Thought for the Day 5-30-09

If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either.

Seth Godin, Tribes, p. 132.

Why Should Your District Continue?

Ben Grey had an interesting post recently where he asked:

Why should your district continue to use and pursue technology?

I think it's the wrong question, albeit asked for the right reasons and it certainly is generating some interesting discussion. So I left a comment on Ben’s post and suggested two different questions that I think are more interesting (to me, at least, we’ll see if they are to you).

First question:

Why learn?

I think a discussion around this question might ultimately help with what Ben was trying to get at.

The second question, and really the reason I decided to post this on my blog, simply removes the last five words from his question.

Why should your district continue?

I think this is a much more interesting question, and one that I’m not asking lightly. I think we need to go back to first principles - or perhaps first “principals” :-)

Why do we exist as an institution?

I’d like you to pretend for a moment that you live in an alternate reality, one where right now, for the first time, someone is proposing universal schooling for all children between the ages of five and eighteen. Now, pitch me your proposal for your school district (or, for folks not in a school district, for your institution). Justify your existence. Tell me what your mission is, and why your institution (as constructed in our current reality) is the best solution to achieve that mission.

If you were starting your school right now, from scratch, would you? Or would your solution look very different?

I think your answer is very important. Don’t you?

Cory Doctorow Interview: Ustream Archive

Today was the day our students Skyped with Cory Doctorow asking him about his book Little Brother. Overall, it went very well. He spent about forty-eight minutes answering their questions (well, more like forty-one minutes, as the first seven minutes before the official start was small talk as we connected early just to make sure we didn't have any issues). He was very engaged, listened to their questions, and made some passionate arguments.

I've embedded the ustream below. Please note a few things. First, as I indicated above, the first seven minutes are small talk (although interesting as well, I think); the formal question and answer portion starts at about the seven minute mark.

Second, the audio quality starts decreasing about halfway through. Not sure if that was a Skype issue, or bandwidth issues on his end or ours, but you'll have to concentrate more as it goes on to understand his end.

Third, you'll notice there are three students asking the questions. This was actually a group of four students, but the fourth student was in a final exam so couldn't be present for this part. Due to scheduling conflicts, this was the best time we could come up with, so the students asking the questions, as well as about twenty-five other students in the audience, were all there in between their scheduled final exams.

Finally, this was part of an assignment where students are reading books that are sometimes controversial and then making a case for why the book should be approved or not by a school board. This particular group was presenting during the final exam period that was directly after this Skype call with Cory Doctorow. They purposely made their first formal question to him be why he though the book should be read by ninth graders so that, less than forty minutes later, they could pull up the archived ustream and easily play his answer (since it was at the beginning - well, after the small talk) as part of their presentation (which they did). Very. Nice.

Things Just Changed. Again.

Do you teach math? Science? Geography? Economics? Health? Business? Language Arts?

Wait, let me start over.

Do you teach?

Wait, let me start over again.

Are you alive, and curious?

Okay, that’s better. I think this is worth 13 minutes of your time. Go watch it, then come back.

I believe Wolfram Alpha is supposed to go live tomorrow. It’s obviously still very, very new (will they change its name to Wolfram Beta later? That will mess up the URL’s. Kidding.) It will be interesting to see what kinds of searches lend themselves to this more computational approach and what kinds don’t, but I still think this is another big step in how humans find, access, digest and repurpose information. Designed to “compute answers to your specific questions,” this once again should make us examine what we are doing in our classrooms, and how we should best prepare our students to be successful in an age with this much computational firepower.

What facts (discrete pieces of information?) do we need to know in order to develop deep understandings of important concepts, and what facts can we just google or wolfram (or will the verb be alpha)? What previously unknown relationships might be teased out of the data by the Wolfrom Alpha algorithms, or what will humans looking at this data in new and unique ways discover? What new questions will we learn to ask, or will we learn to ask old questions in new ways? (You can also view a much longer talk by Stephen Wolfram at the Berkman Center. No, I have not watched it all yet.)

Also note that Google is evolving as well. Joyce Valenza has a good summary post over at School Library Journal that discusses the new features. I also thought this quote she shared from a Google presenter was interesting,

If users can’t spell, it’s our problem. If they don’t know how to form the syntax, it’s our problem. If there’s not enough content, it’s our problem.

Hmm. I wonder whose problem it is if our students don’t know how to question, ask/search, find, evaluate, synthesize, repurpose, remix, and solve problems using tools like Google and Wolfrom Alpha?

Create A Movement

This TED Talk by Seth Godin is worth 17 minutes of your time. After you watch it, some thoughts are below the embed.



Here are a few semi-random thoughts that were generated by this talk. I’m not saying that he’s necessarily right about everything, but he raises some interesting questions that are worth thinking about.

What do I do for a living? Seems like a simple question, but – as Seth Godin points out – perhaps it’s not. I used to answer, “I’m a math teacher” or “I teach math.” Over time that shifted to “I teach students math” and then simply “I teach students.” But I find myself agreeing with him that perhaps that’s too “narrow” of a definition of what we in education try to do: we try to change everything.

Every day we should at least try to step on that light bulb, clearly indicating that there was “before,” and now there’s “after;” that at this moment in time we changed something in our students’ lives. If we don’t aspire to that, if we accept a too-narrow definition of what we do for a living, then we relegate ourselves to mediocrity.

Godin says that the way we make change is by leading, and that leading is simply helping to connect people and ideas. And, at this moment in time, we are at a tipping point (dare I say a moment of “shift”), because the technology allows us to connect in ways that previously were unimaginable or impractical (see Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody). And we can find others that are interested in and passionate about the same things, not by forcing them, but because we want to be connected. We need to be connecting as educators and, just as importantly, we need to be helping our students connect.

He goes on to say that we need to find folks that are disconnected, but already have a yearning; people who are just waiting for someone to lead them. (Sound like anyone you know?) We need to be heretics, who look at the status quo and say, “I can’t abide it.” (What’s wrong with the status quo? Unless you don’t see any need in the world, any disaffection, any hurt or disconnectedness, then we must try to improve on the status quo.) Is this in your curriculum? Perhaps not in so many words, but it should be, so I’m asking you to add it. Right now.

Godin then says there are three questions to ask yourself if you’re trying to lead something. If educators are leaders, then we need to ask ourselves these same questions.

1. Who are you upsetting? If you’re not upsetting anyone, then you’re not changing the status quo. (Note that this is not upsetting people just to upset them, but rather with a purpose, with a goal, with an important change in mind that’s necessary to improve things for someone. Editor’s note: I’ve got this one nailed. Unfortunately, I don’t think it stands on its own.)
   
   
2. Who are you connecting? (Think outside your classroom walls for a moment here. Nothing wrong with connecting inside your classroom, but some of those students have yearnings that don’t match up with others in their classroom, so help them find their tribe.)
   
   
3. Who are you leading? (Don’t limit this to the students in your classroom, or the adults in your building/department; leading is not limited by proximity or geography anymore. Also some folks will protest that they don’t want to lead or that’s not in their job description. I say it should be, and I’d ask you to add it now.)

Godin concludes by asking his audience to create a movement, to find their tribe. So, what are you waiting for?