Building Understanding

Pick your tune…

“It’s been a while…” – Staind

“It’s been a long time, since I rock and rolled!” – Led Zepplin

“Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio…” – Simon and Garfunkel

And I’m sure there are many others.  Regardless, they all capture that at a current posting rate of once every 6 months, I can hardly expect anybody to still be at the other end of this.  I have good excuses like “it was my first year as an administrator” and “I have a young family” and “I’m so busy learning that I don’t have time to share”.  They’re all legit, but in a time when we abandon an RSS feed that hasn’t gone bold in months, it would be unreasonable to think anybody’d still be here.

And yet I write.

I write to get my thoughts out.

I write to get my thoughts together.

I write because I need to frame those thoughts – to reflect on where I am, what I’m doing, whether I’m heading in the right direction and maybe to figure out if I’m making a difference.  Maybe not accurate, but somehow it feels like sharing it (even if it’s with no one) seeks validation or at least like-mindedness.

In the end, it doesn’t matter, because the real difference we’re trying to make is with the students in our care.  This is where I look for a difference to be made.  This is where we must find out if learning is better (if kids are better!) because of what we do.

(And apparently I write to go off on tangents.)

“Back to life.  Back to reality.” – En Vogue (that’s right, I quoted En Vogue) (update: apparently I didn’t…I quoted Soul II Soul!)

So I’m getting back into writing the blog.

And I’m getting back into, with the school year underway, trying to Build Understanding at my school.  Supporting and learning from my Principal as we lead faculty and students to better learning, challenge, reflection, and global awareness.

And that’s the key to our school’s Mission – to build understanding.  Understanding of content.  Understanding of self.  Understanding of others (including the global community).

I’m in my second year now as an administrator, so I don’t get the excuse of learning the job anymore.  I’m back.  I want back into the community of learners/educators out here and I know I’m going to have to earn my way back in with contribution.

I’m getting back into it.

image by Mike Rohde, Flickr Creative Commons

Just a re-blog here (is that the blog equivalent of the retweet?)…

Found this at the Educator’s PLN added by Thomas Whitby.  A Prezi on Todd Whitaker’s book “What Great Principals Do Differently:  The Fifteen Things that Matter Most”, by Jennifer Angel.

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

Technology can do a lot of things.

Some are faster ways to do tedious things (like repeated calculations, making graphs, or maintainig draft versions of writing).  These are helpful.

Others provide flashy ways to present ideas (like web sites, presentations, and publications).  These can be incredibly powerful.  They can also be painfully mis-used.

But there is a part of technology that we have only begun to tap into that is transformational.  There are things technology can do for us now, that simply were not possible before.

Technology can connect us to anyone.

Watch this.

(you most likely have seen this Connectivism video at either Wes Fryer’s blog or Jenny Luca’s)

Pretty powerful.  And technology allows us to do that now.

Okay, it’s complete out-of-the-box thinking time.

Why do schools teach what they do? 

Really, that’s what I’m asking…what’s it good for?

How is the content curriculum that we teach kids helping them?

(And I am not accepting any version of “it prepares them for the next level of school.”)

In older posts on this blog, I’ve written that school curriculum NEEDS a major shift: (whole post here)

21st century learners need thinking skills. They need to be able to find, process, and evaluate information that is EVERYWHERE and always accessible. They need to be able to participate in an interconnected, wired world in effective and responsible ways. They NEED to be taught how to manage/handle/thrive amidst all of the information that is out there and continuing to grow.

Our allegiance to English, Science, Math, and Social Studies as core curricular ideals and the end-all-be-all in student learning needs to make room for higher order thinking, questioning, and information literacy.

And after sharing my thoughts on the NYTimes reported failure of a laptop program, I offered: (whole post here)

Our curricula of content mired in Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies is not preparing students for anything but further education focused on these same subjects.

What students learn needs to be different and how they learn needs to be different.

These are not unique ideas.  Throughout the edublogosphere in varying degrees, educators are talking about the importance of a 21st Century Curriculum (for lack of a better name).

So I ask this question, in light of the shared belief that a 21st Century curriculum focused on thinking, communicating and collaborating skills is necessary for a world in which knowledge is so readily accessible.

What is the point of the way current curriculum is setup?

More specifically, break it down into the classic subjects:

• Why do we learn Language Arts (or English in HS)?
• Why do we learn Social Studies?
• Why do we learn Science?
• Why do we learn Math?
• Why do we learn Art (performing and visual)?

(note:  I stick to these subjects, because Language learning seems to have an obvious practicality, as does Health/PE.)

Is this too bold to ask?  Can we defend what we do as schools?

No more, “That’s the way we’ve always done it” defense.

Out of the box time.

Prove that what we say we value is useful.

Truly no offense intended to any of these subjects and the educators who teach them.  I just want to hear from the experts what the right answers are.

Please feel free to answer any and all in the comments.

Image: “Question!” by Bast, found at Flickr Creative Commons

Also posted as a guest blogger on Dangerously Irrelevant under the title, “Curriculum 2.0 – building buy-in and shared understanding”

In our last post, Justin and I shared with you our 5 essential questions for the 21st Century Learner as well as our thinking behind how and why we felt the need to re-shape the way “technology” curriculum is embedded into classroom learning. We built our work on our new literacy wiki – as a collaborative environment for us, but also in anticipation of wanting needing to share our work with a greater audience for feedback and ultimately contribution at a later date. The wiki was the perfect environment for this. By documenting the evolution of this curricular journey in a public venue we hope to garner feedback and critical friending that will hopefully lead to a better and stronger framework.

Besides isn’t this “shift” all about the power of sharing and networks?

While it’s focus is on making “technology integration” more accessible to teachers and more meaningful to students, it actually attempts to articulate an approach and create a through line that run beside all other subject curricula. Finally an answer to the question “who is going to teach these skills?”……….. Everyone is.

We called it Curriculum 2.0.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/4xBYSdMK1LU" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Once we finished the initial framework it was time to get some feedback.

Involving our Curriculum coordinators, Technology Director and our new colleague, Kim Cofino (how lucky were we?!), the conversations that emerged were awesome. We felt it important to shop the concept around to as many different people as possible in order to get a balanced perspective. Teachers ultimately want to know “what will this look like?” and “how will be it be supported?” and we had to have some answers ready. Through conversation, challenging questions, and true collaboration, we were able to fine tune our original 5 questions into three focused roles of technology in 21st century learning. More on this and the on the philosophy behind our structure in our next post, but until then you can ruminate on the diagram below.

In this post, we wanted to focus on the conversations that got us here.

In addition to working with key people at ISB, we presented our work at the Learning 2.0 Conference in Shanghai in mid September. The feedback was very positive. It was validating to see that other technology coordinators were experiencing the same sort of difficulties with past IT integration scope and sequences. And it was energizing to see that our work was striking a chord. [side note: Dennis will present the work further at the EARCOS Teachers' Conference in Kuala Lumpur in March. If you are there, it'd be great to see you at the session.]

With positive vibes flowing all around, the next step was to include our school leadership. As we mentioned in an earlier post, we work closely with our school Leadership Team in a distributed leadership model with them often looking to us for guidance – leadership in a different direction. Over the past year, we have been presenting various technology tools and ideas to the LT to give them a better sense of what to look for in classrooms and what to expect in educational change in the coming years.

Here in the edublogosphere, we often preach to the converted. In general, there is a lot of agreement on how education needs to change and technology’s role in that change. We recognize the shift that is happening and the impact that will have on our students and should have on their learning. We commiserate on how administration or faculty just don’t get it and celebrate together when they do.

We seldom talk about how important the process to bring them along is – that is a conversation that matters.

Our work with the LT brought this to light for us. To a large degree, they trust us. And that’s a great start, but to enact major curricular change, we had to first convince them of the need. We had to describe an inevitable world that required innovators, thinkers, collaborators, and communicators. One in which knowing something was less important than creating something and in which working in a group meant talking to people around the world and being able to communicate in more than one way.

We had to create a shared understanding of what 21st century learning is and why it’s important. We had to allow them to help frame the context in which this could work at ISB. With that individual, personal input, you can achieve buy-in. Then you can challenge them by asking, what are we going to do about it?

Our point: you can’t skip these conversations.

As other schools or technology folks begin to use our framework to develop their own integration plans, we remind them, make sure you have the conversations. Use our work as a starting point for conversations that encourage questioning and challenge thinking. If we can’t defend our rationale for a curricular model like this, then it isn’t worth doing. Give stake holders a chance to process, question, and understand. (sounds like good teaching!)

Whether it comes via top leadership or from another direction, in order for school change to happen, buy-in has to come from shared understanding. And that only comes from conversations that matter.

For us, the next steps are to flesh out our framework and bring it more formally to teachers, where again, conversation will lead to shared understanding. It’s what didn’t happen at T.C. Williams and why all the tech in the world isn’t improving student learning there.

No matter how “right” we know we are, you must get buy-in and shared understanding.

You can’t skip the conversations.

with Justin Medved

Tomorrow’s post: Refining the Idea

Cross Posted at: Medagogy and Dangerously Irrelevant

Also posted as a guest blogger on Dangerously Irrelevant.

Last year, Justin Medved and I sat down to tackle the big question, “How does an information and technology curriculum stay relevant and meaningful in the 21st Century.” As Technology and Learning Coordinators at the International School of Bangkok this question was important to us for three reasons.

1) 2006-7 was a WASC accreditation year for ISB and we were charged with taking a look at the K-12 Information Technology curriculum and creating a plan of action to improve it.

2) The discussions and writings coming out of the edu-blogosphere last year were rich in ideas all about “shift” , “re-thinking” and “who is teaching these new skills?”. It was hard not to feel like there was some momentum building around a fresh educational paradigm and a shift away from the “integration of technology” in the classroom, moving towards “embedding” it in the way schools “do business”.

3) Prior to our roles as coordinators we had both taught in schools with elaborate technology scope and sequence plans which we felt had little to no impact on learning and often became outdated the moment they were written. We also felt that the previous NET standards were too bulky and disconnected from the average classroom teacher. We wanted to create something that could stand the test of time and be manageable to the average teacher.

With initiative and a purpose driving us forward we sat down to write a rationale to guide our approach. We came up with this:

“We believe that technology is a tool that can help and enhance learning. Everyday we see technology used as a tool outside of formal schooling for communication, collaboration, understanding, and accessing knowledge. It is our goal in developing an integrated curriculum to ensure that the way students learn with technology agrees with the way they live with technology.

Technology is in a constant state of evolution and change. Access speeds, hardware, software, and computer capabilities all evolve and improve on a monthly basis. This change occurs at a rate at which it is impossible for schools to keep up and adapt. Is it not time that we create a curriculum model that understands and this fact and works with it rather than tries to control it?

Too often typical information technology curricula have focused heavily on skills and their scope and sequence across the curriculum. The hard reality of this approach was that they became outdated as soon as they were printed due to changes in software, hardware and the skills that students came equipped with.

Instead of asking the question “What technology skills must a students have to face the 21st century?” should we not be asking “What thinking and literacy skills must a students have to face the 21st century?” These skills are not tied to any particular software or technology-type, but rather aim to provide students with the thinking skill and thus the opportunity to succeed no matter what their futures hold.”

We felt strongly that for too long that way technology was integrated with learning focused more on the tool and less on the curriculum/content that it could be used to support. To compound this fact ,since technology changes so rapidly it became almost impossible to map what “skills” students needed to learn from year to year as new technology arrived on the scene and old skills trickled down age groups. It wasn’t long ago that spreadsheets were the domain of high school students in accounting classes. Now we introduce them to fifth graders doing graphing and data analysis.

Typically teachers saw teaching these technology hardware and software skills as “someone else’s job.” IT skills to be learned in isolation. Yet schools rightly began to insist that technology be integrated into classroom practice.

Under this technology skill curricular model, faced with teachers ill-equipped and not believing that it was their job, IT integration was doomed to failure.

We had to think bigger different ……..

Looking at Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design approach to curriculum and unit design we liked how big “essential questions” and “enduring understandings” had helped us plan and design units when we were teaching math and social studies. What if this same “best practice” approach could be applied to the way technology was used and talked about in the classroom? If this was good curricular design practice, why should technology and thinking curriculum be any different? What if that same approach was used in the way we looked at connecting technology and learning across the curriculum? What if there were only a few manageable questions that even the most tech-resistant teacher could see value in?

Over the school year we fleshed out these questions and ideas and came up five essential questions that we felt addressed the core elements of a comprehensive technology and learning curriculum – one focused on the thinking that was needed for the 21st century learner, rather than the technology.

• How do you know information is true?
• How do you communicate effectively?
• What does it mean to be a global citizen?
• How do I learn best?
• How can we be safe?

You can read into the elements of each of these questions at our curriculum wiki – http://newliteracy.wikispaces.com/

What do you think of the approach? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

with Justin Medved

Tomorrow’s post: Curriculum 2.0 – Creating buy-in, shopping an idea and refining through collaboration

Cross Posted at: Medagogy and Dangerously Irrelevant

We spend a lot of time at schools talking about what learning looks like.

We design assessment to be authentic, specifically to ensure we see children demonstrate what they have learned in an applied, meaningful way.

We debate and discuss how to recognize learning. Will we recognize it, when we see it?

What does learning look like?

Maybe we think too much.

Today I saw learning so clearly, it almost slapped me in the face.

My 2-soon to be 3-yr old son finally got a shot at our new/old little blue iMac (hard to believe that this model was ever an adult desktop computer!). He was on a Playhouse Disney online game – his older sister was out playing with friends. He simply had to navigate Pluto through a maze to the different musical instruments.

Watching him play this game, his processing was so clear that it was as if you could see into his brain. While his eyes scanned the screen and then looked down at his finger poised above the 4 arrow keys, you could almost hear the loud clap of pieces snapping into place. He would catch himself pushing the arrow too many times or in the wrong direction and he would shake his hands in the air as if to say…whoa, I did too much!

Then he’d make adjustments and correct his path.



Amazing. Awesome.

I sat there, watching him, so proud. Not because he was on a computer and I’m a geek, but because I was watching him learn…my kid was learning. It happens all the time (and I’m proud every single one of those times), but today, it was just so blatantly clear.

I loved seeing him raise his tiny fists in the air in celebration when he achieved his goal (and got immediate feedback – thank you technology). And I loved seeing him want to do more…to practice his newly learned knowledge/skills.



And we think kids on games are bad…why again? (Another whole post…I know.)

But today, I was reminded so clearly what learning looks like. I have not done its power justice here in this post. Maybe I’m still beaming too much with pride to write clearly.

Or maybe it’s something that’s hard to describe, which is why we educators spend so much time laboring over what it will look like and designing just the right assessment tools.

It might be hard to put into words.

But it isn’t hard to see.

You just have to give kids the chance to think.

Then just sit back and watch.