Seriously. I’m asking you.
Imagine a blank slate, 5 years, and all the resources you need. What sorts of things would float to the top of your mind?
Two rules.
1. You can’t build a school.
2. You can’t buy gear.
Now that Oprah has gone and stirred the pot, it’s time for some rules.
Here are a few things I want to get out on the table regarding my use and preferences regarding Twitter.
1. I’m random about who I follow and why. I frequently delete around half the people I follow and start over. This strategy helps me discover new people, reconsider why I’m following the ones I do, and keeps my ADD in check.
2. I’m getting around 10 new followers a day. 8 of them are crack whores. The only reason Twitter works is because you choose the folks you follow. When 4 of 5 are spammers, it’s hard to take that “new follower” thing seriously.
3. I’m purposefully playing with your attention. I’m watching the people watch the caged monkey that is Twitter. I’ve watched Twitter enough. I’m watching you watch Twitter. Social objects, etc.
4. Don’t thank me for following you. Seriously. Odds are I was following you in the past.
5. Finally, and most important to this whole post, I need you to check the “Settings” of your Twitter account. Change “Name” to something other than your user name. Extra points if you use your name. Anything I use gives me the option of seeing your real name instead of your user name. Go ahead and use munkyhugz88 as your user name. Give me something I can recognize in the Name: field. Once we get this problem cleared up, I’m coming after those of you that use special characters.
Pennsylvania is talking about banning beepers (and other electronic devices) from classrooms. Link
Fans of the ijohnpederson Home Game™ recognize this rant as the only thing of significance I’ve contributed to the blogosphere. Today I’m taking it into the real world for a bit of feedback and conversation at Educon 2.1.
As always, props the those that wrote the Cluetrain Manifesto. Mine is not much more than an exercise in find/replace/remix, but it’s helped immensely to frame and inspire my thinking.
Three simple questions for the exercise…
Which thesis grabs your attention?
Which phrase strikes you?
Which word brings this together for you?
Onward…
1. Learning is conversation.
2. Learning consists of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
4. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
5. In networked learning, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
6. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
7. As a result, learners are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in networked learning changes people fundamentally.
8. People in networked learning have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from traditional media.
9. There are no secrets. The networked learners know more than schools do about their own learning. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
10. Schools struggle to speak the same voice as this new networked conversation. To their intended audiences, schools sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.
11. Schools can now communicate with their learners directly.
12. Schools attempting to “position” themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their learners care about.
13. Schools need to talk to learners with whom they hope to create relationships.
14. By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep learning at bay.
15. Smart learners will find schools who speak their own language.
16. To speak with a human voice, schools must share the concerns of their communities.
17. But first, they must belong to a community.
18. Human communities are based on discourse. Human speech about human concerns.
19. The community of discourse is the learning.
20. Schools that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.
21. As with networked learning, people are also talking to each other directly inside the school‚ and not just about rules and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.
22. Such networked conversations are taking place today. But only when the conditions are right.
23. A healthy network organizes teachers in many meanings of the word.
24. Schools depend heavily on open networks to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to “improve” or control these networked conversations.
25. When school networks are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of learning.
26. There are three conversations going on. One inside the school. One among the parents. One among the students.
27. These three conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other’s voices.
28. Smart schools will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.
29. However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now perceive schools as little more than quaint legal fictions that are actively preventing these conversations from intersecting.
30. This is suicidal. Parents and students want to talk to schools.
31. Sadly, the part of the school a networked parent wants to talk to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of language that rings false‚ and often is.
32. Parents do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations.
33. We want access to your school information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites with eye candy but lacking any substance.
34. We’re also the people who make your schools go. We want to talk to you directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into a script.
35. As learners, as parents, both of us are sick to death of getting our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless annual reports and PTA groups to introduce us to each other?
36. As learners, as parents, we wonder why you’re not listening. You seem to be speaking a different language.
37. Your tired notions of “parents aren’t involved” make our eyes glaze over. We don’t recognize ourselves in your projections.
38. We like this new education system much better. In fact, we are creating it.
39. You’re invited, but it’s our world. Take your shoes off at the door.
40. We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.
41. If you want us to talk to you, tell us something.
42. We have better things to do than worry about whether you’ll change in time to get our business. Education is only a part of our lives. It seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?
43. We have real power and we know it. If you don’t quite see the light, some other outfit will come along that’s more attentive, more interesting, more fun to play with.
44. Our allegiance is to ourselves‚ our friends, our new allies and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Schools that have no part in this world also have no future.
45. To traditional schools, networked learners may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. However have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.
46. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.
Long time fans of the ijohnpederson Home Game™ know where this comes from. At each milestone I draw back, reflect, and smack around the pixels a bit further. The latest version is considerably honed from previous iterations, while keeping amazingly true to the original meaning of the text that brought many of us to this point.
I encourage you to push back and provide feedback on this.
1. Learning is conversation.
2. Learning consists of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
4. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
5. In networked learning, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
6. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
7. As a result, learners are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in networked learning changes people fundamentally.
8. People in networked learning have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from traditional media.
9. There are no secrets. The networked learners know more than schools do about their own learning. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
10. Schools struggle to speak the same voice as this new networked conversation. To their intended audiences, schools sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.
11. Schools can now communicate with their learners directly.
12. Schools attempting to “position” themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their learners care about.
13. Schools need to talk to learners with whom they hope to create relationships.
14. By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep learning at bay.
15. Smart learners will find schools who speak their own language.
16. To speak with a human voice, schools must share the concerns of their communities.
17. But first, they must belong to a community.
18. Human communities are based on discourse. Human speech about human concerns.
19. The community of discourse is the learning.
20. Schools that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.
21. As with networked learning, people are also talking to each other directly inside the school‚ and not just about rules and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.
22. Such networked conversations are taking place today. But only when the conditions are right.
23. A healthy network organizes teachers in many meanings of the word.
24. Schools depend heavily on open networks to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to “improve” or control these networked conversations.
25. When school networks are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of learning.
26. There are three conversations going on. One inside the school. One among the parents. One among the students.
27. These three conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other’s voices.
28. Smart schools will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.
29. However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now perceive schools as little more than quaint legal fictions that are actively preventing these conversations from intersecting.
30. This is suicidal. Parents and students want to talk to schools.
31. Sadly, the part of the school a networked parent wants to talk to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of language that rings false‚ and often is.
32. Parents do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations.
33. We want access to your school information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites with eye candy but lacking any substance.
34. We’re also the people who make your schools go. We want to talk to you directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into a script.
35. As learners, as parents, both of us are sick to death of getting our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless annual reports and PTA groups to introduce us to each other?
36. As learners, as parents, we wonder why you’re not listening. You seem to be speaking a different language.
37. Your tired notions of “parents aren’t involved” make our eyes glaze over. We don’t recognize ourselves in your projections.
38. We like this new education system much better. In fact, we are creating it.
39. You’re invited, but it’s our world. Take your shoes off at the door.
40. We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.
41. If you want us to talk to you, tell us something.
42. We have better things to do than worry about whether you’ll change in time to get our business. Education is only a part of our lives. It seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?
43. We have real power and we know it. If you don’t quite see the light, some other outfit will come along that’s more attentive, more interesting, more fun to play with.
44. Our allegiance is to ourselves‚ our friends, our new allies and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Schools that have no part in this world also have no future.
45. To traditional schools, networked learners may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. However have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.
46. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.
Really. This could be applied in most of our jobs.
1. Don’t wait for a revolutionary idea. It will never happen. Just focus on a simple, exciting, empty space and execute as fast as possible.
2. Share your idea. The more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
3. Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you.
4. Listen to your community. Answer questions and build your product with their feedback.
5. Gather a great team. Select those with very different skills from you. Look for people who are better than you.
6. Be the first to recognise a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Address the issue in public, learn about and correct it.
7. Don’t spend time on market research. Launch test versions as early as possible. Keep improving the product in the open.
8. Don’t obsess over spreadsheet business plans. They are not going to turn out as you predict, in any case.
9. Don’t plan a big marketing effort. It’s much more important and powerful that your community loves the product.
10. Don’t focus on getting rich. Focus on your users. Money is a consequence of success, not a goal.”
Edit #1: I posted this late at night and
woke up to 10 comments that have me thinking even harder about this
issue. I’ll get absolutely nothing done today if I continue to think
about it…so give me a chance to make it home and construct a
thoughtful response.
Edit #2: "I don’t want them to believe me, I just want them to think." – Marshall McLuhan
My rant has had a chance to marinate a bit. A few "next day" thoughts.
I truly believe that everybody…from the executive editor of Scholastic Administrator magazine through the teachers/administrators in the story and all the commentors on this post…everybody is trying their best.
We all have different agendas and see things through our own lens. I honestly wouldn’t know what to do with 150 students a day in a school that banned cell phones, iPods, laptops, etc. None of you would want me as your principal, trying to keep the lid on the place. I sure as heck don’t know anything about selling magazines or writing a balanced article.
My job is precisely the same as Scholastic’s. "I just wan them to think." Push the edges a bit. See what we learn as a result.
To Scholastic’s credit…
1) They do incredible work for teachers and kids.
2) Read 180 is on my really short list of educational technology things that matter.
3) The executive editor of Scholastic Administrator magazine was inside my inbox this afternoon, inviting me to construct a response for publication in their October/November magazine.
This is a great lesson for everybody involved in information and media literacy.
Markets are conversations. I’m going to continue pushing the edge on this "fear sells" thread.
Doug Johnson…I see the smile on your face. "He’s pure. Mostly."
Original Rant
There’s a running joke at my mailbox at work. It’s been nearly one year and I’ve received exactly 1 piece of mail that had even somewhat important meaning. Today was no different. CDW. Symantec. MacWorld. HP. Scholastic Administrator Magazine.
Seriously. That cover says "When Tech Attacks". Let that sink in just a bit further.
Ok. You have my attention. Go.
"Schools across the country are waging a war against technology tools gone bad. Read how some districts defend their classrooms against the new school thuggery—from iPod cheats to cell phone punks and sneaky Web surfers."
We are at war? Let me check my scorecard. Drugs. Poverty. Afganistan. Terror. Iraq. Cell phones? I really need to start watching TV again to catch this late breaking news.
"According to Will Richardson, author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, we have seen the enemy, and it is us. Adults simply don’t know how to model appropriate digital behavior, he believes, so kids are making up the rules on their own."
Spend more that 5 minutes either reading or talking with Will and one thing is clear. None of this stuff is simple. Especially when a journalist leads with "According to…"
"Is it a case of bad technology leading to bad behavior or good technology with not enough role models? These horror stories should act as a primer."
Boys and girls, that’s called the "hook" of the article. It makes you want to read further. Let’s explore the horror!
"…(a female teacher’s) suspended student blindsided her with a vicious punch while his buddy recorded the scene (on a cell phone). The teacher ended up with 25 stitches in her head. Murphy High has a cell phone policy, but little good that did when students wanted to cause serious harm."
Nobody likes to hear a story like that. The students in this case faced some pretty stiff penalties and a trip to jail. No word on whether the phone did time, but that’s not important right now. Principal Doug Estle is taking steps to calm fears.
“We’ll also do professional development in the fall about spotting potentially violent kids, and we’ll set up tip lines for students who might know something about a potential attack.”
A tip line. We’ll protect kids from the dangers of technology by having them call a tip line on their dangerous cell phones banana phones.
Another example of technology attacking…
"In October 2004, a substitute teacher in Norwich (CT) Public Schools exposed some of the middle school students in her care to pornographic pop-up ads. Julie Amero was tried and convicted and faced the possibility of 40 years in jail."
Wow. That must have been some seriously harmful technology to be convicted and face a possible 40 year jail sentence. Surely school districts, especially the ones involved in this court case, are learning from this situation.
"Despite the incident, the district hasn’t made any radical changes in what it does to keep kids porn-free, according to Bob Hartz, manager of Information Services. “There are so many porn sites,” he says. “You’ve just got to assume it’s going to happen, pay attention, and take the right steps when it does.”"
I’m neither a lawyer nor an expert on this case. Would somebody please get this district a PR person to advise keeping these sorts of quotes quiet? Even if it’s simply for Julie’s sake? Damn. That stings.
Technology that attacks isn’t limited to knocking out teachers or throwing them in jail. Take the MP3 player.
"Everybody loves an open-book exam, especially those who forgot to study. Used to be such exams were at the teacher’s discretion, but technology is changing all that. Which is what a teacher at Mountain View High School, in Meridian, Idaho, discovered upon overhearing students discussing how iPods could help them cheat. The idea is this: Kids record material that will be on an exam and then download it to bring to school on an MP3 player."
How will kids know what will be on the exam prior to the exam? That’s right…they review. These kids got clever about it though. They taught their iPods what would likely be on the exam. Like the article says though, teachers have discretion whether to allow students to use their notes, books, and resources on an exam. All is well. Or is it?
"So why let the MP3 players in the exam room? ‘We wanted to be the cool guys and allow kids to relax a little while taking tests by listening to their iPods,’ Principal Aaron Maybon explains. ‘We’re an SPED and ELL magnet school, and listening to quiet music while taking an exam is a good way for our students to stay focused.’"
What? This isn’t a case of "When Tech Attacks?" These things actually have good uses?
"But even if MP3 players are banned outright, Maybon says, the kids can tell you exactly how to hide the tiny players, cords, and earbuds under bulky clothes and underneath their hair."
Ahh, so it’s not the technology that we are at war with, but rather the bulky clothes and hair.
"Still, Maybon points out that there has never been an incident of iPod cheating at Mountain View. He also has no intention of banning MP3 players and punishing kids for behavior they haven’t exhibited…"
Whew. This story didn’t end up in a trip through the criminal justice system. It’s just kids practicing study skills.
What’s next?
"He (note: not Will Richardson, but referring to Will) says technology is getting smaller and smaller—and easier to carry as well as to hide. Plus, we’re about to enter an age of ubiquitous computing, where kids will be able to snag a Wi-Fi signal from the surrounding community and simply get around whatever blocks or bans school administrators have made. Can you imagine the insanity that will ensue when kids can search the Internet unchecked on a school computer—linked to an unfiltered Wi-Fi connection?"
Insanity? You should see me after I check into a hotel without free wifi these days.
"The good news is that of all the people in the world, educators are best able to solve these problems."
Like CIPA and DOPA. I’m sure that stuff came out in your research on this topic.
"To Richardson’s eye, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and stop thinking about policies that limit technology, and instead focus on what we do best."
Hallelujah.
"’It has to be a K–12 curriculum in which we model good behavior,’ Richardson argues. ‘We have to be consistent in our own behavior, and hand out real consequences for abuses to the procedures.’"
Be firm. Set the expectations. Model proper behaviors.
It’s time for Scholastic Administrator to finish with something profound.
"In other words, be ready to do battle."
That’s how it ends? You are advising your 240,000+ audience of school administrators "be ready to do battle?"
Full disclosure. My personal media critic filter is smart enough to separate Scholastic Administrator Magazine from a peer reviewed journal article or a Wikipedia entry. I also fully admit playing a bit of "Jon Stewart" with the story. I insist that you go read this article in its entirety.
http://content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3746915
Before the comments fly, let me list the deeper, more important reasons why I’m stirred.
1. This article in Scholastic Magazine makes us all look stupid. It is a complete insult to the entire K12 education profession. Is there anybody that really believes a cell phone caused a student to punch out a teacher, a porn pop-up is an "attack" on students, and that an MP3 player is a cause for war?
2. Scholastic Magazine went to Will Richardson for his take and to add a splash of credibility to the article, all the while mangling it. Will (and others) have quit their "day jobs" to chase their passions of school reform and educational technology. I’ve known Will for a number of years. We’ve lived the same highs and lows together. No doubt he’s on some small propeller plane tonight, headed to another hotel room, wondering if it’s possible to hit 4 consecutive "rooms that open to the left" in a single week. I’m sure he’ll come across his copy of "When Tech Attacks" in the near future and question, yet again, whether the time away from his wife and kids is worth it.
3. I can’t help but worry when I think about this article. I’m unsure of how many hours of research go into something like this I’m sure it was plotted out on a storyboard, edited, re-edited, fact checked, and passed through a few hands before going into a publication that reaches 240,000 educators. Right? Somebody had to decide that this article was worth of the cover story. Even scarier, if I approach the article objectively, the fact that is was deemed "cover story quality" means that Scholastic truly believes that the majority of readers will appreciate this story.
Would somebody please let me know if I’m being punked?
Banana Phone Courtesy Flickr CC @ http://flickr.com/photos/nitz/543734402/
First, the Rules:
1. Post these rules before you give your facts
2. List 8 random facts about yourself
3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
4. Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged
A few folks have tagged me. While I appreciate the thoughts, I’m much to lazy to go back and figure out who you were.
1. My first job came after one resume sent and one interview.
2. The superintendent immediately bumped my salary +$2000 because, in my excitement, I had accepter her lowball offer.
3. I have never watched the Wizard of Oz.
4. I joined Twitter on December 15, 2006. That makes me ancient.
5. All I really want to do is mow a really nice golf course. Or own a bar. Without any responsibility attached.
6. I was in a 6.8 earthquake with Bill Gates in 2001.
7. I can’t get enough cottage cheese in this world.
8. I have a tradition of killing blog threads like this one by not tagging anybody else.
Honestly, I have been thinking really hard.
Back on April 2, 2005 I took the 95 Theses from the Cluetrain Manifesto, substituted “learning” for “markets” and “students/parents” for “customers”.
It impacted my thinking in a deep way.
2+ years later I’m here at NECC, meeting many of the people that helped shape this story in my mind. The learning and the conversation are more exciting than ever.
I repeat my remix for those “new to me” and as something to think about for those “old timers” who are grappling with what all this means here in Atlanta this week.
Here’s the remix.
I have two additional opportunities to talk with students in the near future. Mainly to educate the teachers, but I don’t tell the teachers that. I dug back in my past and conjured up the enGauge (popular technology program assessment tool) student interview protocols.
Think about the best teacher you ever had. What made learning in his or her classroom so great?
Do most teachers at this school teach this way?
How do your teachers use technology?
How do you use technology in your school?
How does technology help you learn?
In which classes do you use technology, what technology is used, and how is it used?
Is it easy to find a computer (or other technology) when you need it?
Where do you use technology (probe for at home and at school) and how often?
What are the school rules about using computers, the Internet, Acceptable Use Policy, copyright, and other matters?
Is there anything else we should know?
If you had an afternoon to talk and listen with students, what additional questions would you ask?
Interesting tidbit on communication and crisis. If you are close to the classroom and have been involved in crisis planning and/or lock down procedures, a common rule is to stay off the phone. Think hard about this as a teacher, parent, and student.
While in lock down at Weston, parents were literally standing outside the windows of the classrooms. Information travels very fast. The major culprit: cell phones. What is your district’s policy on the use of cell phones? For staff? For students? The district administrator added something something interesting. Because of rules against the use of cell phones, while in lockdown the students immediately jumped to the computer.
Information travels fast. Kids communicate in ways different from adults. The network is designed to circumvent barriers.
“We’re under pressure to learn more and to learn quickly, but the future goes to those who can unlearn faster than the rest, because you can’t always learn something new until you first let go of something else. And learning to let go of rules is one of the first things we (and our managers) have to learn to be quicker at.”
A few weeks ago I had a brainstorm. An idea picking away at the back of my brain. The thinking built off my learning over the past year with this blog, which has sparked a number of recent “connectivist” conversations and some deep, intense personal learning and reflection. I’m not ready to share this story yet…it’s deeply personal and very much “in progress” right now…but the crazy little voices in my head tapped me this afternoon and reminded me “learning is conversation”.
Back in April when I had 2 readers, including my wife, I remixed Cluetrain Manifesto’s “95 Theses”. I used the magical powers of “find & replace” to substitute “learning” for “markets”, “schools” for “companies”, and “students” for “customers”. I took the corporate/marketing edge off Cluetrain and put it in an educational context.
Whether you are a company dealing with schools, a library dealing with patrons, a speaker on the lecture circuit, or an educator thinking about the future of technology, these remixed “theses” from the Cluetrain Manifesto should serve as a nice guide to tweak your thinking. They have fundamentally changed mine. Pass it along.
1. Learning is conversation.
2. Learning consists of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
4. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
5. In both internetworked learning and among intranetworked students, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
6. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
7. As a result, parents and students are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked learning changes people fundamentally.
8. People in networked learning have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another and the Internet than from textbooks and worksheets.
9. There are no secrets. The networked learners know more than schools do about their own learning. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
10. Schools do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, schools sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.
11. In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of education‚Äîthe sound of mission statements and brochures‚Äîwill seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.
12. Already, schools that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.
13. Schools that assume the online learning medium is the same as television are kidding themselves.
14. Schools that don’t realize their learning is now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.
15. Schools can now communicate with their learners, parents, and students directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.
16. Schools need to realize their students and parents are often laughing. At them.
17. Schools attempting to “position” themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their parents and students actually care about.
18. Schools need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.
19. By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep learning at bay.
20. Most “school improvement” programs are based on the fear that parents & students might see what‚Äôs really going on inside the school.
21. Smart learners will find schools who speak their own language.
22. To speak with a human voice, schools must share the concerns of their communities.
23. But first, they must belong to a community.
24. Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about human concerns.
25. The community of discourse is the learning.
26. Schools that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.
27. As with networked learning, people are also talking to each other directly inside the school—and not just about rules and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.
28. Such conversations are taking place today on school intranets. But only when the conditions are right.
29. Schools typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other district information that workers are doing their best to ignore.
30. Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked educational conversation.
31. A healthy intranet organizes teachers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.
32. While this scares district witless, they also depend heavily on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to “improve” or control these networked conversations.
33. When school intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of learning.
34. Org charts worked in an older economy where plans could be fully understood from atop steep management pyramids and detailed work orders could be handed down from on high.
35. Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.
36. Command-and-control management styles both derive from and reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of paranoia.
37. Paranoia kills conversation. That’s its point. But lack of open conversation kills schools.
38. There are three conversations going on. One inside the school. One among the parents. One among the students.
39. In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete notions of command and control.
40. As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers (teachers, parents, students) and generate distrust in internetworked learning.
41. These three conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other’s voices.
42. Smart schools will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.
43. However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now online perceive schools as little more than quaint legal fictions that are actively preventing these conversations from intersecting.
44. This is suicidal. Parents and students want to talk to schools.
45. Sadly, the part of the school a networked parent wants to talk to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of language that rings false—and often is.
46. Parents do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the educational firewall.
47. We want access to your school information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.
48. We’re also the people who make your schools go. We want to talk to you directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into a script.
49. As learners, as parents, both of us are sick to death of getting our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless annual reports and PTA groups to introduce us to each other?
50. As learners, as parents, we wonder why you’re not listening. You seem to be speaking a different language.
51. The inflated self-important jargon you sling around—in the press, at your meetings—what’s that got to do with us?
52. Maybe you’re impressing yourselves. You’re not impressing us.
53. If you don’t impress us, you are going to take a bath. Don’t you understand this? If you did, you wouldn’t let yourself talk that way.
54. Your tired notions of “parents aren‚Äôt involved” make our eyes glaze over. We don‚Äôt recognize ourselves in your projections‚Äîperhaps because we know we‚Äôre already elsewhere.
55. We like this new education system much better. In fact, we are creating it.
56. You’re invited, but it’s our world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!
57. We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.
58. If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it something interesting for a change.
59. We’ve got some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some better service. Stuff we’d be willing to pay for. Got a minute?
60. You‚Äôre too busy “doing business” to answer our email? Oh gosh, sorry, gee, we‚Äôll come back later. Maybe.
61. You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.
62. We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic self-involvement, join the party.
63. We’d like it if you got what’s going on here. That’d be real nice. But it would be a big mistake to think we’re holding our breath.
64. We have better things to do than worry about whether you’ll change in time to get our business. Education is only a part of our lives. It seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?
65. We have real power and we know it. If you don’t quite see the light, some other outfit will come along that’s more attentive, more interesting, more fun to play with.
66. Our allegiance is to ourselves—our friends, our new allies and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Schools that have no part in this world, also have no future.
67. To traditional schools, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.
68. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.
Today, I’m…
a) Fighting the FCC Erates folks over $20.00 in caller ID charges that are inelligible (on a $72,000 funding request)
b) Taking heat because parents can’t find the Staff Email Directory on http://www.superior.k12.wi.us
c) Disaggregating reading test score data to find that our district assessments really aren’t all that valid
d) Trying to find a SPAM blocking solution for the district because staff members are fussy about the new words they are learning
Along comes David Pollard’s "10 Rules for Being More Imaginative", a great add-on to Hugh McLeod’s "How to Be Creative". Must reads for when you’ve had it up to HERE with the job that give you money.
Last night I picked up Ed Tech Coast to Coast #3 podcast and headed out into the woods for some hiking and learning. Interesting discussion about access to technology…what constitutes "enough"? It started my brain wondering at what point we (schools) simply expect that our teachers a) have Interent access at home and b) have their own (personal) laptop? At what point are these two things simply a part of doing business? The first is far less controversial than the second, but I can guarantee that if I were a teacher without a laptop, I’d have my own. Perhaps that’s more in the realm of 20-30 years out than 5, but it’s important.
Wow. That’s not why I started this post. :O) Tim’s comment below is what drew me.
"The more we set technology apart from the rest of school life by making all sorts of special rules about it, the more marginalized technology becomes with respect to the curriculum and the more likely it is that students will view the rules as yet another reason that school is irrelevant."
The Savvy Technologist » Blog Archive » Scott McLeod: Legal and Ethical Issues
More great listening for tonight’s hike! It’s not only rules that marginalize technology in education. It’s how we treat it and talk about it.
1) "Technology Integration" We use this all of the time. How much further in time do we need to go before this becomes a silly phrase? Last night I integrated my microwave, yet I’m no Alton Brown.
2) "Technology Lab Time" Hopefully, all I need to do is label it. She’s been beaten pretty hard.
3) "Technology is Just a Tool" I’ll let you play with that one in the comments. :O)
Ok. Last night Chief Justice William Rehnquist died. According to the rules, we fly flags at half staff for 10 days out of a sign of respect when a chief justice dies. I checked Wikipedia to figure out the rules. In doing so, I learned that Bush ordered flag lowered for 5 days out of respect for the tsunami victims.
Tsunami hit 12/26/04. Proclomation hit 1/1/05. Six days. Hurricane hit 8/29. It’s now 9/4, day six. Flags will drop today…out of respect for William Rehnquist. Many more black people died yesterday. Many more will die today. More tomorrow. And the next day. I think Kanye West may be right. “George Bush hates black people.”
This is the stuff that makes up Michael Moore documentaries.
Update :: They took care of business late yesterday and made a proclamation. I promise to get down from my soapbox now.
Looks like I’ll be participating in another really cool “you have to be there” educational technology conference from the sidelines web again*! The “Building Learning Communities 2005″ conference kicks off in Boston, MA tomorrow (July 17th). By the looks of things, this is getting closer to what and educational conferences could/should/will be with our new toys on Web 2.0.
1) Presenters can inform and prepare participants prior to the sessions.
2) The conference has an RSS feed, Technorati link, tag (blc05), and a Flickr stream.
3) Wireless.
I’m fired up with anticipation to see what comes out this week on the blogosphere. Dembo? You ready? I’m living vicariously through you folks again!
*I have to admit a strange ego thing…a Google search for weinberger keynote necc has my blog 2nd only to NECC’s website, despite the fact that I was watching the video stream from my backyard here in Minnesota.
Would anybody call “point of order” if I tagged some Flickr images enjoying this conference from my backyard?
Technorati Tags: blc05, steve dembo, will richardson
The Basics of Composition: Rules or No Rules – That is the Question
The “Rule of Thirds” in photography. The picture below sums up the first step in “good picture” vs. “ok picture”. I keep forgetting this stuff in my wild chase to push the button.
The conversation on assessing blogwork caught my attention on Will Richardson’s blog this morning. A few months back I caught a rubric from my friend and college advisor Helen Rallis. She uses a rubric that’s closely corollated with concepts used in the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards portfolio requirements. NBPTS follows a model that asks candidates to describe, analyze, and reflect upon their classroom instruction through writing.
I remixed Helen’s rubric into something more suited to blogging…both posting and commenting…building upon the describe/analyze/reflect strength behind the NBPTS format. The strength of this model is that there are no assumptions that “reflective” writing is better that “descriptive” writing. Blogs require a nice balance of all types of posts to strengthen the community.
Start with simple “community building” types of posts.
“I just landed a new job! Wooo hoooo!”
Some posts go a little further to be descriptive.
“Did you see the goofy blogging picture in Edutopia? I disagree with the characterization and this is why…”
Others get deep.
“Here’s how I see filtering of content in schools, here’s how it impacts information literacy among K12 educators, here’s what people on the other side of the argument feel, and this is why I think they are wrong.”
I couldn’t wait to get home this evening to start crafting this post. I started with Will’s “Assessing Blogwork” and began swimming up the linkstream. I wasn’t prepared for what I’d find.
First stop, Konrad Glogowski.
Grading Conversations
What this means to me is that grading blogs (especially at the elementary level) has to be a very holistic process that focuses not only on the quality of their work but also on the extent to which their work reflects the context in which they work.
Interesting. Konrad quotes Nancy McKeand. Let’s see where this leads us.
Of all the ideas I have seen, I think I like ones suggested by Bud’s students best of all.
Amazing. Three clicks upstream and a few folks like us…highly educated…living this thing called edublogging…we are tracing the roots of our conversations back to students. Students’ in Bud’sclass. Here’swhat Elle thinks.
Blogs should be graded on all three; frequency, subject matter, and content. For example; when writing a newspaper article (as I often have for the class we have at the school), you need the entire package of Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How? Blogging has the same kind of essentials; Frequency, Subject, and Content. Kinda like the whole a+b+c = d, well Frequency+Subject+Content = Good Blogging.
:O) “Learning is conversation.” The “Cluetrain + Education” part of this experience keep echoing in my head. A few examples from the remix…
People in networked learning have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another and the Internet than from textbooks and worksheets.There are no secrets. The networked learners know more than schools do about their own learning. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
Schools that don’t realize their learning is now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.
Schools can now communicate with their learners, parents, and students directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.
The community of discourse is the learning.
Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked educational conversation.
When school intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of learning.
Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.
There are three conversations going on. One inside the school. One among the parents. One among the students.
These three conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other’s voices.
We like this new education system much better. In fact, we are creating it.
We have better things to do than worry about whether you’ll change in time to get our business. Education is only a part of our (students) lives. It seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?
This is precisely why I created the “Cluetrain + Education” Moodle course (follow the link to register). When we start to understand what’s behind these “networked conversations”, we open an entirely new window into what blogging means for education. We are linking to our (well, Bud’s) kids. They are “in” on the networked conversation.
Technorati Tags: assessment, bud hunt, edublogging, educational technology, will richardson