#SDUHSDchat February 9-15: Slooooooow Chat

Instead of our traditional Tuesday night 8:00 - 8:30 "blink and you'll miss it" #SDUHSDchat, let's try something different this week. For the week of the 9th through the 15th, we're going to do a "slow chat". One question will be posted each morning at 7:00 am. You can participate in the chat at any time you like, however frequently or infrequently you choose. Just be sure to include the hashtag #SDUHSDchat in your responses and discussion.

If you are using the standard Twitter website, you can always click on the hashtag to get a timeline that only includes #SDUHSDchat. If you are using Tweetdeck, you can create a separate column for our chat. Or you can use the Participate Learning interface, which is getting better and better for managing Twitter chats.

I will update this post with the questions for each day, so you can always refer back to this post if you miss the day's question in the morning. Questions will be coming from the @SDUHSDchat account as well as from my account, @kfairchild6.

Q1 - Tuesday the 9th
What are some things in your life that happen too quickly? What do you do to make them slow down? Why?

Q2 - Wednesday the 10th

What are some things in your class that happen too fast? What makes you think so? How could they slow down?

Q3 - Thursday the 11th
Team Hare or Team Tortoise? Slow and steady or quick as a jackrabbit? Which is the way you typically work? Why?

Q4 - Friday the 12th
Think about a student’s typical school day. In what ways are they too rushed? How can Ts help them slow down?

Q5 - Saturday the 13th
Often, being “busy” is seen as being successful. Do you agree? Are your weekends busier than your work week?

Q6 - Sunday the 14th
Is the old adage of “Sunday is a day of rest” outdated? How do you rest and recharge over the weekend?

Q7 - Monday the 15th
4th day of a long weekend! Did your Ss relax at all, or are our Ss' lives overscheduled? How can Ts help?

UPDATE: I should have mentioned in the first place that my own introduction to "slow chats" was from the inestimable David Theriault (@davidtedu) in this blog post from January 2014. He tells me he had never heard of a slow chat before that, so lacking evidence to the contrary, we're going to give David the credit for this idea!

Robots, Information Delivery, and Dictators

The estimable Bjorn Paige drew my attention to this article from the Atlantic in March. Michael Godsey, veteran high-school English teacher, is concerned that technology will take over his role as provider of knowledge to his students.

I describe what I think the public-school classroom will look like in 20 years, with a large, fantastic computer screen at the front, streaming one of the nation’s most engaging, informative lessons available on a particular topic. The "virtual class" will be introduced, guided, and curated by one of the country’s best teachers (a.k.a. a "super-teacher"), and it will include professionally produced footage of current events, relevant excerpts from powerful TedTalks, interactive games students can play against other students nationwide, and a formal assessment that the computer will immediately score and record.

From 1958, via Paleofuture

This is a view of students who are remarkably passive. They're all listening and learning at the same pace, on the same topic, at the same time. It's a strikingly un-imaginative vision, in which education is structured in exactly the same way as it has been for the last 60 years, only with computers!

Godsey's article is rife with concern about the loss of content delivery by teachers:

I recalled a veteran teacher who recently said with anguish, "we used to be appreciated as experts in our field."...

I don’t remember the last time I’ve attended, or even heard of, any professional-development training focused on my specific subject matter. Instead, these experiences concentrate on incorporating technology in the classroom, utilizing assessment data, or new ways of becoming a school facilitator....

At a seminar about project-based learning, I told the presenter with an increasing sense of desperation, "You know, some of us English teachers still believe that teaching literature is still our primary job." He smirked and put his pointer finger near his thumb and said, "A very little part of your job."...

The relatively recent emergence of the Internet, and the ever-increasing ease of access to web, has unmistakably usurped the teacher from the former role as dictator of subject content. These days, teachers are expected to concentrate on the "facilitation" of factual knowledge that is suddenly widely accessible. [emphasis mine]

I'm fascinated by the use of the word "dictator". It is a particularly strong word to use here, but as Godsey is an English teacher, I cannot believe it was an accidental choice. I take the intended meaning in this context to be "one who decides the course or path". A secondary meaning is, of course, political: "one who has absolute control and power". That's pretty revealing, but not nearly as revealing as a third meaning: "one who speaks". Are the students taking dictation?

If so, they shouldn't be. 21st-century education must be about students doing, not simply students listening. Students taking dictation, sitting passively, listening as a group, and proceeding all at the same pace is a vision that is just as outdated as the illustration above. Part of a new vision for education is a new role for the adult in the room. That adult needs to be much better at incorporating technology, utilizing assessment data, and becoming a school facilitator. Skill at delivering content to students is not nearly as important as it used to be. Neither is skill at cleaning a slate.

Godsey recognizes this, and laments it. Paige recognizes this, and argues that teachers' humanity can never be replaced:

The inspiration that comes from a teacher, and the interaction between a student and a teacher, is unique. It happens in classrooms and art studios and science labs. It happens in the gym and the theater and the auto shop. It happens in those thousand human moments that make up a school.

I recognize this, and I celebrate it. A variety of student-centered learning models are in use around the country, preparing students to take control of their own learning throughout their lives. Godsey doesn't like this, either:

I’ve started recognizing a common thread to the latest trends in teaching. Flipped learning, blending learning, student-centered learning, project-based learning, and even self-organized learning—they all marginalize the teacher’s expertise.

If the teacher's only expertise is "delivering factual knowledge", then this statement is true. For actual teachers (as opposed to lecturers), this statement is ridiculous on its face. Teacher-centered lecturing is the easiest thing to do in the classroom. Student-centered learning, including all the "trends" that Godsey dismisses, is incredibly difficult to do well. Far from marginalizing the teacher's expertise, these methods will place the teacher's expertise (or lack of it) smack in the center of the classroom experience.

Godsey's vision for flipped learning is in line with the rest of his vision of teaching:

[I]f I think my lesson plans or video tutorials rival some of the best on the Internet (for now), shouldn’t I be trying to make six figures on the open marketplace at teacherspayteachers.com or as a curriculum designer for a private company?

If your idea of effective teaching is writing lesson plans or making video tutorials, then you probably should be working as a curriculum designer rather than as a classroom teacher.

There's a lot more in this article to disagree with, but here's the key paragraph:

There is a profound difference between a local expert teacher using the Internet and all its resources to supplement and improve his or her lessons, and a teacher facilitating the educational plans of massive organizations. Why isn’t this line being publicly and sharply delineated, or even generally discussed? This line should be rigorously guarded by those who want to keep education professionals in the center of each classroom. Those calling for teachers to "transform their roles," regardless of motive or intentionality, are quietly erasing this line—effectively deconstructing the role of the teacher as it’s always been known.

Godsey has completely missed the de-centralized sharing community that has emerged in social networks, instead focusing on large organizations like Microsoft, Activate Instruction, or Edmodo. We could quibble with his choices of targets, but in general, I agree with Godsey's caution about teachers simply implementing lesson plans from corporations. But he's completely wrong that this problem is not being publicly discussed: he's just missed the discussions.

As for the claim that those of us calling for a transformation in teacher roles are "deconstructing the role of the teacher as it's always been known", I plead guilty as charged. It can't happen fast enough.

Speaking Clearly and Edu-speaking: In Reply to Liz Willen

Liz Willen, editor of the Hechinger Report, doesn't like educational jargon. Neither do I, nor most people I know. My colleagues and I are some of the first to laugh and roll our eyes at the newest acronyms that get added to the alphabet soup we have to remember as educators. So it may seem that Willen's righteous rant against "the school establishment's 'edu-speak'" (as reprinted in the Washington Post) would resonate with me, but in fact it doesn't. Willen has painted education with too broad a brush, in the process diminishing the expertise and professionalism of educators.

Every profession has their jargon, their acronyms, their vacuous buzzwords. In the worst cases, these are linguistic signifiers, separating the "in-group" from the "out-group". I have no doubt that there are education professionals who use the language of education in that way. However...

I was taking notes during one of those tedious but important school board meetings rookie reporters are assigned to cover when I realized I had no idea what was going on. Board members and various school officials spouted an inaccessible language of acronyms. The board members spent hours talking to and over one another, using terms that must have baffled audience members. I later learned they were discussing raising property taxes to boost the school budget, a critical issue local voters and parents needed to understand.

The inability of a rookie reporter to understand the professional language of any group as they are working should not be taken as a problem with the working group. Is there any doubt that if Willen had been covering a meeting of financial executives, or NASA scientists, or NFL coaches, that there would have been jargon, abbreviations, and shorthand that she was not familiar with? Part of the responsibility of reporters is to translate from specific professional language into readable explanations for the general public, whether covering education or any other field.

Willen asks "Why do we need terms like 'value-added' or 'formative assessments?' Ugh." Well, because a formative assessment is an educational strategy that (1) research has shown is one of the most effective strategies to increase student achievement, and that (2) many teachers don't know how to use well. It's a thing in education. Asking educators not to use the term "formative assessment" is like asking a scientist not to use the term "electromagnetic field." Just because it's a semi-complicated phrase doesn't make it jargon. Derek Zoolander should not be our model for educational language.

"And what of charter-school movement lingo, replete with 'restorative practices' and 'growth mindsets?'" I wasn't aware that these were specifically charter-school terms. Our district has been working with teachers and administrators on restorative practices for several years now. And using the term "growth mindset" is shorthand within the education community for a complex and multi-faceted debate around student self-motivation and how teachers can best model for and encourage struggling learners. To dismiss the term "growth mindset" as simple edu-speak ("Har, har, kids grow!") is to miss the point entirely.

Willen seems to want educators to speak clearly. Nobody I know wants otherwise. But for professionals speaking to each other, using the terminology of the field is how they speak clearly. Asking them to speak to each other the same way they would to someone outside education is to denigrate the professionalism of the field. Willen writes:

Just try to decipher this recent press release about a new study proving“rubric-based assessment can be taken to scale and can produce valid findings with credible and actionable information about student learning that can be used to improve curricular and assignment designs and to increase effectiveness of programs and classes in advancing the most important learning outcomes of college.”

Actually, to educators conversant with their profession, that's pretty clear.

I spent several days at a conference recently with a group of fascinating educators, advocates and policy-makers, all deeply knowledgeable and committed to improving education. In one-on-one chats over a beer or breakfast, they spoke clearly about problems and solutions. And they kept the tone entirely conversational when discussing our children’s classrooms and college choices.
But everything fell apart the minute we broke up into “enabling environments” to revise “cluster logic models” and “establish comprehensive assessment systems.”

Lesson: Professionals don't speak to each other the way they do to non-professionals. This is not an indictment of educational jargon. To assume that everything in education is simple and can be explained in words of one syllable or less is to fall into the "I went to school, how hard can teaching be?" trap.

More than ever, the public needs easily comprehensible information about what is going on in schools, what is working and what is not. So what’s an education journalist to do?

 Learn the terminology and explain it clearly to your readers. In other words, your job.

Does Promoting 21st-Century Instruction Mean That 20th-Century Instruction Was Wrong?

TL;DR version: No.

Full version: Of course not. There were obviously many good instructional strategies and great teachers in the 20th century, as there were in the 19th, 18th, and 17th centuries, I'm sure. (I wasn't there.) The point, however, is that our students don't live in those centuries. The world has changed. If we want to be effective in teaching students who will live in the 21st century, we can't use the same teaching practices from prior centuries, no matter how great they were in their day. Time for us to move on.

An effective teaching practice, in its time.
"Philo mediev" by Unknown - Castres, bibliothèque municipale. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons

What is 21C Education? #YourEduStory TL;DR version

We can't give students the knowledge they will need for an uncertain future. But we can give them the skills they need to learn for themselves. No matter what innovation and changes happen, our students can be successful if they are able to

1. gather information from a variety of sources,
2. evaluate and analyze that information in context, and
3. do something with that information.

This means that it is much more important for students to learn how to learn deeply, independently, and authentically, than for them to master a body of facts. We must teach them to become master learners.

You Might be a Twitter Bot if...

1. Your username has a random string of numbers at the end, that humans would be unlikely to remember.

2. Your profile description is a list of general descriptions with no specific information or location. (And stars in between phrases; what's that all about?)

3. Your profile description is supposed to be "whimsical" but actually sounds like it was written by a machine who had heard of humans but never actually met one. ("Award-winning" what, Jennifer? "Recovering youth worker"? Ew.)

4. Your profile picture is a stock photo found on the web and multiple other Twitter accounts. (Do a Google Image search to check this.)

5. Your tweets are a series of random, non-sensical phrases or ads.

6. Nobody is starring, retweeting, or replying to your tweets.

7. Your tweets can be found verbatim in Wikipedia or dozens of other tweets, but none are re-tweets or replies. (To check this, copy the text of the tweet and paste it in to a Google search. Put quotes around it, to search for the entire phrase verbatim, then click "Search".)

Addendum: What can you do if you are followed by a Twitter Bot? Please report them for spam and do not follow back. It's a small thing to do, but if enough of us do it, we may have an impact.

P.S. This is just the most recent manifestation of Twitter Bots. Click here to read about a previous one.

P.P.S Got another Bot follower literally while I was writing this post:

On Cell Phones in Classrooms

Poster currently in several classrooms in my district

In the spring, I held an after-school workshop titled "Classroom Management in the Age of BYOD". My intent was for teachers to discuss and share some ideas about successful management strategies in classes where students are using their own cell phones, tablets, or laptops on a regular basis. The workshop went in an unexpected (to me) direction when it became apparent that most of the teachers there were more interested in learning how to ban cell phones and prevent their students from using them. We had suggestions ranging from "collect them at the door" to "email all parents asking them to keep the devices at home" to "remove the wi-fi from all classrooms in the district". I left discouraged.

I once had a ban on cell phones in my classroom. I had a poster similar to the one shown here. That was about 15 years ago, when phones were simply phones, and their use in public places was a novelty. Every few days, one of my students' phones would ring during class, because they weren't used to silencing them. Most of the students' phones resembled the cartoons in this poster. I had to teach them about appropriate and inappropriate times to have their phones' ringers on.

Photo by Flikr user "Images Money", CC-BY 2.0

Do I have to state the obvious? What (most) students carry around in their pockets has as much resemblance to a cell phone from the early 2000's as my laptop computer does with a bakelite rotary dial phone. Most people, including students, are accustomed to silencing ringers and notifications at the appropriate times. What they are not necessarily used to, however, is using their powerful pocket computers for learning and research in addition to socializing and games. This is because we haven't taught them how to do that. And we can't teach them how to use their phones for productive work if we confiscate them on entrance or on sight.

Which brings us to the recurrent hand-wringing article or blog post like this one from Edutopia in June. For all the concern about teachers being "tired of seeing students text each other" and "text language and spelling that creeps into student assignments", there is precious little in this article actually concerned with student learning. The author writes about "the best thing you could do for yourself", "you have to enforce it", "[e]very teacher's tolerance... varies". The closest the author gets to addressing instruction and student learning is a throw-away line:

Perhaps the most important element is minimal downtime in your learning activities, because the temptation to sneak a look is just too strong. 

The comments on the article continue in a similar vein: students are just too distracted by their phones, and need to focus and concentrate on what the teacher is presenting. This is decidedly not a student-centered mindset.

Fortunately, there are educators who recognize that these pocket computers (a) are not going away any time soon, (b) are only going to get more powerful, useful, and widespread, and (c) will be a crucial part of our students' jobs and lives, even more than they are today. Exhibit A, from 2010 (!) by Doug Johnson in ISTE's Learning and Leading with Technology. (Thanks to Chris Ratican on Twitter for the link.) Exhibit B, from Katie Martin, Director of Professional Learning at the University of San Diego. Exhibit C, from Lisa Nielsen, in Tech & Learning.

We cannot simply pretend that powerful pocket computers don't exist or are not going to be important to our students in their futures. We have to teach students how to use them for productive learning. Doing otherwise, in 2015, is educational malpractice.

UPDATE: As if on cue, here's this article from CBCNews: "Smartphones in the classroom: a teacher's dream or nightmare?" It's actually a fairly reasonable article except for this key quote:

But what about the distraction? Surely kids with a cellphone or tablet in front of them will stop focusing on a lecture and start Facebooking or online chatting?

As they should! Just as adults do in a meeting during a boring, irrelevant lecture or presentation. Our teaching methods and strategies have got to match up with students' needs. If you're trying to lecture to high school students, don't be surprised to see them tune you out, whether it's with their phone or by doodling or just by daydreaming.

ANOTHER UPDATE 12/6/2015: Here's another one, from NPR in November: How to Get Students to Stop Using Their Cell Phones in Class. As Julie Smith (@julnilsmith) points out on Twitter, the comments are terrifying. There is one comment I like, however, from user616828: "The 1950s called, they want their pedagogy back."