Jeff Felix

Changing Students Signal a Turning Point in Education (Part Two)

2009-05-07T04:01:00.000-07:00

The average person thinks of a classroom with an adult at the center of attention in front of a room full of silent, seated students. Student activity is usually limited to listening to the teacher lecture, answering some question the teacher posed, or working on some written exercise the teacher assigned. This technique seems to work best when the goal is to raise test scores of basic skills. Most people find it hard to imagine anything different.

In knowledge construction classrooms, teacher-student interactions are less didactic, more collaborative. Students work together. Learning environments feel more like real workplaces. The emphasis is on the processes of inquiry and invention that lead to the discovery of facts. Discovering relationships from which students create a new order, a new pattern, or a new understanding is the teacher’s goal. Making sense from facts is an overriding value that students receive.

Research findings seem to suggest that the overall effects of technology on student outcomes may be greater than previously thought. This same research suggests that teaching and technology processes either may directly impact student outcomes or may interact with technology features and indirectly impact outcomes.

The question is: do we have the leadership courage necessary to handle these deeply destabilizing and disruptive technologies and step up to the task of changing the way our teachers not only teach, but also how they think about the act of teaching?

Perhaps the reason we have not closed the achievement gap is because we focus on the gap and not the achievement. Perhaps we should think of the achievements that dedicated educators in isolated situations have accomplished using technology in a many to one or one to one mode of learning, forming individualized plans of instruction, and differentiated lessons. Perhaps we should begin to think of these achievements as a revolution in the classroom that we honor and bring to the light of day by encouraging collaboration with other educators. The resulting professional learning community will allow educators to look beyond the isolation normally found in schools. It will allow teachers to share successes in the classroom with each other creating a pyramid of new successes. It will finally allow us to talk about the achievements we experience with children instead of the gaps we struggle to close.

I have started to form a relationship with the Coronado community of teachers who share my enthusiasm for 21st century learning. Our new group is called SC21, short for Superintendent’s Committee on 21st Century Learning. Our purpose is to collaborate on the proper steps to take for the future learning possibilities in Coronado. We meet to encourage each other, support best practices, and build on successes or share failures of instruction. Our goal is to build support systems to help students master the multiple skills required of them in their career or life in the 21st century. More information on 21st century learning can be found at http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/.

We need to provide vision for this new method of instruction, for this new way of learning in our Coronado schools. We need to make sure our proud organization does not narrowly focus, does not simply stare incessantly at the pragmatic questions that haunt our daily lives. There are many teachers working overtime to create collaborative learning communities, to engage learners and produce motivating learning activities. However, these models are not sustainable over the long-term unless we change our way of thinking toward teaching. We need to place the power of a larger vision before the gaze of the educators in our schools.

Changing Students Signal a Turning Point in Education (Part One)

2009-04-07T15:56:00.000-07:00

Some experts predict school textbooks will be gone in five to ten years. In 1922 Thomas Edison boldly predicted that motion picture would replace textbooks in education and declared it the starting point of the history of media technologies for learning. Although Edison’s prediction has not exactly come to pass, distance learning, distance education, cyber education, remote classroom, and e-Learning have become similar concepts and fueled the controversial fire. Major publishers now offer electronic versions of textbooks and others are working with publishers to incorporate video into their planned electronic editions. However, speculating about books being eliminated from the classroom will not change our schools or decrease the achievement gap. But perhaps creating a discussion about a revolution in the way teachers instruct and a phenomenal change in the way students learn will.

There is a great deal of tension inside our schools right now and understandable anxiety among parents about the digital culture, a seemingly chaotic world of unfiltered information. But this is a change issue. We've had five centuries of the printing press to get used to print culture. Compare that to twenty years of digital culture - and only a few years of real Internet connectivity with high-speed broadband.

The Internet has changed virtually all aspects of human culture. The Internet has removed the invisible filter that formally standardized knowledge and has allowed anyone with broadband connectivity to put together their own versions of knowledge. Schools should be teaching students how to sort and evaluate the overwhelming volume of information properly by engaging their skills of creativity, innovation, critical thinking, and collaboration.

This change in the framework of education can cause a generational mismatch, a clash of cultures between digitally literate kids and digitally challenged older adults. It is the digital natives versus the digital immigrants. This mismatch may not last very long. Within ten years many of the least computer literate teachers will retire, paving the way for young teachers who have grown up with the power of online technology.

The first digital native or millennial is considered by most to be a child born in 1984 and beyond. The millennial entering our classroom today is extremely different from the child who entered our classrooms when most adults attended school. These children have a totally different way of thinking; it is difficult sometimes to understand their motivation toward learning because their life experiences so far have been vastly different from yours and even from your children.

Changes in our schools will be very slow because of the high cost of equipment and shortages of teachers with skills. But, I believe human society is on the verge of turning full circle. The limits of print technology set just one person up as the knowledge maker, the author. Online, anyone can answer back, anyone can be the author. Billions of new conversations are starting online right now. We are going back to conversational learning, the way we understood the world before textbooks were invented.

The learner today wants to be a part of that conversation, wants to be in charge of their learning, wants to have a teacher deliver instruction to them just the way they want it. This type of learner is what I call the Starbucks student. When you go into a Starbucks, you don’t just order a cup of coffee. You order a venti decaf two pump mocha latte sugar free extra hot no foam cup of coffee.

So too with the student; they don’t just want a cup of instruction with homework to go. They want a multi media presentation on a large screen display with surround sound speakers from a personal computing device combined with Internet broadband capabilities. They want this lesson complete with rich and expansive URL links, and they want to be given the time to discover more than the lesson actually covers if they so choose.

Our community understands this because they too use these same tools daily; they experience the same feelings of desiring individualized instruction and wanting to be in charge of their own learning. Parents are saying this to educators today by pulling their child from traditional schools and placing them into charter schools that specialize in this type of instruction. The students themselves will simply say to you that it is about time.

Bottom line is that the delivery of education has to change and the teachers have to accept and be willing to recreate their delivery of curriculum to take advantage of the tools at their disposal and the changing student in the classroom. It is the right thing to do and it will work – but the classroom paradigm must change. The teacher must become a facilitator and the student must take charge of their own personal learning. Educational leaders must be prepared to provide leadership and equipment to guide this change with the proper timing and expertise necessary for strong implementation.

New Year's Resolutions for 2009

2009-01-08T20:11:00.001-08:00

I should probably make a resolution that I will be more faithful toward posting to this blog. However, I do not want to make promises I cannot keep. So here are the resolutions that at least have a chance of being fulfilled:

“I want to get to know my fellow educators better. I want to meet with them more and give them an opportunity to vent about their classroom problems. We're all in this together and the more we collaborate the better. I resolve to make certain that our schools are giving students the skills they need to compete and succeed in the 21st century workforce.

“We have an obligation to our children to properly prepare them for the jobs they will apply for when they leave our schools. Those jobs may not be the same as those in existence today. We must prepare our students by exercising their creativity, innovativeness, and ability to collaborate with others. The superintendency is my role, not my identity.

“With all eyes on me, it's easy to take it personally, so I resolve to not take issues or criticism personally. I will discern the difference between who I am and what I do so that I can stay in the game when the going gets tough. I will work hard on my listening skills by looking beyond the words of others for the real issues and any opportunities for advancement. Being a good listener means being in the present and not waiting for an opportunity to speak.

“I will remember to take care of myself: eat well, exercise, and get enough sleep. I will find the time to reflect on my work and myself; in order to recalibrate, reenergize and return to the work. Finally, I will remember that this work has a higher purpose as an advocate for children and ultimately as an advocate for the future of our proud country.”

Teacher's Role in Assessment of Children

2008-08-17T15:12:00.000-07:00

The Governor of California’s recent decision to force all students into Algebra in their 8th grade year is a noble endeavor; I believe our curriculum should be rigorous and students should be made to broaden their minds with instruction that paces academic goals so that learning is always an aspiration, but never an end. Algebra is a problem-solving tool; like a hammer is a carpenter's tool, algebra is the mathematician's tool for solving problems. Algebra has applications to every human enterprise. People who say that they will never use algebra are people who do not know algebra. Knowledge of algebra can give you more power to solve problems and accomplish what you want in life.

However, learning Algebra is a bit like learning to read and write. If you truly learn algebra, you will use it to its fullest extent, but not until you have experiences over the years to guide that use properly. Using it and learning it are developmental in nature; it takes time and maturity to do both. The maturity rate for children varies, especially during adolescence. Teachers should be the ones to determine a student’s ability to undertake an Algebra course, not politicians. Forcing some students into the rigor of Algebra could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and turns them off to school. With our national dropout average at 30%, we cannot afford to lose a child’s interest in education at such an early age.

I believe in the idea of No Child Left Behind and the goal of Algebra instruction in 8th grade. But to expect these ideals to apply to every child at the exact same time in each child’s life is saying that lives are not unique and that human beings are alike. We are all different in from one another, learning and growing at varying levels throughout our life. I do not believe we should be placing demands on student learning without the expertise of the educators in the schools making sound academic articulation decisions based on their knowledge of the child, the child’s previous learning, the child’s maturity for such rigor, and the child’s previous assessment results. To do otherwise is ludicrous and unproductive, not to mention inhumane.

Teen Writing Skills Improve with Blogging

2008-05-02T17:27:00.000-07:00

Pew survey shows that student bloggers write more and value the practice more than non-bloggers. The survey of 700 U.S. residents ages 12 to 17 confirms much of the research I performed in the study “Edublogging: Instruction for the Digital Age Learner”

Blogging appears to be helping teens become more productive writers. This is a promising finding that has important implications for schools. A survey recently conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project explored the links between the formal writing that teens do for school and the informal, electronic communication they exchange through email and text messaging.

According to the 2008 study, teens who communicate frequently with their friends, and those who own more technology tools such as computers or cell phones, do not write more often for school or for themselves than less communicative and less gadget-rich teens. However, teen bloggers write more frequently both online and offline.

Forty-seven percent of teen bloggers write outside of school for personal reasons several times a week or more, compared with 33 percent of teens without blogs. Sixty-five percent of teen bloggers believe that writing is essential to later success in life; 53 percent of non-bloggers say the same thing.

This information seems to confirm the results I found in my study on edublogging. Blogging allows a student to write more with more insight into the topic. The student will have deeper thoughts on the subject at hand and will be more motivated to write about the subject. This motivation for writing will assist the student in a variety of other subjects in school and may even lead to a better understanding of their own psyche.

The report notes that teens write for a variety of reasons such as part of a school assignment, to communicate with friends, to share their creations with others, or simply to document their thoughts. They are more motivated to write when they can select topics that are important to their lives and interests, and they report greater enjoyment of school writing when they have the chance to write creatively. Teens also report that writing in a blog for a local or worldwide audience motivates them to write clearly and more often.

The report also confirms my findings about the ambiguity in computer usage at home and at school. Educators seem perplexed when it comes to assigning blogging assignments because many students do not have computers at home. But computer ownership increases daily as prices go down and the need or want of these machines rises. Teens who use a computer at home for their non-school writing believe computers have a greater impact on the amount of writing they produce than on the overall quality of their writing.

Among teens who use computers in their non-school writing, four in 10 say computers help them do more writing, and a similar number believe they would write the same amount whether they used computers or not. Only three in 10 teens who write on computers for non-school purposes at least occasionally believe computers help them do better writing. Twice as many (63 percent) say computers make no difference in the quality of their writing.

Most students (82 percent) believe that additional instruction and focus on writing in school would help improve their writing even further--and more than three-quarters of those surveyed (78 percent) think it would help their writing if their teachers used computer-based writing tools such as games, multimedia, or writing software programs or web sites during class.

California Budget Cuts to Education are Unforgivable

2008-02-18T07:06:00.000-08:00

To address the state’s estimated $14 billion deficit, Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed the largest reduction to education funding in California history. For 2008-09, the Governor has proposed that the Legislature suspend Proposition 98 (the minimum funding guarantee for schools) and cut $4.4 billion (more than 9%) in education funds. The Governor has also proposed $400 million in education funding reductions in the current 2007-08 budget year.

When spread across the 6 million students enrolled in California’s public schools, $4.8 billion in cuts equates to $800 per student or:

 $24,000 for a classroom of 30 students
 $500,000 for an elementary school of 625 students
 $2 million for a high school of 2500 students

These cuts will force half of San Diego’s school districts to file a qualified or negative certification stating they cannot meet their financial obligations. Bonsall Union may be one of them. Because school districts are required by law to provide layoff notices by March 15, some are already issuing pink slips. Bonsall Union will definitely be one of them. If these cuts go through as proposed, we can expect:

 class sizes to increase by as much as a third
 the loss of reading specialists and other interventions
 fewer counselors and class selections for middle and high school students
 the likely elimination of transportation, music and art programs

While it is clear there are extraordinary challenges in balancing the state’s budget, I strongly oppose the governor’s budget proposal. Our students and schools did not create this budget problem, and their progress shouldn’t be undermined because of it.

The governor’s budget reductions would be disastrous to public schools and the cuts are inconsistent with the state’s goal of improving student achievement. Laying off our best and brightest young teachers is unforgivable and appalling to me. Increasing class size and further eroding the support system for students provided by classified and paraprofessional staff is equally detrimental to student achievement.

California spends $1,900 less per student than the national average; when I was a public school student in the ’50-‘60s, California was in the nation’s top ten percent.. Other recent studies have shown that California seriously underfunds its public schools, with New York spending 75 percent more than California. In addition, California has some of the most overcrowded classrooms and the greatest shortages of librarians, counselors and other critical support staff in the nation.

California’s K-12 academic and performance standards are among the most challenging in the nation. With hard work, modest investments in teacher training and the adoption of standards-aligned textbooks, our students and schools have been making progress. Reading scores are up 25 percent and math scores have increased 17 percent in the last four years. This progress cannot continue with these proposed cuts to our public schools.

I am not a legislator, but I am a tax payer and I budget my own finances. Perhaps this is too simplistic, but if I do not have the money, I do not spend it. Why do governments continually spend more than they earn? When I budget, I make sure I pay the important bills first. Why do we constantly need to remind our politicians that education is our most important bridge to the future?

The Study on Blogging Educators is Complete!

2007-12-22T15:41:00.000-08:00

The study on teachers in the United States who are using blogging as an instructional practice has finally been completed. The study shows that teachers perceive a significant increase in student learning through motivation for assignments and through deeper thought processes. Students seem to enjoy the connectiveness of their work to other subjects and to each other. This collaboration encourages a deeper relationship with their peers and with the teacher. Other studies have shown these relationships produce more student learning especially in minorities and students of low socioeconomic backgrounds. It also seems that teachers see the benefits of this practice. They have increased their use of blogging year after year, which seems to show they feel blogging has great relevance as a classroom tool.

Click here for the full study in the form of a dissertation.
Click here for a summary suitable for publishing in a journal.

It is my hope that this study will be useful to you and to others who are proclaiming the benefits of 21st century learning. I believe that this study should be made available to all Web 2.0 educators. I give you permission and in fact would appreciate you sending this study to other educators to make that happen.

This study has been peer reviewed by professionals at the Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education organization. The full paper will be published and I will be presenting the work to fellow educators in March at their International Conference in Las Vegas. I have also been asked to present the findings at the TechEd International Conference & Exposition in April in Ontario, CA. Please look me up if you happen to attend either event.

I would like to thank those of you who participated in this study. I would especially like to thank the 12 edubloggers who took the time to participate in the interview questions. The answers to those questions turned out to be the backbone to the study. One of you (#12) just recently won an award as Edublogger of the year and I can see why. All of you should continue in this valuable work and lead the rest of the world in achieving great learning from the children of the Digital Age. I applaud you and your work in this important endeavor.

Please feel free to contact me at any time. I have much more time now that this study has been completed and I look forward to communicating with you. I might even have time to update my own blog more frequently!

Use it or lose it!

2007-06-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

Summer is here already! As students leave for the summer, educators must be wary of students losing what they have learned over the long break. I suggest blogging as an exercise in writing, maintaining the relationships, and continuing the conversation of learning.

My research on blogging as an instructional practice is nearly complete. I have found that teachers who have maintained a blog with their students are produce students who are deepening their love for learning and even digging deeper for insight through this communication. Maintaining this blogging relationship over the summer could help in the fall by preventing the “learning lag” teachers usually experience in presenting new information because of the need to re-teach previous instruction.

This is especially true of students from a lower socioeconomic status. The Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University reports that “On average, children from low-income families lose nearly three months of grade-level equivalency during the summer months each year, compared to an average of one month lost by middle-income children when reading and math performance are combined.” Because of this, the failure of students to maintain their learning over the summer contributes to the achievement gap for children of low-income families.

Give it a try!

Should Teachers Assign Homework?

2007-04-29T07:52:00.000-07:00

At the last Bonsall Union School District Governing Board meeting, the issue of assigning homework on the weekends was discussed. It appears there has been a long held belief that it was board policy for teachers to not assign homework on Fridays. I have found no such policy and the collective memory of those at the meeting (going back 12 years) could not recall any such directive. So I began to think about the whole issue of homework and its affect on students and their families.

There are many philosophies regarding the need for homework, the disruption it places on families, whether children are mature enough developmentally, the consequences if students don’t have additional time outside of the 5 hours per day for only 180 days, and the negative effect on student motivation for learning. It is a sometimes controversial issue that can be lightly regarded by those who do not have children in school or who do not remember the pressure of overnight assignments. Pedagogically I have found no evidence to support either philosophy to the extent of being able to say yes or no to assigning homework.

So, a middle ground must exist; one that exercises the right of a teacher to assign homework, and another that respects the student’s time and the family’s time. I believe that homework should be respectful of the child’s ability and developmental level, related to the work of the classroom and, reasonable in amount and degree of difficulty. This does not mean that teachers need to create different homework assignments for every student every day. There are some assignments that can be easily accomplished in class, like writing in a journal or practicing spelling words. Specific differentiation is needed for those students whose ability or work ethic is in need of support. There may be a student, for example, who struggles with math. For this child, completing the standard homework assignment of 20 math problems could mean two hours of grueling work as opposed to the 20 minutes it takes for most. Anticipating this, the teacher might adjust the length of the assignment accordingly. Other modifications might include arranging for a child to get help with a homework assignment from a parent or sibling or modifying the way in which an assignment is done (for example, dictating rather than writing, or having a parent read a chapter from a textbook to a child rather than the child reading it him/herself). The important question to ask is, “How might I modify this assignment to fit this child’s learning style and needs?”

The most important strategy for assisting students with homework is to involve and communicate properly with parents. The more informed parents are about homework expectations, the better able they’ll be to help their children meet these expectations.

Easter letdown settles in

2007-04-09T19:00:00.000-07:00

Going to work today, the dreary rain and gray skies seemed to match my mood. The day after Easter (or really any holiday) is such a drag. Seeing friends and family, having good food and conversation, and wishing it would all last a little longer is only part of the problem. The buildup to the holiday and the heightened expectations increase the intensity of the day.

I worked all day on Saturday to get the yard ready. I knew we would do an Easter egg hunt for my granddaughters Sami and Kylie. It came and went like lightning. Life seems to get faster when you get older.

Which brings me back to today. I was faced with reading over 3000 pages of education code in order to put a new district policy manual together for school board approval. Talk about boring! Today was nothing like Sunday; today went as slow as molasses.

A very different mix of ethnicity

2007-04-06T19:53:00.000-07:00

Bonsall Union has a district charter school called Vivian Banks Charter School. The school is located on the church grounds of the Pala Mission nearby the Pala Casino on the Pala Indian Reservation. Most of the children in the school are Indian and the rest are Hispanics. There are only around 100 students enrolled in grades kindergarten through fifth, test scores are low, but it is a happy place to go to school.

I had an interesting conversation with the teachers the other day. We began talking about the racial mix at the school. When the students leave the fifth grade and go to the middle school, they become a part of a very different mix of ethnicity. We have observed confusion from the students about how they should act and socialize. During a period of their life when they are the most confused about their identity and self-worth, we throw them into a melting pot of different races and expect them to figure out how to get along.

Or is it that we start them with the wrong message of race? Should we begin their career in school with a more balanced mixture of race so that when they reach the middle school there is no violent collision of confused thought and action? Vivian Banks began with good intentions of providing a school for the children on the reservation that is close in proximity and culture. Perhaps now that we see the result of these good intentions, we should reexamine the reasons for this school and make sure we are doing right by our children.

Speaking of learners...

2007-03-09T09:45:00.000-08:00

I spoke to the staff at Bonsall Elementary School today regarding my presentation to the school board on the state of the district. They were a very pleasant group and I enjoyed my time with them. The end of the day is a tough time to talk about educational philosophy and changes to instruction.

I was surprised at the number of teachers who seemed passionate about starting the conversation about the business of learning versus the business of running a school. Since I arrived the conversation always seems to be around money, facilities, working conditions, etc. The conversation that I would like to start is around this issue of learning.

Our tasks as educators, is not to convince others of some shared perspective, but rather to foster a passion for learning. It is this goal of stimulating passions within the learner that helped us to choose the career of educator. We should always be committed to:

helping students appreciate various ideas;
encouraging students to ask questions;
guiding students to develop the skills required to ask questions; and
developing a student’s passion to become a life-long learner.

It is not the teaching, it is the learning.

2007-03-05T06:08:00.000-08:00

If administrators hire good learners instead of good teachers, maybe we will begin to see teachers as developers of good learners instead of teachers of good instruction. Let’s think of staff development as assisting teachers with seeing themselves as lifelong learners instead of lifelong teachers. Only then will teachers become sculptors of learners instead of just instructors.

The difference is not subtle. If you think of yourself as just a teacher, then you ignore the responsibility the student has to learn. This responsibility is perhaps greater than yours to teach. Yet, with young, immature children, that responsibility is not always taken to its full extent. Our job is to help them see that responsibility as crucial to survival, to make the issue of learning vital to life, and to help them shape that responsibility through the years.

Because of that immaturity and the differences in all children, we must differentiate the pace and extent of that instruction. Thinking of ourselves as learners, and feeling the empathy for that struggle to learn, assists us with the instruction. Thinking of how we continuously learn helps us with how best to guide the child on their path to lifelong learning.

It is not the teaching, it is the learning.

I was on the edge of understanding...

2007-03-04T14:14:00.000-08:00

The Palm Springs CUE conference was outstanding. There were so many good speakers and presenters. The best part was networking and conversing with fellow participants. As I was walking by a couple of people talking, I overheard one of them say, "In the last workshop, the speaker was good and I was on the edge of understanding.”

I know what she means. You begin the one hour workshop prepared to take notes and remember all the important stuff. Then the presenter says something that you don’t quite understand, or worse yet, it is really exciting and you need to think about it some more. But then the speaker goes on to another topic because time is flying by. There you are; lost between the thought of the last subject and the new information that is racing at you like a locomotive. You are on the edge of understanding one thing, and the next thought jumbles up the previous one.

There is never enough time for depth of thought, quality experiential thought that becomes a solid memory, or even better, a physical use. We do the same thing in the classroom. We are so pushed to get through the book, through the standards, through the high-stakes test, that we ignore the quality of learning. The instruction is good, but the learner never goes deep enough for the knowledge to become useful.

I suggest that it becomes useful in the workplace, after the school experience. It is made useful from the school of hard knocks. What a shame we can’t find a way to create this experience in the classroom.

continuous partial attention...

2007-03-02T06:46:00.000-08:00

I found a very well-written report from futurelab on emerging trends in the area of Social software and learning: An Opening Education report from Futurelab. It provides a good look at how we might understand social software for the classroom and how we might shift education in the direction of c-learning (c for community). The report describes aspects of the changing nature of learning in an information society, how we might educate for creativity and how we might rethink attention, space and identity. It ends with more questions than answers, but provides avenues for exploring some of the issues that strengthen education.

This portion in particular made me pause and think:

Linda Stone (2005), a former Microsoft vice president and human-computer interface expert coined a phrase ‘continuous partial attention’ to refer to a state of mental blurriness induced by information that is constantly pouring in from multiple sources. This state is perceived to be a result of ‘always on’ connectivity and seems to be manifesting itself in different ways. For example, in meetings of technically competent people (such as technical conferences) the back channel (i.e. any communication other than that from the podium) is used to enhance the fore channel. Participants are able to look up information that would be too tedious, basic, or digressive to ask about during a Q&A. They communicate with others to find out or let them know. They write the diary (blog) of the event as it is happening. It is almost the technological equivalent of it becoming acceptable to pass notes around the class behind the teacher’s back.

I am at the California Computer Using Educators Annual Conference in Palm Springs. Yesterday was a great day to discuss tech education issues with other tech educators like me. I was invited to a discussion with about 50 other educators regarding the new educational tech standards for students that ISTE is developing. This is where the "continuous partial attention" came to bear, at least with me.

There was so much great conversation developing at our table that it was difficult to focus at times. I felt that my mind would drift in and out, not because of distractions, but because of the stimulating conversations. It is interesting to think that this "drifting" could be a valuable experience and one that we could somehow use in education. Could it be a learning experience that we have yet to discover?

How do we teach imagination and innovation?

2007-02-28T17:12:00.000-08:00

I was asked to attend the Promethean U.S. Summit at the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA the past two days. This was a two-day (all expenses paid!) forum for senior education professionals from across the nation to come together to network and share their vision and best practices for the use of technology in classrooms. I was very interested in the use of the Activboard for the new classrooms at Bonsall Elementary School. These presentation whiteboards demonstrate how interactive technology is changing the classroom and student learning and bringing the K-12 learning environment into the 21st Century. I think these boards will be the main instructional feature in the new school, if we can find the money.
The Keynote Speaker was Alan November. I first met Alan through the books he has written about technology. He is a fascinating guy and extremely knowledgeable about best practices for students. He is recognized internationally as a leader in education technology. He began his career as an oceanography teacher, but is now better known as a practitioner, designer, and author. He has guided schools, government organizations and industry leaders as they attempt to improve quality with technology.

The best part of the time was meeting other professionals who also believe that children are changing, and if we don’t change with them, we will not prepare them properly for the 21st century. It is probably the first time in human history that teachers are expected to train children for professions that may not have even been invented, yet. We have a moral responsibility to prepare children to be intellectual, innovative, and imaginative. In this new era of “knowledge workers,” it is not enough to retain knowledge. People need to know where to find it, how to search for it, and what to do with it after they obtain it.

So how do we teach imagination and innovation? With the type of instruction we are providing today, it will never happen. Technology will help, but it will take a complete revision of our own ideas of what the classroom and teacher look like in order for the learning to succeed. Perhaps tools like the Activboard, Activslate, and Activote will move us farther down that road faster.

A new day, a new attitude...

2007-02-27T18:20:00.000-08:00

Of course I would do it all over again. Some days are better than others. The doctorate is the toughest educational challenge I have ever faced. After the equivalent of 3 master's degrees, that is saying a lot. It is a challenge, however, that has put me in the best educational "shape" of my life. I have never felt more a part of the profession. I am glad I am in it. I will be glad when it is over.

Today, I am at the U.S. Education Summit with less than 200 invited tech educators from all over the country. I have had a few epiphanies today. This idea of 21st century learning is broad, but important to discuss. I will share them with you next time.

The joy of obtaining a doctorate...

2007-02-25T14:11:00.000-08:00

I remember it well. It was the spring of 2004 and the speaker was saying there is a shortage of quality administrators in California. She said that a new doctoral program would help to train current educators and create models for other aspiring educators to follow. I had looked at Point Loma, La Verne, Nova, and was waiting for National to start an educational doctorate program, so the news was interesting. The program could be completed in three years, far from the 4-8 years that doctoral students normally take to complete the degree.

She went on to say that it would be a joint doctoral program with the UCSD, CalState San Marcos, and San Diego State as partners. It sounded interesting, so I went to the first meeting. The speaker, Dr. Jennifer Jeffries of CSUSM, was already a good friend and convinced me to give it a go. I was especially intrigued by the “action research” part of the program. All of the research and study we performed would be applicable to the position we currently served in a district office or school.

So my smiling face was photographed at the hosted introduction dinner held at UCSD for the other participants and the press. Meeting each other for the first time, we wondered what we were getting ourselves into. We were correct in our hesitation.

Two long years later, I have finished the full time courses, have a signed-off proposal for research, and begin the real work of studying something of interest to me, and hopefully, to others in education.

Many of us in this cohort of 17 have found higher paying jobs in education simply by being in this course. All of us have suffered personally because of the huge amount of time this rigor has taken from us. None of us will regret it when we put on that cap and gown and finally receive that piece of paper in May of 2008. Would I do it again? Don't ask me that question today...