reflecting and changing our methods of education to meet the needs of our students are the very reasons education conferences need to change to meet the needs of our changing educators. Resistance that we too often provide does not prevent the fact that there comes a time when we just must reinvent the wheel.

If all educators need to do, in order to keep up with modern education, is to listen to lectures, they can do that cheaper and more conveniently with webinars and podcasts over the Internet. What do conferences provide beyond the lecture? If the answer is face to face networking, then provide the spaces and times to do that. Select venues with ample lounging spaces or build them into the venue. Sessions must be planned with time between sessions for educators to connect and network. Schedule, encourage, or incent presenters, and featured speakers to circulate in these spaces.

Reflection rooms might be a unique addition. Spaces where speakers, presenters, and attendees could gather for reflection and discussion. This would be the best place for educators to connect face to face as well as digitally through social media to continue discussions online, beyond the conference and through the year. Those creative juices that flow during the conference will continue throughout the year. Current models get people thinking during the conference and in many cases the juices will not flow again until the next conference.

Planning the sessions is key to success in any Edu conference. If, as educators, we know that lecture is not the best way to learn, why would we encourage it in sessions? Interactive sessions, as well as discussions, and even interactive panel sessions are the very things that excite, engage, and educate educators. These should be encouraged and highlighted. The method of delivery should always be a prime consideration in addition to being clearly stated on the session description.

The selection of speakers and sessions needs to be examined. Connected educators are often on the cutting edge discussing education topics as much as a year before it hits Faculty meeting and lounges. If the committees made up to judge and select RFP for sessions than those educators need to be relevant as well. Again, a topic that was popular last year may not be as relevant this year. What upset me was that some of this year’s presenters were filling out and submitting RFP’s for next year’s conference. Maybe we should have staggered RFP deadlines with a quota for each date. Planners could then observe trends and avoid replication over a period of time. It also offers the opportunity to analyze the needs and send out requests for specific RFP’s.

Of course the biggest change in PD for educators in years has been the EDCAMP model of conference. Sessions are planned on the fly based on interest and expertise with the assembled group. These sessions are dynamic discussions, which dive into the depths of the selected topic. Every conference should set aside time for the EDCAMP model. Four hours should do it. Planning it for the middle of the conference will enable educators to get a handle on the topics they would need to delve deeply into.

Today’s technology has enabled educators to connect and collaborate globally. Only a few conferences have understood how to harness the power of the tweet. In order to show a conference to the world, the attendees, when moved by engagement will tweet out all that is needed. This draws into the conferences many who are not physically in attendance.

Every conference should have a connected educator space. Many Bloggers have claimed the Blogger’s Lounge as their space and have continued with great connections with other bloggers. We need that for all educators. The connected educator space must be present at every conference.

My final concern is in the Registration fees. Conferences are expensive to run. There is no option on charging money for attendance. The structure however may be flexible with several options. Consideration should be given to discounting for teams of teachers coming from the same district. Maybe we should have a discount for first-time attendees.

I have traveled the world going to Education conferences. All have good points and bad points. All of these conferences have come from the sweat, tears and blood of many volunteers. They are all well-intentioned and I believe in their necessity in our system for Professional Development. The point I feel we must fight for however is the need for relevance in the world in which we teach. This is the same thing we should strive for in all of education. Many of the goals we strive for to support our students should also be the same goals to address our needs to educate our educators.

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SxSWEdu 2013

Posted in Common Core, conference, Connected Educator, Education, ISTE, Leadership, PD, PLN, Professional development, Professionalism, Reform, Social Media, Teched, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking, Twitter on March 12, 2013| 5 Comments »

Whenever I attend an education conference, which I am doing with great frequency these days, I do so as an educator with an educator’s eye, and an educator’s attitude. It is through that lens that I view education conferences either as a conference for the education profession or the education industry. Sometimes conferences are a combination of both. An easy distinction is that the industry side is made up of the business side of education, while the profession side is composed of classroom educators. Of course the most effective conferences are a balanced blend of both. It is that balance that eludes so many conferences.

This balance in education conferences is also what we should seek in professional development. Instead of making it about the bells and whistles of the applications, we should ask the educators about their goals and methods and then see if that can be enhanced by technology. If the educator has an established goal and an established method that can be made easier and more efficient, and more effective with technology, most educators will move toward that technology addition. The alternative way to do this is to have an administrative commitment to the technology and then to tell teachers to work it into what they do in order to make curriculum better. If teacher acceptance and cooperation is required for success, I think one method might work better than the other.

SxSWEdu 2013 was different from many other education conferences. There was no vendor floor. There were no booths to pursue. There were still tchotchkes, but they were given out at sessions or special events at various sponsored suites used as workplace spaces or meet-up lounges. I was told that the attendance was in the area of 5,000 attendees with one-third of that number representing educators. The few educator speakers who attended were of the very best education has to offer. There were fewer educators however than those speakers provided by the education technology industry.

I attended one workshop by a featured speaker that I thought was described as gaming for learning. Of course this idea of gaming in education is getting a great deal of attention recently, so with my educator lens in hand, I attended the session. The bulk of the session was about a history and development of specific computer generated games, as well as a strategy for working them into education. Monetizing games for education was also mentioned. The topic of learning as it relates to gaming was never the focus or was it barely mentioned. Again it was a business perspective, which is great for the industry folks in attendance, and there were many.

Finally, the time for the closing keynote approached. People began lining up 90 minutes before the designated time. Bill Gates was speaking to represent the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation. Many educators have strong feelings both pro and con about the Gates involvement in education and his influence on education reform. That however was not the issue here. He was at SxSWEdu to give an inspiring education speech. He chose to speak at the start of the allotted time and then bring on a panel for questioning to end his session. I was ready. I positioned myself directly next to the only microphone set up for audience questioners. The Microphone stand actually touched my chair. It was the perfect spot.

The Gates speech for me lacked passion or even enthusiasm. A highlight came as he extolled the almost national acceptance of the Common Core State Standards. He put a giant emphasis on his point with a huge map of the United States with all of the accepting CCSS States brightly colored-in and the non-conforming states in a drab beige color. Of course the audience began to snicker and chuckle when in the center of this display the most prominent of the beige outcasts stood out as a huge section of the map. It was Texas, the very state we were all seated in. The irony grasped and tickled the audience, but it ignored Bill who did not seem to get it.

Bill’s address came to an end and he then introduced his panel. The part that assaulted my educator lens at this education conference was the fact that he introduced his panel as three outstanding CEO’s. It was more business people addressing educators about education. He chose to bring them out and individually question them one at a time. The questions were prepared as expected, but even the follow –up questions from Bill in response to their answers were wooden and staged. The Panel included_:InBloom CEO Iwan Streichenberger_,Dreambox Learning Inc. CEO Jessie Woolley-Wilson, and for the Charter Schools, Summit Schools CEO Diane Tavenner.

Toward the end of the presentation I was mentally preparing to step up to the microphone that was standing at attention by my side. As Bill asked the last wooden question however, something sudden and unexpected happened. I looked down to my phone to tweet out a quick comment to the twitterverse, and as I looked up from the tweet, Bill and his friends were GONE! They literally ran off the stage. NO QUESTIONS FOR YOU! I was dejected all the way to the airport. I was a little lifted when I saw that the flight had Wi-Fi. I connected up and started seeing posts about the Gates Keynote already popping up. The first one I read referred to Gates inspiring the crowd and receiving a standing ovation. I was there and saw little inspiration, and absolutely no ovation. The only standing was when the panel fled the stage and the audience stood in confusion of the abrupt ending.

The emphasis of much of the conference, to me at least, was on data and content delivery. I guess they can be viewed as commodities and, as such, they are easily measured and more conveniently priced. After all, it is about the business. As an educator I tend to lean toward content creation, and formative assessment. Learning is not so easily measured and requires feedback and reflection and sometimes correction, or at least a restatement. After all, it is about the learning

None of what I have mentioned is meant as a negative, but rather just observation. People should understand the make-up and culture of conferences before committing whatever little time and money is available to them in today’s climate. Education is about learning, but it requires more than a slate and chalk to get it done in a technology driven society. If we are to really benefit from these conferences, we may need more education as an education profession and an education industry.

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ICE 2013

Posted in Administrator, Back channeling, conference, Connected Educator, Edcamp, EdChat, Education, ISTE, Leadership, PD, PLN, Professionalism, Reform, Social Media, Technology, Thought leadership, Twitter on March 6, 2013| 4 Comments »

I am very fortunate to have a position that gets me invited to education conferences around the country, and occasionally out of it as well. I have written a number of posts describing the benefits, and the blemishes, of many of them over the last year. I am writing this post, as I am en route to Austin, Texas to participate in one of the big ones, the SXSWEdu Conference. Last week however, I attended a gem of a conference conducted by the Illinois ISTE affiliate, The Illinois Computing Educator’s Conference, referred to as ICE13.

After attending so many conferences, it is easy to point out the flaws of any, or each. Most conferences require RFPs, the requests for proposals, to determine the sessions for the conference program far too many months in advance of the conference. The need for this is to have several, and in some cases, too many people, read over the proposals in order to determine which sessions to approve. Perhaps several staggered deadlines for RFPs might allow a more varied and relevant program. Another gateway to relevance could be a period of time within the conference to conduct an Edcamp format for a segment of the conference. I think all conferences could benefit by some innovative schedule planning.

ICE13 was a little different from many of the other statewide education conferences by virtue of its venue. Although I flew into Chicago, I had to drive what, according to my GPS, was a 45-minute trip outside of Chicago to St. Charles and a resort called Pheasant Run. This venue made a big difference in the tenor of this conference. The presentation rooms were spacious and well equipped as most conferences, but what made the difference was the sprawling hotel itself. There were two bars and several gathering areas with couches and comfy chairs throughout. It was hive of connectivity and networking based on discussions and discourse. It was a great place for presenters, keynotes and participants to meditate, mingle, and mashup ideas and concepts in education.

For me the highlight of the conference was what was called the PLN Plaza. It was used as an overflow area for the keynotes as those speeches were streamed in. The best part however was that the keynotes, as well as many presenters, were scheduled for drop-ins to conduct discussions on their topics with anyone who stopped by. It was up close and personal in the best way. This is an experience many bloggers benefit from at the Blogger’s Café at large national conferences. The PLN Plaza was the brainchild of a group of people including: Dan Rezac, Elizabeth Greene, and Amanda Pelsor, all of whom kept things moving along there for the entire conference. It was a comfortable gathering place where I engaged in many discussions, as well as networking, and connected throughout my entire stay.

There seemed to be more Twitter activity at this conference as well. Connected educators seemed to be a topic that was emphasized by many of the keynotes and several of the presenters. Camaraderie between the presenters because of their connectedness was very evident at ICE13. The conference also had more than one Wi-Fi network to connect to, which made many people very happy.

In addition I also enjoyed The UDL Playground. I first saw this at the NYSCATE Conference in New York. It is a place where a number of vendors can demonstrate tools as participants ask questions to learn about Universal Design for Learning. The activities there were interactive and very instructive. In full disclosure, my wife’s company, VIZZLE, was quite active in its participation at both conferences. It would be great if more vendors participated in activities like the UDL Playground to enable educators to engage authentically beyond a basic booth demonstration.

Education conferences are a needed component of professional development for teachers and administrators, but they are not going to maintain relevance without connecting their members in greater numbers during each conference. Unconnected educators are pumped up and energized with each annual conference. That occurs annually. They need to meet people and network with the new people who they meet at the conference. Connected educators are pumped up and energized year-round, and go into hyper-drive at conferences as they connect face-to-face with all of the educators they have been exchanging information and sources with during the year. We need to stop just talking about innovation as a goal and practice it as professionals. We need to innovate in every aspect of what we do, and we do it wherever and whenever we can. Connectedness has been digitally enhanced through technology, and it is an innovation we need to employ extensively.