TeacherHaines Blog

Balance (part two)

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:05:00 +0000

I always cringe when I hear people make statements without qualifiers at the end. Sometimes it is just poor phrasing, but often it is intentional and it strikes me as shallow thinking. For example, people might say things like "Give kids the freedom to make mistakes," when they really mean, "Look for situations where the consequences of mistakes are not serious and give them freedom within that context."

Nobody who works with kids would let them have a knife fight with real knives for example. Nobody is in favor of giving them the freedom to accidentally injure another child. Kids make mistakes with fire, guns, backyard wrestling, drugs, alcohol, and a host of other activities that responsible adults try very hard to prevent. We don't give kids unlimited freedom to make mistakes. Everyone believes in putting limits on freedom, we all just have a different idea of what an appropriate limit should be for the kids. If you have more rules than most people, you are called strict. If you are more permissive than most people, you are not.

I use Edmodo as a safe, private practice space for lessons about social media and I am faced with questions about freedom every lesson. The first question I usually get when I tell a group of 4th or 5th graders we are joining a social network is usually something like, "Can we use OMG and LOL?" I almost always say yes, but I try to help them see that if you write like you are a silly person, people will treat you like a silly person. If you write like you are intelligent, people will treat you with more respect.

Source: http://www.windows2universe.org

Other situations arise where the class might be writing a collaborative story and I have to make a judgement call about if something they write is funny or if it crosses the line. Sometimes the kids might write something that seems excessively violent or vulgar to me but explicitly limiting their freedom to write it will also dampen their creativity. I try not to directly address potentially inappropriate statements like "Hanna Montana should be the leader of Uranus" [real example] but repeat general guidelines like "ask yourself if you'd be proud to have your parents read the line before you click publish."

On one end, we want to encourage creativity and ownership of an assignment, on the other end we want to keep them from doing something they will regret. It isn't always easy to find the right balance point. I do believe it helps to hear how other people handle specific situations like these though, so if you have any tough calls to share, please let me know.

Balance (part one)

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 13:28:00 +0000

One perennial debate in education circles is the debate about how freedom helps or hurts a student's ability to learn. Some people, usually considered "traditional" or "old school" believe that adults deserve respect and students should sit still, focus and absorb the wisdom of the teachers and coaches who instruct them. Other people, usually considered "progressive" believe children are inherently wiser than adults at deciding what and how they should learn.

I have my own thoughts on the debate and like most people, I fall somewhere between those extremes. There are a few examples I see of the good and the bad, so I decided instead of writing a meandering epic post, I'd break the examples into posts of their own. Each post will focus on an example of the tension between decisions mandated by design and decisions made freely.

It is always useless to say you favor balance because an overwhelming number of people will always say they favor "balance" so the word is sort of non-descriptive. It all hinges on where that balance point is on the spectrum. I've written about some of the things teachers can learn from game designers and one of them, at least in a good game, is that balance. I thought this line from a post I read captures the general concept pretty well:

"When the perception between the ordained and free-will is tweaked just right, it gives the game great 'play' -- moving the narrative forward while letting the play steer."

Do you have any specific examples from your learning experience that express that balance? Let me know.

Sir Ken and the Kool-Aid Problem

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:23:00 +0000

Everyone loves Sir Ken Robinson. I do, you do, adoring crowds do. He seems like a genuinely nice, funny guy who cares about education, the arts, kids and a few other things we all care about.

My only problem with him is that he is wrong. In his now famous TED talk he discusses how schools "kill" creativity and he misses the mark by a wide margin. Yet, there is an almost cult-like following around these types of ideas. Why? I think one of the reasons most people drink the Ken Robinson Kool-Aid is because they want to believe that his theory is true.

I can remember what it was like to be a 4th grader, looking out the window wishing I could climb trees and break empty bottles against the bricks rather than learn long-division. When I was in 4th grade, I didn't see more than 5 minutes into the future. Most kids don't. That's why we rarely give them credit cards, drivers' licenses or real swords. Kids learn about consequences and predicting the future as they experience life and the wisdom of experienced people around them. That's a process most people describe as becoming more mature, becoming wiser, gaining a deeper understanding of the world. It's all good.

Even though we learn on an intellectual level why education is important as we get older, we are forever biased emotionally in favor of recess over chemistry class. Unfortunately we are also emotionally biased to believe people who say things like, "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up" and "Creativity now, is as important in education as literacy," to which he received a loud round of applause. Why mention the applause? The reason is that it helps you see that the crowd came into the talk wanting to believe it. They came in emotionally biased in favor of the premise being true. They applauded the title of the talk before they heard the arguments presented for our scrutiny in the talk.

"Every child is an artist" is attributed to Picasso, but when Robinson quotes him it seems like such a provocatively optimistic thing to say, right? All children being artists sounds great, doesn't it? If you are emotionally neutral on the issue though, it doesn't pass the sniff test. Our judgment of a 5-year-old's painting is emotionally overwhelmed by feelings of pride, fuzzy happiness and the desire to encourage that child. We are rooting for the child. This is what makes us human. However, if you judged the painting from an objective, emotionally neutral position you wouldn't have many nice things to say about it.

If you were objective and emotionally neutral, you might rephrase Picasso and Robinson and say, "Almost every child is a terrible artist, but we love them for trying. The problem is that some realize they are terrible and they stop trying, while others learn, practice and eventually become really good." That is certainly less likely to end up the title of a TED Talk, but it is an intellectually honest and defensible position to take.

Go into a Kindergarten class and look at the pictures on the wall. Look at them objectively. Then go into the art class at your high school. Look at the work the Sophomores and Juniors do. Look at it objectively and compare it to the kindergarten art. Not only do the older students have more skill, but their art is profoundly more creative. Much richer storytelling in the shadows and facial expressions. Much more art about abstract things, much more art about things that aren't in their living room. The more art classes a child takes, the more creative they become.

Compare that Sophomore in high school to an art major at your local college. By the time a child reaches college age, the 14+ years of school must have almost completely destroyed them according to Robinson's theory. But the very opposite is true. The art major has had their view expanded. They have had their skills expanded. They have learned to apply original ideas to various mediums to express deep emotion. Think of what an art major could have done with this "cat (pig?) with girl" picture:

Can teachers do a better job of delivering constructive criticism?
Sure. I know I could use an upgrade in that department.

Should we work to ensure that at the very least we don't discourage kids from trying?
Yes, absolutely.

Do schools kill creativity?
I'd say obviously not.

There are a few other huge holes in his theory and his logic, but it is certainly entertaining. Sir Ken is a very funny guy and had the crowd eating out of his hand (before he took the stage unfortunately) and is a model of how to give a good lecture. I think there are kernels of truth in many of the things he says, but if you watch it as an objective judge and not an emotional fan stuck in a 4th grade mindset you won't drink the Kool-Aid.

Building the House

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 14:26:00 +0000

Teaching is like building a house. I am not the first person to think of this, as evidenced by the language around education-- "strong foundation," "building on," etc. There has always been an ideological battle about how to best build that house and today it seems especially virulent.

Nothing is ever black & white, but there are essentially two major camps struggling to push their philosophy into our curriculum. There are the traditional teachers who base their philosophy on the idea that without a solid foundation, no other learning is possible. They have a logical, time-tested rationale behind this belief. Critical thinking is not possible without a deep, broad factual knowledge base. Problem solving is virtually entirely dependent on domain knowledge of the problem in question. This is all true, but the criticisms from the other camp are true as well-- just learning facts in isolation is akin to building a foundation and then forgetting to build the walls, select the windows, add the roof, the plumbing, the electricity, the paint, the furniture, i.e. all the things that make the actual house.

Image source: HouseconstructionIndia

The response from the traditional educators' community is usually something like, "Once you have a solid foundation, you are empowered to begin self-directed learning." This is true, but it is the same as your architect saying, "Once we build the foundation, you are free to build the rest of the house yourself." The goal is to help them build a solid, sturdy house that they can inhabit for decades to come, not a foundation that will decay and crumble once it is exposed to the elements because we have not taught them how to build walls and install the plumbing.

This is a philosophy built around the idea of creating a broad schema, but it is incomplete and shallow.

The other end of the spectrum is where the progressive educators live. They promote a way of learning that includes a focus on the rest of the house. They understand that memories are created with the family sitting around the fireplace, that a home is where you are safe from the elements, snug in your bed with your childrens' artwork hanging on your refrigerator. They realize that a house is more than just a foundation.

The problem with their philosophy is in the execution. They advocate spending less time doing the unexciting work involved in building the foundation. They think doing the painstaking work of making sure the foundation is level and built on solid ground is boring. I agree with them. However, it is foolhardy to start trying to install bathroom fixtures and skylights in a house before completing the foundation.

In other words, they ignore the harsh reality that all critical thinking and problem solving rest on the foundation. Higher-order skills are extensions of factual knowledge. Educators who bash factual knowledge live in a world where houses just sort of hover in mid-air.

Image Source: PCWorld.com

It is a cartoonish view of learning that exposes more about what our inner-4th grader wishes was true than what thousands of years of learning has proven to be true: we can't do any higher-order thinking without a solid foundation.

This is why I advocate a counter-revolution in education. One that embraces the fact that building the foundation is an unavoidable part of education, but it is also just the beginning. Broad factual knowledge is only a means to an end, but it is the only way to reach that end. We should reject "educational" philosophies that use phrases like "drill & kill" or "mere facts" because we know better. We should also fight with all of our might to make sure educators don't think they have done their job once the foundation is in place.

We need to take a step back and objectively look at what we are doing and stop rooting for people on either extreme of the education debate.

Let's not let traditional educators get away with this:

Image Source: Washington Post

And let's not let progressive educators get away with this:

Image Source: Cloudking.com

Let's help students build a house that is both stable and beautiful.

Interview with Emily-Anne Rigal (Part Two)

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Wed, 25 May 2011 13:44:00 +0000

In part one of this interview, Emily-Anne Rigal talked about her westophate.org project, collaboration and communication. In part two she shares some of her thoughts on education.

Do you think school is valuable? Why or why not?

Understanding certain subjects, like learning how to write well, highly influential historical events, and some science, are valuable, but the amount of “do exactly what you are told” learning is harmful, not helpful. I strongly disagree with the way certain teachers reward students who, in my opinion, don’t think for themselves, while penalizing students that question the information presented and form their own opinions.

What are your thoughts on working in groups versus doing work individually? Do you like one or the other?

Both are equally important. As we spoke about earlier, collaboration leads to greater success. Therefore, developing the skills necessary for group work is important. At the same time, one can’t depend on others with everything, so being proactive and having the self-discipline to work individually is also important.

What makes a good teacher good?

The teachers I admire most are the ones who focus on a student’s individual strengths, as opposed to trying (often unsuccessfully) to mold a student into their idea of a “good student.” We all have our own talents; so, working for and not against a student’s natural abilities makes a good teacher good.

Do you feel that googling facts in real-time can replace having them committed to memory in advance?

YES. (Bold, caps, underlined, highlighted).

I know people like you always have a half dozen projects in your mind that haven't made it into the public sphere yet-- what projects are you looking to start planning in the near future?

For a while now, it has been a dream of mine to give a TED talk, so I am working on taking the necessary steps to accomplish that. My mind rarely goes a day without thinking up (or coming across) information that I would love to share in a TED talk - my iPhone notepad is overflowing with all my notes! I am also excited about a project I have begun working on with my friend Jessica Lawrence called “The Remarkable Effect.” We will be taking concepts from Seth Godin’s “Linchpin” and re-purposing them into fun, short webisodes. The project will launch on Kickstarter in a couple weeks.

What are your long-term goals?

To never become jaded.

Check out the previous interviews in the series:

Pearce Delphin (Part One) Pearce Delphin (Part Two)

17-year-old deontological libertarian from Australia

Todd Oh 17-year-old App developer from South Korea

Lane Sutton 14-year-old entrepreneur

Anna Hoffstrom (Part One) Anna Hoffstrom (Part Two)
18-year-old Autodidact and Unschooler from Finland/Maine

Priyanka 11 year old Texan living in Singapore

Yaqsan Aspiring Omani lawyer going to school at Exeter

Interview with Emily-Anne Rigal (Part One)

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Sun, 22 May 2011 19:31:00 +0000

I am really excited about the latest interview in the student interview series. Emily-Anne Rigal, aka "Schmiddlebopper" is the kind of High School student that makes me regret not attacking life with gusto as a 17-year-old. She is socially conscious, an adept galvanizer and a natural with social media. The term "Digital Native" has become cliche when discussing tech and education, but if the phrase has any meaning, Schmiddlebopper embodies it. I encourage you to check out her digital spaces and see what she has been doing. I'm so glad to have her voice represented in the conversation.

How old are you and where are you from?

I am seventeen years old and live in Williamsburg, Virginia.

You have already started so many interesting projects; which ones are you most proud of and why?

I am most proud of WeStopHate because it has been entirely my own doing, from the creation to execution, so I feel closest to it – WeStopHate is like my baby! I am also incredibly proud of “Schmiddlebopper,” my online persona. I have been creating YouTube videos and blogging on social media since my freshman year of high school under the username “Schmiddlebopper.” I interact online with my “Boppers” every day (through twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, etc) and they inspire me to continue posting.

Tell me about WeStopHate.org and what it is like getting media attention at your age?

WeStopHate is a nonprofit program I started in March 2010 to raise “teen-esteem” (self-esteem in teens) through online videos and social media. Ultimately, WeStopHate combats bullying because we believe that teens that are happy with themselves are not going to put others down. Currently, WeStopHate is the 28^th Most Subscribed YouTube Nonprofit Channel, having received nearly 400,000 video views. MTV, Seventeen Magazine, and many other local and national media outlets have featured WeStopHate. The media attention has been a positive experience because it allows me the opportunity to share my work with other young people. My hope is that learning about WeStopHate will inspire more teens to take action about the causes they care about.

How important is it to be a good collaborator when taking on these challenges?

Collaboration is essential because it enables growth and expansion, while also bringing more value to the project and experience overall. WeStopHate would certainly not be what it is today without the help of my friends, mentors, and volunteers because each person who contributed to the project brought with them their own unique skill set and strengths. An obvious example is WeStopHate’s use of user-generated content because vast majority of our videos are created by teen YouTubers. Had we not collaborated with these teens, the fundamental aspect of WeStopHate (teens helping teens by giving them a platform to share their story with other teens) would not exist.

How do you communicate with friends (before and) after school . . . IM, text, social media? Does the connection to your friends ever stop?

We communicate constantly (morning, day, and night) because we use our phones throughout the school day, even though it’s technically not allowed. Since we have smart phones with social media applications, we stay connected not only through texting, but also through Facebook and Twitter, as most of us update regularly throughout the day. Connection rarely stops unless someone consciously puts away their phone and computer.

Your website emilyannerigal.com is an incredible space. In education terms, you have an amazing "e-portfolio." Do you think these types of spaces are more important than resumes? Do you think they demonstrate learning better than multiple-choice tests or essays?

Being a self-proclaimed SMM (a term I coined meaning “social media maniac”), I definitely have a bias answer, but yes, demonstrating online competence is important and useful for getting ahead. Employers and/or potential clients often Google the people they are considering, so having an online presence (assuming it accurately portrays who you are and the message you would like convey) will likely leave them with a good impression regardless of one’s field. I believe people who are actively engaged online with their audience or experts in their field have a stronger sense of what is going on in their area of interest. This type of knowledge far outweighs that of irrelevant (and often memorization-required) multiple choice tests and essays. It's not easy for a girl that's filled with imagination and curiosity to sit and listen to dull history lessons.

Check out the previous interviews in the series:

Pearce Delphin (Part One) Pearce Delphin (Part Two)

17-year-old deontological libertarian from Australia

Todd Oh 17-year-old App developer from South Korea

Lane Sutton 14-year-old entrepreneur

Being Unhelpful

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Wed, 18 May 2011 18:26:00 +0000

The best thing I did this week as a teacher was be unhelpful. Most teachers by nature are people who like to help, who like to share. Sometimes those instincts can be a burden because we create dependencies. We want our students to be self-sufficient, but sometimes we help them do things they can and should be doing on their own.

This week I was faced with the challenge of helping a 5-year-old spell something I wasn't sure he could spell. Due to a torrential downpour, we didn't come out to the lab. We stayed in the classroom so I had them work with pencil and paper to design inventions. One student invented the "Fast Food A Matic" which is a machine that makes any kind of food really fast. He didn't know how to spell the name, so he asked me. My natural urge was to begin spelling it for him, but part of the art of teaching is knowing how to suppress that urge.

I told him he had to do it himself by sounding it out and doing his best. He kept trying to get me to help him spell it after every single letter, but each time I refused to help. Being unhelpful is usually a lot more work than being helpful, but it's worth it. Finally he was able to work it through on his own and here is what he came up with:

Great job for a 5-year-old. So glad I could be unhelpful this week.

Here is the picture of the invention too:

Lone Voice in the Chanting Mob

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Sun, 01 May 2011 16:46:00 +0000

I haven't had a lot of success explaining Twitter's value to people who don't understand it. Part of the problem in explaining it is that the tool is fundamentally about customizing your community, so the value is so different for everyone because our communities are so different. Some people use Twitter as a virtual water-cooler where they can make comments under their virtual breath to acquaintances, attempt #Hashtag humor or live-tweet an awards show or sporting event. Other people use it to connect with customers, or to share pictures, music, videos or other types of content they create. Some people use it to broadcast their wisdom or lack thereof; others use it to engage in discussion with people about politics, economics, technology or food. Some people use it as a platform for citizen-journalism. There are also vibrant communities of educators sharing, discussing and supporting each other.

I frequently swim in these educational circles because education is one of the most interesting topics of conversation to me personally. I have met many educators who, regardless of their opinions are passionate and care deeply about kids and the future of our world. I have learned quite a bit about what tools other people are using with kids and it has made my classroom stronger. However, I have also noticed a sort of infection that spreads throughout communities like these. It is called groupthink.

If you are unfamiliar with the idea of groupthink, I highly recommend checking out some of the writings of Cass Sunstein, specifically his thoughts on "Cyberbalkanization." Basically groupthink is the reason spending too much time with like-minded people is corrosive to critical thinking. When we are surrounded by people who are all begging the same question, we make leaps of logic and we don't even realize they are leaps. Groupthink drives us deeper into our own beliefs and insulates us from challenge. Once our opinions are calcified thanks to the never-ending confirmation bias cycle of sharing posts, clips and tweets we begin to see the Devil's Advocates as a lunatic fringe, when in fact just the opposite is happening. A recent example would be the "Birthers" reactions to our President's birth certificate. Proof is assumed to be trumped-up, falsified and malicious.

Leaders of like-minded communities are especially dangerous because as with any mob, the only way to distinguish yourself is to be more extreme in your views than the others. If you look around at any balkanized mob of like-minded people in social media, you will see this phenomenon. Education circles are no different. There are many people who are outside of the classroom who get paid in both fame and money to lecture people about why lecturing is bad. Groupthink brainwashes people into abandoning critical thinking and blindly supporting feel-good philosophies like "Why hard work is bad for kids" or "The only real learning is forgetting" or "Why laziness is more productive" or some other carnival barkeresque pablum. These celeb EduBloggers follow a simple formula: When a group is already predisposed to want to believe something, keep feeding them a slightly more extreme version of that belief and you'll be asked to keynote the next "EduWebotron 3.0" conference.

"Have you read his post about why reading with your eyes open is actually stifling creativity?"

"Yes, so counter-intuitive, but if everyone retweets it it must be true! I hope he live-tweets the blackboard burning like he did in West Palm Beach last year!"

Sometimes following the conversation in an insulated community is like watching the hammers marching in lockstep during Pink Floyds' The Wall.

So what's the solution?

Well, one easy way to help is to make the choice to be the Devil's Advocate in the majority of your conversations. You're going to help the group become stronger by testing assumptions and defining terms than by validating someone's ideas about using wikis because you like that person and you like wikis. Everyone wants to be liked. I do, you do, we all do. It's hard to stand up and be the lone voice in the chanting mob, but if you are the lone voice, that is proof enough that the group needs to hear what you have to say.

Another way to fight groupthink is to make sure you don't just follow people who are in your industry. No matter what your career is, there are many voices and many perspectives that you need to understand to do your job properly. If you teach 9th grade Literature, you should not just follow other 9th grade literature teachers. You should not just follow other literature teachers, or just follow teachers for that matter.

You should follow authors. You should follow readers. You should engage them, debate them, learn from them. Follow publishing companies. Follow journalists who cover books. Follow book stores. Follow librarians. Follow Grammarians. Follow linguists. Follow people who design e-readers. Follow people who hate books.

Diversify your streams of information. Don't let like-minded groups drive you to become their median member or worse, their radical leader.

Lean Startup Just-in-Time Lesson Design

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:31:00 +0000

The Lean Startup Movement

Entrepreneur Eric Ries describes the idea of the "Lean Startup" as a process involving "ferocious customer-centric iteration." The essential concepts revolve around the idea that you want people to be using your product as soon as it is usable and then rapidly act on the feedback they give you to improve the product. This model promotes designing and developing your product just enough to be functional and testable, but inornate and "lean." I believe that the modern classroom can learn a great deal from Eric Ries and the lean startup movement.

Sometimes as teachers we want to make sure our students have an understanding of all the relevant context before letting them "do" anything with the material.

In my experience as a student, lessons follow this format:

Teacher talks all about it first, students armed with full context "do" second.

The lean startup lesson plan looks more like this:

Teacher says the bare minimum to enable students to get started "doing." Students run into problems because they don't have all that important context. Teacher explains just enough to let them continue to progress to the next obstacle. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Just-in-Time Manufacturing

A few decades ago Japanese businesses like Toyota used the "Just in Time" (JIT) manufacturing model. JIT manufacturing utilizes "a belief that we may not get the right solution... on the first try, but that if we design everything we do as a bona fide experiment, we can more rapidly converge, iteratively, and at lower cost, on the right answer, and, in the process, learn a heck of lot more about the system we are operating" according to Harvard Business School's Steven Spears.

I am an advocate of the "Just in Time" educational model. Students have never liked to sit through lengthy lectures, so why clump all the necessary teacher portions together? Why not adapt our lessons to fit the lean startup or JIT manufacturing models?

One of the primary considerations when designing a lesson is: How can I get them "doing" as soon as possible?

Games and Television as Professional Development

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:55:00 +0000

Earlier today I watched a student-created video that Michael Wesch tweeted and I think it is very instructive. The explicit message is about advertising and mobile technology but there are other lessons to be learned from the video. One hidden message for teachers who watch that video is this: teachers need to learn more from marketers and game designers.

Learning from Marketers

In the video, one fact jumps off the screen: 90% of students remembered advertising campaign slogans such as "Yo Quiero Taco Bell" and "Just Do It" but only 40% remembered that July 4th, 1776 was the date the United States declared independence. In the context of the video, this is meant to frighten us about the power of marketing and while I understand that sentiment, I think there is a much greater lesson to be learned. The lesson is that someone figured out how to get 90% of people to remember something. How did they do this?

Professional educators only succeed in the same task 40% of the time with much better material. Don't get me wrong, I love tacos as much as the next guy but the awe-inspiring, soul nourishing message of freedom and self-advocacy in America's colonial past should make a much deeper impression on our brains than a celebrity spokesdog. It should, but it doesn't. Why?

Here is my back of the napkin answer to this question.

1. Marketing campaigns stick in our long-term memory because of repetition. They are short, dynamic presentations that are played over and over on TV, radio and in print. We remember them partially because the message is repeated over and over again. If you read my earlier post, you'll know that I firmly believe repetition is the mother of learning.
The lesson for educators: Don't expect people to remember things you mention once in the middle of a 45 minute long class, or do once a week or apply once a year during their education. Say it multiple times. Have them do it multiple times. Have them apply it multiple times. Repetition is the mother of learning. Repetition is the mother of learning.

2. Marketing campaigns understand the power of narrative. From commercial to commercial in the series, we follow this cute little dog on his quest to get what he wants. What he wants happens to be Taco Bell, but if marketers can make us root for him, teachers should be able to make us root for the Founding Fathers in their quest. The stakes were a lot higher, there was more drama, their story is our story and it really happened.
The lesson for educators: Whatever you are teaching already has a narrative. It is already amazing, you just need to discover why and then be a conduit for the discovery.

3. The commercials were funny. Okay, maybe I didn't personally laugh out loud but a cute little talking dog just brightens your day. It is entertaining. If it wasn't entertaining on some level we wouldn't remember it. When is the last time someone laughed learning long division?
The lesson for educators: Standing in front of people and talking in and of itself isn't boring; look at stand-up comedy. Lecture works when it is entertaining and funny.

Learning from Game Designers

The decrease in our national attention span is a myth. Teachers will point to the fact that in 1970-something, kids could sit still for 45 minutes taking notes quietly while a teacher lectured. Today they can't. That may not even be true, but let's just accept that it is for now. This does not prove that our attention span is shrinking, it proves that we are more bored by lectures than we used to be. Kids have amazingly long attention spans for things that they like. In fact, kids can sit in the same place, staring at the same video game for so long that parents and lawmakers around the world are frantically trying to get them to stop. Gaming is the new addiction for kids.

So they can't sit still for 45 minutes of lecture and note taking, but they can sit still for entire weekends playing games. Why?

Here is my back of the napkin answer to that question.

1. Games are more interactive. Gamers are doing, controlling, making decisions, having a big impact on their own stimuli. People's brains interact with the spoken word a lot more than we think they do, but it doesn't compare to the interaction of playing a game. The constant feedback loop from the problem solving, trial and error and incremental progress is mesmerizing.
The lesson for educators: Get the students "doing" as quickly as possible. Let them make ~~mitsakes~~ mistakes through ~~trail~~ trial and error, then give feedback as they make progress.

2. Games are a multi-sensory experience. Have you ever seen the panoramic screen shots or the terrifying characters from God of War? They are visually stunning. The music is as good as anything you will hear from Hollywood, and the sound of metal crashing into rock, of water lapping at the shore or of monsters growling all add to the sensory experience.
The lesson for educators: instead of beginning your class with a lecture-style intro of a topic, maybe try an introductory video. If you can get to the computer lab, maybe intro with a game that teaches the principles.

If I thought about it more, I might reword these or add to them or erase them completely. Can you see anything I missed or got totally wrong? I'd love to know your thoughts.

Mr. Callahan: The Best Teacher I Ever Had

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 03:16:00 +0000

GUEST POST by Audrey Watters
Audrey is a writer for the technology blog ReadWriteWeb, a writer for the NPR education technology blog MindShift, and a contributor to the Huffington Post. This is her post about the best teacher she ever had, Mr. Callahan.

It's pretty easy for me to say that Mr. Callahan was the best teacher I ever had. Much more difficult is the task of explaining what exactly makes that so. The stakes for making such a claim seem rather high right now too, as many of the prevailing education reform narratives involve teacher assessment -- the identification and rewarding of great teachers and concomitantly, the elimination of the bad ones.

Many of these calls tie teacher assessment to student assessment. And that's where I balk. There are no standardized tests by which you can assess Mr. Callahan's impact on me or on any of the thousands of junior high school students that took his Latin classes. It was Latin, after all, not a subject currently tracked as part of the litany of government-mandated examinations.

I did get A’s in Mr. Callahan's Latin classes, don't get me wrong. But I'm not sure you can make too much of that assessment either. I got A's in everything.
I can still rattle off Latin verb conjugations, and with a little brushing up, I imagine I could decline nouns quite handily. I don't know how much we want to make of 25 some-odd years of Latin retention, but it counts for something I'd wager. More importantly, perhaps, the solid foundation Mr. Callahan gave me in Latin helped me easily learn French, Italian, and Russian. But that's not on "the test" either, is it?

Then again, the rules of grammar (English grammar, that is) probably are on some test, somewhere. So thank you, Mr. Callahan, for the lessons in the nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases. And a little Latin knowledge does wonders for your vocabulary, as well. That's bound to come in handy on multiple choice tests, so again, thanks.

Understanding language's infrastructure is important (I'm a writer, so what do you expect me to say), but Mr. Callahan's Latin class involved much more than teaching us these fundamentals. He taught us about Roman history and culture -- all in a way that was compelling, interactive, and memorable. "Salvete!" his booming voice would begin class. "Salve!" we would stand and answer in unison.

He was a large man -- tall, balding, and round. So when he would lead the class on field trips, all of us dressed in our Roman togas and stollas (everyone was required to make one), I have no doubt we made quite a sight. This was Casper, Wyoming, I should add -- not exactly a place where you would expect to find a classroom re-enacting Saturnalian rituals. But we did. I can still recite the chants.

It feels incredibly corny to say "he made a dead language come alive." Yes, that's part of what made him such a gifted teacher, but that's not quite the crux of it. At such a crucial age in a teenager's development -- 8th and 9th grade -- I'd say that Mr. Callahan's Latin class made a lot of us come alive.

There's a memorial page on Facebook dedicated to Mr. Callahan, who died of leukemia in 1998. The comments of former students echo mine here: "Mr. Callahan was the best teacher I ever had." "Of all the teachers I encountered during my public education, none had the impact upon me that Mr. Callahan had." "Hands down, the best teacher I ever had...at any level. All at once he was demanding, inspiring, funny, courageous, compassionate, intelligent, witty, silly, and human." "He made class interesting and fun. He inspired us to dream."

That last sentence speaks volumes, I think. Mr. Callahan encouraged -- demanded, even -- his students embrace learning, find and hone our minds and our skills. Dream.

For me, this was an encouragement to write. I wrote two plays that our Latin Club performed for the school. He urged me to submit a collection of poetry to the State Young Authors Contest. He wasn't my English teacher, and now that I think of it, I wonder if he even got the "official" credit when I won. A poet and a playwright. Those are wild dreams for a ninth grader from Wyoming. As a writer now, I am living those dreams, thanks to his support all those years ago.

I have a lot of great memories about Latin class, funny since I tend otherwise to shudder about junior high being so awful. But here's one that perhaps crystallizes why I remember him so fondly. Some background first: my ninth grade year was rough. Things really sucked at home. This was 1986 -- the height of the Reagan era, (yet another) bust in the oil industry, a weakened Wyoming economy. My family's business -- a local grocery store -- closed its doors. Our dog died. My great-grandma died. I came to class one day to find a handwritten note from Mr. Callahan on my desk. It was a card offering his condolences; even more, it was one recognizing that I was struggling, and offering his support and encouragement as I moved forward.

A gesture like that is impossible to quantify if you're assessing a teacher solely based on students' performance, test scores, and grades. And while I don't know how you'd tie something like that card to graduation rates or future personal or career successes, it may be precisely the thing that matters and precisely what makes a teacher great. Gratias, Mr. Callahan.

The Myth of PISA Scores

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:53:00 +0000

Education reform advocates frequently point to the PISA scores as a reason why we need to change how we educate our students, yet a deeper look at the data tells a different story. When the scores are adjusted to income levels, each economic strata of our country outperforms their counterparts across the globe. This article gives a detailed breakdown of this revealing data:

PISA: It's Poverty Not Stupid

It would stand to reason that if we took students from countries that education reformers admire (Finland, Singapore) and enrolled those students in U.S. schools, their PISA scores would improve. The conclusion here being that The United States actually has the best education system, pound for pound, in the world. Unfortunately, the masses are in the dark about the state of education in the United States.

This is not to say we can not improve. We certainly can and we certainly should.

This also does not change the fact that students from unstable home environments are not receiving the same world-class education that students from happy, stable environments are receiving. This is a problem regardless of the reason, so if we are serious about helping these students learn at the level of our wealthier students, we need to identify the real obstacles. In an effort to shift the conversation about education reform toward these real obstacles and away from misinformed rhetoric, I reached out to Dr. Wesley Renfro, who teaches at St. John Fisher College.

Q: Dr. Renfro, when we look at the real data from the PISA tests, we see that poverty, not pedagogy is the reason our nation-wide average is low in the United States. You eloquently echoed this sentiment in your recent letter to Atlantic Magazine. Even with this new understanding of PISA scores, The United States still has the very real problem that large swaths of our children are not receiving a world-class education. There are no easy answers, but what solutions do you propose to help close this gap between our students?

Dr. Renfro: The gaps in educational achievement are a symptom of growing income inequality in the United States. In the past 30 or so years, the gap between the wealthy and the poor has increasingly widened -- and is now at its highest point of divergence since the very early 20^th century. This is dangerous for all for all sorts of reasons, including its ill effects on education.

I would begin to reform the situation with a wholesale reform of the nation’s tax policy in the hopes of promoting a more equitable distribution of wealth. This, of course, would take a long time before it manifested itself in educational attainment, because of the lag time involved but reductions in poverty lead to more stable homes and students better prepared to succeed.

Too often education policy wonks point to the amount of spending per pupil as a meaningful statistic. I argue this figure is most often a misleading statistical artifice because it doesn’t address the root problem -- that poverty creates chronic instability and other less than desirable outcomes. Children, in those circumstances, have the odds stacked again them and find it difficult to learn.

I would also suggest that the formula for funding schools in many communities needs to be reworked, especially in those communities that are reliant on property taxes to fund education. This leads to gross inequalities in opportunity, inside and outside the classroom, in many public schools.

Q: You mention funding schools differently as an answer. I am not sure there is a causal relationship between funding and academic learning though, when you look at money spent per student in non-public schools. For example, Catholic schools spend approximately half of what is spent on public school students, yet achieve higher levels of academic success. Critics of this fact usually counter with the fact that Catholic school students probably come from more stable home environments. So, doesn't it all come back to the environment where these children are raised? In other words, is education reform (economic or pedagogic) actually the least important element in increasing academic performance in today's low-performing students?

Dr. Renfro: I tend to agree with your analysis. I think that there are many important variables that contribute to students’ learning outcomes. Moreover, I generally think that the environment in which children are raised is, by far, the most important. Ceteris paribus, however, levels of school funding still matter, particularly as access to the arts and extracurricular activities often hinges on funding levels. I think pedagogy matters too but is not as important a causal factor as socioeconomic status.

Q: For the sake of argument, let's assume that economic inequality is an inescapable fact in America. Knowing that our system helps poor students achieve at a higher level than other systems from across the globe, do you see any way to improve their education from a strictly educational standpoint? Are there any innovative programs or models that might help regardless of their economic circumstances?

Dr. Renfro: Economic inequality is inescapable, in America and elsewhere. I’m not arguing in favor of absolute equality but rather a more sensible and balanced approach that seeks to prevent gross discrepancies in wealth. Furthermore, I believe that there needs to be a minimum level of economic sustenance. For example, children without proper nutrition and health-care are handicapped and do not learn as readily as their better fed and healthier counterparts.

From the standpoint of education policy, I think a number of reforms are in order. We need to do a better job of attracting and training teachers. This means that we need to pay teachers more, help them with professional development, and generally make teaching a viable career for talented young individuals.

I also believe that we generally need to alter the balance of teacher training between pedagogy and subject matter expertise. Many states have licensure requirements mandating far too much pedagogy training that too often comes at the expense of subject matter training. If we can attract bright young people into teaching and they have a passion for literature, for example, their training should stoke their passion for that discipline. Individuals in all careers perform best when they are happy and engaged. If we can make teachers happy and engaged, their classroom performance will increase.

We also need to recognize that effective teaching has its limits. It seems to me that, as of late, too many individuals are blaming teachers for low level of educational attainment. This seems to minimize the role of issues like poverty and parenting.

I also believe that teachers needs more individual freedom to do what they do best -- teach and mentor. Too often teachers are forced to teach to standardized tests. I believe that many of these tests are fruitless exercises because they don’t measure the most important marker of success, student achievement after leaving school. I think many schools have come to emphasize and embrace an educational philosophy that is geared at producing students who do well on generic tests. This often comes at the expense of the sort of skills that are often found in the general liberal arts, i.e., critical thinking, analysis, problem-solving, etc.

Although this slate of reforms is mostly aimed at higher education, I’m intrigued by the Lumina Foundation’s plans for skills-based education (http://chronicle.com/article/Educators-Zero-In-on-What/126080/). I think this is really at the heart of what educators should strive to do -- teach people to think critically and have the capacity to integrate new information readily so they can flourish in any number of careers.

Q: The article you linked to from The Chronicle of Higher Education touches on transforming assessment. I recently had a conversation with a professor about which journalism student would be more likely to get a job writing for, say, Time Magazine: A student with a Master's degree in journalism or a student with a global affairs blog that was read by thousands of people each week. Do you think we put too much emphasis on a degree with finite requirements at the expense of a dynamic portfolio of authentic work?

Dr. Renfro: I think it’s very hard to generalize across all disciplines. In some fields, like health science or accounting, finite degrees are important in terms of necessary licensure requirements and practical skills. In other fields, I think it matters less. I’m generally wedded to the old notion of liberal arts. I firmly believe that teaching folks how to think, read, speak, argue, and find information is the best form of education.

In the 1980s everyone was a Communist

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 01:45:00 +0000

The word "Communism" doesn't mean much to kids in 2011, but to people born before 1980 it brings back memories. I remember even as a child thinking how silly it was that a country had to force people to stay by building walls around it. If everyone wants out it couldn't be a very good place to live I thought as I launched my Matchbox cars out the second floor window to freedom. As an adult it seems even more bizarre in retrospect; limiting the basic freedoms of the people to innovate, create and connect seems more like intentional sabotage than a plan for success. Cutting people off from the outside world is a strategy of necrosis.

What I didn't realize until recently is that in the 1980s everyone was a Communist. All of our communication was trapped, contained behind walls. We were hidden from others and they were hidden from us.

As a Technology Teacher in 2011, I am constantly amazed at how easy connections form through social media. If I come across someone on TV, YouTube, in a print or digital article, I can probably find a way to contact them in minutes online. Not their agent, not their studio, not their publisher . . . them. When I see these people or read about them, I get that mental flash where I think that is exactly what I am trying to help my kids to understand! So I use the interwebs to find a way to contact them whether it be their e-mail, Twitter account, Facebook page, telephone number it doesn't matter.

A nice percentage of my lessons are collaborations with different fascinating people of all stripes: writers, entrepreneurs, hackers, and students and teachers from across the globe. I wonder if I was transported back to the 1980s if it would even be possible to do any of this. Where would I start?

Let's say it's 1982. Let's say I happened to have a magazine with an article about someone who could add something important to a unit we were working on in class. Maybe I caught a TV show on one of the 5 channels with some fascinating character. I might want to bring them into my class somehow. I certainly couldn't tweet them an invite and Skype them in the next day, that's for sure.

What's my first step, getting the Yellow Pages? Getting the White Pages? Thinking if someone I know might be a degree or two closer to them and leapfrog my inner-circle? Post an ad in the newspaper in the town where they live? How would I even find out where they live? Call up the government? Hire a Private Investigator? Even if I got their number or their mailing address, how would I get them into class? Fly them to my state, ask them to take a train or rent a car, have a 30 minute chat with my kids and then go home?

Seems crazy, all of it. Okay maybe the idea that everyone was a communist in the 1980s is a little crazy too, but the ability to connect and communicate on this level certainly makes it seem like they were. In November of 1989, the BBC wrote an article about the fall of the Berlin Wall that sort of sums up the last 20 years of communications:

"At midnight East Germany's Communist rulers gave permission for gates along the Wall to be opened after hundreds of people converged on crossing points. They surged through cheering and shouting and were be met by jubilant West Berliners on the other side. Ecstatic crowds immediately began to clamber on top of the Wall and hack large chunks out of the 28-mile (45-kilometre) barrier."

Just like with real-life Communism in North Korea and Cuba pockets of connection communism still exist. Look in your average classroom. The walls are still up. Between internet filters and apathy towards social media as a learning tool, many of our teachers and kids are trapped, hidden, cut-off from the ecstatic, jubilant surge of humanity just waiting to make our classrooms better. They say a picture tells a thousand words, so here is my advice to educators who want access to the free market of ideas just outside their walls:

The myth of exponential knowledge

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:24:00 +0000

Last year Google CEO Eric Schmidt made a big splash by telling us that more information is created every two days than was created from the dawn of time until 2003. This is an alarming find, even if the numbers are fudged quite a bit. The quote wasn't aimed at educators, but many in the EdTech community took this quote and ran with it. The message Schmidt delivered fit very neatly into the narrative many radical educators subscribe to-- that teaching specific factual knowledge is "20th century" and we should be teaching "how to find knowledge" in real time or whatever.

It doesn't take an expert critical thinker to see the huge hole in this line of reasoning. The reason this is a somewhat meaningless factoid is that there has always been more knowledge in the world than we could possibly teach to students. I can remember sitting in the library on SUNY Stony Brook's campus and looking around at the over-stuffed shelves of books on just one bookshelf on one floor and thinking "I will never be able to read even a respectable fraction of the books in here."

This should be obvious prima facie to any objective person, yet that quote gets passed around, re-tweeted, quoted, time and again in EdTech circles. Why?

My theory is that many educators would rather teach their own curriculum or let students design their own curriculum than deliver content designed, sequenced and scaffolded by others. I can understand this sentiment and relate. Having autonomy is a wonderful feeling for teachers and students alike. Just because it feels great and makes you look forward to learning doesn't mean it is the best way to educate an individual, however.

I sat on a curriculum planning team and got to see firsthand that the sequence and scaffolding of the concepts were well thought-out. The age-appropriate lessons for 4th grade were extensions and expansions of the lessons for 3rd grade. The lessons for 3rd grade were extensions and expansions of the lessons for 2nd grade and so on up and down the line. I once had a discussion with Clay Shirky about Math curriculum and he unequivocally told me that the current progression is about as good as he can imagine.

Curriculum is about giving people a foundation to learn more. Cognitive science teaches us that people learn things that build on previous knowledge. This latticework of previous knowledge is called a schema. In other words, skipping steps or zig-zagging around a well-planned sequence of lessons makes learning more difficult.

A curriculum is not meant to be a complete information dump of an all-encompassing human knowledge base. It is meant to provide a broad enough schema for people to absorb and internalize new understandings as they encounter them. Information that does not connect to our existing schema is either ignored or quickly forgotten. Once we understand this fact about how we learn we can see how off the rails the conclusions we draw about exponential information can be.

So let's translate conclusions people draw from Schmidt's quote into the language of cognitive science:

"We need to spend less time building the schemata vital to acquiring new understandings and spend more time teaching people how to do keyword searches on Google for things they won't understand once they read them."

Okay, maybe that's a bit snarky, but it is also accurate.

Curriculum designers are knowledge cartographers- they have been down the road we want our students to travel and they share their experience. We don't need to re-invent the wheel ourselves because we have the benefit of the wisdom of experienced designers.

There is a counter-lesson in here though. Maps get updated because roads and rivers change course. I am a firm believer that curriculum needs to be examined and tweaked on a regular basis, but to discard acquired knowledge as "mere facts" is to deeply misunderstand curriculum design. Is there a kernel of truth in Schmidt's statement? Yes, I think there is more than a kernel in fact. What this means for us as educators is that curriculum design is more important now than ever because it is becoming more difficult to build a broad enough general schema.

Exposure vs. Retention

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 19:13:00 +0000

I believe that the words "learning" and "retention" are synonyms. For example, if I learn how to redirect a folder to a new server in April, then forget how to do it again in September, I can't really say I learned it, can I? I learned how to speak English, I learned my multiplication tables, I learned how to read. I can use the word learn because I retained that knowledge. These units of knowledge are permanently imprinted in my long-term memory.

So what do we call the phenomenon of being taught something that we understand and apply but fail to retain in the long-term? I usually call it "exposure." Much of what is taught in school isn't really learned. Students are exposed to certain skills and knowledge, but 5 or 10 years later can not remember it.

When it comes to learning music or a foreign language, even a little exposure supposedly enables people to learn more deeply later in life. This may be true in other disciplines as well. Students who are taught logic may forget they even heard the word syllogism, but they may have an unconscious understanding of how to construct a logical argument.

This brings up the question: is the goal of school exposure to a variety of skills and knowledge or is the goal deeper and lasting learning? Is our job as teachers about opening neural pathways to enable learning later in life or is it about having students graduate with a conscious understanding of specific systems, skills, and information?

Olde Education

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 01:52:00 +0000

The thing I remember most about reading Beowulf in high school is how bizarre the language seemed to me. It barely made sense when my teacher told me it was actually written in English. I never put much thought into the evolution of the English language until I was confronted with the snapshot of linguistic history that is Beowulf, but it fascinated me once my teacher explained it. She explained that Beowulf is written in Olde English and we now speak Modern English.

I learned that language isn’t static; it evolves in many ways for many reasons. Ironically enough, the same teachers that can explain this change in language remain entrenched in an antiquated educational model. Many of today’s lesson plans are not Modern Education, but Olde Education.
If you listen to the discussion about education reform closely, you’ll notice that the phrase “21st Century skills” gets thrown around quite a bit. This makes sense; after all we are living in the 21st century. However, it is always striking when I hear people use it in the future tense.

People talk about the skills students are “going to need” like the 21st century is still approaching. The reality is that we are over a decade into the 21st century. We shouldn’t be preparing for the upcoming influx of new technologies and cultural shifts because we can’t prepare for things that already happened. For the last decade, students around the world have experienced cultural shifts their teachers never experienced.

Students are connected to their friends 24 hours a day, regardless of their physical location. Students today consume massive amounts of digital content, remix it then share it with their friends. Mobile technology created an entire generation of amatuer photographers, film makers and writers.

Last summer I worked on a mini-documentary titled “Decade 2” that is intended to be a wake-up call to educators who haven’t upgraded their lesson designs to match these cultural paradigm shifts over the last ten years. The movie is basically the manifestation of the William Gibson quote “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.” The same hypothetical future that many veteran educators envision way out in the distance is actually the very practical, ordinary, everyday existence for twenty-somethings as we enter the second decade of the 21st century.

Decade 2 is a series of short clips mostly taken via webcam and shared from twenty-somethings across the United States describing their daily social media use, the pros and cons of tech saturated lifestyles and advice for educators. Many of the contributors to the movie are people I have never met in person but collaborating with them was shockingly easy. The ease with which we can find and connect with new people then share digital content can be startling.

If I tried to do this in 1991, the task would have been beyond impractical for me. Aside from the prohibitive cost of flying around the country to film people F2F, the film development and editing process would have taken months instead of days. It would be a long-shot to even find the people I found in the days before people had digital footprints on the web. Decade 2 is a movie made using the wiki model and it worked because to the contributors, digital collaborations are commonplace.

The world has changed a lot in twenty years and as educators we need to stop speaking to our students in Olde Education and start using a language they can understand.

Interview with Yaqsan

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 20:34:00 +0000

The next interview in the student series is with a naturally gifted young speaker from Oman named Yaqsan. I met Yaqsan, his classmates and their teacher, Salim Al Busaidi, in Qatar in 2009. I wrote about him and his presentation at the Flat Classroom Conference because he was, and still is, an inspiration. I was overwhelmed with how polite, organized and engaging he was during our trip. He is now 18 and studying Law in England and I am happy to have reconnected with him for this interview. (To read the previous interviews in this series, check the bottom of the post for links.)

1. How would you describe your social media use on a normal day?

Yaqsan: As you are well aware everything is now mobile. So all my updates, emails etc come to my phone. But when I'm home my laptop is always on, same thing goes to my email and facebook.

2. Are you a gamer?

Yaqsan: Well I do play playstation 3 but only to some extent. I prefer playing multiplayer shoot em up like Battlefield Bad Company 2.

3. Do you think school, as an institution, is valuable? Why?

Yaqsan: School is the start of a long process of receiving knowledge. If schools were not valuable this will lead to higher education institutions losing their value because the foundation of the learning building has been taken away.

4. What aren't students being taught in school that you feel should be taught?

Yaqsan: This from a personal experience. In Oman unfortunately lab work is very limited. Most experiments are in writing. And IF the students go to the lab then the teacher is the one who does the experiment. So, more lab work.

5. What did you do in school that you feel was a waste of your time?

Yaqsan: I had a subject which was unfortunately useless to me. The subject was life skills. In my opinion life skills are acquired not taught in school.

6. What is the most valuable academic subject for students entering the second decade of the 21st century?

Yaqsan: There are many subjects that are valuable. But in my opinion physics and chemistry on reusable energy is very important, as everyone is aware oil now is predicted to run out in 50 years. Also humanitarian subjects are important like law as we are now suing everyone. But also as crime rate has reached sky high.

7. What was the most memorable lesson you ever had in school?

Yaqsan: To be honest physics was my favorite subject especially nuclear physics. The teacher who taught us knew how to connect to students, even though this is a subject which has a very narrow error margin. He still knew how to make the lesson fun. Which led me to get the highest mark from all my other scientific subjects.

8. What are your thoughts on standardized tests?

Yaqsan: Well it depends. One argument is they will be more fair. It will be easy to judge students because everyone would've had the same exams. But on the other hand not everyone has the same quality of education and it might be unfair on some students.

9. What makes a good teacher good?

Yaqsan: This again depends on the subject. But overall a teacher who isn't too strict on the students and also not too outgoing. If the teacher made the students his/her friends then they will be looked at with admiration and respect. Also from experience.

10. Do you feel that googling facts is a suitable replacement for knowing them?

Yaqsan: If the person already knows the facts then there is no need to google them. But if the person doesn't know them then googling them is an option. But I advise the person who does google the facts to remember them for future reference. This century is all about education. Unfortunately now if the person has knowledge but doesn't know how to use the computer is looked up on them with a frown.

11. You've connected with students from around the world- what are the big differences between students around the globe?

Yaqsan: As technology takes over the differences are becoming smaller and smaller. This I think is not totally a good thing. Because those differences are what makes each nation different from the other. The only difference that are left are for example the food we eat and the way we speak.

12. In Qatar you spoke at the TEDx event- what was that experience like?

Yaqsan: For some reason I've always liked speaking in front of a crowd. The experience was wonderful. Me at the front speaking my thoughts and an audience who listened to every word I said. After that speech I made more speeches at other places. Which all went good. Before I end I would like to advice the people who are shy or afraid to speak in front of people, well not to be shy and afraid, when you get up on the stage (or the front) just forget about everyone else this is your moment and don't let anyone ruin it for you. Speaking in front of a crowd will increase your confidence.

Check out the previous interviews in the series:

Pearce Delphin (Part One) Pearce Delphin (Part Two)

17-year-old deontological libertarian from Australia

Todd Oh 17-year-old App developer from South Korea

Lane Sutton 14-year-old entrepreneur

Anna Hoffstrom (Part One) Anna Hoffstrom (Part Two)
18-year-old Autodidact and Unschooler from Finland/Maine

Priyanka
11 year old Texan living in Singapore

Interview with Priyanka

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 01:26:00 +0000

As I try to invite student viewpoints to our discussions about education reform, I get to learn how different student perspectives can be. Below is my interview with Priyanka, an 11 year old born in Texas, going to school in Singapore with teacher Keith Ferrell. Priyanka is a 5th grader who loves to read, draw and write stories. Keith is the Integration Specialist at Singapore American School (SAS) and is someone I have collaborated with in the past. The SAS mission statement lists "Academic Rigor" as their # 1 priority and from Priyanka's answers, you can tell it isn't just a hollow statement.

1. How old are you and where are you from?

Priyanka: I’m 11 years old, and I’m from Texas.

2. Do you use social media at all? Is Facebook popular in Asia or is something else more popular?

Priyanka: I mainly use email. But Facebook is pretty popular too – a lot of my friends have an account.

3. Do you think school is valuable? Why?

Priyanka: I think school is very valuable! Without an education, kids wouldn’t have the skills or smarts to get a good start in life. But I think having fun is important, too, and enjoying yourself.

4. If you could learn anything that you aren't learning right now, what would it be?

Priyanka: Probably how to save money – it’s useful anywhere and everywhere, for everyone!

5. Have you ever been taught something that didn't seem important in any way?

Priyanka: Definitely measuring angles and using a protractor. I don’t understand how that’s going to help me at all. Also, history. What’s the point of knowing a bunch of facts about things that have already happened?

6. What is the most valuable academic subject for students entering the second decade of the 21st century?

Priyanka: I don’t think there is any one most important. You have to know EVERYTHING, because if you just know one or two, it doesn’t really help you out a lot. You have to combine all of your skills to be productive.

7. What are your thoughts on working in groups versus doing work individually? Do you like one or the other?

Priyanka: I think that it’s important to know how to work both individually and in a group. But I prefer working individually – I just feel like I go a lot faster.

8. What are your thoughts on standardized tests?

Priyanka: I don’t like them, but I think they’re necessary, to get a general idea of how students are doing compared to others in their grade level.

9. What makes a good teacher good?

Priyanka: A good teacher has to love teaching. They have to have the knowledge and understanding of children, and the children have to like and trust them.

10. Do you feel that googling facts can replace knowing them?

Priyanka: Definitely not! You might not have a computer around someday when you want to know something. We need to rely on ourselves, not others, to have the information and knowledge we need.

11. Are you working on any cool projects outside of school?

Priyanka: I’m always working on something! Usually it’s some kind of craft for my room. Sometimes I put on plays for my sister, or do science experiments.

12. You've traveled all across Asia- what is the most amazing thing you've done or seen?

Priyanka: I’ve seen so many cool things – I can’t choose just one. But some things I especially loved were: Going kayaking, seeing & climbing on the Great Wall of China, seeing the Shanghai World Expo, and going to Angkor Wat, in Cambodia.

13. What's the best book you read in the last year?

Priyanka: I love all of Gail Carson Levine’s books, but probably the ones I liked the most were: The Princess Tales (Vol. 1 & 2), Ella Enchanted, Ever and Fairest.

Check out the previous interviews in the series:

Pearce Delphin (Part One) Pearce Delphin (Part Two)

17-year-old deontological libertarian from Australia

Todd Oh 17-year-old App developer from South Korea

Lane Sutton 14-year-old entrepreneur

Anna Hoffstrom (Part One) Anna Hoffstrom (Part Two)
18-year-old Autodidact and Unschooler from Finland/Maine

Interview with Anna Hoffstrom (Part Two)

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 14:01:00 +0000

In part one of this interview, 18-year-old unschooler Anna Hoffstrom shared her thoughts on impromptu lessons, the institution of school and standardized test.

Q: Do you feel that Googling facts is a suitable replacement for knowing them?

@adversarian: The way I see it, if I need to know something new, looking it up on
Google is fine. If I need the information again, I can look it up
again, and the more I need to repeat that process the more the
information validates itself as something that's worthwhile to
remember. Trying to memorize every bit of information I come across is
just impossible, and a fast fact-check on Google is fine by me.

Q: You are an unschooler. I know that when I was younger, I was not mature enough to handle self-education. Do you think unschooling is a universally applicable model or does it work only for highly motivated learners?

@adversarian: A lot of people don't understand how involved a parent is in an
unschooled child's learning. Unschooling parents have to actively
build a positive, active learning environment and having a positive
attitude about learning is a must. Every bit the child learns will
build up to knew questions, new interests, new projects - all of which
is initiated by the child. The parents role is to support the child's
interests, guide the child when wanted, and answer questions.

So it's not about motivation, discipline, or maturity. It's not about
keeping yourself to a rigorous curricula when you're a five-year-old
and can't handle that kind of responsibility. Unschooling will work
with any child. It's how all children learn before they go to school;
unschoolers just keep following that same informal model.

The more important question is if the PARENTS are highly motivated.

Q: You've had the unique experience of being a student in both America and Finland-- how would you describe the different approaches?

@adversarian: The differences in American and Finnish education can be surprising.

My first impression on going to school in Finland was how informal and
laid back the school was. Students took their shoes off along with
their coats, called teachers by their first names, and the different
grades were all sociable with each other. Kids were giggling and
playing in the corridors.

In contrast, what was expected academically was much more advanced
than in the American schools I had gone to.
In Finland the school system is set up differently: kids start school
at the age of seven (something that studies have shown makes the first
years of education more effective and disrupts family life much less),
are in the same class with the same kids from grades 1-6 in
elementary, and then go to middle school for grades 7-9 with the same
class for those three years.

What really makes the Finnish school system different is that the
process in which seniors in high school go through in America (career
planning, college planning, etc) is what the ninth graders in Finland
go through. After ninth grade, students have to pick either a
vocational high school (engineers, chauffeurs, cooks, hairdressers,
artists, etc) or an academic high school (doctors, architects,
journalists, teachers, etc). The secondary schools treat the
applicants much like colleges do: they require an application,
possibly an interview, and judge their students based on their
academic performance in middle school.

Another couple details: in Finland education is compulsory until the
completion ninth grade (or until a child reaches the age of 17),
secondary school has tuition fees (which you can get loans for), and
children going to school use the same public transportation system
everyone else does. Bus fares, food, and regular medical check ups are
paid for by the government until the child has completed compulsory
schooling. Out-of-country field trips are common in grade 9.

In general, Finnish schools give their students much more
responsibility than American schools, and it's what makes their
students so academically capable.

Q: Are you working on or planning any interesting projects for yourself?

@adversarian: Right now the project I'm most excited about is a writing and
photography business I'm starting in a couple months. My blog is
another big project of mine, and I have big plans for it this year.
But most of my projects are spontaneous, and I wouldn't have it any
other way. It keeps me on my toes and I keep learning things I never
would have expected to come across!

Check out the previous interviews in the series:

Pearce Delphin (Part One)

Pearce Delphin (Part Two)

Todd Oh

Lane Sutton

Anna Hoffstrom (Part One)

Interview with Anna Hoffstrom (Part One)

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 13:38:00 +0000

The conversation about education reform tends to be a one-sided conversation. In this student interview series, you will get a chance to read the thoughts of students from across the globe. My interview with 18-year-old Anna Hoffstrom below is the fourth in the series and Anna gives us a great window into the mind of an "Unschooler."

Anna is a remarkably bright young lady with a unique perspective on some the major issues facing educators today. She has spent time in both the U.S. and Finland (where she currently lives) and has well thought out opinions about learning. She began the journey from traditional education to homeschooling to unschooling in the middle of 8th grade and "hasn't looked back since."

Q: How old are you and where are you from?

@adversarian: I recently turned 18 and live in Finland with my parents. I grew up in America, from ages 2-12, but my family moved back to Finland in 2005. Despite loving Finland and its culture I identify myself as American, and English is my first language.

Q: How would you describe your social media use on a normal day?

@adversarian: I tweet daily, and am looking into how to connect with autodidacts on Facebook as well. It might not be considered social media, but some of the best conversations I have are still through old-fashioned email!

Q: Do you think school, as an institution, is valuable? Why?

@adversarian: In today's society, what makes traditional public schools valuable are their mass efficiency, the millions of jobs, and the ease of having an educational record. They are the child's equivalent of a cubicle job: comfortable, familiar, and what people perceive as normal. It's what's
expected.

But as an educational system I think the current public school system, especially in America, is in terrible need of reform and gives very little tangible value back into the community. It's getting more and more obvious that cookie cutter education doesn't work.

Alternative school models, such as the Montessori and Sudbury models, are much more effective in educating students. That makes them much more valuable.

But traditional public schools? No, I don't find them valuable at all. The problems schools solve can be solved in much better ways.

Q: What weren't you being taught in school that you feel should be taught?

@adversarian: In America I really noticed a lack of world culture and world history in what we were learning. Something else I think should be taught, even from a young age, is reading, watching, and talking about the news. The two times we did that in school was on 9/11 and when Mount St. Helens erupted late 2004. Both experiences made a big impact on all of my classmates, and the impromptu lessons based around those events were a lot more effective than they would've been without such an obvious and tangible real-world example.

Q: What did you do in school that you feel was a waste of your time?

@adversarian: Most of my public school experience involved being ahead of the curricula because of my curiosity. Because of that, I helped tutor the struggling students in the class, and I learned very little in school. I had a wonderful experience tutoring and helping my peers, and that was never a waste of time for me, but sitting in school most of my day without learning much myself WAS a waste of time.

Q: What is the most valuable academic subject for students entering the second decade of the 21st century?

@adversarian: The most valuable academic subject isn't much of a subject on its own, but I would say study skills. Being able to adapt and learn are the two most important skills anyone can have, and being resourceful enough and understanding our own learning will grant us those
abilities. We can't predict our future, but we can do our best to prepare ourselves for it.

Q: What are your thoughts on the old phrase "Repetition is the mother of learning"?

@adversarian: Repetition can be helpful for memorizing, but I strongly disagree that it is the mother of learning. Learning something should require a deeper, more critical understanding than simple memorization. Anyone can remember 12x12=144, but understanding how multiplication works requires more than repeating an equation.

Q: What are your thoughts on standardized tests?

@adversarian: I understand the use of standardized testing to aid college applications, but I don't approve of it. For a multitude of reasons, tests themselves aren't going to be a realistic representation of a person's academic ability. Some of us get test anxiety, we might just be having a bad day, we might get high scores but not be emotionally ready for college, etc. There's so much more that needs to be considered, so standardized tests can be misleading.

Q: What makes a good teacher good?

@adversarian: In my life, the best teachers have been the ones who have made an effort to understand my perspective. They take the time to present material in a way I'll be able to understand and connect to the things I already know, instead of telling me what I need to know without filling in the gaps. They emphasize understanding instead of memorization.

Stay Tuned for Part Two with Anna Hoffstrom.

Check out the previous interviews in the series:
Pearce Delphin (Part One)
Pearce Delphin (Part Two)
Todd Oh
Lane Sutton

Interview with Lane Sutton

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:51:00 +0000

Here is my interview with 14 year-old entrepreneur (yes, you read that right) Lane Sutton. Lane is an extraordinary young man who is highly motivated to reach his goals. He spoke at Jeff Pulver's #140conf in 2010, at age 13, and runs his own website. I think that young people like Lane need to be involved in the discussion about reforming education to meet the needs of 21st century learners so please comment, question, debate in the comment section below whether or not you are an educator.

1. How old are you and where are you from?

I am 14 years old and from Framingham, Massachusetts (metrowest of Boston)

2. How would you describe your social media use on a normal day?

Typically, in the morning I check all of my updates, do some tweets and then head off to school. A bad habit of mine, but I check my phone right when I get out of school for voicemail, e-mails, tweets. I will usually spend probably an hour in total using Twitter in any given day.

3. Can you tell us about your experience speaking at the 140 Character Conference?

I had heard about the conference online, and saw that it was coming to Boston, I applied to be a speaker and waited to hear back if I was accepted or not. I was accepted! My topic was about my entire entrepreneur story, how I got started, and how far I have come now. I was very honored to be speaking in such a huge auditorium with over a few hundred people in front of me listening, plus a ton watching livestream. This was also one of my first speeches.

4. Do you think school, as an institution, is valuable? Why?

In some cases, I do think school is important to learn especially things that we can use in life.

5. What aren't you being taught in school that you feel should be taught?

Using Technology Safely – I feel that many of the students in our school don’t use it the right way, and can really learn from it like finding helpful resources online and not sharing too much with social media or the internet.

6. What do you do in school that you feel is a waste of your time?

Sometimes, Science class and Social Studies, I think we learn some things that may not be things we need to know, or can apply to our lives. I am not planning on becoming a geographer, archaeologist, chemist, or a scientist.

7. What is the most valuable academic subject for students entering the
second decade of the 21st century?

I still think Math or Algebra classes are really essential to learn since we use it everyday.

8. If you could design a lesson for next year's class, how would you
structure it?

Tough question! I would probably create a lesson about business and teaching the class about getting a job, how to market themselves, differentiate themselves in a competitive market which are all skills that we will need as the 8th graders move into high school and look for jobs.

9. What are your thoughts on standardized tests?

I think that it isn't necessarily right to do since some students are at different levels of reading, and how fast they can learn, what they can remember, etc., I think that teachers should customize their tests for classes, or maybe even have multiple versions of tests to also prevent cheating.

10. What makes a good teacher good?

A teacher who makes learning fun and interesting, not boring, by bringing the subject to life.

11. Do you feel that Googling facts is a suitable replacement for knowing
them?

Yes and no. Sometimes I might have to Google search for facts since I just may not know them. But, of course if it was taught in class, it would be my responsibility to know them by memory.

12. What projects are you working on outside of school?

I run Kid Critic (www.KidCriticUSA.com) where I write reviews on movies, books, activities, restaurants, products and more from a kid-friendly point of view. I also work as a Social Media Strategist for small businesses helping to create their online web presence and build the brand using social platforms. I also do a lot of public speaking to organizations, at events, and conferences.

My twitter handle is @KidCriticUSA.

Check out the previous interviews in the series:
Pearce Delphin (Part One)
Pearce Delphin (Part Two)
Todd Oh

Interview with Todd Oh

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 14:25:00 +0000

This is the second interview in my series with students from around the world. My first interview was with Australian student Pearce Delphin (part one, part two) and in sticking with that side of the world, next up is a student from South Korea. I think it is important to give students a voice in the conversation about education reform and the Q & A below hopefully adds something to the conversation. Todd Oh is a brilliant young man with many fascinating ideas and I am excited to present his thoughts on education to you here!

1. How old are you and where are you from?

@toddoh_: Hi, I'm Todd Oh, 17 years old boy who lives in South Korea! :)

2. How would you describe your social media use on a normal day?

@toddoh_: Well, I'm quite social media-addicted because of my startup. I wake up and check twitter mentions. Then I check email and send some messages to our teammates through smartphone IM(Kik). While studying at school, we study facebook, social networks, and many web/mobile-related technologies. Because of school, I use facebook for class. Turn on my laptop and start commenting and tweeting. Later, when I'm home- I read and send many tweets, and look around RSS reader to catchup new things.

3. Are you a gamer?

@toddoh_: I play some games but not enjoying it well. My favorite activity is taking photos (outside), not playing games :)

4. Do you think school, as an institution, is valuable? Why?

@toddoh_: Yes, valuable. But not South Korean schools. School without rigorous curriculum is valuable. It will help students creative. Also, school helps us to experience how to socialize well. School is a mini social before we go to real competitive world.

But South Korean schools and Obama's new public school renovation plan are COMPLETELY NOT valuable. Rigorous, strict curriculum can't make student creative and autodidact.
I think rating students by numbers or through exam ONLY is the worst part of it. Exam can't sort which student is creative and passionate. Exam and also, creativity program to valuate students.

5. What aren't you being taught in school that you feel should be taught?

@toddoh_: Journalism. Even though not all students wanna be journalist, Journalism is quite necessary to increase writing skills. Also it will train us to capture essentials of everything. Thinking- this is a good start of everything.

6. What do you do in school that you feel is a waste of your time?

@toddoh_: In this case, I can say every time everyday. I note that South Korea's school is good at cramming. This is why I said 'every time everyday'. We study over 13 subjects (9/10/11/12 grade) and all we need to do is cram with the textbook and previous K-SATs. Can you imagine it? :)

7. What is the most valuable academic subject for students entering the second decade of the 21st century?

@toddoh_: Liberal Arts. That's all.
Some people says IT is the most valuable, some people even says nanoscale science or neurobiology. No, those are valuable, NOT 'THE MOST'.
Even as digital takes control of this world, we are human. Did you see WALL-E, animation from Pixar? Everyone forgot about humanism and nature, and what happened?
Liberal Arts is for all subjects. Without this, we can't live like humans. We live because we think, feel, love and wanna be valuable every time.

8. If you could design a lesson for next year's class, how would you structure it?

@toddoh_: We can't structure class. Government structures it. How lovely this is... :(
But If I could- Industrial Design, Journalism, Social Science(sociology), Literature.

9. What are your thoughts on standardized tests?

@toddoh_: I said about this above(No.4) actually. Not all students can be rated by standardized numbers and sorted (= exam). There are many standards for many different characters. And I know we can't apply double standards on exams. So let's just go with multiple ways. Exam and another programs that can allow creativity and personalities. Obama misunderstood something; Koreans are good at solving math/science problems, but thats it. We know we have to start creative educations such as media creation.

The great guy who leads culture, the great guy who can solve standardized thing faster. Different angle, different results. We all say Steve Jobs is an amazing guy (even if he is selfish or whatever). Does he can solve something faster? No. But does he change our lives? Yes.

10. What makes a good teacher good?

@toddoh_: Hmm, don't be nice to students. Be ready to learn and give it back to students, Be an adviser to students. Being nice is easy- just smile and don't teach them with passion. Saying 'good!' always is easy, but advising students is not an easy thing.

But students want it. Even though your students are not ready to get advice, try it slowly. So if you're going to do this, you have to update brain rapidly.
Good to Great :)

11. Do you feel that Googling facts is a suitable replacement for knowing them?

@toddoh_: Sometimes yes, sometime nope. Case-by-Case. A good teacher can judge if it is right information or not :)
Actually media(including mass-media) gave us many good facts. There are many routes. Several iPad apps are good for it.

P.S: Wolframalpha is also good.

12. What projects are you working on outside of school?

@toddoh_: I'm working on my startup with 3 American students(HS/Univ both). We're building something secret now and will unveil within first quarter.
All I can say is it's related to location. To have fun, Full of fun together- its the rough concept :)

I was also speaker of TEDxYouth@Seoul(Korea) 2010.

You can follow Todd on Twitter @toddoh_.

Interview with Pearce Delphin (Part Two)

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 22:36:00 +0000

Connected teachers spend a lot of time discussing the future of education on social networks. One main theme that continues to be a focal point of these discussions is how modern education needs to be more student-centered. The conversation usually takes place between teachers and I thought it would be of value to invite students from around the world to join the discussion.

I recently connected with a 17 year old student from Australia named Pearce Delphin, also known as @zzap on Twitter. Pearce came onto my radar after I read a story about some controversy he was involved in on Twitter. He struck me as a very intelligent and opinionated 17 year old, so I decided to ask his opinion on a host of subjects that interest educators in my learning community.

Pearce lives in Melbourne, Australia, he just completed high school at Peneligh and Essendon
Grammar School, a private school in Essendon, Melbourne. He obtained a scholarship to Monash University and he is thinking about getting a Business/IT degree there. Pearce is interested in politics and describes himself as a deontological libertarian. He loves "coffee, philosophy, books, and of course, IT and the Internet."

In Part One of this interview Pearce gave his thoughts on the value of school as an institution, the value of self-directed learning, social media, gaming and a host of other topics. This is part two. We would love to know what you think about what Pearce thinks! Don't be afraid to leave a comment below.
Q. What are your thoughts on standardized tests?

@zzap: Standardized testing is good ... to a point. The nationalization of
high school testing is being introduced here in Australia with
horrific repercussions. I think it's important to save some kind of
standardized score so you can see how someone else achieves
academically in comparison to someone else on a relatively equal
playing field. But when the number of participants to a specific test
becomes large, it reaches a certain point where it becomes
exponentially difficult for it to remain unbiased. I really don't know
of a solution to this. What is most critical, though, is that the
standardized tests aren't dumbed down. There should be only a very
small percentage of people receiving a perfect score, and very few
people receiving a near perfect score. The fact that anyone gets a
perfect score at all indicates that the test is not difficult
enough.

Q. What makes a good teacher good?

@zzap: This is, of course, another subjective question. To me, a good
non-interventionist approach makes a teacher good. As I mentioned in
question five, I thrive with teachers that leave me to my own devices.
I learn in my own way, and allowing me to do this is easiest for both
of us -- the teacher doesn't have to worry about me, and I don't have
to worry about "pleasing" the teacher with pointless shenanigans. Of
course, I understand that not everyone is like this, and a solid
teacher is vital to the educational development.

I can't speak for them, but I think it's clear what is really important: a good teacher
is someone who can identify their students' style of learning, and who
can subsequently deal with that student appropriately (that is, either
leave them alone or teach according to the student's needs).

Q. Do you feel that Googling facts is a suitable replacement for knowing them?

@zzap: Yes. Let me propose to you this: if you and I are sitting at a
table, you opposite me, and I had a phone under the desk with an
Internet connection and I could Google anything I wanted without you
seeing. How long do you think I could pretend to be a doctor? I think
I could pretend for a very long time.

Now, the key: if I could pretend to be your doctor for three years, or if I could pretend to be your doctor for five years, what is there to prevent you from certifying me
as a doctor? So just like a machine that can do arithmetic, i.e. a calculator, in one's pocket allows the entire population to be mathematically literate, constant access to the Internet makes everyone potentially a genius.

If one can access any information at any hour of any day in any place, do we really need an education? Because of this, I think you'll see a slow and, in my opinion, a very
needed, change in higher education bodies: they will become less of a
place where students go to learn, and they will instead turn into a
more of a research and assessment body.

A university will say something like: you want to call yourself a doctor? Come to our university for only one month, we will test you on every aspect of being a doctor, and if you pass we will certify you. Where you learn this information, how you learn this information, when you learn this information: it's all up to you. This will simultaneously cause a much greater personal independence required by students, which will also help them in their future careers since they are now naturally independent.

Return to Part One

Interview with Pearce Delphin (Part One)

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 00:27:00 +0000

Connected teachers spend a lot of time discussing the future of education on social networks. One main theme that continues to be a focal point of these discussions is how modern education needs to be more student-centered. The conversation usually takes place between teachers and I thought it would be of value to invite students from around the world to join the discussion.

I recently connected with a 17 year old student from Australia named Pearce Delphin, also known as @zzap on Twitter. Pearce came onto my radar after I read a story about some controversy he was involved in on Twitter. He struck me as a very intelligent and opinionated 17 year old, so I decided to ask his opinion on a host of subjects that interest educators in my learning community.

Pearce lives in Melbourne, Australia, he just completed high school at Peneligh and Essendon Grammar School, a private school in Essendon, Melbourne. He obtained a scholarship to Monash University and he is thinking about getting a Business/IT degree there. Pearce is interested in politics and describes himself as a deontological libertarian. He loves "coffee, philosophy, books, and of course, IT and the Internet."

Q. How would you describe your social media use on a normal day?

@zzap: On a normal day, my social media use is heavy. Along with my coffee
intake. In fact, I don't know what's heavier. The only thing I like more than social media is coffee. Amongst other things. Social media is generally limited to Twitter, though. Naturally I have a Facebook account, and a YouTube account, etc., but they really don't do it for me like Twitter does. Facebook is swamped with inane idiots I had to put up with through my school life, so unless I'm organizing a meet-up with some school friends, I tend to try and avoid it. Because really, I don't care much for most of their poorly structured, grammatically grotesque status updates or (foursquare rip-off) "check-ins".

Since mentioning foursquare, I also use that. It's a great way keeping track of your friends' whereabouts, similarly with Google Latitude, although you need to be more careful of you allow see your Google Latitude location, since it automatically updates your location, unlike foursquare where the user has to check in to a certain venue.

Q. Are you a gamer?

@zzap: No. Games have never really interested me. I like Grand Theft Auto (mainly San Andreas; the sand-boxy feel to that game was awesome), and of course the Sims and sometimes SimCity. But I wouldn't consider myself a gamer; I play them very infrequently.

Q. In the intro I linked to a story that gained you some notoriety in the news-- how did you learn to do that?

@zzap: No idea. I just acquired skills over time, I guess. It wasn't anything particularly fascinating. I just observed a flaw in Twitter and I exploited it. I have never had any formal programming training or classes. In fact, I don't particularly like programming/coding. It seems so dry.

Q. Has the incident changed your views on how you use technology at all?

@zzap: Not really, no. I was concerned for a little while that Twitter would remove my account (like they did with another user I know who used the exploit to cause anyone who viewed the tweet to automatically retweet it like a massive spam worm). I had had that account for a good four years (I was an early adopter) and I certainly didn't want it taken away from my now. But thankfully they didn't, and all was fine. Other than that, my views on technology and how I view it hasn't changed.

Q. Do you think school, as an institution, is valuable? Why?

@zzap: School is valuable to the extent to which the students are willing to learn. I don't support a compulsory schooling system (not sure about over there, but here you're legally obligated to attend school until 15 y/o), because all it does it reduce the lowest common denominator and drags everyone else down with it. When the standard is set so low because everyone has to attend, it causes the intellectuals to become frustrated and bored.

This goes the same with higher education -- university used to be exclusive. Now almost anyone
can get in to do whatever they want. Do we really need commerce degrees for salesmen? I mean, trying not to sound elitist or anything, but you cannot argue that the value of some degrees (as in the effort required and what that effort can tell you about the ability of the person) has been significantly cheapened in recent times.

Naturally, these leads to to the depreciation of degrees in general -- the degree itself now turns into just a piece of paper that entitles you to a job interview. Employers having to test a degree holder to verify that they now understand the things that completing the degree should imply shows that the degree becomes worthless. It's just a title of no value. And that fact is sickening.

Q. What aren't you being taught in school that you feel should be taught?

@zzap: Real life skills. Which seems to have completely disappeared in the last 20-years or so. Hell, I wasn't even taught grammar. GRAMMAR. You see all the kids of today not knowing the difference between your and you're, and you feel like you want to be angry at them because they're too moronic to pay attention in English class. Then you realize, perhaps they were paying attention in English class and their English teacher just never taught them the difference between a possessive pronoun and a contraction.

Schools also ought to embrace technology more. I don't want to go into too much detail about this, because I went to a very conservative private school who considered modern technology on the same realm as the Devil. But in general it seems like schools don't go to enough effort to include technology in the curriculum. Typing class would have been nice. I can type at 110 WPM, yet I still use two index fingers only. It would have been nice to know how to touch type or whatever you call it. You know, with all the fingers? I'd be unstoppable then! mwuahaha.

All the things that they seemingly used to teach, but then they removed from the curriculum. For whatever reason. I mean, how can you say schooling is becoming more progressive and embracing when they used to teach something like typing and now they don't? If anything, in some sense, it's going backward.

Q. What do you do in school that you feel is a waste of your time?

@zzap: Everything. Almost all of it is a waste. But I think that is something more personal. I'm an independent learner; I feel like attending class is a waste of time for me. Generally I disregarded everything that occurred in class, and if I had a test I would cram the weekend before and then go and ace the test. This was my life for two years.

Waking up each morning questioning the point of it all, cramming on weekends, and then going well. The worst thing was that a lot of teachers ... they didn't so much "dislike" me, they just became frustrated with me. Because I ignored their advice in class, I didn't hand up my homework, because it all seemed pointless.

Unlike most, I had acquired an effective technique to learning. Certain teachers resented that, and wanted all their students to do it their way. I was not prepared to sacrifice my learning for those kinds of teachers; and in the process, I pissed some of them off. Regardless of this, I received a good score in my final exams and there were some teachers that accepted my independent learning techniques. That's what we need more of: more acceptance of alternate mechanisms of learning.

(To be continued in Part Two)

Global Wikis & 2nd Graders

noreply@blogger.com (George Haines) — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 20:49:00 +0000

This year my 2nd graders built a wiki with students in the Bronx and Australia. The wiki is a central location to post pictures about the different environments where we live: urban, suburban and rural. My students used BrainPOP Jr. movies to learn the vocabulary, took quizzes and drew pictures on BrainPOP Jr. to assess their understanding, used digital cameras and created their own pages on the wiki. It was an exciting lesson, the students were engaged, learned a lot, and had fun. When I describe this project to people the first question they usually ask is something like, “How do you even start something like that?”

The answer is social media. Connecting with people is a fundamentally important skill for educators heading into the second decade of the 21st century. Connecting not only helps you learn what is happening in other classrooms, but it helps you build relationships with other educators that bear real pedagogical fruit.

This past summer, I connected with a teacher in the Bronx who had an idea to connect kids from the three different environments as a way to bring her lesson to life for her students. We began to plan out the details to see what was logistically feasible. She was in an urban setting and our school is suburban, but we still needed a rural school to round out the project. If I did not have a worldwide network of educators to reach out to, we would probably have had to give up on the idea. However, I knew a teacher from a rural part of Australia and I decided to ask if she could help.

So, sitting on my couch, smartphone in hand, I tweeted out the question. Within minutes she responded with contact information for a teacher in a rural school who might be interested. Over the course of the next few weeks, while waiting for a doctor’s appointment, waiting for the waiter to bring dinner or during commercials on TV, we used social media to plan together.

If it wasn’t for social media, the three classrooms would never have connected and this project would never have happened. BrainPOP Jr. supplied the content, social media supplied the connections, and our students supplied the application of the lesson on their wiki.

Blending twitter, BrainPOP, wikis, time zone differences, and different schedules is not easy, but if you are passionate about educating kids and modeling the skills they need to succeed in the coming decades, it is worth it.