Building Understanding

This is the theme of this year’s EARCOS Leadership Conference in Kuala Lumpur (Follow: #elc12 and @EARCOSORG) this weekend.  This question is recalling many of the arguments and discussions had on the blogosphere in the past few years.

Is our curriculum tied to tradional subjects outdated?

How will online tools be a part of learning?

Are the structures of a “course” outdated and overly rigid?

How can we individualize the pace and path of learning?

These ideas and questions were introduced in the opening remarks by EARCOS President Tim Carr (Head of School at Jakarta International School) and the opening keynote by Dr. Milton Chen of the GeorgeLucas Foundation and EduTopia.

This is right up my alley as a former techie turned administrator self-purposed with changing the way we have kids learn.

Looking forward to it!

(hoping it’s not a sign of things to come that the first session I attended turned out to be a full room waiting for a presenter than never showed!)

More posts of learning to come!

I’ve been out of the game a little bit and so I have to admit that I am incredibly excited to be heading to Shanghai tomorrow for the Learning 2.011 conference.  Great opportunity to reconnect with leaders in the Technology and Learning field, while also re-igniting my passion for learning outside of the traditional subject areas of schools.

I’m going.  Will I see you there?

A wonderful reminder by (ironically) DTAC Thailand to appreciate our human connections.  Love it.

Woke up this morning, I suddenly realized, we’re all in this together. – Ben Lee

This is a post that has been ruminating in my head for 6 months now.  Wonderful lyrics in a great song and lots of ties into what learning and school culture needs to emulate.  The post is all the more fitting now as I have started the next phase of my career in education – administration.

So at the start of August, it was time for me to introduce myself to staff then later students and parents as the new HS Dean of Students.  What was I going to say?  What am I about?  What will it be like with me in this role?

And this song kept running through my head.

I’m made of atoms.  You’re made of atoms. And we’re all in this together.

What schools need to be is a place where students do more than avoid doing what’s wrong.  Instead they do what’s right.  A school should be a place more than of rules and consequences – it should be a culture of looking out for each other, protecting those being picked on and taking a stance against bullying.

And this doesn’t come from a Vice-Principal or Dean of Students who plays the “bad guy”.  It comes from a community of teachers and adults who understand that setting the boundaries up is EVERYONE’S JOB.  Not noticing or turning a blind eye to infractions, bad language, or inappropriate behavior is equivalent to endorsing it.  I (t)asked our faculty to become part of that school culture.  To help me build it so that students understood that the boundaries are consistent, not haphazard.

And long division just doesn’t matter, cuz we’re all in this together.

But even with that, we are talking about a student culture here as well.  Too often I see school cultures of Us vs Them.  In my introduction to students I reminded them that teachers, counselors, administrators, and students all want the same thing – for the student to have a successful 4 years with us that allows them to be successful beyond those 4 years.  Now right now, maybe our picture of what that success looks like, may be different than the students’ vision.  Even so, they are certainly IN THE SAME DIRECTION.  The boundaries exist to ensure success for all students.  We are all in this together.

Students need to be reminded that we are all working in the same direction, working towards similar in not identical goals.  Adults in the building need to be part of this process and students need to understand that they are.

Every twelve seconds someone remembers that were all in this together.

As I and so many have written in the edu-blogosphere, our students face an unpredictable future.  It’s all changing so fast.  For them.  For us.  Navigating this change and preparing ourselves for that uncertain future is our task.  And “building understanding” requires more than coursework comprehension, more than expertise in communication, collaboration, and creation.  It requires building community.

Building real understanding between people so that we all look out for each other and do what’s right.

The city’s changing, cuz we are changing and we’re all in this together.

This is the role of educators.  It must be the culture of schools.

This is the responsibility of school leaders.

Understanding is strangers and cultures realizing that we are all in this together.  That we need each other to be successful must be the culture of education.

“On the subway, we feel like strangers, but we’re all in this together.”

It is my task to help make this our school culture.  Wish me luck.

Ask a scientist.  It’s quantum physics.  We’re all in this together.

“Mucho Jacks” image by laszlo-photo, used under Creative Commons

Inspired by the return to the cross-linking blog post conversation, like the Lehmann (via status update) to Shareski to Fisher to  Utecht to Warlick posts about the value of audience, I’d like to bring together a couple of ideas that have come across my reader and my mind of late.

Like all schools, we talk about polices to keep our students safe online.

Recently, I came across the article from the NYTimes reporting on the study commissioned by 49 state attorneys in the US for the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University to look at the dangers for children in social networking.  Their findings:  on- and off-line bullying are real issues for students and online solicitation is no greater than it would be offline.

From the article:

…children and teenagers were unlikely to be propositioned by adults online. In the cases that do exist, the report said, teenagers are typically willing participants and are already at risk because of poor home environments, substance abuse or other problems.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t teach our students to be safe with their contact information, who they talk to, and how to protect themselves.  Of course we should.  But the typical blanket policy keeping student names away from photos may need re-thinking.

Dean Shareski’s very smart post (via Kim Cofino) reminded us how much we have always celebrated when our students are mentioned in the newspaper.  As they win awards and scholarships, schools honor them in publications and even school websites. But do we provide this opportunity for all students?

One of Shareski’s district leaders replied,

There are kids with special talents that few people know about. What about them? I would bet our schools are full of kids like Tanner but their talent is in Art, or Drama, or Math, or Writing etc. Most kids probably don’t even know where their talent is! But if they did, would they be able to open the doors like Tanner has? How does a superior math student get “recruited” to a University? Can a dance student get into the National Ballet if nobody knows what they have accomplished? At some point everyone needs to “sell themselves” in a job interview, or a business proposal, or even a meeting with the bank manager for your first mortgage.   If we can show kids that their accomplishments are to be proud of, and that the accomplishments are not anonymous, we can teach self confidence, and true self esteem.

Why didn’t I think of that?

No, really, why didn’t I?  Why have I along with others never seen that side of it?  If most believe it’s okay wonderful that students’ accomplishments are celebrated in the newspaper and on TV, why do we have such a problem attaching a kid’s face to a name?  Have we deluded ourselves into thinking that predators don’t read the paper or watch television?

Do creepy people only surf the web?

Working with high school students on blogging this year, I have emphasized taking control of their online persona to present a side of themselves that their Facebook accounts probably don’t.

And the kids get this.

In fact, they want this.  They see the value, they want their voice to be part of conversations and they want to be associated with intelligent writing, their passions, and their accomplishments.  How can they do this if they don’t have a blog associated with their name and media associated with their joys and successes?  They can’t and shouldn’t have to.

When schools develop or rethink online safety measures,  their programs must educate children in stages (dare I say, build understanding?), gradually lowering the walls of their online gardens so that when they are wise enough to recognize threats, they are also given the opportunities to showcase themselves.  At appropriate ages, students NEED to be able to put their name on things.

Not just because it’s theirs, but because they deserve to feel proud it’s theirs.

It began when Tara and I took on the task of articulating our ISB21 curriculum’s standards and benchmarks.  I voiced it in a single tweet:

Okay, some background…

Our task is to ensure that the thorough standards from both ISTE and AASL were completely represented, while remaining true to one of our original tenets:

To be a successful curriculum, one that will truly be part of students’ educational experience, it must be accessible to teachers.

This was very important to Justin and I as we began to develop our ideas and remained important to the whole ISB21 team as each member joined the conversation.  Eventually, ISTE and AASL caught up with us and now its a matter of fitting their great work into our original framework.  But the premise remains.  Past models – the best they could be in their time – generally failed because teachers did not believe it was their job to teach technology.

Now, of course, we realize that technology is merely part of a much bigger conversation about Communication, Collaboration, Innovation, and Thinking.  Online conversations, articles, video mash-ups, and tweets emerge constantly extolling the virtues of a 21st Century Curriculum for 21st Century Learners.  I know…I’ve posted a lot of them.  And we have plenty of credible backing – take ISTE, AASL, Howard Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future,  or the IB Learner Profile to name a few.  They all tell us what we want our kids to turn out like.  They all remind us what we need to value in education.

But we don’t.

At least not in action.  (GENERALIZATION ALERT:)  Schools continue to push content-driven curricula.  Teachers continue to plan lessons building expertise within the discipline.  And if students get our “21st Century Skills”, it’s because of an exception-to-the-rule teacher, choices the students make outside of class, or just plain luck.

We all know that what we need is buy-in.  We see the success stories, celebrate the schools that do it, and ultimately wonder, what does it take to make it work everywhere?  Buy-in.

So back to the teacher accessibility issue.

How do we ensure that teachers see teaching a 21st Century Curriculum as part of their job?

Our way has been to remind teachers that they have ALWAYS valued effective communication, collaboration, innovation, and thinking in their students.  Only the media and the degree to which each is possible have changed.

How we communicate, collaborate, innovate, and think IS different.  Or rather, it can be different.  We still need the ways of the past, but have added ever-changing/growing ways of the present and future.  This is the core principle of our 21st Century Skills.  They are actually 20th Century skills, maybe even 18th Century skills, only they use and will continue to use 21st Century tools.

So how do we build a real and enduring understanding of this?

Half our problem may be the terminology.  On the blogosphere (or is it “in” the blogosphere?), we all know what it means when we say “21st Century”.  It comes embedded with all sorts of extra implications, meanings, connotations, and suggestions.  We understand it, because we’ve read blog posts that converted us, seen videos that shift our understanding, conversed with global colleagues that re-shape and/or affirm our thinking, and joined 100-comment conversations that engaged us so much that we changed the very way we perceived the world, the learner, and our role in education.

But does everyone else get all that when they hear “21st Century skills”?  How could they?  They lack our experiences and our scaffolding.  Not only does it fail to carry the same perspective-shifting connotation, but at worse, may even send a message of “you neither value how I learned nor how I teach.  You are telling me that what I value is not valuable.”

Perhaps that is an extreme view, but it may not  be far from the truth.  In our efforts to spread the gospel, we do our best to explain the significance, but if we want buy-in, let’s remember our audience.  Let’s tap into what our educators already buy into.  They are professional, care about kids, and want their students to succeed.  They understand and value good communication, critical thinking, and collaboration.

Don’t put them off with catch phrases and “excluding” words.  (why do we do that , by the way…blog, wiki, tweet, glog, vlog, apps…are we trying to confuse everyone?)

Instead, remind them, it’s about adapting what they already value to a world that requires new ways to do them.   Remind yourselves that your teachers have ALWAYS been trying to prepare their students to succeed in the world they will live in.  And then collaborate with them on how that world has changed.

As for what we call it instead.  I’m open to suggestions.

Stay tuned.

Image, Future or Bust, by Vermin Inc

Image, Into the future but now without the past, by janusz l

Welcome.

I have been writing (on and off) online for just a couple years now at the site Thinking Allowed, but have finally made the leap into owning a domain and controlling my own stuff.  I feel like  a renter who’s bought his first home.  Exciting, but more pressure.

But it’s finally time.

I’ve changed the blog name as part of the move as a by-product of some thoughts I am sorting through myself.  In education, we are shifting our thinking to accomodate include learning in a globally connected and rapidly changing world.  But we know good learners do more than communicate, collaborate, and think.  We know learners need to understand.  They need to construct meaning and understand scientific principles, literature, art, etc.  But that’s not all.  They also need to Be Understanding.

At a conference I recently attended, Project Zero’s Ron Ritchhart asked this question:

What do we want the children we teach to be like when they are adults?

Overwhelmingly, responses to this speak to dispositions like ethics, independent learning, caring, creativity, and such.  Yet in schools we often focus on creating technical experts in history, math, science and more with little connection to how these students will live their lives.  Are we actively striving to produce these types of adults or does it happen by chance?

Do schools build learners we value by happenstance or intent?

Are we building understanding in our learners?  In our teachers?  It has become a focus for me to ensure that we are, both in their content learning and more altruistically in the way they interact with their community and their world.  Additionally, I still have so much to learn and come to understand as I try to improve school education for learners in a Flat World from my current role as a Technology and Learning Coordinator or in my future (hopefully) role as a school leader.

So “Building Understanding” it is.  For our students.  For teachers and administrators.  For content.  For the whole child.

I’m also building understanding for me.  So much to learn and so many people to learn from.  I hope you join me in this effort and the conversation to come.

images found searching Flickr Creative Commons:  Worn Old Welcome Mat by Jason-Morrison, I Understand Everything (mostly) by gak

A story in the news lately has a 13-yr old Italian boy diagnosed with addiction to PlayStation.  Is this a case of lost in translation from Italian to English or does it mark the beginning of a new medical diagnosis?  The American Medical Association thought otherwise last year when it essentially stated that “while overuse of video games and online games can be a problem for children and adults, calling it a formal addiction would be premature.” (Wash Post article)

Here’s the story in a nutshell:

I watched this story and had some thoughts…

I believe that people become obsessed with games because they represent an outlet from a “regular” life that doesn’t live up to expectations or desires.  Gaming provides feedback, praise, challenge, success, and potential that many are not finding in their non-virtual experiences.

If teens in our schools are becoming addicted (for lack of a better word) to escaping reality, then we need to find ways to include positive experiences in their real lives.

I get that we are about embracing who they are and how they interact with the world.  I get that games are here to stay – in fact, I quite like most of them.

But we have to care about the whole child.  If we are really producing 21st Century success stories, then let’s make sure that includes being a part of a world.  I think we will increasingly value this as it becomes less and less a part of our lives.

What are we talking/sharing/doing about ensuring that kids are out helping people, feeling like they count for something, and are important?

Are we challenging kids?

Are we praising kids for accomplishments they care about?

Are we engaging kids to be better than they were?

If we can do that, we will find that kids are having fun with games, and are addicted to life.