Edustange

Ethical instruction needs to be on going. A single lesson, a single unit, or a single curriculum strand will not suffice. Teachers should integrate ethical instruction into every activity that uses technology.

* Johnson’s 3 P’s of Technology Ethics:

1. Privacy – I will protect my privacy and respect the privacy of others.
2. Property – I will protect my property and respect the property of others.
3. a(P)propriate Use – I will use technology in constructive ways and in ways which do not break the rules of my family, church, school, or government.

school internet use

Doug Johnson shares twelve ways to teach and promote ethical Internet use proactively. Johnson’s post emphasizes the continuity between learning in school and ethical behaviour in the student’s private practice. He stresses that internet use in school needs to be authentic. By that I mean it needs to reflect the exposure and access students have in their private lives. There should be no artificial dichotomy between school and the “real World.” Learning such as this must always be positioned in the real world. The technology we integrate into learning at school is already integrated into our student’s lives at home. Doug Johnson’s twelve points are:

1. Articulate personal values when using technology.
2. Stress the consideration and application of principles rather than relying on a detailed set of rules.
3. Model ethical behaviors. All of us learn more from what others do than what they say.
4. Build student trust.
5. Encourage discussion of ethical issues.
6. Accept the fact students will make mistakes.
7. Allow students personal use of the Internet.
8. Reinforce ethical behaviors and react to the misuse of technology.
9. Create environments that help students avoid temptations.
10. Assess children’s understanding of ethical concepts.
11. Educate our students and ourselves.
12. Educate your parents about ethical technology use.

… TV isn’t what it used to be. No more three-channel universe. That means that the cable/internet virus changes everyone in a very different way. Call it the million channel world (mcw).

The mcw brings addressability. There is no mass any more. You can’t reach everyone. Mad Men is a hit and yet it has only been seen by 2% of the people in the USA.

The mcw bring silos, angry tribes and insularity. Fox News makes a fortune by pitting people against one another. Talkingpointsmemo is custom tailored for people who are sure that the other side is wrong. You can spend your entire day consuming media and never encounter a thought you don’t agree with, don’t like or don’t want to see.

And finally, I have no idea if the mcw is making us happy. Surely, a substantial use is time wasting social network polishing, and that’s not really building anyone’s long-term happiness. And the mcw makes it easier to get angry, to waste time (there’s never ‘nothing on’) or become isolated. Without a doubt, the short-term impact of mcw is that it makes it easy to spread terror and harder to settle on the truth. At the same time, there’s no doubt that more people are connected to more people, belong to more tribes, have more friends, and engage more often than they did before it got here. We got rid of some gatekeepers, but there’s a race for some new ones. In the meantime, a lot of smart people are fending for themselves, which isn’t so bad.

I think a part of what it means to be educated is to be able to successfully reconcile the tension between participation in mass culture and our personal and more narrow communities of purpose; what I think Seth Godin refers to when he says “tribes” A term like “community of purpose” may be fifteen to twenty years out of date but I am still comfortable with it.

Godin is right, there are positives and negatives here. Society as a whole benefits from a common narrative and a common paradigm. We need this sort of glue. As tribal beings we have an individual need to belong to the mass culture. Conversely, we recognize diversity is a sign of health. As unique beings we have an individual need to find smaller personal communities that reflect us more closely.

We convey the tension between these two forces into public education: a unified curriculum with measurable standards and individualized inquiry characterized by autonomy, differentiation, and self expression. Neither direction seem to quite meet our needs, so we struggle to understand the correct balance. I’m not prepared to abandon public schools with common curriculum outcomes in favor of an anarchic alternative (home schooling, private and parochial schools, no schooling). I feel this way not because I have particular faith in our system or the curriculum choices we have made, but because I do believe we need collective narratives and paradigms.

There may be no balance between mass culture and tribe. I think we are engaged in an ongoing dialectic with no expectation of synthesis to resolve the tension. The best analogy I can give is the one I think most teachers are comfortable with. We lead the students down a long road to the point where they can chose their own branches to follow. Along that road we encourage them to take side paths that will enhance their current lives and prepare them for future choices. I think despite the divergences of the paths and the multitude of branches they might follow, the convergences will keep us connected. In some sense we are part of a collective journey. I think he educated person comes to see this.

Mobile will become our gateway to the world

2010 marked the year in which infrastructure, technology and design finally intersected in the mobile space. For the first time, sales of smartphones outpaced sales of desktops and laptops, iPhone and iPad applications were downloaded more than 7 billion times and research shows e-mail access is now on the rise on the iPhone while declining on the computer.

With the foundation in place, in the coming year we will witness the scales tip: Mobile device users will interact with content, companies and the Web more on their phones and iPads than on their computers, and IT and service providers will create solutions that are defined by our mobile consumption and use behaviors. “The highway has been there but until now we needed a special car to get us to our destination, so the average pedestrian was not going to get there. Now that technology barriers have been lowered, mobile will become an extension of who we are,” said Philippe Suchet, CEO of MyShopanion, and the recipient of the Web2.0′ Summit 2010 award for most innovative startup in the mobile shopping category.

From social shopping on the go, to easy paperless transactions and check-ins, to watching (and creating) videos with friends abroad, to in-class learning and collaboration, to managing our health real-time – prepare for an explosion of connected experiences across all points of interactions between people and people, people and companies, and people and information in the cloud.

In my previous post I reposted Shelley Blake-Plock’s comments from December 15, 2009 on 21 things that will be obsolete in 2010. It generated my first conversation. I asserted that the push for transformed learning environments would come from the lowering of the technological barriers for personal devices. This article suggests we will see that much sooner than 2020. Students with a smart phone in their pocket will push for access to their own resources. This will not be a matter of institutions providing them to all students.

1. Desks
The 21st century does not fit neatly into rows. Neither should your students. Allow the network-based concepts of flow, collaboration, and dynamism help you rearrange your room for authentic 21st century learning.2. Language Labs
Foreign language acquisition is only a smartphone away. Get rid of those clunky desktops and monitors and do something fun with that room.

3. Computers
Ok, so this is a trick answer. More precisely this one should read: ‘Our concept of what a computer is’. Because computing is going mobile and over the next decade we’re going to see the full fury of individualized computing via handhelds come to the fore. Can’t wait.

4. Homework
The 21st century is a 24/7 environment. And the next decade is going to see the traditional temporal boundaries between home and school disappear. And despite whatever Secretary Duncan might say, we don’t need kids to ‘go to school’ more; we need them to ‘learn’ more. And this will be done 24/7 and on the move (see #3).

5. The Role of Standardized Tests in College Admissions
The AP Exam is on its last legs. The SAT isn’t far behind. Over the next ten years, we will see Digital Portfolios replace test scores as the #1 factor in college admissions.

6. Differentiated Instruction as the Sign of a Distinguished Teacher
The 21st century is customizable. In ten years, the teacher who hasn’t yet figured out how to use tech to personalize learning will be the teacher out of a job. Differentiation won’t make you ‘distinguished’; it’ll just be a natural part of your work.

7. Fear of Wikipedia
Wikipedia is the greatest democratizing force in the world right now. If you are afraid of letting your students peruse it, it’s time you get over yourself.

8. Paperbacks
Books were nice. In ten years’ time, all reading will be via digital means. And yes, I know, you like the ‘feel’ of paper. Well, in ten years’ time you’ll hardly tell the difference as ‘paper’ itself becomes digitized.

9. Attendance Offices
Bio scans. ‘Nuff said.

10. Lockers
A coat-check, maybe.

11. IT Departments
Ok, so this is another trick answer. More subtly put: IT Departments as we currently know them. Cloud computing and a decade’s worth of increased wifi and satellite access will make some of the traditional roles of IT — software, security, and connectivity — a thing of the past. What will IT professionals do with all their free time? Innovate. Look to tech departments to instigate real change in the function of schools over the next twenty years.

12. Centralized Institutions
School buildings are going to become ‘homebases’ of learning, not the institutions where all learning happens. Buildings will get smaller and greener, student and teacher schedules will change to allow less people on campus at any one time, and more teachers and students will be going out into their communities to engage in experiential learning.

13. Organization of Educational Services by Grade
Education over the next ten years will become more individualized, leaving the bulk of grade-based learning in the past. Students will form peer groups by interest and these interest groups will petition for specialized learning. The structure of K-12 will be fundamentally altered.

14. Education School Classes that Fail to Integrate Social Technology
This is actually one that could occur over the next five years. Education Schools have to realize that if they are to remain relevant, they are going to have to demand that 21st century tech integration be modeled by the very professors who are supposed to be preparing our teachers.
(Ed. Note:  Check out Plock’s 2010 nomination for best blog post: “Why Teachers Should Blog”)

15. Paid/Outsourced Professional Development
No one knows your school as well as you. With the power of a PLN in their backpockets, teachers will rise up to replace peripatetic professional development gurus as the source of schoolwide prof dev programs. This is already happening.

16. Current Curricular Norms
There is no reason why every student needs to take however many credits in the same course of study as every other student. The root of curricular change will be the shift in middle schools to a role as foundational content providers and high schools as places for specialized learning.

17. Parent-Teacher Conference Night
Ongoing parent-teacher relations in virtual reality will make parent-teacher conference nights seem quaint. Over the next ten years, parents and teachers will become closer than ever as a result of virtual communication opportunities. And parents will drive schools to become ever more tech integrated.

18. Typical Cafeteria Food
Nutrition information + handhelds + cost comparison = the end of $3.00 bowls of microwaved mac and cheese. At least, I so hope so.

19. Outsourced Graphic Design and Webmastering
You need a website/brochure/promo/etc.? Well, for goodness sake just let your kids do it. By the end of the decade — in the best of schools — they will be.

20. High School Algebra I
Within the decade, it will either become the norm to teach this course in middle school or we’ll have finally woken up to the fact that there’s no reason to give algebra weight over statistics and IT in high school for non-math majors (and they will have all taken it in middle school anyway).

21. Paper
In ten years’ time, schools will decrease their paper consumption by no less than 90%. And the printing industry and the copier industry and the paper industry itself will either adjust or perish.

Its easy to miss when we try to extrapolate current trends ten years into the future; particularly in a period of technological hyper-change. Experience demonstrates traditional practice and attitudes are far more tenacious than we would like them to be. Education’s failure to actualize John Dewey’s ideas about education is a case in point. My current excitement attempting to integrate inquiry based, differentiated learning into my classroom is actually a reintegration. I was trying this in the mid 1980′s and I modeled my approach to projects from my tenth grade English teacher at Campbell Collegiate Institute in Regina, Saskatchewan (1972). Forty years later, his differentiated approach is still not the norm.

Never-the-less I agree technology is driving educational reform and learners are grasping the tools of democratic learning. Only a general totalitarianism would stop that. We see tentative efforts to limit the freedom of information, so it is possible but I am optimistic the movement is too powerful. Predictions related to technological integration are going to be realized. Changes in our thinking about what it is to be an educated person will come much more slowly.

Arne Duncan, then Chicago public schools chief, with President Obama in 2008. Now secretary of state for education, Duncan wants to recruit more top students to teach in US public schools. Photograph: Jeff Haynes/ReutersState schools in the US are failing not only its children, but also its national security, according to Thomas L Friedman’s recent commentary in the New York Times on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s 4 November speech. Friedman also praises Duncan’s call to reform US education by infusing its teaching core from the top students in the US – a process modelled on the education systems in Finland and Denmark….

Does the US need better schools and do US children deserve the best teachers in every classroom possible? Of course. No one refutes either of these statements.

But these lofty goals cannot be attained as long as leaders refuse to acknowledge the historical pattern of social failures that are reflected in (and, too often, exacerbated by) US schools, such as high dropout rates for racial minorities and children living in poverty. Throughout the world, the full picture of any nation’s schools reflects the social realities of that country; when schools appear to be failures, the facts show that social failures (the conditions of children’s lives outside of school) are driving the educational data.

And we will certainly never address these social failures – and the truth about our schools – if political leaders and media voices refuse even to say the word “poverty”, while promoting simplistic manipulation of data.

Say it, share it, public education more often reflects our cultural patterns than it does shape them. Always ask, “who benefits from this?”, “whose interests are served?” Saskatchewan Education is poised to institutionalize some grading practices in policy. The argued value is equity for all students in Saskatchewan. The solution presented is standardization and uniformity. Differentiation and a contextual response to the needs of individuals is marginalized or dismissed outright. We espouse encouraging students to view their failures as part of the learning experience. We want schools to be a safe place to learn, and then we  propose to send these young people the pointed message that they will be systematically penalized for each failure to be honest, each failure to meet an arbitrary deadline, and each failure to attend the equally arbitrary mandated minutes deemed required to learn each day.

Formal learning is beyond complex, it is extreme. Simple problems have clear causes and obvious solutions. Complex problems have clear causes and uncertain solutions. We know what the problem is and we are not certain what the solution should be. I only wish we were dealing with a complex problem here in Saskatchewan. We are not. We are dealing with an extreme problem. There is no consensus on the nature of the learning problem, or what our goal is for public education (see the magnitude of Saskatchewan’s goals of education for example), and therefore we cannot begin to see our way clear to a solution to the problem.

As the Guardian article suggests, we should not ignore the social factors influencing learning in our province. These external factors influence the social and economic capital young people can access. Penalizing student’s grades because of behaviour often reinforces social inequality. That suites the advantaged members of our society just fine. Children of poverty can become adults of poverty. Children of advantage can go on to perpetuate their privilege.

I have lived Saskatchewan’s Goals of Education for almost thirty years. Grades have never been a stated goal. Assessment measures learning. Grades sort. Grades classify. Grades rank. Grades are competitive. Grades offer opportunity and deny opportunity. Grades are arbitrary and political. Grades are never about learning. Our society values classifications, ranks, competition, and scarcity of opportunity. We like hierarchical pyramids and the look of a bell curve that sorts members of society into winners and losers. Those of us at the top like systems that will allow our children to follow our “success”. We want grades to maintain our valued social order. Young people do not need grades to learn. That requires other things.

What a wonderful concrete poem idea. I love the visual power of it. When I taught senior English literature I particularly enjoyed the concrete poems of e.e. Cummings and Earl Birney. Then again, I loved teaching poetry in general. I teach grade five and six now, suddenly I miss the complexity of Shakespeare.

The minister of education says she is preparing a province wide grading policy that will require teachers to deduct marks if students don’t do their work.

“We need to do a better job of consistent language that’s clear and concise,” Education Minister Donna Harpauer told CBC News. “So we’ll begin, of course, with a direct policy.”

The move comes in response to a series of CBC News reports in September 2010.

CBC had learned that several school divisions had told their teachers not to deduct marks for late, or even plagiarized, work.

Some educators argue that classroom behaviours — such as turning in late book reports — do not accurately reflect a student’s academic achievement.

As long as the student understands the work, he or she should be graded accordingly, proponents of the alternative system say.

But one concern raised by educational experts is the practical problem that results if various school boards have different grading policies. An ‘A’ in one school division may not be equivalent to an ‘A’ in another.

Harpauer said after doing some research, she agreed with that concern .

I wish these unnamed educational experts had considered the problem a little longer or that they had been transparent enough to say they advocated standardized testing such as the American SATs that make issues of attendance and incompletes largely irrelevant. This new Saskatchewan policy is unfortunate for learning in my province.

I posted on the subject of attendance problems in November 2006. http://staff.prairiesouth.ca/sites/stangea/2006/11/19/dealing-with-attendance… I was a school-based administrator then dealing with demands from my teachers to solve absenteeism. With little control over the external factors causing absenteeism, I argued against grading sanctions. I argued we need to look at our own classroom practices first and also make a commitment to the proposition that a grade reflects learning, not behaviour. I was very pleased when I moved to Prairie South School Division and found Division policy articulated this same position. I blogged about that August 2010. It made me proud to be an educator in this district.

I wonder if the educational experts advised the Saskatchewan Minister of Education about the difficulties administrators and teachers face exercising their “discretion for legitimate excuses such as a death or illness in the family.” Will students be graded down for extended family trips? In the last year many of my students missed days, weeks and in one case a month for travel. As a rural teacher and administrator I routinely dealt with hockey tournaments and shopping trips. Our policy on acceptable absence rested largely on parental approval and excuse. I found the students with significant attendance problems generally had parents willing to stretch the truth about why their child was absent. With no certainty about legitimacy, I abandoned grading consequences for truancy. A critical example for me was a girl with a 85% average who attended approximately 50% in her grade twelve year. She had demonstrated achievement of our learning outcomes through marks generated from class (60%) and a Provincial test (40%).

The province’s new policy will not resolve any practical problems. It will perpetuate and strengthen the current problems we have with punitive grading, and diverse understandings of why and how we grade. I wish the educational experts the Minister consulted had been candid about that.

“Inclusion is not about placing a child with a disability in a classroom or school. This is only a tiny piece of the puzzle. Rather inclusion is about how we deal with diversity, how we deal with difference, how w deal (or avoid dealing) with our mortality.

“Inclusion does not mean we are all the same. Inclusion does not mean we all agree. Inclusion celebrates our diversity and differences with respect and gratitude. The greater our diversity, the richer our capacity to create new visions. Inclusion means all together supporting one another….” (from Saskatoon Catholic Schools handbook)

This video preview and some material from Saskatoon Catholic was introduced in our staff meeting this afternoon. I have watched the cultural shift in public education since I began teaching in the 1980′s and I am encouraged. Inclusion is being embedded in our practice. I like the inclusion checklist that was included in our presentation. Consider your own practice as you read this list:

• Does the student enter the classroom at the same time as classmates?
• Is the student positioned so that he or she can see and participate in what is going on?
• Is the student positioned so that classmates and teacher may easily interact with him or her?
• Does the student engage in classroom activities at the same time as classmates?
• Does the student make transitions at the same time as classmates?
• Is the student involved in the same activities as classmates?
• Does the student exit the classroom at the same time as classmates?
• Is the student actively involved in class activities?
• Is the student encouraged to follow the same classroom and social expectations as classmates?
• Is assistance provided only as necessary and faded as soon as possible?
• Are classmates, not just teachers, encouraged to promote learning and interaction?
• Are classmates encouraged to ask for assistance from the student?
• Is assistance provided for the student by the classroom teacher?
• Does the student use the same or similar types of materials during classroom activities as classmates?

Daniel Ballantyne (@ballantynedj) shared this on Twitter. Why is it the entertainment industry can have a greater impact than our dry, academic discourse on rewards and punishments?

To grok something is to both comprehend (relate intellectually) and apprehend (relate emotionally and spiritually)its quiddity, its essence, its being.

In an ideological context, a grokked concept becomes part of the person who contributes to its evolution by improving the doctrine, perpetuating the myth, espousing the belief, adding detail to the social plan, refining the idea or proofing the theory.

Robert A. Heinlein originally coined the term grok in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land as a Martian word that could not be defined in earthly terms, but can be associated with various literal meanings such as “water”, “to drink”, “life”, or “to live”, and had a much more profound figurative meaning that is hard for Earthers to understand because of our assumption of a singular reality.

According to the book, drinking is a central focus on Mars where water is scarce. Martians use the merging of their bodies with water as a simple example or symbol of how two entities can combine to create a new reality greater than the sum of its parts. The water becomes part of the drinker, and the drinker part of the water. Both grok each other. Things that once had separate realities become entangled in the same experiences, goals, history, and purpose. Within the book, the statement of divine immanence verbalized between the main characters, “Thou Art God“, is logically derived from the concept inherent in the term grok.

The word grok resurfaced this evening in an exchange on twitter between @johntspencer and @wmchamberlain (follow them please). I tracked down this explanation on wikipedia. Stranger in a Strange Land is one of a number of fictional books that informed my youth and helped shape my contemporary values and beliefs. Now that I have been reminded of the term, I think I need to meditate on how it can inform my teaching.

“Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthly assumptions) as color means to a blind man.” (Wikipedia)

Is it reasonable to try and grok our students? What would that mean and what would our classrooms look like, feel like and sound like if we did? I think democratic learning, authenticity, differentiation, and autonomy might help us grope our way closer to the point where we can connect intellectually, emotionally and spiritually with the young people we learn with.