Be of Use

I love big, new bold ideas for education. Anything John Seely Brown writes, I eat it up. Disrupting Class, couldn't put it down. The best books I've read lately about professional learning have been written by corporate trainers. I enjoy a wide variety of perspectives and experiences. Despite this, lately I've begun to get a little wary of the "education outsider as reformer" story line. What do they really do? Michele Rhee made a lot of noise, but wasn't able to keep her job long enough to see things through. She railed that the unions ran her out of DC, and now she spends her time raising money to elect school board members who are in line with her vision for change. Seems more like influence via Citizens United style tactics rather than reform. For all the talk about what Joel Klein did in NYC, there are plenty questions about the actual achievement that occurred during his rein. I don't know many teachers who are flipping over the Obama/Duncan agend...

A few things came together today to make me think about the term hacker . The book of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, David Warlick's post Learner as Hacker  and an email from a colleague all caused me to reflect on the term, that to your average person views as a negative thing. The colleague was asking about a friend's email being hacked - just wondering if she had to worry about anything. I didn't think much of it until I came across Warlick's post on "learning as the practice of hacking." Excellent stuff, with a great deal of quotable lines on the parallels between hacking and how we need to prepare students today for life-long learning. When Woz was putting together boards with the Homebrew Computer Club , he thought of himself as a hacker, but then there was no negative conotation with the term. In his letter to prospective shareholders  a new generation of hacker, Mark Zuckerberg writes about the bad rap: The word "hacker" has an unfairl...

I'm wrapping up Jay Cross's Informal Learning , a book I started between semesters this winter and picked back up after wrapping up my last final at UWM. The New Social Learning   and Personal Learning Networks   started to reframe my thinking on what we need professional development to be - learner centered, flexible, online, informal...not top down, large group, "formal" classes or sessions. I think that this change is obvious, especially in light of the push for Professional Learning Communities that help create job-embedded learning opportunities for staff. But it's not an easy sell, at least for me, to the powers that be. They seem to not know anything else, other than the tried and true after school session, workshop or mashed together credit-worthy professional development class. Development opportunities, some think, need to have a date on the calendar or event, with a stopwatch keeping track of the time. Could their be a more top-down approach to lear...

I'm glad a few years ago I introduced the book 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times  to our administration. It was exciting to have an assistant superintendent interested in changing the conversation for learning in our school district. While I still certainly appreciate the content of this book, I am soooooooo sick of hearing about 21st Century Learning, 21st Century Skills, 21st Century ad nauseam . Isn't there a better way to phrase this for everyday conversation? Perhaps we need to stick with this so everyone hears consistent jargon, but I don't think people overall have the right idea of what it means. I would imagine if we polled our staff or parents they would say its technology or computer skills. That couldn't be further from the truth. If I say higher order thinking skills  I think that's pretty clear (at least to me) of what that means. I worry 21st Century  means the Jetsons or Star Trek to all too many people. I appreciate Tony Wag...

I strongly believe in instructional visions that put the teachers on the sideline facilitating learning instead of leading it. Be it the flipped classroom or Clayton Christensen's vision of learning programs and games taking the lead in personalizing instruction, I think we need to embrace this developing role. The teacher is by no means marginalized with these models, simply more of a coach or counselor. In the world of easy access to information personal relationships development trumps content expertise. For those of us working in technology, we've known for a long time that its okay to tell someone "I don't know, but will look into it" (I think that's a Doug Johnson line...). All of us in education need to be okay with that, from the superintendent on down. Content expertise is great, but I think humility is more important. I get it that it's a tough pill to swallow for some, but I feel I've been both happier and more effective in my job since I...

It's funny that I started this rant on January 3rd, then on January 4th this post appears on All Things PLC - Creating Buy-In for PLCs ---------------------------------------------- "The OSEP (Office of Special Education Programs) Technical Assistance Center on the SWPIS website (www.pbis.org) suggests that before schools begin implementing any sort of system change, they achieve at least 80 percent buy-in from building staff" (Windram, Bollman & Johnson, 2012). 80%! Really? In the book How RTI Works in Secondary Schools:Building a Framework for Success  authors Holly Windram, Kerry Bollman and Sara Johnson cite reliable sources - Mike Schmoker ( Results Now ) and Anthony Muhammed ( Transforming School Culture )  on the importance of buy-in. I'm not questioning the importance of buy-in. After a great deal of reading and seeing change flounder in different settings, I'm just starting to wonder what kind of Herculean effort is needed to pull it off? Windr...