None of us is as smart as all of us

I had a poster in my classroom that I have carried with me from office to office to office (I count 9 offices in 18 years) and it really sums up they way I think about learning and doing:

None of us is as smart as all of us.

I am ENTJ.  I don’t wait for someone to tell me what to do and sometimes even resent that to the point of no return.  I especially don’t like it when someone tries to tell me how to do something.  This applies to my learning as well.

I had the opportunity to engage in a conversation about “digital age learning” with an amazing group of educators earlier this week.  Of course, the conversation turned to technology.  Of course, that moved to a conversation about “too much” technology.  I stumbled upon a wonderful conversation on Twitter this AM and it led me to this blog post from 2008!
http://dougbelshaw.com/blog/2008/03/28/is-twitter-bad-for-you/#.T0YTUnJSTLI

As I read it, I thought of that conversation and that caused me to think about a book and a Ted talk by Sherry Turkle (Alone Together) - http://alonetogetherbook.com/ and Then, I thought about a graphic I have used in workshops on creating Personal Learning Networks using social media - 

 - remember, I am ENTJ and believe none of us is as smart as all of us.

What will come of all of this “social networking”?  Is networking learning?  Does learning require a network?  If someone learns something and never teaches someone else about it, is it really learning?

 

How I Learn New Songs in 2012: A Technological Timeline and Call for More Music in Schools

I have always loved to sing – sing along with Hee Haw, other tv shows, the radio, records/tapes/CDs, etc. I loved music class in elementary school and took band and “folk music” electives in middle school. And, I have parents that always made sure I had some way to listen to music and they didn’t even seem to mind the long concerts in the car as we went to visit my grandparents. My brothers, on the other hand, always seemed to be doing something else to drown out the noise I was making.

I got my first stereo for my bedroom when I was 6 or 7. It was a record player with speakers. I would watch a show on tv, hear a new (to me) song, and then try to find the singer or a song with a similar title in mom and dad’s record collection. If I found something I liked, I would play it over and over and over again until I either scratched the record or knew the lyrics.  At lot of Skeeter Davis and John Denver songs were learned like this.  Too bad they never (as far as I can find) sang a song together!

The next stereo I got was when I was around 10 or 12. It was a “combination” system with a record player, two cassette decks (one player, one recorder), and an 8 track player/recorder. I still have this system, by the way. Actually, it is in mom and dad’s basement gathering dust. The first thing I did was to make a copy of all of the albums I hadn’t ruined yet. This took a while because I had to acquire the blank cassette tapes and then sit through the entire album to record it. I found more new songs to learn this way, though. At this point, with the cassette player to support me, I could listen to a verse, sing it, replay it, sing it again, and move on to the next verse. I could learn a typical song by listening to it twice in this segmented way and then once all the way through. I developed strategies for remembering the order of the verses as this was something I had to deal with having learned the song a verse at a time.  A lot of Linda Ronstadt, Bette Midler, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, Rachel Sweet, and Kiss were learned this way.

I kept a notebook through high school where I would “test” my memory of songs. I would sit down and think of a song I hadn’t sung or heard in a while and write out the lyrics. Then, I would pull the appropriate tape from my extremely well organized collection and see how well I had done. Then, I would relearn the tricky parts.  I made my way through a particularly boring high school math class by writing the lyrics to Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” in my notebook every day.

I continued enjoying music and learning new songs through college and my years as a classroom teacher.  I used music in my classes a fair amount and enjoyed singing with my kids as I could.  We used math to analyze different vocal qualities of artists the kids were interested in.  I took kids to concerts around town generally shared my love of music with them.  Check out http://www.downbeatproject.com/ and http://forlauren.com/ to hear beautiful music two of my former math students are sharing with the world.  They are both genius and amazing young people.

About 10 years ago, I began using the web to try to track down lyrics to old songs I hadn’t sung in years or new songs I heard some where. Wow, have the web sources of lyrics grown over the past 10 years!

A few years back, I started searching YouTube for “free” videos of songs. Some people like to put the words in a slideshow, add the music to it and post it to YouTube. It’s interesting to think about the different legal aspects of this. So, I adjusted my strategy to include only official videos released by the artist.

Then came Shazam. With Shazam, I can “listen” to a song and immediately know the title and artist and possibly get to a number of resources like printed lyrics or YouTube videos – all on my phone! I tag a song, go to the YouTube video to replay the song, and learn the song in 15-20 minutes. Now, Shazam has added the wonderful feature of showing the lyrics in time with the song – I can see the words and hear the music at the same time. Two passes like this and I have a song, typically.

When I look at the affordances technology has brought me in terms of personal song learning, I wonder what of this time line is reflected in schooly learning for our 13,000 kids in my district. How is learning new words different from kids now than it was when spelling/vocabulary lists were handed out on paper on Monday followed by a Friday quiz. How about how we learn complex processes now?

Michael Thornton (@mthornton78) and a few of us engaged in a Twitter conversation this weekend because Michael shared . We don’t really use music much in school, do we? I learned a lot about conjunctions and bills and other stuff by watching http://www.schoolhouserock.tv/ as a kid – always in my living room, never in a classroom. I was 9 years old when SchoolHouse Rock first aired and enjoy it still!

Over my years in central office, I have talked with elementary music teachers about SchoolHouse Rock and other tools like it. I usually get met with comments like, “I have my own curriculum” or “teaching WITH music is different from teaching ABOUT music. I teach ABOUT music” or some sort of critique about the chords and rhythms or some other musical element of SchoolHouse Rock.

How can we better use music to help kids access academic content in meaningful ways? How can we use music as a means of kids showing what they know, understand, and can do? As Michael said in our Twitter conversation, kids can “watch, create, share” – watch (and hear) for models, elements of quality, and to learn new information; create their own versions to show what they know, understand, and can do; and, share with a world-wide audience to check their understanding, receive feedback, and improve upon the quality of their work so that others may learn, too.

I realize this post has two distinctly different themes – (a) technology has changed just about everything I do as a learner in the past 40 years or so, but it hasn’t changed much of what we do in schools to promote learning, and (b) music is a powerful tool that is perhaps under utilized in schools. I chose to put these two themes in a single post because, as artists from Jim Reeves to Iron Maiden have sung, “When Two Worlds Collide” interesting things tend to happen.

Today’s High School Kids

I had the great fortune to be at Educon 2.4 in Philly last weekend.  Let me go on record AGAIN that the Science Leadership Academy kids are awesome!  I spent the day with some of the most awesome kids on the planet.  They were running a conference for teachers and having a ball at the same time!  Some kids were working the video streaming stations in the conversation rooms, some were running the coat check, some were tending to feeding and watering hundreds of educators, but all were focused, respectful, helpful, and amazing.

I probably interacted with the kids at Educon 2.4 more than I did my Twitterverse.  While I missed meeting several folks I had intended to, I enjoyed my time picking on the kids and listening to their quick comebacks and thoughtful responses.  From the student speaker at the opening night panel discussion to the kids printing out boarding passes and calling cabs as the attendees were leaving,  I was flat out impressed.  

My time at my hotel was another story, though.  For the 3rd year in a row, I stayed at the Embassy Suites Center City.  It seems that about 25% of the hotel guests were Educon attendees, about 70% Ivy League Model United Nations Conference (ILMUNC) attendees and about 5% were wondering what they had gotten themselves in to.  Let me just tell you…

THE “MODEL UNITED NATIONS” KIDS WERE EVERYTHING BUT MODEL!

Both sets of kids are fun-loving, bright, successful, teenagers who had an opportunity to interact with educators from all over the country.  

The SLA kids made the most of this, asking questions about what we taught and where we were from and generally being interested in making positive connections. I even picked up a few SLA student followers on Twitter!

The ILMUNC kids I encountered were self-absorbed, entitled, and had fun at the expense of others.  When a hotel has 20+ floors, it is not a good thing to play on the elevators.  It took over 30 minutes for a gentleman who cannot safely walk down a set of stairs to go down a few floors in the elevators.  Apparently, an apple battle took place and some non-teenagers were pelted with apples when the elevator doors opened.  It appears no one has taught these Ivy League UN-ers basic elevator protocol and how to behave in public.  And, it appears neither the hotel nor the chaperones intervened.  

The response from the hotel each and every time that I complained was “each of the groups has chaperones.”  My response was, “Maybe on paper, but not in reality.”  

When I tried interacting with the ILMUNC kids (not fussing at them, asking them about their debate topics and countries they were representing), only a third or so responded as if they cared.  I was even completely ignored by two of the students at one point.

Am I being too harsh?  I don’t think so.  Am I expecting too much of our young people?  I don’t think so.  Am I expecting too much from the adults that guide and shape our young people?  Nope. The only time I witnessed a chaperone interacting with a student was when a student came to the bar area to check in with a chaperone.  Yes, the chaperone was enjoying the free happy hour while the students were wreaking havoc on the hotel elevators.

The stark contrast between what I encountered at Educon by day and my hotel by night and at breakfast is like a tale of two futures for America.  I choose for my future to be in the hands of the Science Leadership Academy kids!

Bloggers’ Cafe at VSTE 2011

We are talking about how we find time for blogging and what our motivation is. Who do you blog for? What is your general style? Should we blow up the term “blog”? What should we replace it with?

That was great! Now what?

Like many school divisions across America, mine is just coming off of our two day fall leadership retreat.  That was great!  Now what?

We were fortunate enough to be able to bring teacher leaders, principals, and central office leaders together with Peter H. Reynolds on Wednesday.  The overall response to the day was, “that was GREAT!”  Teachers and principals alike loved Peter’s message and his stories. He is clearly on a mission!  But, what will I do differently as a leader because of my time with Peter and the rest of our leadership team?

How will I act differently the next time I see a kid with an empty piece of paper or a colleague who appears at first glance to have not done his or her job?

What kind of feedback will I give and how will I push the next person I encounter who says, “I just can’t…”?

How will I solicit personal commitment and ownership from myself and those around me?  How will I demonstrate my own personal commitment?  How will I own my own work?

What will I chose to frame in “swirly gold”?

How will I bring out the best in the people around me?

How will I simultaneously foster experimentation and confidence building?

How will I move beyond “That was great!”?  

Now what?

Yeah, but we will always need ditch diggers!

When talking on the topic of citizenship, workforce, and college readiness with a group of other educators recently, some one asked, “But what about the argument ‘Yeah, but we will always need ditch diggers!’?”  Being the graduate school educated daughter of a truck driver and a school cafeteria lady, that hit me hard.  I hopped up from my chair and went to a poster displaying our Vision, Mission, and Goals and pointed to the statement, “All learners believe in their power to embrace learning, to excel, and to own their future.”  I asked something like, “How do we ensure the student owns the choice to become a ditch digger and isn’t handed the choice because he was in the ‘low reading group’ in kindergarten?”

Our Vision statement is powerful in my mind, but it conflicts with the notion of “ability grouping” (which is most often actually “achievement grouping”) and other tracking practices.  The conversation didn’t move to this at all, dispite my physical movement and “in your face question”.  The conversation went back to citizenship, workforce, and college readiness, driven by the question “What of our lifelong learner skills don’t apply to a ditch digger?”

ACPS Lifelong Learner Skills

1. Plan and conduct research.
2. Analyze data, evaluate processes and products; and draw conclusions. 
3. Think analytically, critically, and creatively to pursue new ideas, acquire new knowledge, and make decisions. 
4. Understand and apply principles of logic and reasoning; develop, evaluate, and defend arguments. 
5. Seek, recognize and understand systems, patterns, themes, and interactions. 
6. Apply and adapt a variety of appropriate strategies to new and increasingly complex problems. 
7. Acquire and use precise language to clearly communicate ideas, knowledge, and processes. 
8. Explore and express ideas and opinions using multiple media, the arts, and technology. 
9. Demonstrate ethical behavior and respect for diversity through daily actions and decision making. 
10. Participate fully in civic life, and act on democratic ideals within the context of community and global interdependence. 
11. Understand and follow a physically active lifestyle that promotes good health and wellness. 
12. Apply habits of mind and metacognitive strategies to plan, monitor, and evaluate one’s own work.

So, what of our lifelong learner skills don’t apply to a ditch digger or a truck driver or a school cafeteria lady?  I know my dad, who we refer to as “the original GPS” (granddaddy positioning system) because he has the map of the major highways in the lower 48 memorized, constantly evaluated routing, fuel consumption (there were financial bonuses for achieving fuel savings), safety (there were financial bonuses as well as the obvious benefits from accumulating “safe driving miles”), time of day, weight of the load, and made adjustments as needed. That’s at least 1 – 6 and 12 above, don’t you think?  The fact that dad would park his truck, after ensuring he had the time to spare, and call a cab to take him to visit sites like the Space Needle in Seattle or other places he couldn’t imagine taking his family to on vacation may partially illustrate 10.  I could go on and on about how my parents, neither of whom has a single college credit to their name, exemplify the lifelong learner standards.  And, I challenge anyone to sit in the living room while Jeopary! is on!

So, to what extent did my high school educated parents “own their future”?  Dad started driving a coal truck when he was 16 because he didn’t want to be a coal miner.  He finished high school, went in to the Army for a short stint, and moved on to bigger and better trucking jobs.  When he and mom had been married for a while, he “left the road” to become a dispatcher for a few weeks and was miserable.  Mom and he decided it was better for him to be happy on the road than miserable in an office.  He went back to the road until his retirement.

Once my youngest brother went to kindergarten, Mom looked for a job that would allow her to be on the same schedule that her kids were on.  She found one as a substitute cafeteria worker and eventually worked her way up to being a cafeteria manager in a new school. She retired from that job and began substitute teaching and eventually took a job as a part-time special education teaching assistant.  She retired from that job and is now vice president of Dad’s company, Nap Incorporated (named by my neice who tends to call while Dad is napping.  Actually, everybody tends to call while Dad is napping.)

The message I got from my parents about my career path was to “use your brain and not your back.”  They wanted more for me than they had and they saw a white collar job as providing this.  I also heard over and over again, “We don’t care if you are a ditch digger, just make sure you make enough money to do what you want to do, love what you’re doing, and are the best at it.”  What is it about ditch diggers?

Do kids grow through school wanting to be ditch diggers?  Absolutely!  But, they go through school.  How do we ensure school prepares them to be citizenship, workforce, and college ready AND that they “own their future”?  I didn’t play well in school and DOZENS (yes, dozens) of educators recommended moving me down a level or from this academic program to that non-academic program.  It’s not that I couldn’t do what they were asking me to do academically, it’s just that I found no compelling reason to.  My Mom fought over and over again to keep me in the highest level of classes possible even if my grades were not very good (not doing homework does that to you when homework counts 20 – 25%).

Some may say that I “owned my future” when I chose not to do homework.  I say, “give me homework worth doing.” Regardless of how a student presents in school, we must be committed to connecting them with the most engaging experiences possible to develop skillsets and mindsets necessary to be citizenship, workforce, and college ready.

So, about two weeks in to the school year, walk around your school and look at how students are grouped.  Can you predict the next generation of “ditch diggers”?  How does their experience compare to the next generation of doctors you identify?  Who is getting the worksheets that require rote recall of useless facts?  Who is getting the Socratic seminar that challenges thinking and develops communications skills?  Who has your best teachers?  Who has the greatest access to technology?  Who gets pulled out more?  Who gets more or less time in Art, Music, PE, and other “specials”?  To what extent do your kids “own their future”?

On Technology and Schools

It’s pretty interesting to think about technology in schools these days. There is more stuff than there has ever been – in pockets, backpacks, and classrooms. There are more services to connect us to each other, our data, and our devices.

But, what difference is all of this making? Perhaps the means (aka, the technology) have changed, but what about the end? Are we still preparing kids for success on the test or are we looking beyond the test? If we are looking beyond the test, what are we looking to?

I am having a hard time thinking about attending sessions at ISTE 2011 that are centered on hardware or software. iDONTCARE about the device nearly as much as I care about what is being done with it. iDONTCARE to talk with vendors who can tell me a pricing schema but can’t talk to me about why their product is different from a competitor’s in terms of student control of the content and activity.

The only differences in technology in schools should not be around technical protocols and bandwidth. It’s not just about account management and interoperability. We’ve got to look beyond the letters and numbers with our technology as much as we do with our kids.

Making “School” Worth Remembering

“I never commit to memory anything that can easily be looked up in a book.”  Albert Einstein

I was sitting in a school library today talking to a fellow “product of” turned “teacher in” Albemarle County Public Schools about making school worth remembering.  What will the kids remember from having laptops assigned to them 24/7 as 6th graders?  Will they remember loosing them for the last month of school so they could be used for state testing?  Will they remember spending hours playing with screen savers and downloading virus ridden software from the web?  Will they remember doing electronic worksheets and on-line quizzes?  Will they remember having the “research and present” cycle be technology enriched?  Will they remember teaching their teachers how use some of the tools?  Will they remember revising their five paragraph essays a dozen times to make them perfect for publishing on the web?  Will they remember their teachers oscillating from being one step ahead to two steps behind the kids but coming back the next day to do it again? Will they remember using technology to learn and share about compassion?  What will they remember?  Will they remember the experiment favorably?  How do we use this experience to manage the memories of the next group of kids who are empowered by these resources?

Then, I remembered that this colleague is about the same age as I am and I asked, “Do you remember M.A.C.O.S.?”  She said, “Oh yeah, the Netsilik Eskimos!”  Then, we spent 20 minutes sharing very specific stories about class activities.  Occasionally, one of us would look to a younger colleague sitting with us who didn’t experience M.A.C.O.S. and provide a little more detail.  We had very similar experiences 34 and 36 years ago in two different middle schools in Albemarle with two different teachers and those experiences were so rich and meaningful we were easily taken back and pushed to recall details that were hung on masterfully designed concept-based experiences.

How can we make school memorable, M.A.C.O.S.-like memorable, in this day and age?  What role does the stuff vs the substance play in that? How can we compete with the rest of the world for precious space in the memory banks of adolescents?  How can school compete with Facebook and iTunes and RPG’s when it comes to the bandwidth kids will allocate to “school” or not?  How do we rethink we what expect to be memorized as factoids and shift to what we hope will be remembered as being deeply connected?  While I was easily able to find M.A.C.O.S. resources all over the web, I remember the activities because they were connected to big ideas in meaningful ways.  We laughed at the games of the Eskimo kids and we studied the games we played and how they reflected our own cultures.  How do we provide for similar experiences and opportunities for students to dig deeply in to matters that matter and not simply settle for prepping students for low-level recall of factoids that are not worthy of remembering 34 hours or days later, much less 34 years?

Note:  Each of the M.A.C.O.S. (Man a Course of Study) links in this post leads to a different resource.

New Addition or New Edition?

One thing I love about my school district, is that I have opportunities to engage in the work with others on so many different levels.  We’re large enough that there is ALWAYS something going on that is amazing and we are small enough that there’s a good probability I am at least aware of these amazing things and often involved in them beyond just my awareness.

One thing that is going on right now that is of particular interest to me is yet another construction project at Greer Elementary.  Greer underwent Phase I of this renovation in 2008-2009 and the School Board received an update on Phase II at its April 14, 2011 meeting.

My personal reflections on a planning meeting at Greer with Matt Landhal (@mlandahl, principal) and some of his teachers led to me kicking this blog post around with the current title intact.  Talking with Matt and his teachers about how they want kids to interact with space, content, each other, media, and the world in the new addition and how they are looking to connect it back to what happens (currently and in the future) in the current physical space has me kicking around a ton of questions -  how can we use a new addition as a platform for thinking through and envisioning a new edition?  How do we leverage the new space without creating inequities for students who are assigned to the “old” space? Will some kids be “better off” in the old space or the new space?  How could we possibly know?  Where does the space drop out of the equation and the teacher come in to it?  How will we decide who is assigned to what space?  What difference will that make?

All of these questions and some I haven’t been able to get out of my head and to my keyboard come back to a larger question of how space influences learning or not.  This leads to a larger question of what influences a teacher’s decision-making.  I don’t believe any of us would argue that if you put someone who doesn’t know the curriculum and is either unskilled at or uninterested in connecting kids to said curriculum in to the “perfect learning space” that great things will happen.  I do not believe the space (including all of the stuff in the space) is at all causal, but I do believe it is influential.  So, now the question becomes, what influence do we want the space to have on the learning?

This question strangely connects me to my visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shortly after it opened in 1993.  This museum has set the standard for how to use space to influence emotions and interactions.  I remember the changing lights and sounds changing my expectations of what was to come next.  I remember how the ducking and the turning made me feel herded and manipulated.  I remember watching out for the 70 plus students I had taken with me and noticing who was crying when and who was standing in silence and awe to pay more attention to what.  I remember this disbelief and disgust.  I remember the day as my single most rewarding day as a teacher.

I felt some of this same space-caused emotional roller coaster when I visited the National Civil Rights Museum – enough that I wasn’t disappointed but not enough to feel like I had sat at the back of a bus long enough. 

I was so disappointed when I went to the National Museum of the American Indian shortly after it open.  After my last conversation with my half-blooded grandmother before she died, I was expecting a Trail of Tears exhibit that jerked me around like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  Instead, I found nothing about what my family had lived through on “the Trail.”  I call it “The Museum for the Commercialization of the American Indian.”

Why did I go from thinking about new Kindergarten spaces to thinking about museums?  The central question of “what influence do we want the space to have on the learning?” connects these in my mind.  These Kindergarten classrooms will impact what decisions teachers can and do make and how kids react to these decisions.  What impact do we want to have?  If the walls open up and two classrooms can be connected through a portal, what will happen differently than if the kids actually had to go through a traditional doorway, out in the hallway, and through another traditional doorway to walk between classrooms?  How did I feel when I had to walk through a box car to get from one room to another, knowing that thousands of people had ridden this same box car from being rounded up to being murdered?  The pathway between two spaces matters on how the two spaces are perceived.

As I think about all of the questions tossed and information out between teachers and architects on that afternoon in the Greer library, I am humbled by the shear number of decisions at hand.  I am also intrigued by how those decisions will be made and then how they will influence what kids and teachers do in the “magical” spaces.

While I don’t think of Kindergarten classrooms as museums, the purpose of having the portal between the two classrooms took me back to my experience at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  Then, my mind shifted to the places in my division where I know opening a portal between two classrooms is possible and I thought about who uses this utility and to what end.  I am convinced that who gets put on either side of the moveable wall determines whether or not the wall will ever move and what the purpose of the movements are.  That the walls move simply represents an opportunity.  Whether the opportunity is realized is dependent upon the teachers.  Whether the “right” teachers are located on either side of the wall is primarily a principal decision that represents attention to a vision or not.

Should we plan for cubbies in the classroom or should we plan for them in the hallway?  If we put them in the hallway, do we need to put doors on them to provide a little protection and ensure they stay neat and tidy?  If we put them in the classroom, can we do it in a way that doesn’t take away flexibility in how we use the space around the cubby?  How does snack time look differently if the cubbies are in the room or in the hallway?  How will we manage the traffic flow and monitor the students?  This line of questioning took me back to a visit I made to another school when I went to three Kindergarten classrooms in the five minutes before shifting from class activities to specials.  One teacher put on a clean up song, and like salivating dogs the kids responded in a very well-conditioned manner and started cleaning up.  Another teacher clapped a pattern and flicked the lights and told the kids to start cleaning up and then began doling out strategic praise statements like, “I like the way Jack is cleaning up his space.”  The third teacher said, “Class, it’s almost time for PE.  What do we need to do to ensure our math supplies are where we can all find them tomorrow?”  In unison, the students shouted, “Put them away!”  and started working to make sure the needs of the classroom community were met.  Three different strategies with the same short-term end result in mind, but representing three very different visions.  The storage compartment shape, size, and location had nothing to do with these differences.

So, how can we use a new addition as a platform for thinking through and envisioning a new edition?  What about what we are currently doing or not doing would we like to change?  What would we like to have remain the same?  Why?  How do we envision five year olds interacting with the world five years from now?  How do they interact now?  How does school prohibit, permit or promote this natural interaction with the world?  What role does space and stuff play in this?

Where will the teaching wall be?  Do we want a teaching wall or multiple teaching spaces?  Who is going to be teaching whom?  How often would we expect to see 4 or 5 students gathered around a teaching space engaging in something?  What would they need access to when they do this?  Would you design a teaching space differently than you would design a learning space?  What kids of interactions do you foresee?  “Teacher” to “learners”?  “Learners” to each other?  Everyone to content?

In many cases, there will be trade-offs we don’t really want to make.  If we don’t have a whole class teaching/learning space, how/where will we hold morning meeting?  If we do, how can we make it flexible so we can re-purpose it easily when we don’t need it to accommodate the whole class?  Overall, I would say the challenge is to provide the capability to do everything while not forcing anything.  Choice and flexibility for the teacher occupying the space so that he or she can provide choice and flexibility to the learners.  How can we provide this without a gazillion dollars per square foot?

One thing I know about all of these questions as well as the ones that never made it from my finger tips to your eyes is that there are no easy answers.  Perhaps the challenge is not to answer the questions but in understanding the questions we are asking.  Are we asking questions that point to “student-centered, inquiry-driven learning” or are we asking questions that point to something else?  What if we had kids come along with us on this journey?  Would they be asking the same questions or a whole different class of questions?  Will this be a new addition or a pathway to a new edition?  How will we know?

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”  Albert Einstein

Time dilation, dog years, and our tolerance for rapid change

It’s time to stop using time as an excuse.

I used “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once”  as the Albert Einstein quote in my last blog post and am using if for this one as well.

This quote doesn’t mean we can slow everything down so it doesn’t happen until we’re ready for it to happen.

A fellow educator whom I admire and was in a meeting with recently cited the research about change taking 3 to 5 years to become institutionalized.  Well, I first read that research in 1991 and it is now 2011.  I am skeptical that it still applies and tired of it being used as an excuse.

The world is changing very quickly right now.  The questions shouldn’t be around how to slow this change down or throttle it back like a cellular service provider.  The questions should be how we can take advantage of the rapid pace of change and use it to the advantage our young people.  If we don’t, someone else will.

It struck me recently that my district took seven years to decide on and finish installing ceiling mounted projectors in every classroom.  Seven years.  If you can’t get a techology-based roll out done from start to finish in seven months now you better not call it a roll out!  Just stick to “multiple installations” or some other phrase.

So, why the title?  Well, I would suspect most people have heard that Einstein had a theory of relativity and many people have seen commercials or other depictions of a person traveling around the earth really fast and not aging like a person sitting relatively still (pun intended).  Well, that’s called time dilation.  We cannot continue to believe we can slow down time in schools.  This approach is doing our kids no favors and is giving the public education critics fodder.  Let’s not just keep up, let’s lead the way.  The educators reading this blog are not the ones I am worried about, it’s the ones who do not engage in social media or other means of constant, public learning and public practice.  Use the strategy “each one teach one” today and print out an interesting blog post from me or someone else and hand it to a colleague who doesn’t have a blog roll or an rss feed or a PLN.  Suck them in.  The kids depend on it!

And dog years?  Well, I keep thinking about the seven year roll out of projectors.  The 7:1 ratio made me think of dog years as I thought a human year of aging was 7 dog years was until I found this article in preparation for this post.  Regardless, we can’t do this any more.  We don’t have the time.