I Think That Tomorrow Will be a Fight

Today we had a school wide assembly.  At the assembly the students were told that as of tomorrow they were no longer going to be allowed to have cell phones during class hours.  The cell phones will be collected at homeroom periods and returned during noon hour.  This is okay.  We talked about it during our last staff meeting.   We really have not done much of a job of teaching our students to use the cell phones respectfully and productively.  Our students' cell phone use is really distracting them from their education.  We teach at a difficult school and we are scrambling to help our students succeed academically.

Then our principal blindsides us (during the assembly) by telling all of the students that staff members will be locking up our cell phones as well (contrary to the mandate of the staff handbook).  Let me start with my initial irrational reaction.  No bloody way.  There is no way that you are going to take away my shiny new iPhone.  I will not be separated from having Google in my pocket.

Let me explain a bit before I move on to my more rational reaction.  I finally got my first smartphone a few months ago and I have been working hard at finding ways to integrate it into my daily work and daily life.  I now read my email on it more than I do my computer.  I have my life programmed into the calendar.  I use it to refer to my day plans.  It is a quick reference tool, my calculator, one of my notepads, and my camera.   I read most of my books on my smartphone.  It even sends me texts to remind me when I have supervision.  I feel much more organized when I have this tool with me.  I am an edtechnophile.

And now for something completely different - my rational reaction (after thinking about it of course).  I agree that I will get better buy in from my students if I lead by example.  They are more likely to comply if I am not flashing my own cell phone in their faces.  I will do it (with some grumbling out of student earshot).  I may even agree with doing it.  Enough said.

If I reacted this strongly, how are our students going to do?

I still think that tomorrow will be a fight.








On a related note:  Take a look at the slides from this presentation by David Truss a few years back.

Photo Credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/photojonny/2438765145/

Mastery

!!!!!DISCLAIMER!!!!!

I am sorry to have to do it but this post is not a informative, instructional post. It is a rant. If you are here to learn how to use the internet and technology, good. But ignore this post. If you are interested in reading the opinion of somebody who is completely and utterly right then read on. 

Definition of Mastery

great skillfulness and knowledge of some subject or activity
(wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn)


Very great skill or knowledge
(World Book Dictionary)


Possession or display of great skill or knowledge
(Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary)


Great skill, expert knowledge
(Gage Canadian Dictionary)


Can do the skill, twice.
(the standard teacher's definition)




Anybody see a problem?  As teachers we throw the word mastery around like a dirty dishrag at a community supper.  "Yes, they have mastered the skill."  Has the student?  Or can they merely do the skill (at least we have seen them do it - twice if we are good teachers).  We use the term way too loosely.  Is this just another symptom in our declining expectations?  Master means that they have amazing skill and or knowledge.  Wayne Gretzky mastered hockey.  Arnold Palmer mastered golf.  Steven Spielberg  mastered moviemaking.  A concert soloist has mastered their music.  Any olympic athlete has mastered their sport.  Many of my university professors mastered their content area (some even learned how to teach it).


Malcom Gladwell talks about mastery in his book Outliers.  "10,000 hours is the magic number of greatness."  That is how long it takes to truly achieve mastery.  In studies that ranged from musicians, to professional hockey players, to amazing computer programmers, the common factor was that they ALL worked for roughly 10,000 hours before becoming very good, before achieving mastery.  Skill is not what made them great - skill and working much, much harder than everyone else made them masters.


And here we go as teachers using the word.  We have watered it down and ruined it.  I don't even want to say it again.  It has become meaningless.  How many of our students have spent those kind of hours on any skill we teach them?  A student with perfect attendance would take until grade 11 to reach 10,000 hours of school (not counting homework).  Without a heck of a lot of homework do you really think they can achieve the M-word in any subject area?  


I have already heard the argument "But they have achieved mastery for their level."  (Yes I have gone off on this rant before.)  Really?  Have they?  Are they great?  Are they showing expert knowledge?  Or can they merely do it consistently.  I can drive down the road and consistently stay between the ditches.  Have I mastered driving?  No, I am merely good enough.  


And when has good enough ever been good enough?

Online Video Statistics

The average canadian watches over 605 minutes of online video every month.

That is what I heard on CBC Radio today on my drive in to work.  We watch an average of 10 hours a month.  Here is a link to some of the stats that they are quoting.  We are the top country for the amount of online video watched.  (The radio host figured it might have something to do with winter.)

Now you tell me we shouldn't be using this for and in education.

You tell me that we should be blocking these sites.

You tell me that we can't afford the bandwidth to use these tools.

Then get out of the way of my bus.

Photo Credit  http://www.flickr.com/photos/wheany/2233392126/

I Want a New Job

!!!!!DISCLAIMER!!!!!

I am sorry to have to do it but this post is not a informative, instructional post. It is a rant. If you are here to learn how to use the internet and technology, good. But ignore this post. If you are interested in reading the opinion of somebody who is completely and utterly right then read on. 

I want a new job.  You heard it right.  I want a new job.  Well ok, I would be satisfied with somebody else having this job if they had the power, authority, desire, and ability to do it well.

Ewan McIntosh described his dream job in the Ed Tech Posse podcast he participated in.  He wanted to be paid to jump on each and every bandwagon that came up.  He would then report back to others to see if the bandwagon was worth it.  Now I don't want his job - but my job would probably work well with his.

I want to be a Yes Man.  I want to be a Lets Find a Way Man.  I want my job to be finding ways to say yes to educators requests.  

Educator:  "Can I do/have (insert random skill/technology/tool)?'

Me: "Heck ya - that sounds awesome.  I am not sure how but lets find a way!"

Can I have that job?  Please?  Pretty please with cherries on top?  

I am qualified.  It started back when I was a kid with a bucket of Lego.  Any time I saw a new toy that I wanted (and knew I probably wouldn't get) I found a way to build it.  I was finding work arounds to get what I wanted.

I wanted a Smartboard.  It was not in the budget so I found a way to build the Poor Man's Interactive White Board - for a lot less money.  

We wanted GarageBand on our PCs.  So I found a PC equivilent (and if the Division doesn't get me the license soon going to get a less than legal version!  Yes this is an idle threat.)

I wanted Rockband but didn't want a console.  So I found a free open source program that works the same way.

We wanted Macs to do media editing.  The tech powers that be said no.  I found a way to say yes (and dealt with the consequences later).

I have been trying to do this job for a while now.  I just want the power and authority to make it happen.  I have the desire.  I want to say yes.  I want to say yes to other people!  I just don't have the authority or the power.  

Now we have some of these people in our division.  Yes people.  I suspect that you know who you are and you are wonderful.  You are awesome.  You are great.  Keep it up.  The problem is that you are blocked by NO people.  People whose first reaction is to say NO (usually with capital letters - sometimes with an examation mark).  NO People are controllers - they give up power grudgingly.  Yes People know that sharing power grants you the uber power of collaboration.  It is like that magic penny that keeps growing the more that you give it away.  Yes People scare No People.  No People don't understand them and find them threatening.  

Do not despise No People.  Pity them.  The world is strange and incomprehensable to them.  Treat them like a child that insists on telling bad knock knock jokes that make no sense.  Humour them and pretend that they are funny.  Then move on before things get too awkward.

Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock

Survey Question: How can we improve communication in the school?

My Response:

Give us more time. A lot of us use school time to have professional conversations with our co-workers (admin included). More planning days would definately lead to more of those conversations.

Note that those days must be unstructured planning time. Planning days where we just given more paperwork does not facilitate positive communication. It creates an us vs. them mentality where admin (both locally here and up at the division level) are definately not in the us part. That sort of thinking leads to lots of communication - negative communication.

More paper does not mean better communication. Too much information being passed down (paper and email) leads to cognitive overload and the message is never heard.

Ok, the cat is out of the bag. If my admin read this then they will know who filled out that particular annomous survey. (I suspect they would have anyways - I filled it out in crayon - and handed it directly to one of them).

Photo Credit: Maury McMown - used under a Creative Commons License

You Know that you are a Bureaucracy when.......

The other day I received an email from the folks up at the division office. The Living Sky School Division Glossary of Terms. What have we become now that we need a glossary of terms to operate? Oh yeah, one step closer to a bureaucracy. The document contains 57 items of administrative happiness (kind of like the ketchup but not nearly as tasty and just as messy). To quote the email that it came with it is "designed as a reference tool to decipher many of the acronyms and terms we frequently use in use in education." If we need to decipher the terms then we are using too much jargon. Why do we always feel the need to make ourselves feel more important by fancy terms that just confuse the layman? I would expect better from us - from educators. It is our job to take ideas and concepts and explain them in simpler and easier to understand ways.

There is a blog that I read titled Common Craft - Explanations in Plain English. They create a wonderful line of videos that do exactly what the title says. They explain things - simply and clearly. No extra fluff - just the bare concept. A lot of us can learn from them. Little to no jargon.

A friend and I once put on a session at one of our conferences (the title and content is not really relevant to this conversation). What applies is how we sold ourselves to our participants. At the door to one of the keynotes we hand out our calling cards - Buzzword Bingo handouts. Each square on the bingo chart had a different educational buzzword. Our goal was to get people to really think about the message that was being said. Don't just hear the buzzwords, listen for the meaning and the message. Anyways back to the point - one of the things we discussed was handing out the bingo sheets at a staff meeting (and letting our admin know about it). The purpose was to get them to use less jargon and fewer buzzwords.

The point? Well, lets look something I learned in my first year at the College of Engineering. The KISS principle - Keep It Simple Stupid. We are educators. Lets keep it simple.

Twisting in the Internet Swings

!!!!!DISCLAIMER!!!!!

I am sorry to have to do it but this post is not a informative, instructional post. It is a rant. If you are here to learn how to use the internet and technology, good. But ignore this post. If you are interested in reading the opinion of somebody who is completely and utterly right then read on.

Let me start with an analogy. I have a small child at home (11 months old tomorrow). Since he is crawling and almost walking he tends to move around a lot and get into EVERYTHING. He is also a very active boy. I have two options with him. I can either tether him to a chain in the center of the living room or I can let him move around and get into things. So my wife and I give him freedom. Yes he falls. Yes he bumps his head. Yes he gets scrapes and bruises. Yes he gets underfoot. Yes there are tears. And yes he sometimes gets into dangerous things he shouldn't. But we are right there with him. Every time he either gets hurt or gets a stern NO from us he learns about his limits. He finds out what is safe and what is not. This knowlege will be useful when he is older.

If we raise him in the padded room (and in a straight jacket like the cartoon) he will never get hurt. In that room. The minute he hits 8 years old and we finally let him out of his safe bubble he is going to go and get himself seriously hurt on the playground. He won't have learned that maybe jumping 2 meters to the ground is going to hurt. He has been so tightly protected and babied that he has no clue what his limits are! He will fail Darwin's natural selection because when it comes to real life common sense, my son would be STUPID! He would never have been given a chance to test his limits, to see what he can and can't do. And whose fault would it be? Mine.

We are doing exactly that with our internet content filtering. Ok so our students should never be allowed to view pornography at school. Fair. My son doesn't get to play in the knife drawer either. But we do let him play in many of the kitchen cupboards. We are not letting our students learn internet resposibility in a supervised environment. My school has almost everything blocked (including this blog) but they have none of these restrictions at home. We need to teach them how to identify and avoid risks, but we have to do that by exposing them to risk along the way. And we need to be there right beside them.

We are an older generation. We don't know, understand, and use the internet at anywhere near the same level as some of our students. Many of us are functionally illiterate on the web. That scares us. We may not even realize it, but we are. We are scared. So we try and shut down and block out what scares us. We even lie to ourselves that we are doing it for someone else's own good.

A collegue and I were talking about it (so I need to give him credit for this part). What are we trying to hide with our network security? Are we a bank with sensitive banking information? Are we some sort of national security agency with international secrets? All of our marks are stored at SaskLearning so getting into our local system won't really hurt that. Most teachers use paper and pencil books for marks anyways. Besides 15 to 20 minutes of searching on Google will often let you know how to crack many systems anyways.

So what do we do? Do we actually teach them be responsible (and let them practice and show proficiency at it) or do we force them to remain ignorant because they are overprotected. A tough decision but I think I know where I am leaning.