Leveraging Learning by Organizing Technology Use: A Modest Framework

I was tweeting today with a teacher who expressed the frustration I think many of us feel: How do we situate technology inside the work we do as teachers in order to deepen and complicate learning?

I tweeted the following:

And Chris responded:

So the exchange got me thinking about structuring curriculum in order to privilege: connecting, collaborating, creating, contextualizing, and critically consuming so that I could get at the tacit and not just rest at the surface of information.  In this post I want to explore these ideas by doing two things:

1. Offer an explanation as to why connecting, collaborating, creating, contextualizing, and critically consuming are key processes in learning;
2. Answer this question: What are methods I might use that would allow learners (including me) to leverage powerful technologies to do these things?

Doug Thomas and John Seely Brown (2011) boldly state: "The twenty-first century...belongs to the tacit" (Kindle Location 1002). Michael Polanyi defined tacit as knowing more than one can say.  We cannot transfer tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge "grows through personal experience and experimentation...you can’t teach it to me, though I can still learn it. The reason for the difference is that learning tacit knowledge happens not only in the brain, but also in the body, through all our senses" (Thomas & Brown, Kindle Locations 1013-1015).

This framework (really nothing more than some loose thinking built on the ideas of many others) seeks to situate tacit knowledge as essential, not ancillary.  What follows is a way to conceptualize. I invite you to add to this and to help me to revise it. I will continue to work on it. Think of this as an initial draft.

I. Why do I want learners to connect, collaborate, create, contextualize, and critically consume?

Connecting

The secret to scaling across is connecting.  Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze (2011) in Walk Out, Walk On, explain "Scaling across happens when people create something locally and inspire others who carry the idea home and develop it in their own unique way" (p. 36).  Scaling across is rhizomatic. Scaling up leads to disappointment, loss of agency, and in some situations colonization. It is an epic construct, anti-rhizomatic.

Juxtaposition to other leads to learning. Connecting with others leads to potentially powerful ideas.  Technology allows us the means to connect across cultures, genders, politics, ages, nationalities, and geographies while tapping emerging and/or established affinities/interests, wonderings, passions, and disciplines.  Princeton sociologist Martin Ruef's research suggests that the 'weak connections' (not deep friendships) people make through social networking are more likely to lead to innovation than those with small networks comprised of close friends.  Jonah Lehrer (2012) summarizes Ruef's findings: "...businesspeople with entropic networks full of weak ties were three times more innovative than people with small networks of close friends" (Kindle Locations 2797-2798).

Weak ties should not be interpreted as singularly being technology-produced (such as through Twitter connections). Rather, weak ties also are produced by being in the company of others.  In earlier posts I have written a lot about the benefits of learning walks.  In my work with students, learning walks are critical, not ancillary activities.  Learning walks place us in the community, offering us occasions to connect with those who are not simply housed at school.  Last fall about 40 high school students, some faculty and I were in Washington Heights (Manhattan), when we came upon a man who was selling ices.  It was a hot day. The man had a large block of ice on a cart and collection of bottles filled with syrup and he used a tool to shave the ice. The students were interested in both the sweet ice treat and the process as none had seen this before. This 10-minute stop is one I have not forgotten. It is a scene I replay in my head and one I suspect might make its way into a piece of fiction.  I still haven't codified the experience and yet I know it was important as I continue to recall it. Tacit knowing is important.

Collaborating

The power of we is greater than the singularity of I.  Facilitating learners' cross-cultural collaboration is an important aspect of our work as teachers.  Finding and framing questions, solving problems, creating works, and sharing resources, insights, ideas, and dreams represent important 'content'. Technologies allow for this to happen in unprecedented ways.  What we make of this is of course in our hands and our students.

Creating

In writing about High Tech High, Lehrer writes:

When children are allowed to create, they’re able to develop the sophisticated talents that are required for success in the real world. Instead of learning how to pass a standardized test, they learn how to cope with complexity and connect ideas, how to bridge disciplines and improve their first drafts. These mental talents can’t be taught in an afternoon— there is no textbook for ingenuity, no lesson plan for divergent thinking. Rather, they must be discovered: the child has to learn by doing (Kindle Locations 3211-3215).

Again a connection between tacit knowing and creating is made.  This is John Dewey's thinking. This is Maxine Greene's passions.  Experience leads to learning.  Such learning is often tacit.

How are our learners positioned to be media creators from inside of schools and classrooms? Earlier today I had a conversation with the superintendent of schools and an assistant middle school principal from the town where I live and I shared that there were active media creators at our middle school and a task before us was to help teachers and administrators recognize the creative practices of students. I referenced one teen at the middle school who has posted 300+ films on YouTube and enjoys audience responses from several thousand to more than 15,000 responses per video. That is a sizable audience he has pulled.  Henry Jenkins (2009) reports that "[o]ne-third of teens share what they create online with others, 22 percent have their own Web sites, 19 percent blog, and 19 percent remix online content" (Kindle  Locations 73-74).

How do we invite, tap, and grow such important beginnings?

Contextualizing

"In a world where context is always shifting and being rearranged, the stability of the what dimension of knowledge also comes into question. Only by understanding the where of a piece of information can we understand its meaning" (Thomas & Brown, 2011, A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change (Kindle Locations 1292-1296).

Contextualizing is an important process where learners connect location(s) (place and time), person/people, and 'content' understanding that as we shape it, it also shapes what we know.  Thomas and Brown state: 

Technology is no longer just a fast way of transporting information from one place to another, and the information it moves is no longer static. Instead, information technology has become a participatory medium, giving rise to an environment that is constantly being changed and reshaped by the participation itself. The process is almost quantum in nature: The more we interact with these informational spaces, the more the environment changes, and the very act of finding information reshapes not only the context that gives that information meaning but also the meaning itself (Kindle Locations 445-449).

Again, Thomas and Brown offer us important insight into context.  They write:

When we build, we do more than create content. Thanks to new technologies, we also create context by building within a particular environment, often providing links or creating connections and juxtapositions to give meaning to the content. Learning now, therefore, goes far beyond a simple transfer of information and becomes inextricably bound with the context that is being created. Where one chooses to post, where one links to, or where one is linked from does not just serve as a locus for finding content. It becomes part of the content itself (Kindle Locations 1319-1323).

Blog posts are an example of potentially contextualized learning.  Where the post is situated, the links it contains, the audience it pulls, the commentary that is offered contextualize the learning.

Critically Consuming

Practices related to reading and writing emerge alongside the production of information and often requires participation. Critically consuming is not a uni-directional activity.  It is collaborative, interactive, co-specifying.  Henry Jenkins's notions of participatory culture captures the idea of consumption as participatory well. Jenkins (2009) writes: "Participatory culture is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways" (Kindle Locations 111-112). To what end, do we teach learners how to make sense of and to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content?

Again referencing a Pew study, Jenkins offers: "...we are moving away from a world in which some produce and many consume media toward one in which everyone has a more active stake in the culture that is produced" (Kindle Locations 139-140).

II. What are methods I might use that would allow learners (including me) to leverage powerful technologies to do these things?

Spending time trying to keep up with the changing technological landscape is a losing effort as a strategy.  Apps abound. Tools change. Invention occurs.  So I am less interested in spending time 'keeping up' as I am in developing a participatory culture (Jenkins 2009) where the connected group's intelligence can guide innovation by helping us apply tools to learning needs AND play with tools when we have yet to know the learning need.

Jenkins (2009) defines participatory culture as:

"... a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby experienced participants pass along knowledge to novices. In a participatory culture, members also believe their contributions matter and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least, members care about others' opinions of what they have created) (Kindle Location 24-26).

To what end are our schools and classrooms participatory cultures? Jenkins lists some examples of participatory cultures including: affiliation (i.e., Facebook, MySpace, game chats), expressions (i.e., fan fiction, mash-ups, zines),  collaborative problem solving (i.e., alternative reality gaming) and circulation (i.e., podcasting, screencasts, blogging).

The more research I do that examines the out-of-school learning of young people (preteen and teens), the more convinced I am that there is critical learning we need to undertake that these young people can teach us.  Their out-of-school learning reminds me of Wheatley & Frieze's descriptions of Walk Ons.

Walk Outs are people who bravely choose to leave behind situations, jobs, relationships, and ideas that restrict and confine them, anything that inhibits them. They walk on to the ideas, people, and practices that enable them to explore and discover new gifts, new possibilities (p. 4).

They tell us that "Walk Ons find each other and connect. Together, they learn quickly, take greater risks, and support one another to continue their pioneering work. A new system is born from their efforts" (p.12).  How do we recognize one another?  How do we build WITH learners these types of environments where walking out is not required?


Works Cited

Jenkins, Henry. (2009). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning). Kindle Edition.

Lehrer, Jonah. (2012-03-19). Imagine: How Creativity Works. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

Thomas, Douglas and Seely Brown, John. (2011-03-12). A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change. CreateSpace. Kindle Edition.

Wheatley, Margaret and Frieze, Deborah. (2011-04-11). Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.
 

How Ready Are You for the Connected Child at Your School? In the Classroom?

During the next few weeks, millions of students will return to school. In this post I want to provide a quick glimpse into the at-home world of a connected child in order to ask how teachers and adminsitrators have gotten ready to teach this type of learner. What pedagogical, content, and policy changes are you making at the classroom, school, and district levels to accommodate the connected child?

For the connected child, the world is no longer defined by local geography alone. Instead, the connected child interacts with others from across the globe. For example, one 'news source' of the London riots in our home were three children my son skypes with daily from London who shared impressions they had while living in the city and listening to and learning from their families, friends and through direct observations. These first person accounts occurred as a result of sustained online relationships. How will teachers and administrators continue these relationships at school? Is there a mechanism, a process put into play that even seeks to find out how the connected child interacts in the world? Will school boards permit children, not just high school teenagers, to be connected at school to others they may not at first know? How will you help the connected child to not experience a forced claustrophobia of the 20th century classroom?

For the connected child digital use is on demand, not in a lab or when some more powerful other says it's okay to use technology. Outfitted with a smartphone, s/he thinks through that phone, problem solves, plays, communicates through a variety of forms, and interacts with others. How will smartphone technologies and other Internet-ready devices be employed at your school and in your district? The biggest question: who will control the use of these devices? The connected child has and/or is learning how to responsibly use technology at home. How will this learning be augmented at school?

The connected child has learned to problem solve via peer to peer relationships and online resources. Sharing gaming spaces via multiple player games, the connected child frames and negotiates problems alongside others, sharing control of screens, supporting the world building of self and other, and situating problem solving not in a pass-fail framework more typically found in the testing culture of schools. One doesn't 'fail' in gaming worlds in the same deterministic manner one fails at school. In gaming worlds, 'failing' is a viable option that leads forward. It is not an end. For example, my son asked one of his coplayers to 'kill' him because he needed to be respawned in order to be in better health to enter a cave and engage monsters. He explained that had he entered the cave with the quality of health he had at that moment in the game, he would not have been able to defeat the monsters. Failing in the gaming world may be a strategic step. There's often little to no 'respawning' in the classroom where the plethora of teacher generated quizzes, checks, and tests are one way roads built on the belief that the learner must be able to show what s/he knows at the moment. I have even heard teachers and administrator explain that it would be 'unfair' to allow students the occasion to retake assessments. Further tests and testing environments are to a large degree self determined. Trial and error are an expected method for the connected child. How do you reconcile the connected child who thinks strategically with the monologic classroom?

Further, the connected child uses online resources to solve problems and build important requisite knowledge. Whereas I may still need to remember to use Yelp as opposed to waiting to find a phonebook, my son's reference-finding process has largely been online and he gravitates first to solving problems using online sources, such as YouTube, apps, or skype. It is not unusual on a car trip to hear my son say, "I can skype with X and let you know." How will you facilitate this type of learner in the classroom and the school? How will you react when there is a skype signal for an incoming connection?


The connected child is one who learns via passions. Affinity spaces represent passionate learning spaces of a child, connected or not. According to Wikipedia:

An affinity space is a place where informal learning takes place. According to James Paul Gee, affinity spaces are locations (physical or virtual) where groups of people are drawn together because they share a particular common, strong interest or are engaged in a common activity.[1] Often but not always occurring online, affinity spaces encourage the sharing knowledge or participating in a specific area, but informal learning is another outcome.

The connected child participates in affinity spaces as a regular and reoccurring practice. passionate affinity spaces differ from traditional schooling in some very important ways. According to Gee (2011):

1. People chose to associate with passionate affinity spaces. They can achieve expert status regardless of credentials, age, role, race, gender, ethnicity, sociology-economic status.
2. Usually at least 20% of the people will have a deep passion, not just a passing interest in the learning being composed int he affinity space.
3. People can produce (knowledge, create things, do things), not only consume, in these spaces.
4. People sometimes lead, sometimes follow.
5. Knowledge is distributed: different people know different things and can share their knowledge as they need, when they need.
6. Affinity spaces are open, newcomers are welcome to join at will, not just at prescribed times.
7. Affinity spaces are about people sharing a common endeavor and learning things.

There is deep learning that happens in passionate affinity spaces, not just surface know-how. As a result, the connected child is experienced with learning deeply via sustained playing/participation. For example, as the child of two English teachers we have wanted our son to appreciate and practice accuracy and precision in published work. We have watched as he has learned that accuracy matters as he writes code associated with gaming. "One small error and it won't run," he tells us. "It has to be accurate." Another friend of his has said he is learning about multiplication via the buildings and worlds he is designing and creating. This connected child knows when his designs work--when he has gotten the math right. How will the classroom, school, and district facilitate such choice and depth and inspire precision, accuracy, and self reflection? How will you reconcile the disconnect between mandated standards and passion-based learning?

The connected child is engaged in solving world problems. For example, my son recently asked me to to take a look at something he had designed and built in Minecraft. He showed me a building he designed that rebuilds itself when damaged and a bridge that also is self- repairing. He designed these in order to safeguard his world from those who might want to blow up one of more of his buildings. Through play though he was also to make a connection to social need not located in a game, but in life. My son tells me his designs would be much more complicated in actual life but could be a big help with urban renewal and places where there is war. If I can put all the electric work beneath ground then it could help the poor, he tells me. They wouldn't be dependent on others. They could have places to live that were reliable, self-repairing. In what ways will the connected child's classroom based learning allow him/her to solve real world problems in age appropriate manners?

The connected child expects to communicate with others s/he knows and has yet to meet. After watching hours and hours of video, my son decided to make his own videos about specific aspects of gaming. This is not unique as many others are doing similar self initiated work. This work though requires the learner to know how to make the film using software and or an app, format the film, and upload it to a site where it can be seen. Equally important are all the decisions about what content and processes will be delineated in the film.

The connected child expects to pull an audience, not simply perform in front of a ready made one, such as classmates. I have seen my son advertised his server on Planet Minecraft and Minecraft Forum in order to pull audiences in. He wants other Minecraft players to select his server to play. He thinks about ways to upgrade and manage his server.

At home my husband and I have been wondering about the often 'smallness' of school based learning and the more worldly experience our child enjoys via his connection to others. We wonder if his teachers and principal even are aware of such learning. We wonder how they have been preparing themselves for the connected child and 'readying' the school of the last century for the child of this century. We wonder if the rather rote and increasingly dull exercises that have framed our son's school based learning to date will drive him from a place we know as school as he ages and how we will support such leaving. We worry that the benefits of school will be lost, obfuscated beneath the narrowness of test-based curricula, national standards, and the lost of teacher autonomy.

Instead of issuing readiness tests to students to see if they are 'ready' for school, I wonder if we don't need to test ourselves and see how ready we are for the students.

Guest Blog: Kelly Dabinett: Technology in the English Classroom

Kelly Dabinett

Guest Blog: Kelly Dabinett

This is Kelly's twelfth year teaching English at Morristown High School in Morristown, NJ.  She received a B.A. degree in English and a Master’s degree in the Art of Teaching.  At the high school, she is a mentor in the student support mentoring program and is involved with the Academic Decathlon team as the essay and interview coach.  She has previously served as a tutor in the academic enrichment tutoring program and has also been involved with the high school softball team as the junior varsity coach and with the middle school field hockey team as the assistant coach.

I love how Kelly incorporates students' voices in her discussion of technology in the high school English classroom.

Contact Information: kelly.dabinett@msdk12.net

kelly.dabinett@morristownhighschool.org

Using Technology In The Classroom

By Kelly Dabinett

The incorporation of technology within the classroom has proved to be a vital, motivational and advantageous element that is an integral part of the educational foundation of students today.  Its effect has been profound ~ intrigue, inspiration and indisputable success have stemmed from the vast expanse of the technological world and the educational opportunities it offers. 

Within my classroom, the integration of Moodle has proved to be a dynamic and engaging element of our learning environment.  It has, in essence, been an extension of our classroom. Specifically, the use of forums has proved to be a valuable resource.  I have utilized the forums largely for the development of collaborative, student-driven outlets in which students are empowered to develop meaningful work that is based upon both core concepts and independent readings.  With the use of these forums, students have extensive opportunities to reflect upon thoughts, analysis and concepts that were produced and developed during class time.  The forums offer them the experience of enlightening one another by means of engaging in extended conversations through the creation of threads that vary in detail, depth and analysis. 

Students have extended their thinking well beyond the walls of the classroom as they facilitate discussions, make connections and draw conclusions.  They intellectually challenge one another to find meaning in a student-centered environment that abounds with interest and intrigue.  Through the analysis of our core texts, students have reflected upon themes and concepts and, in so doing, have found a personal relevance to what is taking place in the texts and discussions. As one student wrote, “Reading this book has made me realize that mental and spiritual strength are more important than physical strength alone.”  The students begin to make personal connections that they find applicable to their own lives,  “Reading the novel…has mostly shown me to always prepare myself for life to come.  In essence…the novel has embedded the reoccurring ‘what if?’ scenario in my mind.  And with it, I can better understand exactly how prepared I am for what is to come.” 
 Students spark reactions based on their commentary and analysis of text. One student wrote, “I completely agree.  The idea of survival seems so far out there that most people like you and I could not fathom as to what we would do exactly.  It makes us think – but the catch is, we most likely would not stay true to our initial thought.  Exactly like you said, we would be put to the test and change our philosophy in life because of the given situation.  Personally, I think that is life.  It takes you places for a reason and the choices you make in the journey determine who you are, and what you will do to stay alive.”  Higher-order thinking skills are evident as authentic, student-driven discussions are generated and thus, evoke a demonstration of a skill-set that has an opportunity to flourish through collaboration, reflection and exploration.

Posts and replies that have been generated from independent reading works have incorporated topics that have roots in a variety of disciplines and have spanned various genres.  One student decided to read some selected poems by T.S. Eliot and writes, “The poem was amazing and I am still reading it over again.  Poems aren’t understood right after you read it.  You have to dive in and immerse yourself in it to truly understand it.”  In response to a post about The Autobiography of Malcolm X, one student replies with, “The story of Malcolm X is an incredible one and you will discover more and more of what he had to go through.  It shows a lot about his character and how strongly he felt about civil rights.  It’s a great book and helps people better understand the struggles of the civil rights movement.”  While engaging in a discussion about a non-fiction text, a student writes, “This is a kind of book that makes you think about the rewards the protagonist receives.  He doesn’t necessarily get a prize at the end, or something material, what he really gets is something he will never forget.  He got to live his dream of traveling and gaining new knowledge.”  Finally, after reading the autobiography The Measure of a Man, by Sidney Poitier, a student writes, “I think all we need to do is believe in ourselves because we as humans have an infinite amount of potential…I really have enjoyed reading the thoughts of another person in such depth and detail.  I personally think this book was enlightening because it showed me a completely different perspective on life which has broadened my view on the world.  It has made me reconsider previous thoughts and beliefs and has solidified others.  I highly recommend this book to someone who is curious about what others think of the world and the ways people go about living their lives.” 
Students have also portrayed a distinct capacity to inspire one another, as various students collaborated on the development of thematically-based analytical essays derived from this text after being intrigued by this particular classmate’s Moodle posts.   Ultimately, these forums afford students the opportunity to utilize their posts and replies, in conjunction with additional written work and verbal discussions to produce a valuable product that coincides with themes that are embedded into the course, along with global skills and ideas that are expansive in nature. 

The student posts and replies generated reveal keen insight, tremendous growth and the capability of thought processes that may not always be demonstrated within the allotted instructional time.  This environment affords them the opportunity to continue their learning and has been an additional venue for them to generate discussions that elicit insight, reflection and analytical abilities.  Outgoing and more reserved students alike benefit from this modality, as it proves to be a vehicle through which they have opportunities to navigate their own thoughts, express themselves and assume responsibility in creating meaningful dialogue.  I often call upon students to elaborate upon the information they posted, as well as replies they have posted to others, and, after having had that additional time to form, reflect upon and organize their thoughts, they are generally more inclined to confidently contribute their beliefs to generate a powerful class discussion.  The discussion, then, is one of excitement filled with learners who are passionate about their beliefs ~ beliefs that are diverse, creative and reflective.  

In addition to the use of forums, Moodle has afforded me the opportunity to incorporate resources, such as links to websites, based on the content being studied.  While various resources can be added and activities implemented via Moodle, the end result has proved to be the same: students have the opportunity to express themselves in the digital realm and have insightful, educational interactions with a wide variety individuals from their class, thus gaining real world experience and intellectual maturity. 

The use of a sympodium has proved to be powerful tool to enhance the topic at hand, as it offers an opportunity to produce presentations that are interactive.  I have incorporated the use of the sympodium to display elements such as PowerPoint, videos and interviews, and to simply construct word documents.  While displaying these images, this technological source offers the capability to write on the screen in digital ink as the work is projected onto a large screen.  This method of presentation can be dynamic in nature, as each display can be personalized by both the teacher and the students to generate a meaningful product. 

Netbooks have been accessible, via COWs, which have been instrumental in the integration of technology within the classroom.  When utilizing these devices, I often provide students the opportunity to work in pairs or small groups to enhance their learning experience, as different perspectives can be discussed and examined prior to an entire class dialogue.  With these Internet ready devices, I have had students access Moodle and research topics to strengthen their learning.

I have also incorporated the use of iPods.  I have largely integrated these devices for students to utilize while reading and they have played a vital role in helping students retain focus and build reading stamina.  Additionally, the use of both the iPod Touch and the smart phone has been advantageous for real-time research.

I have had the absolute pleasure of working with Kara Douma, an instructional leader at the high school, and in so doing have come to incorporate the use of Flip cameras and iPads within the classroom.  The Flip cameras were integrated within the instructional environment as the students were assigned an exam that extended beyond the traditional exam time block.  Throughout a duration of a few weeks, students were assigned to analyze a text by partaking in a process that included research, generating artifacts, designing a mode of expression and ultimately recording and presenting their chosen mode via the use of Flip cameras.  Students were assessed by means of various targeted proficiencies and were able to demonstrate key analytical abilities. 

Through the utilization of iPads as a technological resource, the students have been enthusiastically reading and listening to text, exploring various apps such as Google Earth and utilizing the Notes app to assess and reflect upon their use of the iPad apps.  Students have been reading and/or listening to the digital version of text through the iBooks app.  Through this app students are also utilizing the dictionary and annotation functions to assist and guide their thinking, analysis and comprehension.  Additionally, the iPads have been incorporated as a device for students to generate personalized responses to current events.  Through an interdisciplinary activity, students were able to merge concepts from History and English as they viewed images and captions from worldly events and responded to them from the perspective of a character from literature.

We ultimately plan to introduce and utilize new apps to aid in determining and enhancing student learning styles. As we guide the students while they make their way through the various apps and encounter an array of successes and struggles, our hope is that eventually the students will develop the capacity to determine their strengths and weaknesses as learners.  After engaging in the implementation of various apps and referring to their personal assessment and reflection of iPad apps, students will begin to take ownership of their learning styles and develop an awareness of the educational format that is most beneficial for them.  Ultimately, through various meaningful and insightful lessons and activities, the students will develop the skills to take part in individualizing their education through the integration of technology.

The use of technology within the classroom has proved to be an experience in which opportunities for instruction simply abound.  I have been inspired by those around me and I know we will continue to guide one another in our development of meaningful instruction that empowers learners to be productive and successful individuals.

What Rests in Our Hands Is Simply That: Be a Learner

In light of Tom Whitby's "modest proposal" to post a blog  about positive educational reform on 10.17.10, I found myself thinking about reform and redesign. Now, I am not much for reform as I think the word, the process, and what it has come to mean is at best, tired—and for the last 40 years, increasingly divisive.  I do believe though that redesign is needed in public education and I offer here a simple way to revolutionize public and private education. Be a learner (your choice of passions and interests), study how you and others learn, and bring all of it with you to your classroom, school or district, and show it off via public exhibitions. Personal learning passions and public exhibitions of learner's work are more important than national and state standards movements, national and state testing, national and state curriculum maps, and the like.

Having worked for 29 years as an educator, most of those years in K-12 public education in urban, suburban, and rural locations, I have been privileged to work alongside great teachers, principals, and administrators.  Their greatness has been neither static, nor superhuman. Rather, they are learners who always have a project going, a passion they are following, an idea they are tugging at--in short it is simply a stance they embody.  These are gregarious learners, quiet learners, deep and thoughtful rivers that are both purposeful and nomadic.  They wander and reorganize.  They are largely contradictory in their thinking, believing, and (re)actions as they are often in the present moment. They resist and theorize.  Memory of these learners reminds me that all of the plans and schemes and reforming in the world cannot and will not achieve a sustained learning environment for the practice  of doing to others is so seriously flawed.  Reform is always an epic design and couldn't recognize a rhizomatic moment if it tripped over a mass of roots. 

Listen to Whitman, who in Song of Myself , wrote:

The past and present wilt - I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.  

Reform measures--progressive and not have often been largely about filling others with something the reformers privileged: workshop, direct instruction, rigor, process, mapping, cross walking, and on and on. It is not that anything is actually wrong with these approaches at their core. Rather, by attending to something else, something other—the more personal and I would urge, empowered learning is suppressed.  When this happens over and over again—perhaps for whole careers—the learner (student, teacher, administrator, parent) internalizes that his/her job is to attend to things that may or may not make sense and to suppress and not trust what does make sense.  This is what kills education. A direct shot to the heart.

So what am I advocating? I am interested in redesigning schools to focus on learning for all who step through the door (real and virtual) and to have learning direct our attention, resources, staffing and time.  Instead of asking: Will this technique do x, I want to occasion learning passions. Instead of the old input-output algorithm, imagine if passion was x and we asked: What do we need to set into play in order for the possibility of x to be realized?

In the school system where I work we are redesigning the high school and by extension the district.  As the director of curriculum, my goals are two-fold: privilege learning and learners and organize in such a manner that idiosyncratic methods, content, and beings can flourish.  Nothing more. Nothing less.  I tell you here though, it takes extraordinary design as the teaching world has been largely organized to resist such overtures. Nonetheless, we beat on. In the last four weeks, high school faculty have forwarded courses they would like to teach--beautiful, idiosyncratic works that are embedded with who they are.  They make my heart sing.  Next, I would like students to have the same opportunity and responsibility to design personal and public learning.  A  simple redesign plan might be: Let's plan, learn, redesign,  and exhibit our learning to the public.

We have some early trailblazers already out and about: this year we opened a small academy (Classics Academy) that are comprised of five courses taught by four teachers, and three other team-taught courses.  We are in the process of issuing  iPads, 24/7, to all.  Just last week, two of the teachers and their students, along with the students' parents and siblings, neighbors and other educators from the school found themselves in a field at night holding up their iPads loaded with the interactive astronomy app, Star Walk. The students had been studying astronomy as part of a Classics History and Classics Mathematics course that the two teachers (Dawn DeMartino and Harry Sugar) teach.  As one of our Board of Education members told me (I paraphrase): It was cold and late and I knew those teachers had been teaching all day and still there they were. We were on blankets and looking up at the sky looking at the iPad to better know what we were seeing.  And there was Mr. Sugar who had set up his telescope so we could see better--see the indentations of moon craters. My one child was fascinated by the Hercules constellation and my daughter was explaining that the North star did not remain constant over time.  It was beautiful and powerful. 

Beautiful work. Empowered learners and learning. That is the revolution.

We must stop doing unto others and instead take mark of where we are.  It is more challenging than one might think. For example, I fell pray to my own worst moment when I decided we would move forward with a physics in ninth grade initiative. Some of the teachers voiced resistance as they worried that they would need to suppress their leaning in order to enact a program. I offered assurances (ones I actually believed) and yet their commentary gave me pause.  I realized a bit later (a day) that I had lost sight of the real goal: not to have physics in ninth grade at all cost, but to engender a place of learning.  These teachers were not objecting to redesigning the science courses, but the means by which we did it.  Ah, time to listen and seek a third space. As Ruth Vinz writes: "The bulk of teacher knowledge is socially derived and hybrid" (1996, p. 168).  She then quotes Homi Bhabha (1990) who explains hybridity:  'For me the importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original moments from which the third emerges, rather hybridity to me is the 'third space' which enables other positions to emerge' [p.211] (as quoted in Vinz, 1996, p. 168).  Ruth concludes by asserting: "The act of teaching engenders a continual contestation beyond teachers' present and future knowledge—challenging, mixing, testing, and ultimately transgressing what the teacher knows 'how to do' or has ever done before" (p. 168).  The teachers and I need a third space, not a directive.

I love Ruth's book, Composing a Teaching Life.  She has been both my finest teacher and friend these last 17 years.  In one of the chapters in the text she discusses what rests in teachers' hands. She concludes: "We must keep the learning and the imagining. That's what rests in our hands—the responsibility to do just that" (p. 164).  I have read those words for years and it is the pronoun, that, I want to emphasize.  Our responsibility rests not in enacting other schemes.  We are responsible to keep the learning and imagining.  Just that.

If we want to (in)form the conversation about learning at local, state, national and international forums, we need to ensure that what we are learning is not insubstantial, but rather worthy of our time and attention.  I grow weary of the books and websites that offer 15 ways to do this, 30 ways to do that.  Fodder mostly.  I have given some thought to works that have influenced me and have helped me to better understand and appreciate the complexity of learning, that have encouraged me to consider multiple and often contradictory perspectives and the importance of resistance, that have shown me slices of worlds I simply had not known existed, and have inspired me to be brave in light of politics and manufactured fear.  Here is my list:

1. Bakhtin, M.M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
2. Bakhtin, M.M. (1990).  Art and Answerability: Early philosophical essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
3. Barthes, Roland. (1982/2010). Camera Lucida: Reflections on photography. NY: Hill and Wang.
4. Bateson, Mary Catherine. (2000). Full circles, overlapping lives: Culture and generation in transition. NY: Random House.
5. Baudrillard, Jean. (1995). Simulacra and simulation (the Body, in theory: History of cultural materialism).  Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
6. Berger, John & Jean Mohr. (1982/1995). Another way of telling. NY: Vintage.
7. Berger, Ron. (2003). An ethics of excellence: Building a culture of craftsmanship with students. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
8. Bhabha, Homi K. (2004). The location of culture, 2nd edition. London: Routledge.
9. Cochran-Smith, Marilyn and Susan L. Lytle. (2009). Inquiry as stance: Practitioner research in the next generation. NY: Teachers College Press.
10. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
11. Dewey, John. (1916/1944). Democracy and education: An introduction to philosophy of education. NY: The Free Press.
12. Du Bois, W.E. B. (1994). The souls of Black folks. NY: Barnes & Noble Classics.
13. Eisner, Elliot (Ed). (1985). Learning and teaching the ways of knowing: Eighty-fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
14. Gee, James Paul. (2008). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology and Discourses, 3rd edition. London: Routledge.
15. Gonzalez, Norma, Moll, Luis C., and Cathy Amanti. (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households and classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 
16. Graves, Donald. (1983/2003). Writing: Teachers & children at work. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
17. Greene, Maxine. (1988). The dialectic of freedom. NY: Teachers College Press.
18. Heath, Shirley Brice. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: UK: Cambridge University Press. 
19. Kuhn, Thomas S. (1962/1970). The structure of scientific revolutions, second edition.  Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.  
20. Leander, Kevin M. & Margaret Sheehy (Eds,) (2004). Spatializing literacy research and practice. NY: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
21. Morrison, Toni. (1987). Beloved. NY: Alfred Knopf.
22. Pinar, William. (2009). What is curriculum theory? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 
23. Rosenblatt, Lousie. (1978/1994). The reader, the text, the poem: transactional theory of the literary work. Carbondale & Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
24. Schank, Roger. C. (1995). Tell me a story: Narrative and intelligence. Evanston, IL: Northwetsern Universty Press.
25. Said, Edward. (1983).  The World, the text, and the critic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
26. Soja, Edward W. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. Cambridge. MA: Blackwell Publisher, Inc. 
27. Vinz, Ruth. (1996). Composing a teaching life. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton Cook.
28. Vygotsky, Lev. (1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
29. West, Cornel. (2005). Democracy matters: Winning the fight against imperialism. NY: Penguin.
30. Whitman, Walt. (1855/2008). Leaves of grass. Kindle edition.
31. Williams, William Carlos. (1967). Pictures from Brueghel and other poems. NY: New Directions.
32. Woolf, Virginia. (1991). A room of one's own. San Diego, CA: Harcourt.

Common Core Curricular Mapping: Travels with A Tour Guide

Just who are we teaching? I wondered as I read the Common Core Curriculum Maps--"model" curricula that attempt to explicate the new common core state standards for English language arts.  One method (Socratic Seminar) and one literary theory (New Criticism) undergird the mile wide and inch deep maps at the secondary level.  I was reminded while reading the long lists of texts of Dennis Sumara’s (1996) characterization of the teacher as tour guide. Sumara writes, “Curriculum is a normalizing experience…Teachers become tour guides, showing students which sites must be noticed... As a daily performance, teaching becomes a pointing ritual that seldom pierces underneath the skin of the everyday” (p. 233).

Missing from these maps is the 21st century. No hyperbole intended. It is as if the teachers who wrote these maps were unaware of the digital world and the students they teach.  In the school district where I work, students are composing research by collaboratively building knowledge by sharing annotations through Diigo. Here students are connecting with learners beyond the classroom through skype to learn with and from others. Teachers and students are collaborating through google docs, posing questions and posting comments to one another through a Moodle account. Stories don't rest on paper exclusively in these classrooms as teachers and students compose, mix, and remix text using a variety of media and tools. 

It is rather shocking that the new common core curriculum maps at best posit a world long gone and then offer us that world as if it was relevant.  The Common Core Curriculum Maps are a dead end. We need to occasion powerful producers and consumers of text, not by following maps already made, but by lighting out for the new territory along with our students.  As Huck told us so long ago: "I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it. I've been there before." 

Haven't we all.