Who's the Teacher? You're the Teacher.

Watch this TED talk from TED founder Chris Anderson. Go ahead, I'll wait.




I'm not going to say too much about this other than I'm just going to pull a few quotes from this to ponder.

Crowd accelerated innovation.
(Or, perhaps Crowd Accelerated Innovation, deserving of capital letters?)

It's the crowd, that shines the light, and fuels the desire . . .This is a model that pretty much any organization could use to nurture its own cycle of crowd accelerated innovation . . . Invite the crowd, let in the light, and dial up the desire.
(Schools? Education? Individuals? Learning?)

You have to show your stuff to the world . . . Radical openness.
(Radical. Openness. Is there anything more unlike what most schools/classrooms look like today? And do we think programs like Race to the Top are going to make things more open, more collaborative? Or less?)

We’re a social species. We spark off one another.
(Oy. Back to the drawing board for my Algebra class. I have to do better.)

We watch 80 million hours of YouTube every day . .. Cisco predicts that in 4 years, more than 90% of the web will be video.
(And more video has been uploaded to YouTube in the last two months than has been broadcast by ABC, NBC and CBS combined since ABC started broadcasting . . . in 1948.)

It’s in that non-verbal portion, there’s some serious magic.
(I like to think my writing is sometimes good, and I don't think anyone is saying that writing is going away, but he has a point.)

Reading and writing are actually relatively recent inventions. Face to face communication has been fine-tuned by millions of years of evolution . . . This is the connective tissue of the human super-organism in action.
(I have to think about the idea of "connective tissue" a little bit more, but shades of Clay Shirky here - both Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus.)

Print scaled. The world’s ambitious innovators and influencers now could get their ideas to spread far and wide. . . But now, in the blink of the eye, the game has changed again. . . . what Gutenberg did for writing, online video can do for face to face communication . . . that primal medium which your brain is exquisitely wired for just went global. (Wow. Shades of both Shirky and Steven Johnson here.)

For the first time in human history talented students don’t have to have their potential and their dreams written out of history by lousy teachers. (I, of course, don't love that line, but I get the point. I would say it more like, "For the first time in human history talented learners don't have to have their potential and their dreams written out of history by lousy circumstances," but, yeah, okay. Also see Disrupting Class.)

Who's the teacher? You're the teacher. ('Nuff said.)

IKEA and Geothermal Energy: Skyping with Ms. Anderson

IKEA is in the process of building a giant store about five miles from my school. This is no ordinary store construction, however, as they are putting in a geothermal energy system to help heat and cool the store. When I saw the article about it, I thought this would be another good opportunity for my students to Skype with someone, so I tracked down the contact info of the engineer from NREL that was mentioned in the article. She kindly agreed and the Skype session will happen this Wednesday.

You can read the background info we provided to my students on the class blog, and here are the questions we'll be asking:

1.  How do you define “math?” How would you describe what “math” is to non-engineers? Me
   
   
2. What is the difference between geothermal energy and other forms of energy? Grant
   
   
3. How does the temperature change from the winter to summer underground, and how effective is the water being pumped to control the temperature of the building, especially due to the bipolar weather of Colorado? Alex
   
   
4. Do you think that this system could one day be in the average American home? Why or why not? Jordan
   
   
5. When you were in school getting all those different degrees, did you know that you would be doing everything you are? Did you ever want to start all over? Becca
   
   
6. Two part question: Out of everything you have done and will do in your life, what would you want a youth to remember out of it all? With all your work with renewable energy/heat pump technology what are you most happy about doing and what are some ideas you have to work on in the future? Jessica

If all goes well, I'm hoping to ustream it as well, so you're welcome to tune in on our ustream channel. We'll be skyping from approximately 9:35 - 10:00 am Mountain Time (PLC day for us, so late start) on Wednesday, September 29th.

Update 9-29-10: Archive of the ustream.

Welcome Sunday Telegraph and Daniel Pink Blog Readers

If you’re visiting this blog for the first time due to this article in the Sunday Telegraph or this post on Daniel Pink’s blog, welcome. As Mr. Pink thankfully mentioned in both places, I did not originate the idea of flipping homework and lectures. Many other folks are doing this also and, frankly, most of them are doing it better than I am. Two of the teachers I know that have done the most work in this area are Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams – you might check out some of their work. (And, if you’re a teacher that’s also using video in a similar way and you threw up a little when Daniel Pink chose to link to me, please leave a link to your work in the comments so people can perhaps take a look.)

If you’re interested in learning more about my partial return to the math classroom, you can check out all the posts related to that endeavor and/or the Transparent Algebra blog.

If you’re visiting for my other claim to my fifteen minutes of fame, you might check out the Shift Happens wiki or the last blog post I wrote about that to learn more about Did You Know?/Shift Happens.

If you’re interested in what else goes on around here, then look around a bit. My blogging has tapered off lately as budget cuts have added a bit to my plate, but you might be interested in the Best (?) Posts of 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 to get a feel for the place.

Dear Denver Post, Would You Be Okay With Us Cheating on the CSAP, Too?

So two weeks ago the Denver Post disappointed us with this headline:

Summer is almost over, and the disappointment about returning to class . . .

Now this week they follow that up with a column about the Derek Jeter cheating incident, where he fooled the umpire into thinking he’d been hit by the ball so that he could get on base instead of making an out. Troy Renck, the Denver Post baseball columnist, had this to say:

All those people who talk about the honor in baseball, I wonder when exactly they watched the game. Don't they realize that third-base coaches used to do cartwheels to try to get pitchers to walk or balk?

. . . I agree it doesn't set a great example for kids. But that's where parents should be able to articulate the difference between professional athletes and youth sports. For the pros, their livelihood depends on the results of the games, not whether they get banned from the orange slices and Capri Suns.

If Jeter is guilty of anything, it's bad acting, not cheating.

Really?

So, what you’re saying is, the more important something is the more okay it is to cheat? Following your logic, then it would be okay for schools and students to cheat on CSAP because most certainly “our livelihood” depends on the results. What you’re saying is, “Hey, he cheated too, so it’s okay for me to cheat!” My fifth grader already knows that’s not a legitimate excuse.

I can’t help but point to the irony of this story being on the facing pace in the print edition of the sports section, with the headline “Question of Honor:”

Undisclosed Creek players conspired to fix results in a preseason intrasquad qualifying "ladder" tournament that determines varsity seedings. Several players were serving suspensions this past week when Creek dropped one match at Fairview and another at home against rival Regis Jesuit.

. . . "What this was for (the players involved) was a life lesson," Cherry Creek spokeswoman Tustin Amole said. "It showed poor sportsmanship and very bad judgment. The school and the athletic director and the principal took this very, very seriously."

So, on the one hand, we have educators at Cherry Creek High School making an unequivocal statement that cheating is not okay. That it’s not only wrong, but that we’ll punish both you and ourselves as an institution to make sure you understand how wrong it is. Then, on the other hand, we have Troy Renck and the Denver Post supporting – no, in fact, promoting – the win at all costs culture that has given us not only Derek Jeter, but also Enron, Lehman Brothers, credit default swaps, and our current economic crisis.

A few years ago Charles Barkley stated that he didn’t want to be a role model for young people. Put me firmly in the camp that believes that all of us: teachers, athletes, coaches, and adults in all manner of occupations should be role models for our young people. And, yes, that includes sports columnists and newspaper editors that are asleep at the switch.

If I asked students at my high school the following question,

In non life-threatening circumstances, and in cases where it’s not a conflict between good and evil (think World War II), is it okay to cheat?

I’m pretty sure that all 2,150 of them would get the correct answer. Now, to be sure, it’s likely that some of them have cheated in a variety of endeavors, but yet they still know it’s wrong. And most of them, like the tennis players at Cherry Creek, know they made a mistake and regret it.

Yet apparently Derek Jeter, Troy Renck and the editors at the Denver Post would disagree with our high school students, and would tell them that, “Yes, it is okay to cheat if the stakes are high enough.” So now those tennis players at Cherry Creek, who got a very clear message from the educators in their lives that cheating is not okay, have to be asking themselves, “Wait. What you’re saying is that what I did wasn’t wrong, I just should’ve been making money off of it?”

In combination with the disappointing headline from two weeks ago, that makes two strikes on you Denver Post. You know what they say in baseball, “Three strikes and you’re out.” Of course, perhaps that doesn’t apply anymore to people like Derek Jeter . . . or Troy Renck.

No, Mr. Renck, I’m not going to “give you a break.” I expect more from you Mr. Renck, and from the Denver Post. As I said a couple of weeks ago, perhaps you should pay closer attention to what you are actually communicating to our young people. That instead of undermining what we are trying to teach our students about respect and responsibility, about right and wrong, about honor and doing the right thing even when no one is looking (and that includes umpires), perhaps you should try to support us.

If you have an opinion on this, feel free to leave a comment on this post. But, perhaps more importantly, feel free to contact the Denver Post with your thoughts.

Troy Renck:   trenck@denverpost.com
Sports Page:   sports@denverpost.com or sportsletters@denverpost.com
Dan Haley, editorial page editor:  dhaley@denverpost.com or @danhaleyDP on Twitter
Letters to the Editor:  openforum@denverpost.com or 303-954-1331
Daniel Petty, Denver Post Social Media Editor:  @danielpetty on Twitter

Homecoming Pep Assembly

For those of you who don't work in a high school, you might enjoy this taste of a Homecoming Pep Assembly.

Cheering. Dancing. Singing. Tug-of-War. Centipede Race. The kids are alright.

Dear MLA and APA

Two questions.

1. How often (not counting grad school) have you actually followed a written citation, found the source material, and then read it?
   
   Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Seventh Edition. New York: Modern Language Association, 2007. Print.
   
   
2. How often have you clicked on a link to learn more?
   

 

Dear Denver Post - You're the Disappointment

I teach high school. I love all of high school, including high school sports, and including the fun that students have at Friday night (or Thursday night this week for us) football. So I understand the intent of the following headline in The Denver Post.

But, as it does every year at this time (and several times throughout the year), The Post throws the rest of school under the bus.

Summer is almost over, and the disappointment about returning to class . . .

Really?

Really, Denver Post, that's the message you want to send? With all your whining on the editorial page about the state of our schools (and pretty consistently getting it wrong by the way), you don't feel any responsibility to actually read your own paper and perhaps, just perhaps, make sure you aren't contributing to the anti-education culture of the state of Colorado?

Not only did school start for most of us quite a while ago, but many of us are excited about returning to school (teachers, administrators, students and parents - apparently everyone except The Denver Post's writers and editors). Yes, I know many high school students won't readily admit to being excited about being back, and certainly students don't love everything about school, but come visit my school and you can feel the excitement. We've got great students, a great staff, and a great community, and we're doing important and meaningful things with students every day (including Friday night football), but you chose to go with "disappointment about returning to class."

So, as the self-proclaimed Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire, perhaps you could pay closer attention to the headlines in the section that many students turn to first because it's about them. Because, if you continue to use your "voice" to undermine what we try to do day in and day out, you'll have plenty more to write about on your editorial pages. Of course, maybe that's your intent.

What I Said Today

[cross-posted on Transparent Algebra]

Today was our Skype session with Professor Garibaldi, and I thought that went well. After the Skype session we only had about twenty minutes left (shortened classes due to a PLC day) so I took that opportunity to talk with my class a little bit. I realized that I hadn't done a good job of conveying my thoughts and beliefs about the class, of sharing my passion, of explaining why I setup class the way I did and what I was expecting from them - and what I was hoping for them.

So here, more or less, is what I said. I'm sure it wasn't quite this smooth, as when I write I automatically correct and tweak, but this is pretty close to what I said (and definitely the spirit of what I hope I conveyed).

---

I wanted to talk a little bit about this class and why I’m doing the things I’m doing. Mr. Krause, one of our English teachers, is doing a project right now where his students are asking people how they define success. I answered that for several groups of students, but I wanted to talk for a minute about how I’ll decide if I’m successful with you guys in this class.

I won’t think I’m a success if you get a good grade in Algebra, although I certainly hope you do and I’m going to try really hard to help you do that. I won’t think I’m a success if you score well on tests like CSAP or ACT, although I hope you do, and even though a lot of well-intentioned people think that’s how I should define success. I won’t even think I’m a success if you go to a good college and then get a good job, although I certainly want you to do that because I’d like to retire someday and I need you all to have good jobs to support me.

No, I’ll consider myself successful if you turn out to be good, kind, caring adults. If you’re a good spouse, child and parent. If you contribute to the world and to your community and help those around you. If you participate. And learn.

And here’s the deal. The education that I received was a pretty good one. But it’s not good enough for you guys. Not anymore. You see, in a rapidly changing, information abundant world, the people who are going to be successful – both professionally and personally – are the learners. And by “learners” I don’t mean people who just learn what we teach you here at AHS.

Now, I want to be clear, that doesn’t mean I don’t think you should learn what we teach you here at AHS. I don’t want you to go to your second period teacher, raise your hand, and say, “Mr. Fisch said I don’t need to learn what you’re teaching.” Please, don’t do that. That’s not at all what I’m saying. Your teachers here work very hard trying to share important, meaningful and relevant knowledge and skills. And that’s important, but it’s not enough. Because to be successful in the 21st century you’re going to have to be a learner, you’re going to have to learn how to learn, and go after things on your own. You’re going to have to be independent, curious, passionate learners, who don’t just sit back and wait for someone to tell them what they’re supposed to know, but who go out and try to figure things out for yourself. Who pursue your interests, your goals, your passions with intensity, and who actively participate in everything you do. Who go out and find other learners who are passionate about what you are passionate about and learn from them – and alongside them.

To quote myself (sorry), the world has shifted. The world of school, and the world of work, and the world in general has shifted, and so I need you to shift as well, and that’s what I’m trying to do in this class. I’m trying to get you to be actively involved in your own education, to be independent and curious learners in mathematics, even if Algebra is never going to be your favorite subject.

I believe you need the skills I’m trying to get you to learn for three main reasons. First, to be a successful citizen in the 21st century you have to be numerate. In order to deal with all the data that is going to get thrown at you, and to make good, responsible, effective decisions, you’re going to need a lot of the skills we’re learning in Algebra.

And frankly, that’s not necessarily true about all the math classes you’ll take. Honestly, if you take Trig and Pre-Calc, the skills you learn there are very important if you go into the math and sciences, but perhaps not so much day-to-day life for most of you (some folks will disagree with that). But the skills we learn in Algebra you’ll be using every day to make sense of all that data in the world, to be informed voters and decision makers.

The second reason to learn the skills is if you decide that you are passionate about math and science, you need these skills in order to progress to more complex topics and to go deeper.

The third reason – and it’s the one I think is least important but you may think is the most important – is that right now in the short term you have to learn these skills to get a good grade in this class, to do well in school, and to get into college if that’s what you choose. So while I prefer that you focus on the first two reasons, this one is still a valid one for many of you.

And this is why it’s critical you do the assignments I’m asking you to do, like watching the videos I’ve created for you. Those videos are designed to help you master the skills, and to become more independent learners. But they’re also designed to free up class time so that we can become more curious, active learners, in class, and so we can explore interesting (or not for some of you) applications of Algebra like the bike gear ratios or Tim Tebow’s speed at the NFL Combine or a variety of other activities we’ll be doing this year. In order to apply the skills in class, I need you to do the necessary work outside of class.

But in order for that to happen, in order for us to use our class time to be the kind of learners I think you need to be to be successful in this century, your century, I need you to step up and take care of business. I need you to watch the videos, and use them as they’re intended, and do the other things I ask you to do outside of class. And I really, really need you to participate in class, to be active learners. To ask questions, and be involved, and talk to each other, and help each other, and be willing to take risks in order to learn more, even if that makes you a little nervous or uncomfortable. I need you to do more of the talking in class, and me to do less. I need you to do more of the thinking, and the questioning, and the figuring out.

So I’m asking you to please, please consider what kind of future you want, not just for yourself, but for those around you, and make an effort to be as independent, as curious, as responsible, as passionate of a learner that you can be. And I promise that I’ll bring the passion every day and do the very best I can to help you become that learner.