No Artificial Flavors

This past month, I’ve felt like I’ve died and gone to PD Heaven. Yes, Professional Development and Heaven: terms I never thought I’d use in the same sentence. But here I am writing this, and meaning it.

This past month I’ve gone to two incredible education conferences without paying a cent and one without even leaving my desk. Education has been turned on its head, and it seems Professional Development is following suit.

On May 2nd, I attended Google On-Air, a day chocked full of 47 live hour-long  concurrent sessions: http://goo.gl/Auglt.  Attendees didn’t pay a penny; they just showed up in Google+ for sessions that interested them. I lurked in a dozen sessions over the course of the day and participated in two “Hang Outs,” which meant my live mug was on the screen along with 9 other other educators, asking questions, giving suggestions, and sharing screenshots as an unlimited outside audience watched.

The “Take Away” from Google On-Air was inspiring and practical. I learned from classroom teachers and from technology pioneers alike. I can think of a dozen changes I’ve already made regarding what I’ve learned and I have a list of others I’m dying to implement when time allows. Even better? Each of the 47 sessions is archived online, ready, free and waiting for anyone to see:  http://goo.gl/Auglt  A chunk of my summer will be spent exploring its treasures. There we were: a community of educators from around the country and around the world and country collaborating virtually because we wanted to.

A friend of mine who teaches in Florida calls this group “The Society of Yes” – a group of education enthusiasts who have found each other through blogs, listserves, and Twitter, who refuse to encounter a good idea without sharing it, and who know that if we share what we learn we can incrementally change the world and its classrooms for the better. The Society of Yes doesn’t do this because our names are being checked off on an attendance list or because it’s in our contract; we do it because we are compelled to learn, because it’s who we are.

Just ten days after Google On-Air, I encountered more from “The Society of Yes” at EdCamp Milwaukee http://goo.gl/gMgfD,  the 100th of its kind in the U.S. over the past two years.

Here was the deal: EdCamp was available to the first 250 to sign up. After showing up on a Saturday morning at South Milwaukee High School and chatting over bagels with some new friends, we hit the auditorium where we collectively Skyped with the founders of EdCamp (EdCamp Philly). They explained their EdCamp vision: An collaborative, free exchange of ideas, where there is no “expert,” but educators learning along side each other.

That’s exactly what it was.

Instructions for the day were simple and liberating, things like:
- “This day is about you; move from session to session; no one’s feelings will be hurt: it’s about your learning”
- “It’s about conversation and having the right people in that conversation”
- “Follow the Twitter feed; see what’s happening in other sessions: stop by if it’s a better fit for you. ‘Vote with your feet’”

Then, we the people, determined the day’s agenda. It started with a blank white board in front of the auditorium, a stack of post-it notes, and a microphone. What happened next was democracy in action.

One-by-one educators came up to the microphone and proposed a topic they wanted to lead a session, or a topic of interest for a discussion session: flipped classroom, multimedia integration, learning stations, student help desks, learning coaches, mastery learning.  Announce it, record it on a post it, and stick it in a time slot on the whiteboard.

Though this was my first EdCamp, I found myself suddenly courageous: spotting a new friend (from the Society of Yes) I’d met at breakfast, I invited him to co-facilitate a session on Tech integration in Secondary English. A post it note later, we were on the agenda.

Within 20 minutes, a shared Google Spreadsheet came together and a full-day’s agenda was born: http://goo.gl/FsE1g containing way more interesting sessions per hour than one could humanely attend.

The day maintained a steady clip of collaboration and learning; important discussions; shared frustrations; fruitful brainstorming, and loads of learning. In each session, we tweeted out tips, links, and advice, all collected under our #EdCampMke hashtag and on shared Google Docs.

It was fluid and exciting. For only one session did I stay in the room the whole time—the one I co-facilitated (it seemed the right thing to do); otherwise, I was taking and giving and sharing and moving and experiencing the most exciting single day of professional development of my 18 years in education.

It was an incredibly democratic, collaborative, liberating…utopian even: several times during the day, I found myself silently saying “This is how the world is supposed to operate.” And there it was.

These days, I’m doing a great deal of questioning about how learning really happens versus how it allegedly happens. In recent years, I’ve toyed with the idea of getting another Master’s Degree; this time in Educational Technology: a formal credential to back up what I’m now doing in the classroom. However, the more I investigate the degree program the more I realize its requirements do not correspond with where I’m headed and what I need to get there. I have come to the conclusion (cemented by a conversation with a mentor at EdCamp) that getting an Edtech Master’s degree will do little for me. That a more organic approach to my education will yield greater growth.  That earning specific tech certifications useful to my practice, that self-teaching using online tutorials, that attending EdCamps and virtual conferences, that collaborating with edtech like-mindeds on Twitter and the blogosphere supersede the old paradigm of “get another degree.”

I’m not the only one thinking these things. And it’s not just educators, but about all learners. One of my Twitter colleagues led me to a recent article http://goo.gl/LkjNuby Thomas Friedman who wrote of Stanford Professor Andrew Ng’s foray into free, online learning. “’I normally teach 400 students,’ Ng explained, but last semester he taught 100,000 in an online course on machine learning.’” He, and others like him, perhaps for the first time in history, are attempting to create truly free and public education.

This is exciting. This is subversive. This is democracy.

The Crab Bucket

The Crab Bucket Theory goes like this: 

If there’s a bucket of crabs and one crab tries to crawl up the side of the bucket to freedom, the other crabs pull him down, sending the lot of them to their ultimate demise.  This actually happens. Doesn't make much sense, though, does it? We, as higher-functioning beings, would never behave that way, right? We wouldn’t pull each other down. We would applaud each others’ escape, learn from it, scamper up the side of the bucket, and one by one, ascend, right?

In the best of all possible worlds, that is, but not in this one.

When I achieved National Board Certification, one of my colleagues repeatedly smirked and said, “Oooh, it’s Miss National Boards!” at our every encounter. During meetings and in-services, he’d say, “Let’s ask Miss National Boards. She must know.” This surprised me, at first.  I felt like I was back in high school in Freshman English class,  hiding the “A+” on my term paper so I wouldn’t be made fun of.

When I became a published author a few years ago, I was ecstatic when my book arrived in the mail with my name on its cover. I wanted to share this moment with my colleagues.  However, memories of “Miss National Boards” led me to show one or two friends; I didn’t even show my English department, though it was a book designed for AP English teachers. They’d resent me; they’d think I was boasting.

When I received the first SMART Board in the district - after writing a matching grant - there were mumblings: why did she get a SMART Board? When I wrote a grant for 3 more boards in my department, the question changed: why does the English Department have 4 SMART Boards? When I took the initiative to become a SMART Board Certified trainer, the question became: why is she our SMART Board Trainer?

When I was named Wisconsin High School Teacher of the Year, the obligatory standing ovation came and some very genuine congrats from my close circle, but there were also a smattering of half-hearted, resentful congrats; some didn’t say a word. I’ve never quite figured out how to interpret that one.

Just the other day, I connected with a colleague in my district who will be receiving a classroom set of laptops next year for her students. She expressed the fear of “how she would tell” the other teachers in her building. It was then that I had an epiphany: it wasn’t just me; I wasn’t just paranoid: the Crab Bucket Theory is alive and well across the field of education.

What is it about education that makes mediocrity king, and achievement suspect? The more terrifying question being: does this quest for mediocrity trickle down to our students?

I recently expanded my teaching into other teacher's classrooms, providing technology integration support to teachers. I feel mostly supported in this position, but a few people in my district are clearly threatened by it and miss no opportunity for sabotage or gossip.

I will continue to publish, write grants, try new technologies, follow cutting edgers on Twitter and the Blogosphere. I’m not done learning, never will be. So things will keep happening for me, but as each one does, I’m certain I will feel the crab claws reaching toward me, snapping...

And to those pincers pointed directly at me, I say, “Ascend! It is your Birth Right!” Climb up that bucket, read professionally, write grants, continue your education, try new things in your classroom.

There’s plenty of room for everyone outside the bucket.  

But It's Complicated...

So there I was at WEMTA (Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology  Association) listening to Rushton Hurley, the quite fabulous educational reformer / Japanese linguist / edtech enthusiast, while chatting via keyboard to other audience members in the room.

As he waxed poetic on what’s most needed in education today, my co-texters shared thoughts, Q&A’s and laughs, toying with his ideas, taking them in divergent directions, sharing quirky stuff we do in class: my fake mannequin hand as a SMART Board pointer won me some in-room popularity (these people actually thought I was hilarious - shared ideas and an ego boost to boot).


Rushton played a quirky video of Japanese Businessmen dancing. He simply asked: “What do you think of this?” A few dozen of us backchanneled about it as we watched it. Our chat was  intense and interesting and quick and smart, metaphors and analogies flying. When the clip was over, he asked us to talk about it with the people at our table. Some said a few words, but the texted chat during the video was far more rich than the table talk. Instead of 45 minutes of “sit and get,” by offering a backchanneling opportunity, Rushton turned my lunch into sustenance of body, mind and spirit as I listened, chatted, pondered and interacted.

And so I thought, what would a similar opportunity mean for students? The chance to share ideas, challenge each other, interact with the topic at hand during class instead of the “sit and get”?

Much is being written about the use of backchanneling and Twitter in the classroom to increase student engagement. Some say this is clearly the way to connect with students, it’s clearly their preferred mode of communication; others say it’s a distraction, allowing students to tune out and preventing them from concentrating on difficult concepts.

Much has also been written lately about the fallacy of multi-tasking. That while we would like to believe we can do many things simultaneously, the fact is that we trade doing a few things well for doing many things poorly. This is a problem.

I know that while I was eating lunch and listening to Rushton, I was wholly engaged thoroughly enjoying myself and at a heightened state of awareness. I was having fun.

I suspect if we were given a quiz after Rushton’s presentation, I would have scored lower than many in the room. I wasn’t hearing every word he said; backchanneling reduced my ability to accurately regurgitate, but it also increased the value of my experience, allowed me to co-construct meaning with others in the room, to process what he was saying, to figure out how it related to my experiences as an educator and how I could use it to improve my practice.

And isn’t that what 21st century learning is about? Leveraging information and gleaning real-world experience? And isn’t multitasking how our digital natives operate? And isn’t it our charge, then, to help them multitask more effectively, help them manage their world and function well within it?

Maybe it’s not an either/or; maybe there’s a compromise between the “sit and get” and Twitter  that would allow teachers to be fully heard and students to fully process. Harvard Educator Eric Mazur’s “Just in Time Teaching” comes to mind - offering short bursts of lecture followed by students immediately interacting and applying and questioning.

One thing is certain: we have more questions than answers in education today. We know what we’re doing isn’t working. We have ideas. We have energy, but we have more questions than we have answers.  We know we need to engage more authentically with students, we know we need to prepare them for an ever-changing and increasingly digital world. To do this, we need to change the paradigm, give up some of the control, embrace uncertainty, and forge ahead.  

But it’s complicated...

To Friend or Not To Friend

It’s not that I’m anti-Facebook.

It’s not that I’m anti-technology.

I encourage my students to use cell phones in class to discuss, research, write, but I have yet to find a sweet spot using Facebook with students.  Of course I know the Facebook No-No’s. I know better than to friend current students, but beyond that, the line gets fuzzy.

Three times I’ve dabbled in Facebook with students and three times I‘ve been burned:

1. Strike One: two years ago, when recent graduates sent me a facebook invite, I accepted. It was fun staying in touch, seeing how they were doing in college, keeping my finger on the pulse of teendom.  But soon enough, I ran across a rant about my AP Class: too hard, too much reading, what did it have to do with real life anyway? I was surprised by my reaction – how much I took this to heart: ‘this” being my life, my livelihood. “This” being why I stay up way too late at night, why I bring a stack of papers with me everywhere I go, why I feel perpetual guilt for not spending enough time with my family. So I revised my Facebook policy: no “friending” former students until post-college age.
2. Last year was strike two.  I violated my policy and let one recent grad slip in; a beloved student and the daughter of a friend and colleague. Things were fine until her friends realized that we were friends, and the requests started streaming in. Clearly I had to reestablish the line. Fresh out of my classroom, our teacher/student roles were too recent. And once friends with a recent grad, their friends (many who are still in high school) see my business. FB is a place where I want to be a non-teacher. If I feel ike ranting, I want to rant.
3. Third Strike: This year, my beloved Freshmen blew my mind. I assigned a “This I Believe” essay modeled after the National Public Radio Show. It required that they write and read aloud an essay about what they believe. I had hoped this assignment would inspire the sublime – that it would force students to examine themselves and their world in a profound and meaningful way. This year, my 5th year of teaching “This I Believe’s,” it happened. After being touched by the work of one of their peers, who opened up about a deeply personal topic in her essay and courageously read it to the class, my freshmen, with no prompting from me, rewrote their essays – getting much more personal, opening up, writing about what matters most. They bound their essays, wrote me a cover letter that made me teary, and ceremoniously presented it to me in class. And so, when they told me they started a facebook page with their essays and invited me to join, I hesitated, talked it over with them, and ultimately joined, hoping to affirm and extend the inspiration they clearly had for writing and the camaraderie clearly forming . That was about two months ago. Today, a single comment posted on that page pierced the heart of their poorly-labeled “fearless leader”: “So guys, what are we going to do when we actually have to try hard to pass English next hear?” OUCH. BIG OUCH. ENORMOUS OUCH. These are accelerated students. I expect that they will have no problem passing. I expect them to strive for excellence on each assignment. I expect that my job is to encourage and nudge, not threaten or penalize.  And I would expect that I’d have thicker skin after 18 years of teaching.  And so, strike three, facebook is out.

Public and private spaces exist for a reason. With social media playing an increasingly powerful role in our culture, teachers must be deliberate in making and walking the public/private line.

There’s an inherent paradox in education: we are told to get to know our students, to personalize their educations, to appeal to their interests, but we’re also rightly told to leave our personal lives and biases outside the classroom and to maintain a professional distance. A tough balancing act.

Students need a place to blow off steam, to be themselves, to say things they can’t say in school. We need to give them their space and we need to accept that not every technology tool is effective and appropriate to use with students.

And so, farewell Facebook.

I Want to Work Myself out of a Job

I want to work myself out of a job.

I read a tweet the other day: “When is it going to stop being called ‘technology integration’ and start being called ‘teaching?’” I retweeted with gusto. Then, I thought about it a bit more.

Nice. Insensitive, arrogant, ignorant, but nice.

So, technology fully-integrated into teaching: what would it look like? Imagine this: students following their interests in self-initiated projects, leveraging technology to create original products and demonstrate learning to a global audience. Teachers as facilitators, partners, nudgers, clarifiers.

Good stuff. Great stuff. Dreamy stuff. But how do we get there?

Therein lies the hypocrisy of the tweet: “When will we stop calling it “technology integration” and just start calling it “teaching?”

AS IF teachers just have to make the decision to integrate technology, and all will be well. If only a critical mass of teachers, heaving all their weight, would throw a giant switch and voila: seamless technology integration: teachers and administrators and students and Apple and Google kumbayaing together in a circle of love.

The reality is that we have to have an honest look in the mirror and ask: what’s the discrepancy between the rosy-colored picture above and school-as-we-know-it?  What has to happen for effective technology integration to happen?

3 things:

1) Scrape the Plate: Teachers need time to learn and integrate technology in an authentic way. Teachers have more classes and more students and more responsibilities than ever. We have to make room on their plates for technology by first taking something off their plates.

2) Kill the Bugs: We need enough bandwidth, enough technical support, enough reliable devices. We must minimize technology glitches so we can ensure that technology is increasing student learning, not delaying or distracting from it.

3) Tech for All:  We need universal, reliable computer access for all. Teachers are smart, efficient professionals who value their scarcest commodity: time. They will make a full commitment to technology integration only when they know it will be time well spent, only when we can ensure that reliable technology will be available to themselves and their students, inside and outside of school, 24/7.

This is a seriously tall order. But this is a seriously tall moment. This is a Guttenberg moment; this is paradigm smashing, but it can’t happen overnight, and clever little quips won’t help, however cute they may be.

And while these are necessary conditions, they are not sufficient conditions. They won’t work unless educators are also willing to take the jump.

(Insert metaphor here: Enter Friday’s staff inservice). Among my Introduction to Google Apps sessions was one slumped over teacher, unwilling to take the jump. She assumed the computer right next to the door. She didn’t look up once. She never signed into her Google Apps account. She paid no attention to me or anything going on around her. She had to be there contractually, but goshdarnit, we couldn’t make her learn anything.  Her one saving grace was that she provided me with a juicy metaphor.

Staring at her monitor, oblivious to all, she is a metaphor for resistance to change. She is allowing the world to pass her by. She is ignoring this transformational moment in education.  She is curling up in the fetal position and embracing extinction.  She is an excellent metaphor for professional and educational inertia, and for that I thank her.

So there it is: three conditions and the educators who are still standing:  all critical components of doing right by our students in learning and technology.  With that, I long for the day when I (and edtechers like me) am able to work myself out of a job: when “it’s no longer called ‘technology integration’ but ‘teaching.’”

Until then, we have work to do.

I Broke up with My Boyfriend, Quit my Job, and Lost My Faith in the Deity

"What's new?" an innocent enough pleasantry, uttered by many-a-friend.

My response these days: "I broke up with my boyfriend, quit my job, and lost faith in the deity."

So let's break it down, shall we?

1)  Broke up with my Boyfriend:  Last Spring, I was his.  Seduced by his intelligence, his ability to anticipate my every need, his impeccable charm, his flawless packaging, iPad 2 ---3G 64 meg in black leather---and I became one.  I was so taken by him that I found a way to get a cart of him and 29 of his bff's into my classroom.  Life with boyfriend in the classroom, though, proved less than ideal (full story here).  At first, he could do everything, so we thought.  We tried to introduce him to Dropbox, FilesAnywhere, Google Apps.  Let's just say he doesn't play well with others.

And so, we broke up.  He's now moving to our elementary school, where we believe he will play better with our younglings.  It's sad, but it must be.  So this week, we will say our final goodbyes and hope that each of us finds our technological soulmate somewhere down the road.

2)  I officially quit my job two weeks ago.  Okay, I'm being a bit melodramatic (full story here).  I've shifted to half-time teaching; half-time technology integration.  Actually, switched to my dream job, truth be told.

So, two weeks into the new job: the low down?  After 18 years of Pavlovian behavior, not responding to a bell every 50 minutes telling me where I need to be is bizarre, but appreciated.  I'm wrapping my brain around the possibilities, I've worked in classrooms: multimedia QR projects, Glogster Posters, and Digital Storytelling; I've been to a technology summit, planned trainings, dreamed with and tutored teachers.  It's exciting and uncertain and important work.

3) So, to review: a failed love life and an uncertain work life.  At least I have my faith, right?  Strike three.  Much has been uttered lately about our false faith in technology.  Steve Jobs was not the messiah, nor is Bill Gates, nor Mark Zuckermann. The list continues.  We can't continue to melt our golden earrings for technology innovations that sell our students short.  The only way this thing will work is if we wed sound practices and clear objectives with tools that will enhance and streamline those practices, engaging students in their digital language, and preparing them for our 21st century global world.

Technology alone is not the solution:
We need to wed best practices with strategic use of technology. 

We can't continue to salivate over all things shiny and new, but we also can't close our eyes to emerging technologies.  We must exert self-control around the shiny, new things.  We must give students their due attention.  We must give technology its due research.  We must give teachers their due respect.

No alchemy.  No elixir.  No golden calves.

No boyfriend can complete you, no job can define you, no technology in and of itself can save education.

Still, with all of this uncertainty, I feel like Marlo Thomas in That Girl of maybe Zooe Deschanel in New Girl.  Amidst an educational system in flux and new Golden Calves by the day, I find myself metaphorically frolicking in the street, spinning in possibility, tossing my hat in the air, believing we're on the cusp of figuring this out.

This is exciting.

There are Years that Ask Questions and Years that Answer

Novelist Zora Neale Hurston said, “there are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

Last year asked questions for all educators in the state of Wisconsin; last year asked questions for me personally: the two were not unrelated.

So now, after 18 years in the classroom, I have a new job. Part-time teaching English; part-time Technology Integration.

And along with this new job comes excitement and trepidation; energy and anxiety; I'm both completely ready for it and will never be fully ready for it.

I’m passionate about teaching and I’m passionate about technology, but this year, I found out that diving deeply into both simultaneously---in an authentic and effective way---is not humanely possible, at least not for this human. So I took a risk and pitched a proposal for my ideal job: teach part-time, help teachers with technology integration part-time. To my elation, I was not only given the go ahead; I was given a mandate: help teachers integrate technology in a meaningful way in their classrooms: not starting in 5 years, not starting next year, but starting NEXT SEMESTER - as in three weeks from now!


And so, green light on, here are my New Year's Resolutions 2012:

1. Deepen my professional social network. I can’t do this alone. I need help, and for me, Twitter is currently the place to get it. 2011 marked my turn from Twitter sceptic to Twitter enthusiast. I’ve been tweeting for 4 months. I follow 87 educators and 60 follow me. I resolve to grow my presence on Twitter while continuing to be hyper selective about whom I follow: my Twitter friends don’t tell me what they ate for dinner; they develop classroom ideas, debate pedagogical philosophies, brainstorm edtech ideas, share conference notes; in short, they give me a broad exposure to what’s happening in the field. Their expertise, advice and enthusiasm is like none I’ve found in my professional life. More please.

2. Keep my eyes on the prize. I resolve to maintain laser focus on helping teachers integrate technology in the classroom. In my proposal, I intentionally used the term “laser focus.” It’s easy to get bogged down in theory and meetings and strategic plans and flavors-of-the-day; I am committed to having an active presence in teachers’ classrooms. I am committed to figuring out how to help teachers integrate technology in a way that's NOT just "one more thing" for them to do. I’m committed to creating 24/7 “how to” resources that continue to support them when I’m not in their classrooms. I’m committed to being an available, responsive, helpful resource to these amazing people.

3. Focus. I'm exposed to dozens of new websites, 2.0 tools, classroom tech ideas on a daily basis. I resolve to focus on a few proven, streamlined, effective tools that will be of most practical use to teachers and most dramatically improve student learning. I resolve not to be distracted by the abundance of shiny, new things.

4. No complaining, period. A friend of mine uses the term “the Society of Yes” to describe the edtech community - a group of educators who are incredibly positive and extraordinarily determined to figure out how we can best use technology to benefit students and teachers.  And so, I vow allegiance to “the Society of Yes”: anything coming out of my mouth that begins to sound like a complaint will be rephrased as a potential solution. Period.

5. Integrate: Meaningful and effective technology integration is difficult, very difficult. What’s going on in education right now is staggering: mandates galore, blinding focus on assessment and testing, the restructuring of teacher evaluation and teacher preparation programs, increased class sizes, increased teaching loads. We’re all feeling the impact of these factors in our classrooms. How then can teachers, whose plates are already heaping, keep up with technology, which itself is changing at breakneck speeds? How can a teacher find the time to integrate technology in a way that streamlines his/her practice, teaches students 21st century skills, and increases student learning? This is no longer a rhetorical question; it’s my job description.

I’m hoping that 2012 will, as Zora Neale Hurston suggests, be a year that answers that question.