Watching The Sun Rise: Reflections on life and teaching in 2012/13

Stephen Hurley at VoicEd asked for a reflection as the year ends, so I'll give it a whirl.  This is going to be tricky to do without spiraling into Nietzsche's abyss.

This past school year started with the worst summer of my adult life.  I'm still recovering from my mother's suicide and I probably shouldn't have resumed teaching in the fall, but I did out of shear stubbornness.  Rather than trying to deal with this nightmare in a quiet year I got to do it during one of the most turbulent political periods in Ontario education.  You need only look over Dusty World in the fall to see the white water political ride education in general and my board in particular went through.

In a few short weeks, as OSSTF swung from a confrontational stance with the Liberal government that I supported by volunteering on our district executive and attending many rallies, I found myself suddenly muzzled by an organization that I realized I have very little in common with.  Rather than standing up for what is right, they would rather do what is expedient.  I've never been good at bending a knee to bullying, even if it does serve a political end.  It's half a year later and our OLRB complaint against OSSTF for misrepresentation is still awaiting an outcome.  Being an idealist I find this very upsetting.  It seems any organization is politically self interested before it can stand for anything else.

It's easy to forget that teachers are people, and the job is a deeply personal one.  This past year has had a number of strange confluences both personal and professional for me.  As my school and board tried to leverage the suicide of Amanda Todd to address bullying I couldn't help but feel that this was manipulating misery for some kind of administrative end.  The contrite, 'suicide is bad, don't bully someone into it' struck me as simplistic.  That cyber bulling got selected by the media as the cause of her suicide (which a number of anti-technology teachers immediately trumpeted as proof that we should back off on it) was doubly frustrating.  That Amanda, like my mother, suffered from years of mental illness tends to be ignored because dealing with something as complicated as mental illness is more than most organizations, no matter how well intentioned, are willing or able to do.  That provincial and federal governments have basically bowed out of caring for the mentally ill has put a great deal of stress on already over stressed families.  If we're going to address mental illness it better not be on a poster stuck up in a high school.  This trivializes a very complex issue.  Suicide is never a simple result of bullying, it's the most profound, existential decision you're ever going to make.  It deserves more than a soundbite.

Between the fractured politics in education and my own personal baggage 2012/13 has been a difficult year to manage.  As the storm subsided and we began our two years of government mandated contract, the school trundled on and extracurriculars resumed, kind of.  In a subdued second semester I began to get some closure with my Mum and tried to find ways to get back on my feet again.  The first semester was like watching a horse with a broken leg that didn't have the sense to lay down.  At the end of second semester I'm able to stand without it hurting so much.

With some perspective on a year that felt like nastiness was crowding in all around me, I'm able to see the good that happened too.  My wonderful wife has done backflips to help me through this, all while battling the same political nonsense and working on her Masters.  My spectacular son continues to astonish me with how deep he is getting, even as the education system continues to wring its hands over how not-normal he is.  I got a new principal who knows what she's doing and who appreciates the work I do.  I've been able to develop my professional interests both as a department head, teacher and online PLN presence.  My board has been developing a real 21st Century presence in educational technology and I feel like I've played an important part in arguing for that.  The year has been very professionally satisfying, if you ignore the Ministry, the union and the media... which is probably good advice.

Even with a nasty political infection, education in Ontario has been able to produce outstanding results, and I've been able to develop my professional self in satisfying and challenging ways.  No year is ever going to be without challenges, and the challenges of this year have been mighty, but that I'm able to find intense intellectual satisfaction in my profession is a great help when dealing with all the slings and arrows life can throw your way.

Fear & Arrogance

Quote from Bull Durham

The industrial mindset around education tends to look away from this approach to learning, but there is something to be said for bravery in the face of overwhelming odds; it's a true commitment to what you're learning.  Of course, if you're going to learn something like it matters then failure should be an expectation if anything other than competence is demonstrated.  In a school system that prides itself on stats it generates about itself, this kind of without-a-net learning doesn't happen.

When I say true commitment I mean a willingness to put your learning to the test (and I don't mean a standardized test).  There is a reflective aspect to learning that we tend to ignore in education.    We like to say we're looking at meta-cognition and self-aware learning, but only without questioning the context we frame it with.  Unless a student is considering the school system in which they find themselves complete with all its financially forced lunacy, the metacognition they are asked to endure in class is little more than another attempt to pretend rows of desks and student numbers are the ideal.  In that environment the student who shrugs and walks out of class in order to truly test themselves in a trade or other real pursuit is the only one answering the metacognitive question correctly.

Learning without concrete, relevant feedback is empty, pointless.  The type of feedback students get in school tends to be abstract to the point of emptiness.  We then wonder why their poor grades don't motivate them to try harder to get better abstract numbers, and then teachers agonize over how to 'engage' them.

When I first started to teach in Japan I tried to understand why my classes were so different even though the lessons were the same.  In looking at my learners I realized that some were intrinsically motivated and some extrinsically motivated.  The doctor who came in to work on their presentation to have their work shared in an international conference?  Those classes were stellar.  The employees who were required by management to upgrade their English?  Tedious.  Intrinsically motivated learners are a joy to teach though also a great challenge because of how voracious they are.  When we create an education system we iron out intrinsic motivation in favour of standardized, extrinsic motivations (grades, standardized test scores, report cards).  Any fear or arrogance in daring to explore and expand beyond our comfort zone is stamped out in favour of standardized assessment.

I've been learning the art and science of motorbike riding over the last couple of months.  I can't think of an activity that requires a greater commitment (except perhaps tight rope walking).  The learning process for this activity is ruthless and demanding.  I don't get days off or time to relax when I'm working on my craft.  I don't have someone constantly correcting my behavior to keep me on task.  And it hurts doing it, let alone if I do it poorly.  What got me on a bike in the first place?  Fear and arrogance; the chance to do something difficult well.  Thinking that I could learn this thing with grace and skill was a dare I've always wanted to take.  That I want to be successful in something I've seen kill other people is perverse and satisfying.

We don't like students to learn things that are challenging to them, we like them to all do the same thing on a bell curve.  We process them as statistics that we can then manage.  If you've ever tried to submit a class of all failures or all perfects you know this to be true; they want a bell curve of grades with a median in the Bs.  Student centred learning tries to put an individualized face on this, but the assessment rubric will quickly bring it back in line again.  It's unreasonable to expect a teacher to individualize learning for thirty people, but if we're going to run this like an assembly line we can't bemoan the loss of individual learning.

The real trick with learning is to want to do it.  Once you're there and you have a deeply seated need to figure out what it is you want master, you can begin to develop those skills.  In addition to fear and arrogance (two methods of not being daunted by learning a challenging skill), you should also embrace patience and a willingness to laugh at your failures without ignoring them.  With a flexible, resilient approach to learning in place you are sure to succeed at your craft, though not always in ways you may have imagined.

Mastery takes longer, but this'll get you over the steep bit
at the beginning of the learning curve

I stumbled across the chart on the right a few weeks ago on Google+.  Whenever I hear someone say, "I wish I could draw", or, "I wish I could code", or any other longed for learning you care to name, I think back to this chart and wonder why they never spent the time if they wanted it that badly; they obviously never wanted it that badly.  Learning isn't magic and teaching isn't a dark art.  The learner has to recognize the value of the learning and have an emotional need to achieve it.  The teacher has already walked that path to expertise and cultivates that love of the material by challenging the student to achieve that which is barely within their reach.  Their expertise allows them to dare the student to appropriate challenges.  Learning is a visceral, thrilling self-driven, emotional experience, not a pedantic, systemic process to be forced on rows of victims.

These moments of learning greatness where students reach for more than they should and see success (and failure) happen in schools all the time, but they are usually the result of a good teacher trying to protect students from systemic processing.  They also tend to happen in stochastic learning or extracurriculars more than the ordered learning of the class room.  In the kinetic action of arts, technology or physical education students still have the freedom of unregimented, hands on learning toward less specific ends. That stochastic space allows them room to attempt greatness, to bypass the routine learning and realize a eureka moment.  Formal classroom education irons that out with curriculum, formalized assessment and systemic teaching practice.  The freedom still evident in stochastic learning tends to unnerve the professional student and educational administrator, both of whom have learned to play the game of Education rather than simply encourage people do what they are naturally predisposed to do.  For the true apprentice hands on learning is the last bastion of real learning in our education system.  It may be the unspoken reason that killing extracurriculars in Ontario this year cut so deeply.  Only in sport and other physical activity can we appreciate the immediacy of failure and the joy of real success.  You can't bell-curve reality.

All is not lost.  We could begin revising education towards learning rather than self serving statistics gathering.

Imagine an education system that didn't work to generate its own self-serving statistics.  A school system that was focused on developing an environment in which students were able to develop a deep, intrinsic love of learning, where no extrinsic motivation existed to force them into a mold of grades and average expectations.  Failure in this system could be brutal and obvious, but students would be encouraged to attack their learning with fear and arrogance (and patience and humor) knowing that they would never be demeaned for failing but only for ignoring their failures.

Damned Statistics & Digital Meta-cognitive Opportunities

Tweeting my mouth off

Education would rather  focus on arbitrary and fabricated data, like graduation rates.  It's easy to increase graduation rates, just lower standards.  It has been working for Ontario Education for years now.  You barely have to even attend a class now to get a credit, and if you fail? A teacher not even qualified in the subject area will pass you along; we call that student success.  The grade eleven university level English paper with no less than three grammar and punctuation errors IN THE TITLE was an example I saw of this.  It was given a 78% by the credit recovery teacher grading it.  That failing student will now go on to university thinking that they are an 'A' student (they went from failing badly to 80%!).

There is another way.  Rather than chasing our own tails by trying to improve statistics that we create ourselves, why not start harnessing data that is actually useful and relevant to students beyond the context of education?  Digital technology offers us a fantastic and under utilized avenue for collecting meaningful data on student learning; data that might actually help them beyond the walled garden of education.

Rather than addressing the distraction caused by digital devices, we ignore them, or try to ban them.  Even at our best we only tentatively use digital tools, and when we do we ignore the data they could be providing on student activity.  Digital devices could shine a powerful light on student learning, instead we call them a distraction and let students abuse them into uselessness.  Effectively harnessing educational technology could give us granular, specific data about student activity in the classroom, yet we choose to wallow in darkness.  Really useful data-driven learning is only a decision away from implementation.

Education, like so many other sectors, has become increasingly interested in data driven management.  I don't have anything against that on principal, in fact, I'd rather be managed according to logic and fact than the usual management ethos (egomania and paranoia).  Where we go wrong with data driven educational reform is where human beings are involved.  Education, more than most fields, prefers not to reveal its inner workings.  The choices made on what data to collect and how to present it usually revolve around a sense of self preservation rather than a focus on student success.  The only data we collect is data we can control for our own ends.

The intent of the education factory is to reduce something as complex as human learning down to a percentage.  That in itself is about the biggest abstraction you could devise, what Twain would call a statistic in the truest sense.  Those numbers are ultimately useless in anything other than education.  The only time in your life your grade will ever matter is if you're transferring from one educational institution to another.  No will ever ask what your marks were once you're out of school.  They don't even ask teachers what their marks were before hiring them; even educators realize how meaningless grades are.

Instead of spending all our energy fabricating meaningless statistics in the form of grades, imagine harnessing all the data that flows through education technology and presenting it in a radically transparent reporting system that connects students to their lives after they graduate. That system would provide students with a powerful tool for metacognitive review around their own learning, and their use of digital tools.  Instead of reductive grades and empty comment banks, why not offer an insightful statistical analysis of how a student uses digital tools as they learn?  The tools themselves are eager to share this data, it is only educators who are stopping it.

A student who is shown, in specific detail, why they failed a course (but watched oh so many fascinating youtube videos), is being shown their own poor choices in stark detail.  One of the great joys I have in elearning is showing students their analytics.   When I get the, "I don't understand this!" line, I ask for specifics, which usually gets me a, "I don't get any of it!"  I can then pull up an analysis of what lessons the student has attempted.  The student who didn't bother to actually even try any of the lessons gets wonderfully sheepish at this point.

With meaningful data on hand about their poor choices, education's arbitrariness instead becomes a metacognitive opportunity to adjust learning habits; something we seem loath to do on digital tools, even as we criticize how students use them.

Collecting meaningful student data would allow us to connect the abstract world of education with what students will face on the other side of graduation, especially if we continue to collect data after they move on.  Ever wondered what high school courses are actually useful (and I don't mean in graduating, I mean in finding work, being useful, living a good life)?  How about a live stat attached to each showing employablity based on course choice?  Think you'll move over to applied level English because your friends are in there and you don't like doing homework? Welcome to a 14% higher unemployment rate, and a 6% higher criminality rate!  Imagine what parents and students could do if this kind of data were available.  Realizing that there are real world consequences to your educational choices would do much to remove apathy and a lack of engagement on the part of students.  Education has very real consequences beyond school but we seem intent on trying to remove any obvious connection between education and the rest of a student's life.  With open learning data we'd have way fewer students who have missed the starting gun.

Last year my school talked about creating a cosmetology program.  This would be a hugely expensive undertaking requiring changing the face of the school.  That was OK though because the board was willing to throw tens of thousands of dollars at an increase in graduation rates for at risk girls.  What would they do with it once they were out?  It made me want to start up a video game program, not because it would do anything helpful, but because it would fill sections.  We subvert usefulness in a desperate attempt to game graduation statistics.

I couldn't help but think of the college computer engineering program I'd been to see a few months before.  They had a 100% placement rate for grads with starting pay well above the Canadian average, but they couldn't find enough people interested in the field to run a full course each year.  They didn't have any females in the course at all, and were desperately trying to get more women interested.  I can't find enough kids in my high school to run more than one combined senior computer engineering course... in a field that all but guarantees a good job when you graduate and is about as future proof as you could wish.  I don't imagine cosmeticians are walking into that kind of employment certainty at high rates of pay, but a future out of school isn't what we're aiming students at, we're just concerned with graduating them.

It sounds harsh, but one of the reasons students are so disengaged from school is because they recognize the cognitive dissonance between the world beyond school and the fabricated reality we keep them in until they turn eighteen.  If you want students to engage in their educations provide them with metacognitive data that actually helps them.  Education has gone to greater and greater lengths to try and protect students from themselves and the 'real' world, all to chase fictional statistics.

Digitization in the classroom offers us access to meaningful data on student learning behaviour that was impossible even ten years ago.  Instead of being ignored and treated as a distraction, we should be harnessing digital technology and communicating that data.  A student who spends less than 10% of class time working on their project before failing it?  If that data were included in assessment, a student would have a metacognitive opportunity to understand the mechanics of their own failure.  They might then also begin to harness digital tools rather than being distracted by them.  Digitization shouldn't be an escape from accountability, it should amplify it.

In such an environment, assessment might become something more than a damned statistic.

***

I didn't even get into how this data could serve employment after school.  Detailed data on how students tackle work would be of great interest to employers.  Even the basics like attendance and ability to focus on work would be of more interest to employers than any grade.

Imagine an Ontario Student Record that offered employers an automated resume that included attendance and other useful details like ability to complete work in a timely fashion, group/team skills, communications and approach to new challenges.  Instead of hiding education behind a curtain of graduation, we could begin to make it immediately and obviously connected to future success.

I Know It's Just a Number: 30K

I just turned forty four; that's just a number.  A day later Dusty World is going to cross the thirty thousand page view mark.  That's just a number too, but I like it a lot more than forty four.

Blogging started as a bit of catharsis; a chance to reflect on my profession.  I picked up the idea from ECOO a few years ago and hit 5000 page views in February 2012, just over two years after I started posting.  I was overjoyed then.

In June of 2012, just four months later, Dusty World passed ten thousand page views.  Once a backlog of posts builds, people wander in off the internet looking at old posts as well as new.  This is my 168th post.  I tend to stay away from the picture and/or short comment posts.  When I write it tends to be about me trying to develop an idea, usually with graphics and a lot of hypertext to support it.  

I love how blogging has sharpened my voice and I love talking to people about ideas reading a post has sparked in them.  I even love listening to the disagreements; most times I agree with them.  When I write a post, I have to follow the idea all the way down the rabbit hole, it's why I do it.  Blogging has let me shake the dust of my English and philosophy degrees and exercise them.

Posting has become a natural part of my reflective process.  I sometimes don't even necessarily agree with what I end up working out in Dusty World posts, but they always offer me some perspective on what I'm wrestling with.

During the worst of the job action in Ontario this past year Dusty World occasionally wandered into politics. After being bitten by all sides of that dissonance I'm thinking that nothing is to be gained from trying to untangle the nasty politics around education in Ontario.  The interests are so deeply ingrained and self involved that coming out on one side or the other is essentially meaningless if you're interested in supporting education itself.  My energy is better spend focusing on the unnerving, exciting and revolutionary technological change we're going through.  It not only frightens and excites me, but it also makes for a rich source of reflection, especially when I see students being experimented on with it every day.  How technology is changing our society is always a source of interest and something I'd never want to stop looking at.

The bizarre future we're making for ourselves is going to make existing political structures around education increasingly tenuous and inconsequential.  If I have to take a side it would be the side that doesn't exist yet, but it will.  I'm OK with being the villain for thinking in a way that is only just beginning to exist.

Dusty World is going to keep its eye on the prize and speak to the radical changes we're all going to have to adapt to in the coming years.  Meanwhile, thirty thousand is a nice number to think about.

Noon on May 18th!!!

Get off the Bus and Drive

The transition from institutionalized, single platform education technology to a decentralized model is in full swing at our school.  I'm getting blow back from various teachers who want things to remain as they've always been.  I don't think they mean ditto machines, facsimiles and telegrams, but they might.  There is always a tendency to fight advances in technology, it's difficult to change ingrained habits.

The difference between this and previous technological shifts is that we've institutionalized helplessness into educational digital technology.  We've convinced teachers that computers are an appliance and networking is a utility.  We treat internet access the same way we treat electricity or water delivery; it's off loaded to a bureaucracy who guarantees delivery.  As the old guard retires and their traditional thinking around passive technology use fades, we are left with whole generations of teachers who have been taught to do nothing except sit on the institutionally provided bus and go where it takes them.  Complaining about it is about all they can do.

Any decision making about educational technology has long been taken from teachers.  Digital learning tools are seen as remotely operated apparatus that should be dropped the moment they don't perform as expected.

When I suggest that teachers can get off the #edtech bus and drive their own educational technology they get anxious; driving a car takes a lot of effort compared to sitting on the bus.  You not only have to drive it, but you've got to look after it too, make sure it has gas, service it, take ownership of it.  The reward is much finer control over how you travel on your journey.

If you want to get where you're going (making education relevant and useful to your students?) driving your technology will get you there much sooner.  You'll get to decide what vehicle to take, what options to put on it, and even how you want various technologies to enhance your teaching.  Diversification of technology is vital to a better understanding of what it is and how to use it effectively. Digital technology isn't one app or one platform, it is a sea change in how we access and share information.

Driving your own technology usage does take a lot more effort than sitting on the #edtech bus, though it's just a different kind of effort.  All that energy you used to expend on worrying when the bus would show up?  or why it's so old and dilapidated?  You can now spend deciding what to get, what options you want and how you want to implement it.  You get to decide what, when and how your students are using technology to enhance their learning; you get to actually control your digital learning environment.

That last bit is perhaps the most enjoyable part of driving your own technology use; being able to control your #edtech environment is a key factor in customizing 21st Century learning to suit your students.

If we treated classrooms the way we treat digital learning environments, all rooms would be exactly the same, with the same seating plans, the same chalk boards and the same size.  Those classrooms would also be years out of date, and the teacher couldn't move a table or chair if they wanted to, because they'd all be nailed to the floor.  If you dare to ask why the furniture is nailed to the floor you'd be reprimanded with a fear based diatribe on how not keeping everything locked down and the same is potentially dangerous to your students and staff.

A Digital Skills Continuum: Differentiation of technology is a key to technical fluency!

If you're teaching using technology you're also teaching technology, and it would behove you to know what's under the hood.  Being ignorant of the machinery you're operating makes you a very bad driver indeed.  You don't necessarily need to be a full-on mechanic, but a tinkerer's mindset allows you to understand and look after your own needs in terms of the technology you use.

There are going to be some crashes with all these new drivers coming onto the road, but each collision will result in a learning experience.  I only hope that teachers who are inexperienced are willing to look past the messiness of their own learning to the possibilities opening up to them in a digital world.  At some point we'll tip over and teachers will accept that competence in technology isn't someone else's job but an integral part of their profession in the twenty-first century, just as it has become a basic fluency in so many other professions.

The Determined Luddite

They showed this at the Google Summit a couple of weeks ago:

A metaphor for users of technology?

It's a special kind of learned helplessness, and I see it every day when trying to get people moving on their computers again.  There is nothing magical about computers, though many people like to think there is (it gives them an excuse not to engage in learning about them).  If we're going to make digital skills a foundational skill set in the twenty first century (and we certainly seem to be moving in that direction), then we need to integrate digiracy into curriculum in the same way we integrate literacy and numeracy, and we need teachers to be able to demonstrate competence in digital skill in the same way that we expect them to display proficiency in traditional literacies; acting helpless does nothing to move this forward.

Our board is about to take steps toward a BYOD/multi-platform approach to #edtech.  This can't happen until people get off the escalator and figure out how to open a book.

Helplessness, learned or otherwise, isn't going to lead to the effective integration of technology in the classroom.  How we train teachers to become digitally competent is a vital piece to this puzzle.  The mini-lab approach with digital coaches assigned to their own tech-cloud is a way to encourage the tech-curious to develop better skills.  It also (through collegial interaction with peers) lets the tech-curious spread their enthusiasm and know-how to the less keen.

Build digeracy through scaffolded, objective learning with diverse technology. Opting out is no longer an option.
It was an embarrassing approach ten years ago, it's quickly becoming untenable now.

That people seem to rewind well past where you think reasonable caution may lie in trouble shooting computers is frustrating from a tech's point of view.  If a user has a genuine issue with their computer, or something has actually broken, then we're generally happy to be of assistance, but when a teacher says a printer is broken when it is simply unplugged, this points to a willful kind of ignorance.  When that teacher is also one of the schools computer teachers I want to move to the arctic and give up.

A minimum expectation of digital fluency should be a willingness to address basic, operational issues before evoking support.  If schools want to develop digital fluency, an expectation of honest engagement has to be where that starts.  If the internet is really becoming that important, then it becomes incumbent upon the user to make that connection as stable and effective as possible.  I'd say that 80% of the tech calls I deal with are people unplugging things they shouldn't be touching in the first place, and then everyone else being too helpless to plug it back in again.

One of my grade 9s shared this as a video to help them out with an introduction to computers (the editing is hilarious):  Komputer Kindergarten.  MSDOS and the beige 1990s are the reason this sounds so antiquated (and funny).  That so many people twenty years down the road still don't "do that stuff'" is getting to be equally ridiculous.  I'm not saying everyone has to be a technician, but everyone should be able to change their own tire, otherwise they shouldn't be driving.  You can't be expected to operate the equipment effectively if you're determined to know nothing about it and want nothing to do with it.

Effective teaching with digital tools begins with teachers, and I find so many of them not just reluctant but downright contrary to the idea of learning even the basics of how a computer or network functions.  Some of that lies at the feet of teacher unions and school boards who have taught teachers to be helpless through locked, fear driven educational I.T. regimes.  Educators who have bypassed these restrictions and developed digital fluency in spite of their union and board's best efforts are the ones we need to bring back in from the cold now that the school technology cold war is over.  Their fluency as digital coaches could create momentum to inflect enough colleagues to adopt a more open approach to learning technology.

The idiotic idea that technology is the realm of the young and if you want to know anything about it, just ask your students, needs to die.  Students are the rocket scientists who unplug an ethernet cable to plug into their infected laptop so they can have faster internet.  They then leave it unplugged and the next student comes along and instead of plugging the end back into the computer, plugs it into the wall, creating havoc as the network loops itself.  Then everyone complains at how slow and unreliable the internet is; it's not the internet that is slow and unreliable.

As school systems stumble along years behind business and society, they have finally gotten the idea that being online is just a new medium of communication (not bad, only a decade after the rest of us did).   As education evolves into a more diverse, open technological environment, perhaps the hardest people to convince will be teachers who have bought into the fear and panic of their unions and employers and have been forced out of step with social expectation as a result.