Category Archives: teaching

The Middle Way, Another Look

learning, teaching

Yesterday, I considered how we might find a middle path as we figure out how to integrate digital media into our lives.  Two more stories today bring me to continue to consider the notion of the middle way as it applies to education.

Eduwonk Andrew Rotherham, in his take on the movie Bully, worries that educators often respond to problems with knee-jerk reactions that lead to zero-tolerance policies that end up making “eye rolling” a bullying offense.  And Tim Stahmer pointed to a Bitstrip about the Kahn Academy videos that helps put them in context: useful tools but certainly not revolutionary.

Why is it that we always want THE answer in education?  The magic bullet, the shortcut to success, the perfect policy?

When I was a young educator, I remember spending much time crafting my class rules each year in the hopes that if I got it right, I wouldn’t have any discipline problems.  I finally discovered that despite the snappy acronym or musical accompaniment (one year I made Aretha Franklin’s Respect the class song), the real way to avoid classroom management problems for me was to engage the students in learning as quickly as possible.  So, on the first day of class, while the other teachers were busy going over rules and expectations, I just dove into the work of learning. After all, by seventh grade, my students were pretty much aware that they weren’t supposed to talk while I was talking or poke their neighbors with their pencils.  While this approach worked well for me and I suggest it to my student teachers, I also let them know that they will discover their own methods.

It was those same student teachers who taught me a lesson of the perils of painting with a broad brush: we were talking about the Kahn Academy, and I was prepared to be negative when one of my students mentioned how helpful it had been to her in math.  While we agreed that it was not revolutionary, it was a great example of the way the Internet could provide students with extra support in their own learning. It was the student’s ability to access knowledge outside the classroom that was the revolutionary idea.

With some 5.5 million students enrolled in nearly 100,000 schools across the country, the idea that any one policy or intervention will work for all of them is just silly.  If there is going to be a revolution in education, perhaps it will come when we stop trying to make blanket policies and let schools and their stakeholders determine what works best for them and their learners.

 

Are We Superficial?

Education, learning, teaching

This is the question that Robert Talbert asks over at Casting Out Nines. The post itself is mostly a quote from Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the only self-help books I have ever found to be really challenging in terms of doing more than just giving you one long pep talk.

The quote deals with Covey’s distinction between Character Ethic and Personality Ethic and reminds me of the old debate about sincerity: can you “try” to be sincere or is it just something that comes from within. Any attempt to fake it ends in a lack of sincerity. For Covey, the Character Ethic arises when we internalize our values while the Personality Ethic is practiced by those who make no fundamental changes in the way they relate to others, but simply play the game in an artificial kind of way. I would encourage you to read the quote before you continue reading this post…

Talbert ends his blog post with this observation and question:

It seems like this quote is pretty dense in implications for educational systems, student approaches to learning, faculty approaches to teaching… what do you think?

I agree with Talbert.  I teach educational technology and qualitative research courses to undergraduates and graduates.  So many of the big questions with which we deal–digital divide, digital natives, social media, Internet privacy, copyright and creative commons, using technology in the classroom–do not have final, fill in the blank, multiple choice kinds of answers.  Instead, they offer up all sorts of murky waters where students can muck around.   I have my own ideas about many of them but rather than imposing my world view, I prefer to take a more constructivist approach, challenging students to find their own way through the content and then creating projects that help others do the same.

What I have discovered is that while some students really thrive in this environment, others do not, and it is my perception that it was the “good” students who often struggled because the very things that made them good had been taken away.  What was that thing?  The ability to give the teacher what she wanted whether it was the right answer, the neat outline, or  the correct number of words.  Covey’s distinction, which I had forgotten over time, provides a perfect metaphor for this phenomenon: the students who thrive in my environment do so because they care about learning, more specifically, they care about their own learning and creativity, something I like to think I give them a chance to demonstrate.  The “good” students, however, often turn in less than stellar work since they don’t have the personal tools available to them to really create something on their own without precise directions from me.

I’ll never forget the grad student who apologized for using his musical knowledge as a basis for a project he did:  it wasn’t “educational” he thought but he had taken me at my word that I wanted the students to find their own path.  So, he trusted me, but only to a point as I suspect he had been told that same thing in the past only to be dinged when he actually tried it.  I offered reassurance that he had done exactly what I had hoped all my students would do.

This semester, I am struggling with having my undergraduates join the world of Twitter.  I want to give them an experience of a professional learning network that can fit into one semester and Twitter just makes sense.  But, the open ended nature of the assignment makes it difficult for many of them: they want to know how many tweets, when they have to be posted and so forth.  I, on the other hand, am asking them to make themselves part of that world and do what seems right.  Already, the lines are being drawn.  I have had a few great conversations with one or two students and others are starting to come on board, but I can tell those who really want me to impose some order.  I am resisting even as I am offering support: ideas for things to tweet, suggestions for people to follow, and replying and retweeting the things they do post.  I am asking them to pay the price, which is Covey’s distinction between character and personality:

To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don’t pay the price day in and day out, you never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind.

Just An Old Curmudgeon

ds106, Education, learning, rhetoric, teaching

Lately, as I’ve followed the conversations about teaching and learning in the 21st century, I find myself increasingly taking a negative stance. It may just be my natural need to be the devil’s advocate, but I think it’s also a frustration with black and white rhetoric in which old is bad, new is good, ALL teachers are luddites who are stuck in their ways, EVERYONE should have an online professional learning network, and the ONLY way to teach is through project-based, student-centered learning. I could go on but I think you get the picture.

The irony, of course, is that I am a denizen of the digital world with an extensive online PLN, and I have adopted project-base learning methods in the courses I teach believing it is the best way for my students to engage with the content in my course.

So, what’s the problem? Why won’t I jump on the 21st century bandwagon? I think the main reason is that, as I complete my 5th decade on this planet, the biggest lesson I have learned is that the words “always,” “never,” “all,” and “none” are simply not useful. Our propensity towards polls and statistics and nice, neat charts tends to blind us to the infinite variety of experiences that exist in the world. We want to be able to make our case for the best way to live, work, teach and learn, and gray is not the appropriate color to use when we paint that picture.

It’s summed up simply in that old saying, “There’s an exception to every rule.” So, while I don’t lecture, I have known some wonderful lecturers in my day whose words have stuck with me over decades. And while I find it comfortable to engage with community online, I understand that others prefer to be in the same room. In my own realm, I was an early adopter of electronic books but I am also, even as I write this post, surrounded by thousands of books and have no intention of abandoning that habit. I guess my preference is to focus on the exception rather than the rule.

Or maybe I’m just an old curmudgeon.

Respecting Teachers As Learners

adult learning, Education, learning, teaching

In his blog post, Do Teachers Need to Relearn How to Learn, Mr. Salsich wonders why teachers seem so dependent on professional development and are unable to transfer knowledge of one technology tool to another. He wonders why schools have to have organized professional development at all since you can pretty learn anything you want on the Internet. He concludes, “I’m beginning to wonder if teachers really know how to learn new skills independently.”

That conclusion seems a stretch and also something of a contradiction since Mr. Salsich admitted up front that he hasn’t learned things independently but rather took advantage of folks on the Internet to learn. So, the real question he seems to be asking is, “I’m beginning to wonder if teachers really know how to learn new skills independently by using web-based resources the way I do?” And that’s a question that shows the blind spot of many web-using educators: I found my network/learning/salvation on the Internet so you should, too. Is is just possible that some people prefer to learn by taking a face to face class? Or reading a book? Or sitting with a more experienced friend?

Another question nagged me as well…why are we blaming the teachers for lousy professional development? Maybe, just maybe, it isn’t teachers who are necessarily demanding professional development (I know of at least a few who would be happy to use the three-hour workshop time to work independently)? Could it be that that the school leadership doesn’t trust them to learn on their own and so creates one-size-fits-all professional development that functions as an accountability rather than a learning tool?

The biggest stumbling block for me, however, was the continued focus on tools. Certainly, teachers have had professional development related to wikis and blogs and other web-based tools. And if the goal of professional development is just to learn how to use a tool then showing teachers web-based tutorials and giving them time to view them and then apply their learning in relevant ways to their teaching would be very useful to them. But, I would hope at this point in the 21st century, we are focusing our professional development on pedagogical uses of these tools and tailoring our professional development to teachers’ styles and needs. When was the last time we even asked teachers what they might want to learn or what might be useful to them?

Let’s redirect the questions we use when we plan professional development: Are you a teacher who does a lot of collaborative projects? Then, a wiki might be a great place for your students to share their research and learning. Are you a teacher who has students doing independent reading? Then, LibraryThing would be a great place for them to keep track of their reading and write reviews for other students. Are you a teacher who has students keep math journals? Then, a blog would be a great tool for you to use for that kind of writing. Are you a teacher who would like a website where you can communicate with your students and parents more effectively and efficiently? Google Sites and Edmodo are great possibilities for setting up a home on the web. Once we’ve found a relevant tool, then we can certainly show teachers how to find others, either on the web or just down the hall, who are using these tools.

One of the things they might talk about would be classroom management, one of the things that is often left out of professional development. If the math teacher embraces the idea of blogging the math journals, what does she need to know about incorporating available devices into the routine of her probably already packed day? One of the things we know about teachers is that they have routines for just about everything as a way of reducing complexity and making efficient use of time. Adding technology can be a huge disruption to those routines so helping teachers develop new ones around the tools will go a long way to supporting their use. And, while they can probably find people on the web to help them, sometimes a face to face conversation with a colleague in another grade or department about what they did may be a better solution.

I applaud Mr. Salsich’s efforts at questioning our current professional development practices but would humbly suggest that one of the first steps in encouraging teachers to integrate technology is to do what we do with the kids: make it meaningful and differentiate for different learning styles. We might also spend some time learning more about the research into adult learning, which interestingly enough shows that adult learners prefer to be self-directed, something that is often not a part of typical professional development. We don’t have to teach teachers to be self-directed, instead we need to respect them and provide them the space, time and reason to do so.

Dazed and Confused

Education, teaching, technology

I’m not really sure where to start to respond to this article about education and technology in Idaho.  Here are a couple notable quotes with my reactions:

Last year, the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a law that requires all high school students to take some online classes to graduate, and that the students and their teachers be given laptops or tablets. The idea was to establish Idaho’s schools as a high-tech vanguard.

To help pay for these programs, the state may have to shift tens of millions of dollars away from salaries for teachers and administrators. And the plan envisions a fundamental change in the role of teachers, making them less a lecturer at the front of the room and more of a guide helping students through lessons delivered on computers.

Certainly encouraging less lecturing is a worthy goal but making teachers a guide to computer based lessons doesn’t sound much better. Do these lessons support collaboration and problem solving? And, if the students don’t learn, will the computer be blamed?

Teachers are resisting, saying that they prefer to employ technology as it suits their own teaching methods and styles. Some feel they are judged on how much they make use of technology, regardless of whether it improves learning. Some teachers in the Los Angeles public schools, for example, complain that the form that supervisors use to evaluate teachers has a check box on whether they use technology, suggesting that they must use it for its own sake.

Whenever I read a quote like this, I’m reminded of my first supervisor when I taught high school English. After attending a workshop about using the overhead projector to support instruction, she decreed that we use the overhead in some way every day. While I was already using the overhead to support writing instruction, I certainly did not use it every day just as I did not use any pedagogical practice or resource every day. My resources and instruction were based on the objectives and content. I’ll admit it: I even delivered a lecture now and then if it seemed appropriate.

Some of her views are echoed by other teachers, like Doug StanWiens, 44, a popular teacher of advanced history and economics at Boise High School. He is a heavy technology user, relying on an interactive whiteboard and working with his students to build a Web site that documents local architecture, a project he says will create a resource for the community.

“I firmly believe that technology is a tool for teachers to use,” he said. “It’s time for teachers to get moving on it.” But he also spoke last year on the capital steps in opposition to the state’s program, which he said he saw as a poorly thought-out, one-size-fits-all approach.

Idaho should be grateful that it has such thoughtful educators and might take a lesson from them about differentiation. The state is assuming that ALL kids would learn better on a computer just as they assume that ALL teachers lecture. Perhaps the training could focus on differentiation and providing kids with instruction that helps them learn not that makes a state look high tech.

For his part, Governor Otter said that putting technology into students’ hands was the only way to prepare them for the work force. Giving them easy access to a wealth of facts and resources online allows them to develop critical thinking skills, he said, which is what employers want the most.

This is the quote that led to my title: I just don’t see the connection between easy access to facts leads to developing critical thinking skills. Isn’t it what you DO with those facts that leads to critical thinking? There’s where quality teachers can really make the difference.