Category Archives: blogging

When We See It As A Challenge

blogging, Education, gaming

My attention lately has turned to game design and notions of gamification.  Part of it stems from the discussion of Reality is Broken that I facilitated earlier this year and part from my own growing devotion to time management strategy games. It has led me to incorporate game language into my ed tech course for pre-service teachers.  They are moving into the gamification phase right now as they determine which areas they wish to pursue in more depth and they’ll level up, achieve mastery, and then choose one area in which they will get to the Boss level.  One of the engaging pieces of games is the notion of the challenge.  If a game is too easy, we tend to be less interested. It has to be just hard enough that we have a sense we can beat it but know that we may fail before we succeed by applying the lessons we have learned in our earlier attempts.

I read two different pieces today that seem to be using the challenge approach to encourage positive change in two very different groups of people.

Education Week profiles Haut Gap Middle School, a school that has used the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Suports (PBIS) approach to discipline. It has something of a game style approach as it seeks to reward positive behavior:

For example, once every quarter, Haut Gap students who have collected the right number of PRIDE coupons earn a special privilege. They also can cash in their coupons for prizes. They earn coupons for asking thoughtful questions in class, being prepared for a lesson, and asking for permission the right way. Coupons or not, when students behave the right way, they are told.

“You have your reading book out,” English teacher Brandon Bobart told his students during a recent class. “I can tell you’re committed to your learning.”

Earlier this month, 6th grader Saniyah King happily reported she had earned 10 PRIDE coupons. If she has 20 by month’s end, she’ll get to take part in a schoolwide dress-up day, when students swap school uniforms for business attire.

I can hear some of you sputtering: why should kids be rewarded for good behavior?  It should simply be what is expected of you as a citizen. But we see rewards in the real world: earning points for good driving, getting at least a small interest rate for saving money, and in San Antonio and Chicago  a wellness challenge that will reward municipal employees for getting healthier with cash prizes and penalize those who don’t by increasing their health benefit payment.

The second article was a reminder from Shelly Terrell about the 30 Goals Challenge for 2012. She has been focusing on one or two goals a week but I may at least get started on the list in anticipation of getting into the 2013 challenge at the beginning. Having specific goals for learning and growth can help guide us as students. When they are set as personal challenges, we may find them even more compelling.  And like a good game, Terrell builds in reflection: why did you learn by completing this challenge.

Of course, I’m already involved in a 30 day challenge of blogging every day.  It’s been a good journey: I find myself thinking about the blog entry throughout the day and then sitting down in the evening to pull it together. But sometimes, like yesterday, I will see a headline that just calls for comment. I’ve allowed myself a fairly wide net of subjects from poverty to technology to Neil Young with a blog entry about Bruce Springsteen is in the works.

I’m doing some reflecting on whether or not I can keep this up after the 30 days ends next week. I would like to very much as I’ve found the practice of writing to be very useful both in terms of codifying my ideas and beliefs but also in terms of making me keep up a bit more as I look for blog fodder. I’m considering ideas for how to streamline it a bit and will share them in a future entry.

Grand Challenge Felled by Cold

blogging, Education, , ,

My ambition to blog every day for 30 days came to an end yesterday.  I battled a cold for a couple days and yesterday had to attend an all day meeting despite being in the worst of it.  I know, I know, I should have stayed home but this is a once-a-year meeting and it was somewhat essential that I be there in person. (For those of you who might have been with me, I apologize for the hacking and sneezing and only hope I did not infect you.) Once home, blogging, education and technology were the furthest things from my mind.  I cuddled up in comfortable pajamas and fell asleep before 8 PM.

I’m going to blog twice today to make up for it…does that count? This first one is something of a follow up to the last blog post about the VCU blogging community.  There are a few other blogs that I read on a regular basis and I thought I would share one of them with you:

For five years, Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier wrote thoughtful letters back and forth as part of the Bridging Differences blog at EdWeek, exploring issues related to education. They began at different ends of the spectrum with Ravitch representing a more conservative viewpoint and Meier a more liberal.  In the end, though, they seemed to have met on the bridge, with Ravitch moving perhaps further along towards Meier’s side as her discomfort with reforms she once espoused like charters and vouchers grew. It was a pleasure to get a peek into the minds of these two women.  Ravitch has moved on to her own blog where she is posting 10-20 items per day (talk about a grand challenge)! And she has become an outspoken advocate for public education.  In her closing post for the Bridging Differences blog, she points out that failing public education is a myth:

Here is something to reflect on: the NAEP scores of students who are black, white, Hispanic, or Asian are at their highest point in history. The proportion of young people between 18-24 who have graduated high school is close to 90 percent, another historical high point. Those who rail about the decline and failure of American education are either misinformed or they obfuscate or prevaricate.

Now, Meier has been joined by Pedro Noguera, sociologist at New York University who studies urban education.  About the same time he came on board, he posted an article in The Nation in which he took issue with the Chicago teachers who were on strike that sparked a response from Diane Ravitch. In his first post for Bridging Differences, he asked Meier to respond as well and she did.

While much of Education Week is behind a pay wall, this blog is freely available.  It provides a chance to get beyond slogans and agendas and think deeply about education.  The commenters also rise about the average and help expand the conversation.

Join A Community of Learners

blogging, thinking out loud,

I was browsing through some of the bloggers I read looking for blogging fodder to keep up with my 30-day challenge of writing every day. Jon Becker at Educational Insanity always has thoughtful posts and I appreciate his willingness to poke fun at himself sometimes.

The post that caught my attention today is about VCU’s Department of Educational Leadership’s new media ecosystem.  Jon invited us all to get involved in this ecosystem that includes blogs by doctoral students at VCU. I’m already part of the ecosystem as I belong to the Facebook page and follow the Twitter feed. But, it was great to spend time browsing the wide variety of blog entries.  I left a few comments for folks and signed up for the updates.

I think the post that really resonated with me today, perhaps because I feel like I’ve been burning the candle at both ends lately and now have a cold, was one by Andy Wolfenbarger.  He focused on the power of a cohort to support its members, but the main message was that passionate people tend to simply work too hard.  We see all that needs to be done and forget that taking care of ourselves is important, too.  I’m taking his good advice today…work can wait. The henhouse needs some attention and so do I. There’s a sunny spot on the porch calling my name and dogs that will be happy for a long walk later on.

And now that I’ve gotten my blog entry done, I really don’t need to be online the rest of the day! Thanks, Andy, for your good advice.  Your cohort is lucky to have you and I’m lucky to be part of this ecosystem.

Of Sweeping Passions and Grand Challenges

blogging, learning, teaching

Attending the TedXAshburn event on Saturday was an uplifting experience.  I was able to hear fascinating people talk with great passion about their lives and their work.  They were teachers and administrators and mission workers and musicians who all live very different lives yet shared one thing in common: passion.  Most of them had a single sweeping passion that drove them but they also had a passion for life and a determination to live a life that mattered, a life that made a difference to others.

yin yang graphicI found myself asking the question: what am I passionate about?  What drives me?  The simple answer is teaching.  I do lots of things as part of my work from organizing conferences to balancing budgets to leading book groups. But as I look across the landscape that is the life of a consultant, it is teaching that inspires me. So, I was glad to hear George Wolfe declare that we are all teachers.  I miss spending time with middle schoolers and having the feeling of influencing a young mind, but I know I am making a difference in the ways my pre-service teachers think about their classrooms and in the ways my graduate students approach the use of technology in their schools.

I have a second passion: learning. This summer, I had the privilege of working with groups of practicing teachers in schools across the country as they try to figure out the best ways to use emerging technologies to meet the needs of their students. I was the teacher as I had the responsibility of organizing our work together but, as with any teaching experience, I also learned so much from the participants just as I learn from the students in my courses. Now, as we continue our work together, I am taking on a different kind of teaching role, that of mentor, as I guide and support them as they work on implementation.

Hence the graphic I was inspired to create as I drafted this entry: we teach, we learn, all in the same time and space. I want to make sure my students know that I am learning from them and with them despite my label as teacher.

In addition to the live speakers, we were treated to two TED videos.  The organizers of Saturday’s event chose Google engineer Matt Cutts’ talk about the 30-day challenge.  Cutts suggests that you think of something you’ve always wanted to add to your life and try it for 30 days:

While Cutts talks about doing something “new,” I’ve decided I just want to do something I already do but would like to do more regularly: write.  Specifically, write blog entries. It is something I think about a lot, even going so far as to draft entries in my head, but I never seem to get them written and published.  Life intervenes by way of emails and phone calls and other distractions.  So, starting today, I am challenging myself to write in this blog every day for the next 30 days. I make this personal challenge public as an added incentive for keeping with it.

My March Resolution

blogging, Education, technology

First a word to my students: do as I say and not as I do. I know that this semester, I’ve really asked you to stretch yourselves in terms of using technology. You’re blogging and twittering and participating in a Ning. Tonight, we’ll be exploring Second Life as well. And you’re doing a good job. I appreciate your thoughtful blog entries, your forum posts and your willingness to even give twitter a try. Mostly, I’m writing to apologize that I haven’t been keeping up. I’ve been resting on my laurels as it were…after all, I have blogged and twittered and ninged before. But that’s just not fair: I need to be doing all that with you this semester. I’m asking you to make time; I must do the same.

And, there’s really the rub: virtual communities have two qualities that make them require special attention: they are virtual and they are usually voluntary. Turn off Tweetdeck and Twitter essentially goes away. Forget to visit iGoogle and the blogging world is somewhat distant. They aren’t calling on the phone or bouncing in my launcher bar.

So, for me, the issue is one of just making time and the commitment to being more active in all these communities. Finding something to write about, posting articles of interest to Twitter, and reading and commenting on the Ning. Maybe over that first cup of coffee in the morning…harken back to reading the paper with breakfast?

And then I wonder, if I struggle to keep up my connections with the virtual world, what’s going to happen to may students when they leave the course? Will they have found enough in this virtual world to continue their work: how many of them will blog? or tweet? or be part of the Ning? What do they need to experience in the next two months that will convince at least some of them to continue to use these tools to teach and learn?