Mission Impossible

My school, like many schools and other organizations, has a mission statement. I can't tell you what it is. This despite the fact that we've had it for just over seven years now and I - along with the entire staff that was here at the time - helped create it. While I haven't done a scientific survey, I feel fairly confident in saying that if you asked five random staff members at my school what our mission statement is, there's a pretty good chance none of them would be able to tell you. And I feel even more confident that if you asked five random students at my school, they wouldn't know either. Which means it's mission impossible.

That doesn't mean I don't generally like what's in our mission statement (and, for that matter, our longer vision statement). You can read them here (pdf). I do want students to achieve their potential, collaborate and be life-long learners, and contribute to society. The problem is that when you have a mission statement that no one knows, and that has generic statements like that, it ends up being pretty meaningless. I've written about this previously, talking about core values and whether students can articulate the vision, but clearly it's still bothering me. I'd like something that's meaningful, and that we can post in each and every classroom so that each day, students and teachers could refer to it. Any student would be able - and expected - to ask, how is what we are learning today going to help fulfill our mission? And if the teacher doesn't have a good answer, then they should stop teaching it. Similarly, every teacher would be able - and expected - to ask the same of what students were doing with their time.

So I was feeling all good and outraged, but then I asked myself, "What's my mission statement?" Uh-oh. I don't have a good answer for that, even though it's something I've thought about. Some of the Language Arts teachers at my school do an activity with students called "What's Your Sentence?," based on an idea in Daniel Pink's Drive. In the past, they've put out an email to staff asking for their sentence that they can share with students, and I always star it in my email and stare at it for a week before feeling guilty and not replying. This will be no surprise to regular readers of this blog, but my problem is that I can't figure out just one sentence that captures it for me.

I usually start with a sentence something like this:

To help those around me become more passionate learners.

But then I start picking at it. Shouldn't I include myself in there? But that makes the sentence awkward.

To help myself, and those around me, become a more passionate learner.

And learner about what? Do I really want them to become a more passionate learner about something that isn't meaningful for them? Say, perhaps, our somewhat arbitrary curriculum? And so I try something like,

To help those around me discover and pursue their passions.

But then that doesn't explicitly mention learning, and becoming a better learner. And it leaves out "myself" again. So then I try something like,

To help myself and those around me discover and pursue their passions by becoming more passionate learners.

or perhaps

To help myself and those around me discover and pursue their passions by becoming better learners.

Yuck. It's about now that I remember why I was better suited to teach mathematics than language arts, and then I dial back my outrage (at least a little) about my school's mission statement. So I try changing the order,

To help myself and those around me become better learners and discover and pursue their passions.

Maybe a little better, but it's awkward with the multiple 'ands', and I still don't quite like the phrase 'better learners.' So then I'm reminded of another post where I reference something David Jakes wrote talking about culture, and I wonder if somehow my mission statement should try to talk about a culture of learning.

To help myself and those around me develop a culture of learning; one where we help each other discover and then pursue our passions.

Getting closer, but I'm still not sure I can really do it in one sentence. But when I start adding sentences, it gets too involved and less clear. So does that mean it's "mission impossible" for me as well? If I can't articulate what I'm trying to accomplish, what my purpose is, does that mean that I'm doomed to fail? Maybe.

What about your school's mission statement? Or your sentence? Do you have something straightforward and meaningful that your school - and you - can rally around? I'm obviously still struggling with my own, but I think for those of us working in schools, it's something important to talk about. And, even if we don't come up with one perfect sentence or one perfect mission statement, I think we should be willing to post what we do have in each and every one of our learning spaces, and ask our students to hold us just as accountable as we hold them.

A Little Respect Goes A Long Way

A few years back Daniel Pink wrote about emotionally intelligent signage in A Whole New Mind. It's the idea that we have choices when we create signs, and that if we create them with how humans will react to them in mind, we will likely be more successful. More recently, Thaler and Sunstein wrote about the idea that we can subtly "nudge" people into behaviors that are more productive for them - and for society.

Here's an example of an emotionally intelligent sign, instead of the typical "Slow Down" or "Fines Doubled in School Zone", they went with:

To me, a lot of it comes down to respect, and to making the conscious choice to assume that people will, more often than not, make a good choice rather than a bad one. In general, I think my school does a pretty good job with this. Compared to many high schools of our size, we give our students a fair amount of freedom, and assume that - with help - they will usually make the right decision. But that doesn't mean we can't improve.

Eight years ago I wrote this post when these signs started appearing around the building:

In response, I posted a sign outside my room that said something like:

Please get out your Cell Phones, iPods and Electronic Devices and use them to enhance your learning during class.

I felt it sent a much better message to our students. Regrettably, I still see many of the "no cell phone" signs around the building (in fact, I took the above image today), yet none of the "use them to enhance" signs.

I was reminded of this issue because we have new digital signage around the building this fall. Typically the slides are created once a week, with occasional additions or subtractions during the week. We are now in Week 5 and I believe this is the only slide that has appeared every day this school year.

Let me be clear, I think it's important that we have an open campus and I think it shows respect for our students. I also agree that some students struggle with this freedom and so therefore need some help managing this, which sometimes means they have their open campus privileges temporarily replaced with Study Center until they get the hang of it. Having said that, I'm not a fan of the above slide (or having it play over and over again on the digital signage).

I think there are a variety of ways we could communicate this message in a more positive, emotionally intelligent way. Here's one, although you can probably come up with some better ways.

I think this communicates essentially the same message, only in a much more positive, respectful way. The way we currently have it phrased, it's threatening: "screw up and we'll take it away." Phrased this way, it assumes that most students will handle the responsibility well (and 98% of them do).

There are a variety of other signs around the building (and I imagine your building as well) that should perhaps be rethought. Perhaps instead of "No Food or Drink in the Halls!" we could say,

Our custodians work really hard. Let's help them out by enjoying our food and drink in the cafeteria, and cleaning up any spills. Thanks!

Or maybe your Class Expectations include a long list of "don'ts", why not trying something more like:

I think a little respect goes a long way.

What If They All Took Art?

It's interesting. Over the last several months I've been involved in several conversations around the idea of giving students more control over their own learning, letting them choose to pursue things they are interested in, pursue their passions, create a more "personal" curriculum and perhaps not take a full-blown, "comprehensive" schedule of classes in high school. At some point in each of these conversations, someone always objects with a statement along the lines of, "Well, they'd all choose just to take Art." (In fairness, sometimes it's PE.) That question kinda bugs me, so I thought I'd take a few minutes and explore it a bit.

First, what if they all did take Art, would that be so bad? I mean if everyone had a greater appreciation for art, and beauty, and creativity, as well as perhaps had more opportunity to be creative themselves, would that be so bad? I can imagine a lot worse things than a world full of folks who create and appreciate art.

But I know the real objection is often along the lines of a more practical nature: employment. Where would all these artists work? Don't they need math, and science, and language arts, and social studies in order to be prepared to enter the workforce? Well, maybe. But don't they need Art just as much? As Daniel Pink said in A Whole New Mind, the MFA is the new MBA. Whether it's high profile folks like Jonathan Ive at Apple or Michael Graves at Target, or under-the-radar folks like the person that's creating websites or the latest app, design is huge in today's workforce. Both beauty and functionality is prized in products today (at least in the so-called developed world). People who can design things that work well and look good, and especially if they can do it with a minimal environmental and energy footprint, are in high demand (coincidentally, this came across my Twitter feed as I was composing this.) So perhaps we should be asking, "What if they all took Math" instead. Or what if they all took a "comprehensive" curriculum that was often devoid of relevance and meaning, and only allowed them to explore many different areas at a superficial level. What about that?

The second piece I want to explore is the assumption that our students will take the "easy" way out. That's typically part of the conversation as well, students will just take Art (or P.E.) because it's easy and they don't want to work or think hard. But let's examine the assumptions behind that. First, the "easy" way out assumes a culture of required courses and the all-important grade. Whereas the idea many of us are exploring is students pursuing their own interests, and grades are nowhere to be found. If you remove the artificial constraints of grades and transcripts, required courses and required credits in certain areas, the whole idea of "the easy way out" doesn't really apply anymore. There is no "out," there is only learning more about what you're interested in.

The second underlying assumption is that students are lazy. There's an incredible lack of respect shown to our students in this attitude. Imagine the entire four years of high school was built around the students' interests and passions, with guidance from caring adults. Do you really think that students, looking at four years of that, would just completely blow it off? Some folks argue, "Well, 14-year olds don't know what they're passionate about." That's true to some extent, but what if the four years of high school was helping them find and develop that passion? Would that perhaps be a better use of their (and our) time?

The next objection is often, "But what if some kids don't find their passion" or perhaps "some kids still won't care?" That's certainly possible. But what do you think is happening to those kids right now in our current system? Do you really think they are being successful now? I would bet that many more students would be successfully served by a passion-based education than our current system, even if I won't guarantee 100% success.

The third piece I want to explore is the idea of a "comprehensive" high school. This argument revolves around the idea that if students are allowed to pursue their passions, they won't be well-rounded and won't be functional citizens and community members. I share this concern, and believe there is some merit to this argument, but again I think there are two big assumptions being made here. First, that our current system is being successful in this area, and second that a passion-based system would not be.

We read every day about what a horrible job we're doing in schools. Whether it's state testing, or PISA, or some other measure, clearly we are "failing" in our job of creating well-prepared, well-rounded citizens and employees. Yet all of the mainstream education reform efforts are built-around doubling-down on the existing system. "Let's have more, and higher standards. Let's increase graduation requirements and the number of days of school. Let's hold students and teachers more accountable." If the current system isn't working, getting better at it isn't going to help, it's just going to more efficiently not work.

But what about the other side of this, that if students are pursuing their passion, say, taking all Art classes, that they can't possibly get a well-rounded education? I find this so interesting, because the argument is essentially that as an Art teacher, or a Math teacher, or a whatever teacher, I'm not capable of helping students learn about the world around them in these other areas. How often have you heard a teacher say, "Well, I'm a math teacher, so I can't really help you with that. Go see so-and-so." So we don't expect ourselves as teachers to be well-rounded, but that's exactly what we're asking our students to be. "Well, I can't help you with that, but you sure as heck ought to be an expert in all these areas all at the same time." Double-standard much?

If we truly expect our students to be well-rounded, shouldn't we have the same expectations for ourselves? Shouldn't an art teacher, or a math teacher, or a whatever teacher be able to help students learn more about the civil war in Syria, or Nelson Mandela, or climate change? Shouldn't a Language Arts teacher be able to help their students with the scientific method or understanding social security? If we expect our students to master 8-9 classes at a time (in my school), and pass comprehensive final exams, shouldn't we be able to as well? So go ahead, I dare you, take all the final exams that a representative high school student in your school is going to be taking in about two weeks. See how you do. Now convince me that all those topics you just tested on were "essential." Paraphrasing Yong Zhao, if things are really essential, then it's awfully hard to avoid them even if you are pursuing your interests and passions.

So, if we're going to have a real conversation about this, let's at least be upfront about our assumptions, and then let's examine them to see if they really hold water. I'm not arguing that students shouldn't be exposed to many different areas, that they should narrowly focus and "major" in a subject in high school. What I'm suggesting is that pursuing your passion and discussing the wider world of knowledge are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, might better achieve that "well-rounded, comprehensive education, liberal arts" ideal that we claim to value.

What if they all did take Art? I think that might be a good thing.

Daniel Pink Live Blog (May 9, 2011)

Below is the live blog for our students' conversation with Daniel Pink on Monday, May 9th, from approximately 8:25 am - 10:30 am Mountain Time, and you can also view the ustream.

A Whole New Mind: Join Us For Year Four

Once again this year students in Anne Smith and Maura Moritz's English 9 Honors classes will be reading Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind and discussing it with each other, with many of you, and with Daniel Pink himself (read about previous years' experiences). Students will be holding in-class fishbowl discussions and live blogging chapters four through nine (Design, Story, Sympathy, Empathy and Meaning).

The process will be very similar to previous years, but there are a few variations on our end. This year students will also be reading excerpts of Drive, watching and evaluating some TED Talks, and then their culminating activity will be giving a 5-minute Pecha Kucha style TED-like talk answering the question What Matters? for their final exam.

We are again asking other folks from our learning networks to participate as the students discuss specific chapters of the book. We hope to broaden their perspectives by extending their Personal Learning Networks to include thoughtful folks, both locally and from around the world. Like previous years, an inner circle of students will be having a face-to-face discussion, and the outer circle of students can periodically join the inner circle but will also be live-blogging. (If you want a refresher, here are some links to help explain the process and see the students' work.) We will again be using Ustream to broadcast the inner circle discussion out to remote participants, parents and other interested folks, and CoverItLive for the live blogging.

We would love to have some of you join us as well. This wiki lists the dates and times along with which chapters will be discussed on which dates (note that due to time constraints we’ll be combining the Empathy and Play chapters). If you are interested in participating, please do the following:

• Re-read (if you wish) A Whole New Mind, or simply review the chapter(s) you'll be blogging with the students.
  
  
• Visit the wiki and add yourself to the appropriate date(s) and time(s). You may add yourself to any spot, even if someone is already signed up, but it would be great if we could fill all the open slots first if possible. Also please add your "participant biography" at the bottom of the page. To keep the live blogging manageable, we'd like to have a maximum of three folks sign up for each slot (although everyone is welcome to observe the live blogging).
  
  
• On the day and time you've signed up, tune in to our ustream channel and to the appropriate blog post (linked from the wiki - as we get closer to each live blog date the period number will link to the live blog post).

We're really excited about this opportunity for our students and want to make the most of it. We really hope that you'll join us and add your thoughts to our conversation.

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.

Daniel Pink Ustream and CoverItLive Archive

We had a fantastic session with Daniel Pink today. He was even better than he was the first two years (and the first two years he was very good). He seemed more relaxed and really engaged the students in conversation more.

The ustream and CoverItLive archives are embedded below. Unfortunately, the sound on the ustream wasn't great. A lot of static at the beginning, although that gets a little better after about 5 minutes, but still isn't great. But if you're interested in A Whole New Mind, or in the process of skyping with an author, it's still worth your time.

AWNM: Year 3

Once again this year our students in Anne Smith and Maura Moritz's English 9 Honors classes will be reading Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind and discussing it with each other, with many of you, and with Daniel Pink himself (read about previous years' experiences). Students will be holding in-class fishbowl discussions and live blogging chapters four through nine (Design, Story, Sympathy, Empathy and Meaning).

We again have a bunch of folks from our PLN's that will be live blogging with them, and Daniel Pink will be Skyping with them to discuss Chapter 6: Symphony. (Unfortunately due to our schedules not synching very well this year, we'll only get Mr. Pink once this year instead of twice. The good news is that he'll be discussing Symphony this time which is a chapter that we haven't been able to discuss with him before.)

You're welcome to check out the wiki to see when we'll be live blogging, and then tune in to the ustream of the in-class discussion and/or the CoverItLive live blogging on Anne's class blog (periods 2 and 5 on that schedule) or Maura's class blog (periods 3 and 4 on that schedule). We're looking forward to another great learning experience for - and with - our students.

AWNM Video Conference: Tech Setup, Ustream Archive and Pictures

I just wanted to share the tech setup as well as the Ustream archive and some pictures of our video conference on Friday with Daniel Pink. (You can also view the two archived CoverItLive live blogs on my previous post.)

For those that are interested, here was the tech setup. To Skype (and then eventually MeBeam, more on that in a moment) with Daniel Pink, we had a Dell computer with a logitech webcam and snowball microphone connected to it. This was connected to a projector in our Forum that rear projects onto a large screen (we were in the forum because we had four classes with a total of 110 kids or so) so that all the students could see and hear him. Earlier in the week students had submitted their questions on a blog and then Maura Moritz and Anne Smith selected sixteen of them to be asked today (due to time constraints). Each student would come down to the snowball microphone and ask the question of Mr. Pink, and then ask a follow-up or respond to Mr. Pink's questions if he asked them.

Then over on the side we had an iMac connected to a second snowball microphone and a DV camcorder which we used to Ustream the event. The Ustream audience (folks who read about it on my blog or on twitter, plus we emailed all the parents of the students in the classes) could see the student asking the question, a decent shot of the projected screen with Mr. Pink on it, and then hear both of them pretty well.

Next to that we had two Dell laptops, each one moderating the two CoverItLive blogs we had setup. We had two setup because we had so many students live blogging we felt it would be overwhelming to have them all on one live blog. The ninety or so students that weren't asking the questions had the capability of hopping on the live blog (or they could choose just to listen) - we probably had around 50 to 60 or so laptops spread throughout those 90 students, and the students could hand the laptop to the student sitting next to them if they wanted to comment.

Overall, it went well, although for the first time in two years we had some technical difficulties. We've always used Skype for this and it worked well for a while, but then suddenly dropped the call. We reconnected once for a little while, then it dropped again and then wouldn't connect. After trying for a few minutes, we switched over to MeBeam which thankfully worked for us. MeBeam doesn't have quite the same quality as Skype (a little bit of a delay and the video isn't quite as crisp), but it still worked well.

We really appreciate how flexible Daniel Pink was. When we did this last year, we had talked about using MeBeam as a backup to Skype, but we really hadn't talked about any contingencies this year (my fault). When it became obvious that Skype maybe wasn't going to reconnect, I Skype-chatted to Mr. Pink that we should try switching to MeBeam, and then gave him the URL and the room name. He Skyped back that he would, and by the time I switched over and loaded it up, he was there. We had a brief moment when his audio wasn't on (by default when you enter a MeBeam room your audio is off and it's not completely intuitive where to turn it on), but we told him where to enable his audio and then we were good to go (well, after he put some headphones on as we were getting echo). Now, none of that is rocket science, but in my experience that's more than enough to throw a lot of folks, especially when we hadn't talked about it in advance. So I was very thankful that he handled it with aplomb and didn't get flustered with the tech stuff.

Unfortunately, I'd been sick all week and had to visit the doctor later that day so I didn't get to listen to the students reflect about the experience later that day. From my perspective, I thought it went well, and I thought the students did a nice job of asking thoughtful questions. As one person noted in the Ustream chat, they were polite and respectful but not overly deferential to Daniel Pink. And, as has been the case for the two years we've done this (so four times he's interacted with our students), Daniel Pink has been very generous with his time and tries to thoughtfully address their questions.

Here is the archived Ustream (it starts about 2:45 into the archive, I hit record a little too early because I didn't want to forget!) and some pictures that should give you an idea of what the room looked like.

Join Us for the Daniel Pink Video Conference and Live Blog

Tomorrow (Friday, February 20th) our students will conduct their culminating discussion of Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind. This will begin at about 8:25 am MST and end at around 9:25 am MST. This will be similar to last year, but we've made a few adjustments.

First, since we only have him for one hour this year instead of two, we'll just have selected students ask him their question and then perhaps a follow-up (last year we tried to have a mini-fishbowl discussion as well, but we don't think that will work so well with our limited time).

Second, with that many students in the live blog, it goes a little too fast and furious, so we're going to create two this year. Mrs. Smith's 2nd period and Mrs. Moritz's 3rd period will be on one live blog, and Mrs. Moritz's 4th period and Mrs. Smith's 5th period will be on a second live blog. You can either follow those links or I'll embed both CoverItLive's in this post (not sure how well that will work in practice, so jump to the links if it doesn't work having them both embedded here).

We will also be ustreaming the event - basically you'll hear the questions the students ask and Mr. Pink's responses, and probably see a really badly angled shot of the projected screen with Mr. Pink on Skype and perhaps the students actually asking the questions (it's going to be a tough angle, so we'll see).

You are welcome to observe and/or participate in the CoverItLive blogs if you wish, but with a few caveats. First, this is the students' discussion, so please don't drive the conversation. Second, please make sure you enter your real name in the appropriate spot in CoverItLive so we know who you are. Third, the CoverItLive is a place for discussing A Whole New Mind, if you wish to discuss the pedagogy or the technical aspects of this, please do that with the other adults in the ustream chat.

As always, our priority is to make this work for the students, so if we have technical issues with the ustream or anything else, we will do our best to fix them, but our focus will remain on making this work in the room, anything else is gravy.

Here's the attempt to embed both live blogs in this post.

CoverItLive Smith 2 and Moritz 3

CoverItLive Moritz 4 and Smith 5

What's the Purpose of School?

While I've certainly blogged about and around this topic before, I've run across a couple of interesting posts in the last few weeks that both address this question directly. I'm going to quote liberally from both posts, because I think it's useful to see them both on the same page.

First, David Warlick wrote after watching - and participating - in our videoconferencing with Daniel Pink:

On several occasions, lately, when working with teachers and administrators at independent schools, I’ve been asked, “What is the purpose of education?” It’s not a question that comes out of public school conversations very often. We already know what education is for. The government told us.

Education is about:

• Covering all the standards
• Improving performance on government tests
• Meeting AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress)
• Producing a competitive workforce

We don’t even ask any more — and even in this season of Change (http://change.gov/), we’re still not asking that question.

Now I generalize when comparing different types of schools, and to be sure, independent schools are also governed by testing, as many of their students attend so that they can get into Harvard, Yale, or Duke (Go Blue Devils). But, again, there is a palpable sense of confidence in the conversations I witness when away from public schools — a willingness to ask tough questions.

I’ve had a ready answer to the question.

“The purpose of education is to appropriately prepare our children for their future.”

There are some implied, but essential questions in that answer:

• What will their future hold? What will they need to know?
• What are appropriate method, materials, environment, activity?
• Who are these children? What is their frame of reference?

Today, I have a new answer. My old one is still good. I’ll continue to use it. But if you ask me, “What is the purpose of education?” today, I’ll say,

"The purpose of education is to make the world a better place!"

What drew me to this answer was Karl Fisch’s teleconferencing activity last week (see A 2.0 Sort’a Day: Part 2). As I thought more about the experience, it occurred to me that this was an almost singularly unique activity — beyond the fact that students were interacting with an internationally renowned writer, exchanging thoughtful insights, and the really cool use of technology.

What struck me in hindsight was that these students were earning respect. They were respected by each other, by their teachers, by the instructional support professionals, and by the internationally renowned figure, Dan Pink. Their engagement in that activity will continue to be respected by people, young and old, who will read the archive of those multidimensional conversations.

Those students were full partners in their learning, and they were entrusted to go beyond just what was expected. They were encouraged to freely extend and develop their own thoughts, skills, and knowledge, building on their own frame of reference, pushing and pulling through conversation, and being responsible for their part of the endeavor.

Then yesterday Seth Godin wrote:

So, a starter list. The purpose of school is to:

1. Become an informed citizen
2. Be able to read for pleasure
3. Be trained in the rudimentary skills necessary for employment
4. Do well on standardized tests
5. Homogenize society, at least a bit
6. Pasteurize out the dangerous ideas
7. Give kids something to do while parents work
8. Teach future citizens how to conform
9. Teach future consumers how to desire
10. Build a social fabric
11. Create leaders who help us compete on a world stage
12. Generate future scientists who will advance medicine and technology
13. Learn for the sake of learning
14. Help people become interesting and productive
15. Defang the proletariat
16. Establish a floor below which a typical person is unlikely to fall
17. Find and celebrate prodigies, geniuses and the gifted
18. Make sure kids learn to exercise, eat right and avoid common health problems
19. Teach future citizens to obey authority
20. Teach future employees to do the same
21. Increase appreciation for art and culture
22. Teach creativity and problem solving
23. Minimize public spelling mistakes
24. Increase emotional intelligence
25. Decrease crime by teaching civics and ethics
26. Increase understanding of a life well lived
27. Make sure the sports teams have enough players

Both David and Seth, coming from different backgrounds, have some fairly negative views of what some folks think school is for, as well as some more positive views of what school should be. If you've read my blog for any length of time you most likely know the general trend my thoughts take on this, so I'll spare you my own ranting and raving (for now, anyway). But I thought these were worth posting on the same page as a good starting point for discussion, as Seth suggests:

If you have the email address of the school board or principals, perhaps you'll forward this list to them (and I hope you are in communication with them regardless, since it's a big chunk of your future and your taxes!). Should make an interesting starting point for a discussion.

Please leave a comment or do as Seth suggests and contact a school board member, superintendent, school administrator, teacher, student, parent, state legislator (Colorado), community member, congressperson (Senate, House, or possibly this link for both), or President Obama and ask them for their thoughts, without the spin.

What's the purpose of school?

Design Discussion with Daniel Pink: Setup, Pictures, Screenshots and Ustreams

In case anyone is interested, I thought I would embed the two Ustream recordings from today, as well as share a few pictures and screenshots. Since someone asked in the Ustream chat, I'll share the setup as well.

• Since Daniel Pink graciously shared two hours with us, we combined four classes down into two. Because that meant we had about 55-60 students each time, we needed a larger area than their usual classroom, so we setup in our library. In the "front" we had a computer running Windows XP and we used Skype to connect with Mr. Pink. That computer was then projected so that all the students could see him, as well as the live blog (although they pretty much read the live blog on their laptop screens). We used a logitech webcam for the video for Skype, and a Blue Snowball microphone (with a USB extension cable to get it into the group of students asking questions) for the audio. We then had logitech speakers to broadcast Mr. Pink's audio out to the room. (We did not have any feedback issues, although we did have him wear headphones on his end to help with that.)
  
  
  
  
• We also ustreamed the event. For the ustream, we used a DV camcorder connected to an iMac (for better video quality than a typical webcam, although I don't know how much difference it really makes) and a second Blue Snowball microphone (again with USB extension cable) for the ustream audio.
  
  
  
  
• We used a laptop to approve the CoverItLive comments, although that could've been done on either of the other computers if we wanted to (we brought in some extra help just in case, so we put them to work!).
  
  
  
• The students who were live blogging were mostly using our Dell laptop computers running Windows XP, connecting wirelessly to our network, although some students brought in their own laptops.

Amazingly enough, we pretty much had zero technical issues.

Here are some additional photos, screenshots and the two ustream embeds. If anyone has any feedback - technological or pedagogical - please leave a comment. And, of course, if you have any questions, leave those as well.













Anne Smith's Period 2 and 5 Ustream (and CoverItLive live blog archive):

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

Maura Moritz's Period 3 and 4 Ustream (and CoverItLive live blog archive):

Streaming live video by Ustream

AWNM: Chapter 4 Live Blog and Ustream

As I wrote a week ago, some of our ninth graders are currently involved in a project based on Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind. On Thursday, January 15th, our students will be discussing Chapter 4 (Design) of A Whole New Mind with Daniel Pink (see the wiki for the schedule of the discussions over the other chapters). Mr. Pink is graciously giving us two hours of his time, so Anne Smith’s two classes will be discussing with him during second period (8:25 – 9:24 am, MST) and Maura Moritz’s two classes will be discussing during third period (9:29 – 10:30 am, MST). During each period, the two classes of students will gather in the library, and an "inner circle" of students will ask questions of and interact with Daniel Pink via Skype. The students in the "outer circle" will be watching that as well as live blogging on their respective class blogs (Anne Smith's class blog, Maura Moritz's class blog).

In addition, we will try to stream video and audio of the live discussion out via ustream. If everything is working, you can go to our ustream channel and watch and listen live to the students interacting with Mr. Pink. Please keep in mind, however, that the ustream is a bonus, we will be focusing on making sure Skype and the live blogging is working, so if there are any technical issues with the ustream we won’t be spending very much time trying to troubleshoot those. (Please also know that the ustream chat does not always make it through our firewall, so we probably won’t be reading or monitoring that.) Anyone who's interested is invited to watch the live blogs and/or the ustream.

It will be interesting to see how this first discussion goes. Last year the students didn't interact with Daniel Pink until Chapter 7, so they were very much into the book, the discussions, and had experience interacting with remote live bloggers. Since they are just beginning their study of the book and its concepts at this point, we'll see if that affects their level of engagement and the quality of their discussions. In any event, we're looking forward to an engaging and rewarding learning experience for our students.

A Whole New Learning Experience: Take Two

I blogged last year about some of our ninth graders reading A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, and discussing it not only with each other, but with over 30 educators from around the world and Daniel Pink himself. Well, some of this year’s ninth graders in Anne Smith’s and Maura Moritz’s classes are going to get the opportunity to do it again.

If you’re really interested, you can read all my previous posts regarding our experiences with this project. But, in a nutshell, the students are reading the book and discussing it in class using the fishbowl method with live blogging. In addition to the students discussing face-to-face and live blogging, approximately 30 educators from around the world will be “dropping” in to live blog as well. They’ll be able to hear and see the in-class discussion via webcam (and MeBeam), and will simultaneously live blog along with the outer circle of students in the classroom (using CoverItLive this year). Twice during the project, once while discussing Chapter 4 (Design) and then again at the end of the book with the culminating discussion, the students will have the opportunity to interact with Daniel Pink via Skype.

The students will be doing a variety of activities along with the discussions, but their culminating project will again be a Wikified Research Paper. A Wikified Research Paper has all the components of a traditional research paper, but on a wiki so that it can include hyperlinks, audio, video, etc. It also contains other wiki pages with their research and related items, as well as the ability for others to give them comments and feedback along the way and on the final paper (although since it’s a wiki it’s never “final”).

If you’re really a glutton and want to know more about this, we have a video produced by Dana Levesque, one of the amazing instructional technology specialists in our district. It gives you a feel for what it looked like last year, including some short interviews with students, some longer interviews with Anne and Maura regarding their preparation for and reaction to this project, and an interview with yours truly talking about some of the technology aspects of this project.

AWNM Wikified Research Papers

As the culmination of their study of A Whole New Mind, Anne Smith and Maura Moritz’s students had to complete a Wikified Research Paper. Here are links to the four wiki pages that have links to the students' wikis. (You’ll have to explore a little on each student’s wiki, some of them have their final paper on the home page of the wiki, others on a page titled Final Draft, and still others with various other page names .) There are over one hundred of these, so I certainly don’t expect anyone reading this to go read all of them (I certainly haven’t), but you might pick a couple from each class at random to read and then leave them some constructive feedback on the discussion tab of their wiki.

Smith Period 2

Moritz Period 3

Moritz Period 4

Smith Period 5

I wanted to take a moment to once again thank Daniel Pink and the folks in my network who helped us out with this project. Your participation, thoughts and insights are much appreciated.

Because a few folks asked, I also wanted to share a few of the technical details of the video conference with Daniel Pink. We brought all four classes together in our Forum (our large lecture-hall type classroom – the only one large enough for a group this size – around 110 students) for two hours (in-school field trip for the students). We connected with Mr. Pink via Skype. On our end we had a Dell computer that was connected to a large rear-projection screen that’s part of our Forum, as well as to speakers in the ceiling of the Forum. We used a Logitech Ultravision webcam (slightly newer version of it) for the video, and a Blue Snowball Microphone for the audio. On his end I believe he was using his Mac with the built-in iSight camera. He was also wearing headphones to minimize the audio feedback. (Skype appeared to do a great job with that – his wearing headphones helped us out, but we couldn’t use headphones on our end because all the students in the Forum needed to hear, but Mr. Pink reported very little audio feedback on his end.)

We had pre-selected twenty questions from students for Mr. Pink to respond to (they’re all in the live blog if you want to read through it), in addition to two general questions to get the ball rolling. Each student came down to the microphone to ask their question of Mr. Pink. After he answered, they could ask a follow-up or clarifying question if necessary. If they didn’t have one, then there were eight students down in front to carry on a very modified fishbowl discussion if they had anything to add to what Mr. Pink said (very modified fishbowl discussion because of the time constraints, having four classes in a lecture-hall setting, and the opportunity to hear from the author himself). The webcam and microphone were positioned to pick up the eight students down in front (as well as the students who came down to ask the questions), so Mr. Pink could hear those comments as well. The remaining students shared about thirty-five laptops and participated in live blogging using CoverItLive (I was on another Dell jockeying the CoverItLive blog).

Finally, we also ustreamed the whole thing (video archive, chat archive). We had a Canon camcorder hooked up via Firewire to a Mac and a second Blue Snowball Microphone positioned at the table with the eight students. I was at a table with a Dell (for the CoverItLive blog and with headphones to verify that the ustream was working) and the Mac (for the ustreaming itself).

Overall, the technology worked really well. The only real issue we had was that the ustream chat doesn’t always make it through our firewall, so I couldn’t monitor that, and we did lose the ustream a couple of times. Thankfully Kristin Hokanson captured the chat and helped me put the various orphaned ustreams back together so we have a pretty good record of the ustream.

Here are a few pictures to get a feel for what it looked like (especially for those of you who watched the ustream and perhaps thought there were only 8-10 students there).



Finally, I want to thank Anne, Maura and the students, for the incredible amount of time, effort and thought they put into this project. There are things we could’ve done better (and will do better next time we try something like this) but, overall, I think it was an amazing learning experience.

Ustreaming and Live Blogging Daniel Pink Video Conference

Update 2-28-08: Well, it looks like we pulled it off. I'll reflect on it in another post eventually, but a few quick links. First, the CoverItLive live blog is archived below. Second, thanks to Kristin Hokanson the Ustream chat is also archived. Third, the Ustream archive is in four parts, available on Ustream or on the wiki. I haven't watched through them, but I think they're all there.
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Well, I’m a little worried that we’ll look back at this and say, “We should’ve quit while we’re ahead,” but we’re going to give it a shot anyway. This Thursday is our students’ live video conference with Daniel Pink. They’ve finished A Whole New Mind and this is their chance to ask Mr. Pink some questions directly, as well as further discuss the book with their classmates. We’ll have all four classes of students (about 110 or so) in our Forum and will conduct a video Skype call with Mr. Pink. (One tech concern there – feedback. We’re asking him to wear headphones on his end, but on our end we have to broadcast the audio to the whole room, so we’re worried he’ll get a lot of feedback of his own voice when he speaks. In limited testing in-house, Skype does a fairly good job, but if anyone has any ideas we would appreciate it. Because we hope it will be conversational, it's tough to mute and unmute the microphones.)

Students will come up to the microphone one at a time and ask a question of Mr. Pink. He’ll respond and the student will have the opportunity to ask a clarifying or follow-up question if necessary. If not, then the fishbowl inner circle will have the opportunity to discuss the question if they have anything to add, with Mr. Pink a virtual participant in that inner circle. We’re hoping to get through about twenty questions or so in about ninety minutes, and then leave Mr. Pink time to reflect on this experience with the students.

Everything so far was in the original plan, but after some reasonable success with Ustream and CoverItLive last weekend for Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation, we’ve decided to push our luck a little bit. So, we’re going to attempt to Ustream the whole thing. We’ll point a camcorder and a microphone at the inner circle discussion and the big screen, so hopefully Ustream viewers will be able to hear the questions the students ask, Mr. Pink's response, and the inner circle discussion. We are doing this primarily so that the students’ parents can watch and listen in, but of course it will be open to all of you. Here’s the Ustream channel we will be using and we'll be broadcasting from approximately 8:30 am MST through about 10:15 am MST on Thursday, February 28th.

While we’ve attempted to allow the Ustream chat through our firewall, sometimes we get it and sometimes we don’t, so we won’t be using or monitoring the Ustream chat. Instead, some of our students will be live blogging the fishbowl discussion using CoverItLive. I will be chat-jockeying the CoverItLive blogging (embedded below) and approximately thirty of the students who aren’t in the inner circle or asking one of the twenty or so questions will be commenting. I’ll be approving the comments as fast as I can and we’ll also hopefully have the live blog up on the big screen next to the Skype window so that all the students in the Forum can see the live blog if they wish. Again, this is primarily for our students to live blog, but other folks can choose to participate if they wish – we just ask you to not dominate the discussion and to make sure you attach your name to each of your comments. (If you haven’t used CoverItLive before, there’s a line for your name and then a box for the body of your comment. Once you comment once, it seems to remember your name.)

Now, a few caveats. Our primary goal is to simply get the Skype video conference and discussion with Mr. Pink to work. If the Ustream and/or CoverItLive don’t work, I’ll briefly troubleshoot those but then let it go and simply focus on the rest. And, again, the primary purpose of the Ustream is for the students’ parents to be able to observe, and the live blog is for the students to use to discuss (and for the parents to be able to virtually watch the blog discussion). So, while we’re inviting the network in, we’re also asking the network to play nice.

So, wish us luck, and here’s the CoverItLive blog (if things go swimmingly, it will go live at about 8:30 am MST on Thursday).

Friedman, Pink and Stager - Oh My!

At the risk of giving Gary a heart attack, here's an interview of Thomas Friedman by Daniel Pink. It's part of the February issue of The School Administrator, which appears to have several articles relevant to our discussion of A Whole New Mind. I would suggest our students read both the interview and some of the other articles with Gary's criticisms in mind. (For those of you who haven't been following our AWNM project, you may want to read through the comments on this post and this post to see some of Gary's thought-provoking questions for our students - and their responses.)

Embedded below is the 2005 commencement speech by Steve Jobs at Stanford that is referenced in the Pink/Friedman interview. You can also read the text of the speech. He tells "three stories from [his] life" - perhaps one of the reasons Mr. Pink likes it.

Creativity: More Food for Thought for Our AWNM Project

I just wanted to share a couple of other resources for our students involved in studying Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind.

First, Carolyn Foote pointed me to this post from 2006 on Presentation Zen applying the six senses of AWNM to presentations:

The six fundamental aptitudes outlined by Pink can be applied to many aspects of our personal and professional lives. Below, I list the six key abilities as they relate to the art of presentation. The six aptitudes are: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. My discussion is with presentations (enhanced by multimedia) in mind, but you could take the six aptitudes and apply them to the art of game design, programming, product design, project management, health care, teaching, retail, PR, and so on.

I think the post is well worth reading for our students as they consider the application of the six senses (and also as they create their Wikified Research Papers or other presentations at Arapahoe).

Then, for those truly dedicated students (you know who you are), you should consider watching this 19 minute presentation given by Sir Ken Robinson, where he makes the case that schools should be cultivating creativity, but he fears that we are actually killing it. (For some reason, when I embed the video on this post it won't play, so you'll need to view it on the TED site.) Be forewarned, he doesn't mince words (at about the 3 minute mark):

My contention is that all kids have tremendous talents and we squander them - pretty ruthlessly . . . My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy - and we should treat it with the same status.

Live Blogging AWNM – Round One

As I mentioned in a previous post, four sections of our ninth graders are reading and discussing Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, including live blogging and a videoconference with the author. They are also live blogging with various folks from my learning network as they discuss the six senses that Mr. Pink believes are critical for success in the 21st century.

Last Friday was our first attempt to bring in those outside live bloggers and – for the most part - it worked very well. In the spirit of sharing what works – and what we struggled with – here’s a quick summary.

What Went Well
The technology worked surprisingly well. Sometimes when we’ve done live blogging previously (just the students in the class), Blogger has blocked our IP address after awhile because they thought we were spamming comments (sometimes 200+ comments in 50 minutes that are coming from one IP address). Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

MeBeam worked pretty well, with the only problems being a software update that messed a few folks up, as well as some firewall issues (more on that below). We used MeBeam to stream the audio/video of the inner circle discussion out to the live bloggers. That way they not only followed the comments on the blog, but were able to hear the conversation in the classroom. For those that hooked up their own webcams, it also allowed the students to see what they looked like. (We decided not to bring their audio in, figuring the students had enough to concentrate on.) We used a Logitech webcam for the video, and a Blue Snowball microphone for the audio, with the Snowball pulled into the middle of the discussion using a 15-foot USB extension cable.

As usual, the students did a really nice job with the both the in-class discussion and the live blogging discussion (with one exception that I’ll talk about below). Our remote bloggers were incredible. Thanks to Dean Shareski, Darren Draper, Julie Lindsay, Jeff Whipple, Sharon Peters, James Folkestad, Sylvia Martinez, Karen Janowski and Tim Stahmer for your participation, your probing questions, and your willingness to devote time to this. We - and our students - really appreciate it.

What Didn’t Go Well
MeBeam updated their software a couple of days before we did this. As part of that upgrade, they implemented a “motion detection” system so that people didn’t use up their bandwidth with a webcam pointed at a wall or something. If it doesn’t sense any motion for about 10 seconds, it kicks you out of the room. But that meant that if folks trying to tune in to the MeBeam broadcast didn’t have a webcam connected, it booted them out. Luckily MeBeam still has their “original style” available that works without the motion detection system. I found that out the day before, but didn’t get that communicated to everyone in time. Since the feedback from the remote bloggers is that hearing the in-class discussion was really helpful, that was not ideal for those folks that couldn’t connect. Hopefully this week we’ll do better. Also, at least one remote blogger had firewall issues that wouldn’t allow him to connect to MeBeam. MeBeam uses Flash and a pretty standard port, but apparently not standard enough.

While for the most part the student discussion was really good, they did get off-topic a little more than I expected. From previous fishbowl discussions I’ve seen them conduct, they usually do an excellent job of staying on topic. I think the difference was mostly because it was a non-fiction book, and that threw them a little bit. I wanted them to focus mostly on the concept of Design, but they spent more of their time on right brain/left brain issues. I still think it was a great discussion in all four sections, but that’s something we can hopefully improve on this week (focusing on Story this week).

What I Still Wonder About
Sylvia gave us some thoughtful feedback asking if we had thought about exploring the science of right brain/left brain a little bit more, since the extreme dichotomy of “the left brain does this, the right brain that” has been somewhat discredited. (My reading of the science is that each hemisphere is still “specialized” and operates differently, but that the interplay is very complex.) To be honest, I was more focused on the six senses and not the science, and wasn’t that worried about the science because Pink was using it as a metaphor, not a scientific “fact.” For me (and this is just me), I want to explore the usefulness and applicability of the six senses to today’s students, both in a school setting and beyond. I feel like schools are pretty “L-directed” (to use Pink’s term where he tries to avoid the “left brain” idea) and that we need to incorporate more “R-directed” activities and even policies into our schools. Not everyone agrees that that is the case, of course, but I think it’s worth exploring. But Sylvia’s comments make me question whether we should’ve expanded this project even more to include the science, and I wonder how we could’ve done that effectively (or possibly could do it effectively in the future). So if folks have suggestions – or links to good resources that explore this further – please leave a comment.

You can read Anne Smith’s and Maura Moritz’s reflection on how last week went, as well as posts by Darren, Julie and Sharon with their thoughts. If you’d like to read through the live blog posts, here are the four sections (Period 2, Period 3, Period 4, Period 5). And Dan Pink has chimed in with a question for our students (on Anne’s class blog, on Maura’s class blog).

Overall, I think it was a very successful start to the project. We’re hoping that with some tweaks to the process (like sending better MeBeam instructions to the remote bloggers) and a reminder to the students to stay more on the topic of the particular chapter they are discussing, that this week will be even better. This week we’re looking forward to hearing from two of our school board members, Dan Maas (our CIO), Kristin Hokanson, Miguel Guhlin, Ben Wilkoff, Lori Soifer (a school board trustee in Michigan), Christian Long and Jim Gates.