Chaos Theory, Twitter and the Common Core

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's a blog post title that hasn't been used before. And won't ever be again.

I've read a little bit about chaos theory, although I don't pretend to really understand it. My very simplified understanding of it is that very small changes in initial conditions can result in very different outcomes of a dynamic system (often illustrated by "a butterfly flapping its wings in China can change the weather in Denver" - although I don't think that quite captures it). There are other conditions that have to be present (topological mixing - which I sort of get, and its periodic orbit must be dense - which I really don't), but it boils down to

When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.

At some point today a fleeting thought crossed my brain and, as so often happens, I decided to record it here on the blog, even though I know it opens me up to ridicule do to my lack of real understanding of chaos theory. So be it. The thought was something along the lines of

What effect does something like Twitter have on complex, dynamic systems?

Note that it doesn't have to be Twitter, but any of the synchronous and asynchronous ways we have today of communicating, collaborating, and generally "topologically mixing." But Twitter is the one that came to mind, so I'm going with it. If dynamic systems with nearly identical initial conditions can result in very different outcomes, then can these various ways of "mixing" - how they are present and how they are applied - both constitute and amplify a change in initial conditions?

So what in the world does this have to do with Common Core? Probably nothing, but here is the premise of Common Core:

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led effort that established a single set of clear educational standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts and mathematics that states voluntarily adopt.

. . . High standards that are consistent across states provide teachers, parents, and students with a set of clear expectations that are aligned to the expectations in college and careers. The standards promote equity by ensuring all students, no matter where they live, are well prepared with the skills and knowledge necessary to collaborate and compete with their peers in the United States and abroad.

So the follow-up thought that came to my mind today was something like:

By trying to standardize on a common core curriculum to assure equality of preparation, aren't we ignoring what we know about dynamic systems?

Namely, that there's no possible way to standardize enough to prevent wildly different outcomes. We have so many variables in the inputs (background of the students, background of the teachers, the effectiveness of the HVAC system, . . .), and so many variables along the way, that we can't possibly use a controlled curriculum to pre-determine the outcomes.

So if the basic premise of Common Core ignores what we know about complex systems, where does that leave us? Perhaps jumping out of the Core (err, car). (Or maybe just talking to myself, both are possible.)

The Twitter Distortion Field

People used to say that Steve Jobs was able to create a Reality Distortion Field when he spoke. He had the ability to convince those around him to believe in just about anything, which was both good (they were motivated to achieve things they thought they couldn't) and bad (Jobs would sometimes recall events differently than others did - some might call that lying).

I've come to think that I'm present (and participating) in another distortion field: the Twitter Distortion Field (TDF). Like Jobs' RDF, the TDF can be both good and bad. Here's how it works. You get on Twitter and instantly have access to a wide range of ideas and opinions; it constantly provides you new ideas to try in your school/classroom, as well as continually challenging your thinking about whether what you are doing in your school/classroom is worthwhile. In many ways, this is a wonderful thing. We should be learning from others, constantly questioning our practices, and trying to improve the teaching and learning going on in our schools.

But I was reminded this week of the negative side of this: the TDF can also make you feel like crap. Every time you get on Twitter the TDF reinforces the notion that you aren't doing a very good job, that everyone out there is doing wonderful, innovative, transformational things in their schools and with their students, and what you're doing is only slightly better than child abuse.

What reminded me of this is that earlier this week we had a visitor from a neighboring school district, and we observed some classes (including my Algebra class) and then had a great conversation about what he saw, as well as what we hoped for for our students. And it reminded me that we are doing some pretty good things in our school and, yes, even in my very own classroom.

That's not to say that we can't improve, or that there aren't some major shifts that I think need to happen, but I think the TDF can sometimes give a warped sense of reality. People typically share the best things that they are doing and you often don't have a good sense of how well it actually worked with students. Plus, at least in my case, my self-selected network tends to notice and reinforce the most radical shifts from the mainstream, akin to being a high school quarterback and always comparing yourself to the thirty-two starting quarterbacks in the NFL. Again, that's not all bad, as the high school quarterback can certainly learn a ton from the starting NFL quarterbacks, but it can also setup unrealistic expectations for the next high school game (or Algebra class).

As I was thinking about this this morning, I read Will Richardson's The Missing Layer post. Will quotes a New York Times piece about Michael Petrilli:

He recently conducted an analysis of Twitter and the tens of thousands of followers of Ms. Rhee, who is pro-charter, and Ms. Ravitch, who is anti-charter, and discovered that only 10 percent overlapped. Just as conservatives gravitate to Fox News and liberals to MSNBC to hear their preconceived notions and biases confirmed, Mr. Petrilli speculates that those in education are now preaching solely to the converted, a phenomenon known in the media world as “narrowcasting.”

Worse, in Mr. Petrilli’s view, those who follow Ms. Rhee tend to describe themselves in their Twitter profiles as policy makers or otherwise removed from the immediate realities of the classroom, while Ms. Ravitch’s devotees are typically self-identified practitioners: principals and teachers on education’s front lines. Surely these folks should be talking to one another, but in Mr. Petrilli’s experience, they often aren’t.

Will's bigger point is whether either "side" is even talking about what learning should look like in today's world, and that's an important point, but I'm going to focus for a minute on Mr. Petrilli's research. Now, I'm prone to see connections where there aren't any so perhaps this is a stretch, but I connected it to my musings about the TDF. Because as I read about the "only 10 percent" of Twitter followers of Ms. Rhee and Ms. Ravitch who overlapped, my first response was: Who cares?

That's not to say that "narrowcasting" or "echo chamber" aren't real concerns (although I've talked about that before), but I wonder how much weight we can give to statistics involving who follows whom on Twitter. As I think about my own school which I believe - as indicated above - is doing some very good things but also think needs to be radically transformed, I couldn't help wondering what the 115 or so teachers at my school would think about this story.

My guess is that most of those 115 teacher would know who Michelle Rhee is, simply because she's had a fair amount of exposure in mainstream media (newspapers, Time Magazine, 60 Minutes, network news shows). I would guess a much smaller number of them would be familiar with Diane Ravitch, as she has not had as much play in those same media outlets. But in both cases I think the first major reaction from them would also be, "Who cares?"

I could very well be wrong, but I think they'd say that because they see very little that they can do about it. They feel powerless to influence this debate, and powerless to really make any changes to the system. And it's hard to blame them, as you look at the past week here in Colorado and you see this guest column in the Denver Post advocating for vouchers (which follows up the Post's naming of DCSD School Board President John Carson as a "top thinker in education"), it's announced that the Colorado Department of Education has hired the CEO of KIPP Colorado to head it's Division of Innovation, Choice and Engagement, and we spent our PLC time on Wednesday (at least in the Math Department) trying to realign our courses with the Common Core State Standards.

So teachers (including myself) resort to the practical, given these constraints (like the CCSS Math Standards), and try to figure out what we can we do to make this the best it possibly can be for our students. We don't feel like we can really change the constraints, so we focus on making the best of it (and rightly ignoring the crazy tech guy in the Math Department PLC meeting who teaches one section of Algebra and has his cranky pants on - sorry Math Department folks).

And that brings me back to the Twitter Distortion Field. I think that for many of us on Twitter, we see the disconnect between what some people are doing (or say they are doing) on Twitter, and the reality of our own schools, and we begin to feel hopeless (okay, maybe that should be "I" begin to feel hopeless). But I think we need to keep in mind that Twitter may not be an accurate reflection of reality, and that while the TDF can inspire and impel us toward some of those transformational changes many of us are hoping for, we shouldn't simultaneously denigrate some of the very good things we are doing day-to-day with our students right now, even if they are within the constraints of a flawed system.

So next time you're on Twitter and see a wonderful lesson idea from another classroom, or hear about a school that's doing things you can barely dream of, don't feel like what you're doing is crap. Learn from that classroom and that school, try to incorporate those ideas and improve your own practice, but always remember that the TDF most likely doesn't completely reflect reality, and don't let it distort the reality of the very good things that are likely already happening in your own classroom.

Tools I'd Like My Future Principal To Consider: Twitter

From the article Meet Your New PD Tool in Scholastic Administrator magazine:

"I really think anybody who doesn't spend a little time building a personal network is doing themselves and their school a disservice. If we're not modeling this stuff for our teachers and students, then I don't think we're doing our jobs."
                                                             (p. 31, quoting Patrick Larkin, @bhsprincipal)

I'd like my future principal to consider that statement and ask themselves if they are modeling what it's like to be a lifelong learner, a connected learner, for our students if they aren't actively using and harnessing the power of social media. I'd like my future principal to not only have an active presence on Twitter, but I'd like them to engage their administrative team and the entire faculty in a discussion of how best to leverage these new tools (as well as the possible negative aspects that are indeed present). I'd like them to lead a discussion about how the staff could use tools like Twitter for their own personalized professional development:

For Sheninger, tweeting is like directed Googling. "Instead of doing a Google search, you're harnessing human power, a human-generated search engine driven by education professionals who are passionate and have determined that having an online presence will have a dramatic, positive impact on their professional practice."
                                                              (p. 31, quoting Eric Sheninger, @nmhs_principal).

I'd like them to lead a discussion not only about how to leverage tools such as Twitter to broadcast information to our community, but how to also use those tools to engage our community as learners. I'd like that discussion to extend to ways to have our students engage with other passionate learners around the globe - safely, meaningfully, and effectively.

I'd like my future principal - and their entire administrative team - to know what #cpchat is, and what folks are referring to when they talk about the Connected Principal's blog, or CASTLE. I'd like them to know not only Patrick and Eric, but Chris and Lyn and George and Josie and . . . the list goes on and on (including lots and lots of folks that I don't know . . . yet, or perhaps ever, it doesn't matter as their network will be personal to them.)

I'd like them not to be surprised by some of the things Eric says in this video:



Video credit: http://www.scholastic.com/administrator/

"24/7. When I need it. From anywhere in the world. To me that's power. It's helping my students see a new world. It give me goosebumps every time I think about it." - Eric Sheninger in the video

I want my future principal to help our students see - and participate - in this new world.

#occupytheclassroom

Back in the spring sometime I tweeted out that I was wondering why we didn’t see similar protests by young people in this country similar to the then-just-beginning Arab Spring protests. While the economic, environmental and education problems that we have pale in comparison to the issues that folks in some of those other countries have to deal with, it still surprised me that there wasn’t more protest here. After all, the present and near future wasn’t look very bright for young people and the leadership of our country seemed to be unable to get much done other than bicker with each other.

Now along comes #occupywallstreet and all the offshoots. (When I saw on Twitter last night that there was an #occupyLexington – where I grew up – that kind of surprised me, and that ultimately spurred this post.) While not only comprised of young people, they are certainly a significant portion of these protests, and I think we’re beginning to see protesters in this country leverage many of the same online tools that folks in Tunisia and Egypt, Yemen and Syria are using (although thankfully without the violence associated with those efforts).

But when I first saw the hashtag #occupytheclassroom in my Twitter stream (can’t recall exactly where or I would link) I smiled . . . and then dismissed it. I was skeptical that any kind of grassroots movement by teachers could have any effect on the current reform juggernaut. Plus teachers, despite our reputation, are generally a conservative lot when it comes to schools – we may want to change a few things, but we generally don’t want to change too much. And, historically, I don’t see much evidence of teacher-driven reform being very successful.

Well, I’m still skeptical, but I keep hearing this little voice in my head. A little voice that says that, in the end, teachers are the ones in the classrooms working with kids each day. After listening for a moment, I remembered whose voice that was. Mine.

About five years ago in some staff development we were doing in my school, I suggested to (argued with?) folks in the staff development that we did have the power to change things. That if we, as a group of reasonably respected and successful teachers in our school, got together and said, “Here are some changes we’d like to make that we think would be beneficial to our students, and here’s why,” that we’d have a pretty decent chance of being listened to.

That instead of blaming “the system,” we should realize that we are the system, and we should advocate for our students when we see things that we don’t believe are in their best interests. And that we, just like the protesters in the middle east, and just like the #occupywallstreet folks, have access to tools that Clay Shirky has shown us make it much easier to not only organize, but to actually effect change. That, really, this thing we call school doesn’t happen without us.

What if we just said, “Enough.”

What if we just said, “Your reform is bad for our students. We need to transform.”

What if we just said, “Not in my classroom. Not to my students. Not to my own children.”

What if we did #occupytheclassroom?

What if I #occupiedmyclassroom?

What if you #occupiedyourclassroom?

I’m still skeptical. But a little less than I was. And maybe, just maybe, a little hopeful.

You?


Update: It looks like this post by Jose Vilson was probably the source of the #occupytheclassroom hashtag that eventually appeared in my Twitter stream.

Twitter Chat with (and without) a Purpose

I just left a long comment over on Bud Hunt's blog and thought it might be worthwhile to duplicate it here. First, please go read his post and considering participating in the #engchat conversation on June 27th.

Then here are the comments I left (first very brief comment, and then the follow-up comment when Bud asked me to say more):

I wonder how this conversation intersects with the idea of “productive eavesdropping” here and here.

 Follow-up comment:

Well, I’m not exactly sure where this #engchat conversation is heading, but my overall sense of it is that some folks may be concerned that there’s a whole lot of talking around the various chats on Twitter (and outside the chats), but that perhaps it’s not all that useful because the talk isn’t very purposeful and doesn’t translate into change. That made me think of your earlier musings around “productive eavesdropping” and perhaps how that has a role to play in this conversation.

I think we need to be careful about insisting on everything having a clear purpose. I’m in favor of purposefulness as much as the next guy, and I agree that sometimes we engage in non-productive behavior (whether in meetings at school or online). But I also think we can learn a lot in situations that don’t have a well-defined purpose; that learning (especially online) can occur serendipitously and often without a fixed, defined plan going in.

It’s awfully hard to tease out what effects my online experiences have had on my own practice, so let me use my wife as an example (with her permission). She got on Twitter about two years ago, initially very much as a lurker but more recently as more of a participant. Twitter, in turn, hooked her up to conversations on blogs and she’s now a very active user of Google Reader and just started her own professional blog. It has definitely impacted her practice and it’s fascinating to watch as she now is helping bring other staff members in her building into these spaces.  The conversations, at least among many in her building, have definitely changed, and they’ve changed at least somewhat due to my wife’s “unpurposeful” (at least initially) use of Twitter. As an even more concrete example, her very experienced Building Resource Teacher decided to attend ISTE this year for the first time (she did not attend last year . . . when it was in Denver), at least partially as the result of these conversations.

I guess I think we need to be careful of dismissing the usefulness of “idle” chatter on Twitter and in other spaces. I think for many of us, we may not always be using it purposefully, yet the accumulated effect of the conversations ends up changing our practices (for the better), sometimes in small ways and sometimes in larger ones. I think that simply being involved in conversations, sometimes as active participants and sometimes as more passive observers, is an important part of the ongoing learning process, even when it doesn’t have a clearly defined purpose. That’s not to say that conversations with purpose are bad; they’re not. But it is to say that we need to be very careful about dismissing the usefulness of things that may not appear to have a purpose to us (in the learning place we’re currently occupying), but may very much have a useful purpose for someone else.

Your thoughts?

No One Right Way

(I apologize in advance if this comes off as more rant-y than usual – if that’s even possible. This is very much thinking out loud, so take it for what it’s worth. It's certainly not intended to be directed at anyone, the people I mention are all helping me think through this. And, of course, I very well may be completely wrong. On to the post.)

As happens every so often, I was involved in a briefly intense Twitter discussion yesterday where I followed my usual habit of pushing (provoking?) hard just to explore my own (and others’) thinking. This one, however, I felt sort of deserved a follow-up, so here’s my attempt to summarize my current draft thinking.

The genesis of the discussion was a tweet by Will Richardson:

 I pushed back a little with:

And away we went with lots of other folks chiming in along the way.

I understand the basic criticisms of calling these 21st century skills, namely that we’re ten plus years into the 21st century already and that many (most? all?) of these skills were important before the 21st century. And I also understand Will’s basic premise that, as crucial skills, these shouldn’t be taught in isolation in a separate course, but should be embedded – and modeled – in all of our classrooms.

But here’s the thing. I think there’s no one right way. I think in our passionate desire to effect the changes we think our students need, we sometimes fall into the same trap as many of the so-called reformers that we daily deride. Would it be so horrible to have a 55-minute-(or whatever)-a-day course called “21st Century Literacy Skills” taught by someone who’s pretty immersed in this arena? (For those of you who have heard Will passionately speak about these literacies, would you be averse if he was available to teach that to your students?). And, yes, these ideas should be talked about, explored, and modeled in all classrooms in addition to that one course, but if a school decided to dedicate time for that course, would it be so bad? (As Chris Lehmann has often said, if you value something let me see where it lives in your schedule. I think a case could be made that having a course in every kid’s schedule dedicated to this would show that you very much value it. Although it’s not the only way.)

But I also think it’s okay if a school decides that, no, these should be embedded in all of our courses and we’re not going to teach a separate, pull-out course specifically about these skills. There’s not one right way to do this and, if we insist there is, then we take away something I think is vital to making this whole school thing work: flexibility and personalization. (I think perhaps the only good thing I said at EduCon was that all education is global, but it’s also local.) The teachers in the classrooms with their kids, with their very individual students, with specific backgrounds and learning conditions, and very specific wants, needs and passions, need to be able to address those needs as they see fit, without folks criticizing that that's "so 2005." (And, yes, I’m as guilty of that as anyone. Mea culpa.)

I also think that much of the angst over the “21st Century Skills” label is misplaced. While I agree with folks who say that many of these skills were important pre-21st century, I disagree with some of their conclusions. First, I think that while many of these skills (collaboration and communication immediately come to mind) were very nice to have in the 20th century, I think you could often get by without them. I would suggest that for most of the professional jobs that many folks aspire to these are now necessary and prerequisite skills, not just “nice-to-have” skills.

Moving beyond employment, I also think they are necessary skills to be effective citizens in the 21st century. As the Twitter discussion unfolded, Zac Chase, Laura Deisley and I broke off into a side discussion around being an informed voter in the 21st century. Zac pushed back suggesting that really today isn’t all that different in terms of being a voter, saying that sure there are a lot more people talking about stuff, but in the end are they really saying anything that’s changing the process? (More from Zac around these ideas). Laura and I, representing the – ahem – older crowd, suggested that based on our experience, we feel it really is different. That the wealth of information available about candidates and issues, the various forms of media used to convey that information, and the ability to interact socially and at a distance around them makes being a voter/citizen much, much different today.

This is different, and it requires different skills.

And while I understand and partially agree with the argument that “Hey, we’re eleven years into the 21st century, shouldn’t we already be teaching these skills and let’s just get on with it instead of talking about them like they’re new,” I also think that some are overlooking one pretty important point: we still have eighty-nine more years left in the 21st century. I think too many folks hear “21st Century Skills” and think of a fixed, standard set of skills that are settled and clearly defined. But I think they’re still evolving, and will continue to evolve (transform?) in ways that are really hard to imagine at this point. Is it so bad to use a label that forces us to look forward? (Did educators in 1911 know what the next eight-nine years were going to bring? Would it have been bad for them to be talking about 20th Century Skills?)

That was one of the essential ideas of the presentation that shall not be named – that we live in exponential times. If Kurzweil is right in his prediction that by mid-century a $1000 computer will exceed the computational capability of the human race, then life is going to be radically different, and our brains have literally not evolved in such a way for us to truly understand that. Our brains do a pretty good job of projecting things out linearly, but we suck at exponential (which is a really important point that Kurzweil makes several times).

Here’s the example that I use with my Algebra class to demonstrate this. Take a standard piece of Xerox paper and fold it in half. Then fold it in half again. And again. And again. How many times do you have to fold it in half until the thickness equals the distance from the Earth to the Moon? (Yes, understanding you couldn’t physically fold it in half that many times, but assuming you could.) Go ahead, take a gut-level, intuitive guess of how many times. Answer below.

Richard Miller, chair of the English Department at Rutgers, says that

We're living in the time of the most significant change in human expression in human history

 and that

We are no longer grounded in the printing press; what you see before us is the networked world.

The networked world is different than the world in the previous centuries. Yes, we’ve always had networks. The cavemen had learning networks. They knew who to go to learn about hunting, and who was the expert on gathering, and who to learn from about how to defend the tribe. And our networks evolved and expanded over time, and include our extended families, and our neighborhoods, and our places of employment, and often a professional community. And they includes books, and 20th century media like radio and television. But I still don’t think that compares to the potential (realized by some, not by others) of our learning networks today. I have teachers on six continents that I learn from every day. Many of whom I’ve never met face-to-face.

This is different, and it requires different skills.

Miller goes on to say,

To compose, and compose successfully in the 21st century, you have to not only excel at verbal expression, at written expression, you have to also excel in the use and manipulation of images. That's what it means to compose . . . All of our students, regardless of discipline, regardless of major, can come together and work on this central activity of multimedia composition. That’s writing in the 21st century. It’s multiply authored, it’s multiply produced.

I think that if you agree that multimedia composition is a “central activity” of communication in our current time, then that requires some things to change.He also says,

We do not have a pedagogy on hand to teach the kind of writing [composing?] I'm describing. It needs to be invented.

Invented certainly suggests there’s something new here.

Jason Ohler defines literacy as “being able to consume and produce in the media forms of the day.” Is anyone going to argue that the “media forms” of today are not significantly different than media forms previously? Or that our ability to not only consume, but produce them, is not significantly different? Different not only in form, but in ubiquity, presence, function, and impact? As the National Council for the Social Studies says,

We live in a multimedia age where the majority of information people receive comes less often from print sources and more typically from highly constructed visual images, complex sound arrangements, and multiple media formats.

This is different, and it requires different skills.

The National Council of Teachers of English says,

Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies are . . . multiple, dynamic and malleable.

21st Century Skills, however you define them, are not static. They are “multiple, dynamic and malleable.” If folks want to use "21st Century Skills" as a catch-all label, I think that’s fine. If folks don’t want to use that label as a catch-all, then that’s fine as well. I think we need to move beyond arguing about the label, beyond saying there’s one right way to do this. If “literacies” is an accurate description, then it’s a core set of skills that all students (people) need to have, and I suspect having a course dedicated to it and/or embedding it in all classrooms are both better approaches than dismissing them because of the label.

Today is different, and it does require different skills. So what’s so wrong with having different approaches to help students learn those skills? There's no one right way.

Oh yeah. 42. Forty-two folds for the thickness of the paper to equal the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Most folks’ intuitive guesses are five or more orders of magnitude off. We suck at exponential. If we’re so bad at imagining that, then what else do we lack the capacity to imagine?

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?
   

 

Thinking in Hashtags

We went shopping for clothes today. This is not something we do very often, but my wife had a gift card for Dillards so we went to see if we could find anything. My wife finally found some shirts she wanted to try on, but the store was short-staffed so the first couple of fitting rooms we tried were locked up. Eventually we found an open fitting room and a salesperson, and my wife said the salesperson laid out the clothes she was trying on in the dressing room, ruffled them up, and generally made it look like a display before leaving and letting her try them on.

I'm sure the salesperson was doing her job the way she's supposed to, and many people would consider that customer service, but I was thinking that true customer service would've had all the fitting rooms unlocked instead of treating your customers like potential shoplifters. Actually, what I thought was

#realcustomerservicewouldvebeentohavethefittingroomsunlocked

Seriously, that's the way the thought generated itself in my head.

I'm not saying this is necessarily important, there may be no "there" here, but I find it interesting that apparently my online activities have actually affected the way I think. If I'm actually thinking in hashtags, then it's almost like I've changed the grammar of the way I think. I find that fascinating. Has anyone else found themselves actually thinking differently as a result of how you interact online?

Sometimes This Stuff Still Amazes Me

Just a quick post to note that I still find my own personal networked world to be pretty fascinating and amazing. Yesterday I was talking with my wife about a homework assignment Abby had in math where she needed to gather some data. So I threw together a quick Google Form, posted on my blog, and tweeted it out.

Very quickly the responses started coming in, mostly from Twitter I suspect because I doubt that many folks had seen the post at that point. (Next time I may add a question about where they found out about the survey just to confirm that.) About a day later we now have 299 responses (as of this writing) from 43 states and 18 countries (counting the U.S.). (You can see the results embedded in that post.)

Now this particular survey and this particular post are nothing earth-shattering, but it again reminds me of how different the world is from when I was growing up; how easy it is to connect with others around the world, and certainly how easy it is to gather data via Google Forms, a blog and Twitter. While I certainly still need to do a lot of thinking about how best to utilize this capability in meaningful ways, I think we all as educators need to be constantly asking ourselves the question, "What can we do now (that is relevant and meaningful for students) that we couldn't do before?"

Abby playing guitar for Grandma via Skype.

Twitter Lists & Aggregated Content: Are We Responsible?

I was part of an interesting discussion on Twitter Friday night and I wanted to share it here, as well as add a few final thoughts. Participants that I reference are Bud Hunt, Brian Crosby, Dean Shareski, Anne Van Meter, Barbara Barreda, and Karen Fasimpaur. Thanks to all of you for helping me think through these ideas.

The discussion started with a tweet from Bud Hunt where he shared some of what his school district is doing with Twitter. Here’s part of the tweet trail (I’m sure there were comments from other folks as well, but these are the ones I remembered and grabbed).





































I just want to add a few concluding thoughts. First, full disclosure, Bud called me on his way home from work and we talked for a while about this.

Second, I wasn’t arguing against what Bud’s district is doing. In fact, I really, really like what they’re doing, I was just trying to explore the ramifications and think through some of the issues.

Third, I wanted to “finish” my part of the discussion with Karen that was interrupted by my having to go make dinner. This is what I would’ve tweeted next (is this then a set of retroactive tweets?):

• @kfasimpaur It’s not so much the linking that I see as the problem.
• It’s the creation and the encouragement.
• By creating the Twitter list, @budtheteacher’s district has created something *new*, not just linked to something.
• I think the act of creation does imply some type of “ownership” and “responsibility”
• And when they publicize it & encourage folks both to add themselves to the list & to follow, that also blurs the lines.
• So, say a student in Bud’s district joins the Twitter list. Then he tweets that he’s . . .
• . . . planning on hurting himself or others. Is there some kind of monitoring in place? . . .
• . . . Should there be? Or say he tweets something offensive, then what?
• The fact the district has a disclaimer http://blogs.stvrain.k12.co.us/twitter/opt-in/ that they . . .
• . . . “reserve the right to determine the membership of the SVVSD’s Twitter Lists” implies some ownership . . .
• . . . and that some quasi-monitoring might be going on.
• So, again, I support what his district is doing and love the transparency and the community.
• But I do think it’s really complicated and there are many things we still need to think through.

Now, I actually might have tweeted something different because there probably would’ve been some replies in there that would have altered my thinking, but you get the idea.

Transparency and community building by teachers, schools and districts is something I very much support, and I think what St. Vrain is doing is very compelling and very interesting, but I also think it’s uncharted territory and there are some pretty complicated issues involved. This is a really important conversation to have, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

How Many People in Your Family?

This post is more of just an extended tweet than it is a blog post, but I thought it might be interesting to share.

My daughter had a math assignment where she was supposed to gather data on how many people were in people's families, then graph it and determine things like median, mode, range, maximum and minimum (interestingly, not the mean, although they've done that for other problems - which is probably good since median makes much more sense for this problem). Just for fun I created a quick Google Form and tweeted it out.



The only required question was "How Many People in Your Family?" with some directions on how to define that for this problem, but then I also asked (just because I was curious) two optional questions: your location and your age.

Well, that quick tweet generated 95 responses (so far). Since Abby is at the point where it's still really hands-on with the data and you generate graphs by hand (to get a better understanding of the concept), that was a little more than she needed, so she decided to just use the first thirty-two. Here are her results:










In case you're curious, here are the results for all 95 data points:

The median and the mode were both 4 and the standard deviation was 1.54.

For those of you curious about the ages of the respondents, the mean was 40.37, the median and mode were both 39, and the standard deviation was 10.96. (It might be interesting for someone to do a more randomized survey of educational tweeters to see if anything could be deduced from the results - both age and family size data.) We had responses from all over the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Thailand.

So, nothing profound here, but I just thought it was interesting in several respects. First, how many folks responded to a tweet that obviously was not going to have much benefit for/impact on them. Second, how easy it was to generate data via a tweet and a Google Form (not randomized, I realize, but still interesting). Finally, I found the age and family size of the folks who responded interesting, even if I can't draw any major conclusions from it. (Perhaps: The mostly educational twitterers who follow me and responded to this tweet are typically between the ages of 30 and 50 and have two to five people in their immediate family - not a huge surprise.)

Thanks to everyone that helped Abby with this assignment and, if you have anything more profound you can generate from this, feel free to leave it in the comments.

More Than a Passing Trend

I wrote an email to an editor at the Denver Post last Sunday in response to an editorial titled, Twitter: A Medium without a Message (please read it before reading the rest of this post).

Now, this is somewhat ironic because, while I certainly use Twitter, I'm not a frequent user compared to many folks and I don't necessarily think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. But I truly felt like he was missing the point somewhat, and he generally seems like a thoughtful guy (even if I don't always agree with him), so I dashed off a quick email in about eight minutes or so.

I then tweeted about it (of course) and wondered a couple of things. First, I wondered:



Why did I feel like email was a more "personal" way to connect with Dan Haley?

Then I wondered this:



And:





Why would I give less thought and care writing an email to an editor of the Denver Post then I would to a blog post? Perhaps Jenny Nash got it right that it's due to the perceived audience:


In any event, I've obviously decided to repost it here, with the caveat that, again, I'm not sure it really does justice to the argument I was trying to make. So, I'm counting on you guys to add to it in the comments or link to posts that are already created about the value of Twitter, just in case Dan Haley stops by.

So, here's the email I sent (unaltered, much as I would like to refine it before posting it here)

Dan,

I read your editorial today about Twitter and wanted to share a few thoughts. While I'm not a huge Twitter user, and I won't argue that it's the greatest thing ever, I think one of the reasons you're not finding it valuable is that you're following the wrong people. Part of that you can't help, as you said politicians are "the people you 'follow' for a living." The problem is that most politicians use Twitter in one of two ways. As you indicated, they either use them as glorified press releases, or as a way to appear "folksy" to their constituents. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not all that interesting and, as politicians, they're somewhat constrained from being "real" on Twitter because it could come back to haunt them. You also mentioned celebrities and, well, unless you're really interested in a particular celebrity, most of them aren't that interesting either.

I would suggest that if you want to see the real power in Twitter, you need to follow people that are passionate about the same things you are passionate about. Since politicians are interesting to you, but are somewhat constrained as indicated above, then find some folks that are writing about politics and follow them on Twitter. Then find some folks that are passionate about journalism (I'm assuming you are) and follow them. And then find some folks that are passionate about some hobby of yours and follow them. If you do that, I think you'll find more value in Twitter.

As an example, I'm an educator that's passionate about trying to meet the needs of our students in a world that is vastly different than the one that most educators grew up in. So I mostly follow other educators who are thinking and writing and linking and tweeting about education. There is a bias toward tech using educators, partially because that's my role in my school - technology coordinator, but also because those folks have a higher presence on Twitter. But I also follow interesting folks that aren't specifically educators writing about teaching and learning but are always finding interesting and relevant ideas and information that help me do my job as an educator - and as a citizen. Every time I dip into Twitter I always find a relevant resource or tool I can share with the teachers in my building, or a link to a blog post or a website or a podcast or a video that helps my thinking around what education should look like. I have teachers on six continents - most of whom I've never met face-to-face - but I learn from them every day.They are part of my own Personal Learning Network, an extended network of people around the world that I can not only learn from every day, but that I can connect teachers and students in my building with to help them teach and learn in a rapidly changing, technology-rich, globally-interconnected world.

Yes, I also find many tweets that aren't along those lines, that are more "personal" if you will, but that's a huge part of community building. Just as in face-to-face communication, folks that establish trust and some personal connection have a much better chance of connecting around more significant issues as well. I would guess that at the Post, teams of people that have some personal relationship and connection are more productive in the long run, particularly around big issues or projects, because they have a relationship that's more than "just" business, and they have some common frame of reference. It's the same on Twitter, and some of those "this is what I'm doing" type tweets help establish that.

So, while I agree that there is a lot of hype about Twitter right now, I would ask you to take a closer look at it. I would ask you to get beyond the press releases and the celebrity gossip, and talk with some folks that were using it before the hype and that find tremendous value in it. (I can connect you with some very thoughtful folks using Twitter if you'd like.) It doesn't matter if Twitter is the particular tool that has staying power, or whether something else comes along to replace it. What matters, and what should be interesting to you as a journalist, is how thoughtful folks are using it to help them learn, grow and be more productive. Surely that is more than simply a "passing trend."

Thanks for reading.