Have a Good Life

Right now I am listening to the director of IT in my district, Scot McCombs, talk about the issues we are dealing with by being a new school district, implementing a new grade book, dealing with new positions and ways of doing things. Needless to say, there are some growing pains. There is nothing wrong with that.

Scot has told these people that they can come and talk to him, and he is serious about that. I have felt that way since day 1, and I have talked to him as much as I have felt I needed to. My philosophy is "What's the worst thing he can do? Say, 'No.'" Oh, scary!

One of my favorite things about my job is that I can disagree with my supervisors without fear that I will be reprimanded or shunned for disagreeing.

As far as culture goes, this is why I am happy at my job. I feel that my opinion is important and that I will be listened to. I think that most people in the district would agree.

I'm no doctor, but life experience has taught me this much, at least:

1. Spend the night outside when it is cold.
2. Make sure it is rainy, too.
3. Sleep poorly.
4. Get in line with 44,999 of your closest friends (many of whom also spent the night outside).
5. Huddle in a small enclosed space with live flu strains floating around.

"People started arriving as early as Friday night to get into line -- bringing food, blankets and umbrellas. Some arrived around 6 a.m. -- an hour before the clinics opened -- only to learn they were too late."

Story from KSL: http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=8430943

Twitter version: The Kindle is not for education, unless it is for all in education. That is, everyone has to have their own or it won't work.

Subscription to "The New Yorker"

Luckily, the district I work for is forward thinking enough to allow me to buy some Kindles to test the waters. So, for the four people on my team, we bought two Kindle 2's and two Kindle DX's.

The first weekend we got them, my wife and I each read a book. It totaled about 800 pages. I really like the reading experience. It is very fluid and easy to use. My eyes didn't get tired, and when I read with my contacts in, it didn't hurt or give me a headache (reading on my iPod Touch or on a computer screen does give me a headache sometimes). There isn't a backlight, so reading in the dark is not as fun.

With the text-to-speech feature that is on select books and Amazon-converted PDFs, you can have the device read to you in a (annoying) computer voice. Obviously, no substitute for real audiobooks (which the Kindle plays, also), but for me it was good enough when I wanted to keep reading what I wanted between locations.

This last week we had a retreat that filled our brains to capacity.

Kelly Dumont did most of the work, and he did a great job. As far as training like this goes, we had a ton of information to process. We spent a lot of time learning about tools we need to be using for the school year. That was the information overload. We could have continued the retreat into this week with all the stuff we needed to do, but I think one week was enough. There is still a lot to get done before the school year starts.

To break things up, we invited some expert voices to Skype in and talk to us about educational technology, libraries, and branding. This was, in my opinion, the best part about the retreat. It was really neat to hear from those who have been doing this for a while, and many of their words sparked a discussion that we probably would not have had. I think that I have a great team. They are going to be wonderful. All four of us (hopefully soon to be five of us) have strong opinions, but we are able to disagree without holding a grudge (or at least, that is my perception, and I hope it is right). During the week, we did "About Me" presentations which I think helped us get to know each other. The time was also very loose, so we could do what we wanted to and spend some time seeing what we were really like. I think both those things contributed to our great discussions.

One of the biggest challenges we face in education is giving teachers time to think. We don't do that nearly often enough, and it is a vital key to their continual learning. We had time this week to think, discuss, and learn. That is what made the week a success.

There were many topics that were left unvisited and incomplete. We still need to figure out a Responsible Use Policy for students and employees. We still need to take a stance on copyright. We still need to figure how we will support social media. We also need to prepare our presentation for New Teacher Orientation. And I am sure there are other things we still need to do. The good news is that I think we can do this now. I think that we have worked together enough to have our ideas mostly in sync. What I mean is, one or two or three of us can write some of these policies and make tentative decisions knowing where the others are going to have problems. One person wants facebook completely blocked, while another wants to use it as a tool in the classroom.

I think this retreat was great. We are all heading the same general direction, and I think that is important.

Have a Good Life.

What is the focus of our schools? What do we talk about most in our schools? Who do we think about the most in our schools? According to "The Equity Project" the focus is clearly on teachers and their salary:

The Equity Project (TEP) Charter School believes that teacher quality is the most important factor in achieving educational equity for low income students. Spurred by this belief, TEP reallocates its public funds by making an unprecedented investment in attracting and retaining great teachers. Plus an annual bonus of up to $25,000.

They further explain that they have refined what will make them a great school:

"These redefined expectations are unified by one principle: student achievement is maximized when teachers have the time and support to constantly improve their craft."

Don't get me wrong. I am all for teachers getting paid more, and I fully support giving them the time they need to "improve their craft". But TEP is going focusing on the wrong thing. This is something I have believed for a long time. The focus of every school should be on the learning of students in the building. Anything else is a waste of time. Schools do not exist to provide adults with a job, a career, or a calling. Schools exist so that kids can learn. If kids don't learn, it doesn't matter how much money teachers make. If kids don't learn, it doesn't matter how much professional development the teachers receive, or how much they observe their peers. How can you make sure students learn?

By focusing on student learning!

TEP says that student achievement is important, and they better show that the low-income students they service do indeed get higher scores if they want all $6 million donated for a school building. The problem is that you don't focus on student learning by focusing nearly completely on your teachers.

Here are my questions for The Equity Project:

1. What do you want your students to learn?

2. How are you going to know if they learned it?

3. What are you going to do (in a systematic, timely way) when they don't learn it?

Without the answers to these questions, we don't know how this or any school will do, regardless of how much other stuff they may claim will "save" education.

As it so often happens, while I was writing this, I saw this BLOGPOST from Harvard Education Publishing, which sums it up much more eloquently than I do.

Have a Good Life.

These thoughts are in response to Darren Draper's post at the Tech and Learning Blog.

I served a mission for my church in Russia for two years. Before I got there I studied the language for at least 8 hours each day for seven weeks. You can imagine how well I thought I spoke when I left for Russia. When I got there, I realzed that I spoke horribly. However, after about six months in the mothellrland, speaking russian as much as possible, I could take care of myself pretty well. After finishing my two years, I arrived. I could tell jokes in Russian. I could make plays on words. I was able to do this because I spoke the language. I learned by doing something.

In schools many teachers expect students to learn by sitting and getting.

There is one place that can and should be a place at schools that students can learn by doing: the library.

The library could be renamed the learning by doing lab. If students want to learn about something, they should be able to do it in the library.

I have been lucky enough to be able to teach many other teachers and students on a variety of topics. A friend and I were recently talking about how people from different generations learn. He mentioned that younger people (like our students) want to dive in and figure things out. Older people (like teachers) want to be told step-by-step how to do things.

When I teach adults and students alike, I adapt my teaching method to whatever seems most comfortable for them. When I teach students, I usually let them play with things and only show or demonstrate when they get stuck. So far, my students have enjoyed this.

Last year, when I did TechnoThursdays, I usually had to go more step-by-step with the adults who came and needed help, which is why I used the wikispace to help them see the step-by-step directions. TechnoThursdays were the ideal setup. I would create a wiki with directions of what we were going to do. Then I would talk to the teachers and walk those who needed it through that web page.

Technology makes that possible. It allows everyone to be on their own page when it comes to learning. They can go slow or they can go fast. This year, I have made many screencasts that show how to do different things with our transition to Google Apps for Education email accounts. The screencasts allow the teachers to view the needed material, often without any audio, and as many times as they personally need. Some people just need to know that a certain functionality exists, and they will do the rest on their own. I am not doing TechnoThursdays this year because I do that in one technology-themed faculty meeting each month. Allowing everyone to go at a speed that is comfortable to them has made those meetings much more effective. It gives people permission to go above and beyond what I am teaching.

The Aloha Team at my school went one step beyond my lesson about blogging on our school web site. They made their own wiki and their own blogs and those blogs are linked on this wiki. Their next step is to create an RSS feed that feeds right on to that page (a challenge for next year). That is something that could not have happened if I did not let them go at their own pace--a vital key to any learning situation.

I think about when I teach in other settings where technology is not available, the learners have no opportunity to go at their own speed. The instructor determines the speed, and they must conform to it. There is no other choice.

Understanding the ways that my students and other adults learn has helped me figure out how I learn the best. I like a mixture of what I give my students and what I give adults. I like the structure of an actual class, but I like being able to go at my own pace. Since I have finished my Masters degree, I have been able to focus more on what I want to learn, when I want to learn it. Using Twitter has also helped me gain more information than I could ever imagine.