I’m sure you’ve heard the very common metaphor used to critique our current national obsession with accountability through standardized testing: “We don’t fatten the pig by just weighing it!” This is usually stated right before someone goes on to discuss the importance of improving what happens in our classrooms before we test the students. You know — we need to prepare our new teachers better, we need to improve our current teachers, we need to implement Professional Learning Communities, we need to monitor and evaluate teachers more often or better, etc.

I used to like that metaphor, but yesterday I started thinking about it and I realized that I no longer feel like it is a great metaphor for what is happening and what needs to happen in our schools. You see, the metaphor just assumes that our only goal is to make the pig fatter and I don’t think that is our real goal at all. If it is true, then it means that our ONLY goal is to get kids to pass the tests at higher rates. Do you agree with that goal? I didn’t think so, and I don’t agree with it either.

What is our real goal? Our real goal is to help prepare kids for THEIR future. That preparedness requires much more than simply being able to pass one test.

A much better metaphor, in my opinion, is “We don’t become healthier by just weighing ourselves every morning.” Notice I didn’t say “We don’t lose weight…” My reason for that is that while most of us do want to lose weight, what we really want even more than that is to be much healthier — and in some cases that might not necessarily mean that we need to lose weight. However, for the sake of explaining why I think this is a better metaphor, let’s begin by understanding why “weighing myself” is a poor way to lose weight, much less adopt a healthier lifestyle.

I don’t lose weight by just getting on the scale every morning to see if I’ve lost weight… I have to do something in addition to weighing myself. I need to make other changes like changing my diet, changing my activity level and exercise habits, or both.

I could simply change my diet by just eating a lot less every day or by adopting any number of “fad diets”. However, just eating less or adopting a fad diet could be as unhealthy as doing nothing and not losing weight. I need to make substantial and sustainable changes to my diet so that I am eating healthier — not just less.

In order to focus on being more healthy — which is different from just losing weight — I also need to change my activity level by exercising more. The interesting thing with this is that I could actually GAIN weight initially by exercising more, especially if I do any weight training with free weights or machines (lean muscle weighs more than fat tissue), so my old measure of weighing myself on the scale is no longer adequate for assessing my health.

I need multiple measures in order to assess my health. I need to measure how much weight I can lift or how many more miles I can walk/run/ride… I need to have blood work done in order to measure things like my cholesterol level… I need to get my blood pressure checked and get regular physical & well woman exams… Simply using one measure — the weight scale — won’t give me all of the information I need.

Changing my health is relatively easy compared to changing the health of our schools. I am pretty much a closed system. Aside from things like pollution and allergens, I can control most of what goes into my body and most of the things that happen to my body. Our schools are not closed systems. We can’t control everything that affects their health, but we also don’t do enough about the things that we can change about their health.

And yet, when it comes to measuring how healthy our schools are, too often we are simply relying on “weighing” them with only one measure — a measure that could be meaningless for certain healthy habits (like exercising).

If we want to prepare our students for THEIR futures, then we need to make substantial and sustainable healthy learning changes to our education systems in addition to using multiple measures to assess the health of our systems. And yes, in many ways I think that means making radical changes to how, when, and where we facilitate learning, and how, when, and where we measure learning.

(Cross-posted at LeaderTalk.org)

You’ve just watched “Did You Know” or a keynote by David Warlick for the very first time. You feel your heart begin to race as panic sets in… you think: “My school is in no way prepared to help our students learn what they need for work and life in the this very different and constantly changing world… What should I do?!”

Too often, the initial response is to look for money to buy more computers. Some educational leaders may say “Let’s make sure we have laptops in the hands of EVERY student!… SmartBoards in EVERY classroom!” While it is nice to have administrative support for new technology purchases, a “technology purchasing frenzy” is simply NOT the correct response to the realization that our schools are not doing enough to prepare students for their futures. This is really about changing adult perspectives and adult behaviors to create student-centered classrooms that exemplify research-based best practices around learning. It’s not about buying the latest, greatest, and most expensive tech toys on the market. Expensive tech in the hands of educators who haven’t made changes to their behaviors and instructional practice are no better than the good old chalk board, pencil, and paper. Even worse, expensive tech that the teachers see no use for will end up just collecting dust in a storage room.

The examples are endless… SmartBoards as expensive chalkboards… PowerPoint & media projectors as flashy and expensive overhead transparencies… computers as typewriters & calculators… Distance-learning labs that only get used for faculty or team meetings — or worse, as a nice empty room to use during testing week…

PLEASE NOTE – from here on out on this blog post I am using the word “learner” for everyone on the campus — teachers, administrators, staff… AND — I am unapologetic with some of the things I say below. If we are serious about changing our learning environments so that our students leave fully prepared for life and work in a globally connected and collaborative environment, then we are definitely going to be moving the cheese of many people in our organizations — it won’t be easy and we can’t wait for all of the state and federal policies and mandates to catch up before we take action.

So what should we do when we realize that the world has changed for our students?

Rather than immediately engage in a technology purchasing frenzy, take some time to begin discussions on your campus about how to transform your school into a place where teachers see themselves first as LEARNERS who are invested in improving their instructional practice through reflection and inquiry, and where students are more globally connected in a way that enhances and supports their individual learning. Collaborate with your faculty and staff — your learners — to learn more about how the world has changed and what that means for our profession…

Locate the “early adopters” in your district/schools and bring them in to a conversation around change — recruit them to help spread change virally…

Change adult behaviors and practices first… Change the way you work together, the way you speak with each other… Change your vocabulary… Begin by redefining yourselves as learners rather than educators… Acknowledge that in order to prepare your students for their futures of the 21st Century, all learners on your campus must be equally prepared for those futures… Commit to the belief that being “technophobic” or “technology illiterate” is no longer an option for 21st Century learners (and after you’ve redefined yourselves as learners, understand what that means for professional learning on your campus)… Be firm about this — it should NOT be okay on your campus for ANYONE to say “I don’t like technology” or “I’m just not very techie… can you do this for me?”… Banish the phrase “Kids these days” from the vocabulary of everyone on your campus… While you are at it, you should also banish the phrase “My teaching methods have always worked and I’m not going to change just because these kids (fill in the blank)…”

Don’t form a committee to “study this and bring back suggestions for change” — committees take too long and you just don’t have time… change needed to happen yesterday…

Don’t create a “pilot project” — same reasons for not forming a committee — it takes too long and change needed to happen yesterday…

Do not purchase any new technology hardware until you have first ensured that your network is up-to-date and accessible… How many network drops are in each room? Do you have wireless access across your entire campus?… Drops in every room and wireless access across the campus are “must-haves” before you start buying anything else!…

Give your teachers time to “play” with Web 2.0 — to explore the use of Web 2.0 (blogs, wikis, Twitter, etc.) for THEIR professional learning BEFORE they attempt to use the same tools in the classroom with students. In fact, put a moratorium on classroom use of blogs and wikis for at least four months until teachers have used them weekly for their own learning by reading and writing and connecting with other edublogging educators…

Inform all new first-year learners on your campus that their “learning” is just beginning and will never end… and that it certainly did not end upon completion of all degree and certification requirements…

Begin all interviews for new hires with “what is the most recent thing that you learned and how did you learn it?”…

Understand that all of this can and should happen in conjunction with other changes in professional practice such as Professional Learning Communities and Critical Friends Groups, and along with structural changes such as Smaller Learning Communities, varied student grouping strategies, and/or early college campuses… Transforming your school into a 21st Century Learning Center does not mean that you throw out other initiatives and other research-based best practices…

Campus leaders should model the professional learning use of Web 2.0 tools through transparent blogging and wiki use with the faculty on a weekly basis… Begin putting all of your professional “knowledge” on a wiki (accessible from anywhere — NOT on the campus intranet) and when your learners ask where they can find certain documents, policies, etc., smile and tell them “It’s on the wiki!”… Give your learners password-protected access to edit the wiki so that knowledge on your campus is collaboratively developed… This is as much about being transparent in your own learning and in your communication and collaborative decision-making with all of your learners as it is about modeling the use of new tools…

Don’t know how to use these tools for professional learning, collaboration, and communication? Take time THIS SUMMER to learn… A few great places to start include a wide variety of edublogs as well as “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms” (Will Richardson), “Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century” (David Franklin Warlick), “Classroom Blogging: 2nd Edition” (David Warlick), and “Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools” (Gwen Solomon, Lynne Schrum)…

If our students need to be educated for a globally connected workplace rather than educated for factory work (and yes, they do), collaborate with your learners to make system, process, and structural changes so that your school looks, feels, and functions less like a factory and more like a globally connected communications and learning center…

Remember that the most important thing is a change in behaviors and practices — a change in pedagogy — NOT just buying new technology…

Finally… when you do make technology purchases — provide support… provide support… provide support… AND provide training… but provide training that is a model of effective instruction and learning practices… create cheerleaders who will coach other professional learners and promote continual learning around changes in the world, economics, technology, and workforce trends that have an impact on our work as learning professionals…

Here are a few other blog posts that offer more suggestions for creating a 21st Century learning environment on your campus:

Your job is to make something happen
First Steps Toward Becoming a 21st Century Educator
The Barriers May Not be so Great
Disruption or Demand to Learn
Purposeful Networking
I’m on a Path — Come Join Me!
The Teachers We Need
Don Tapscott Speaks Out on Education — Keynote for Horizon Project 2008
9 Principles for Implementation: The Big Shift
ISTE’s Refreshed Technology Standards for Students
Social Networking Sites are NOT the Problem… BEHAVIORS (and bad statistics) Are!
The Five Phases of Flattening a Classroom

I know I haven’t covered all of the do’s and don’ts around this issue of reinventing our schools for the 21st Century, so I’ll throw this out to the edublogosphere…

What do’s and don’ts would you add to the list I’ve compiled above?

Technorati Tags: 21st Century, Classroom, education, Fear, Flat, School 2.0, Technology, Warlick

I am looking at my School 2.0 “Learning Ecosystem” map that’s hanging on the wall of my office (get yours here), and I’m just wondering… By the time our schools and districts get around to creating this ecosystem, will it already be outdated and obsolete?

Technorati Tags: Classroom, education, 21st Century, Technology, School 2.0

This morning, Bud The Teacher, posted a request for designs for a 21st Century version of the “I Read Banned Books” buttons that we are all so familiar with. In response to this request, I played around with an idea:

Buttons, apparel, mugs, and more are here. I’m getting at least a t-shirt, some buttons, and stickers for NECC.
And Adrian Bruce also responded with some nifty buttons that you can add to your website or blog:

If you want to use the design I created on your blog, you can grab this button from my flickr.com account

So what month should we designate for “Blocked Blogs” month?

Technorati Tags: 21st Century, ad4dcss, digital_access, blocked_blogs, Technology

I have volunteered to help Steve Hargadon bring the Classroom 2.0 LIVE Workshop to Houston, Texas, but my efforts so far to find a suitable location for June 19 - 20 (2008) have been very unsuccessful. If you have or know of a location that meets the requirements that we need (gotta have super-great wifi!) and is available for those two dates, then please contact me ASAP! Thanks!

Last summer I wrote an article for ISTE’s Daily Leader, their daily newspaper published each day of NECC. The title of the article was “Tag-Teaming NECC” and you can read my corresponding blog post here.

In anticipation of this summer’s upcoming NECC conference, I want to add two new ideas to everything included in last year’s article/blog post. If you are sending a team from your campus to NECC this year, consider using one or both of the following ideas to manage the information gathered by your team during the conference:

A Team Blog

Each team member can be an author and they can use the blog to do live-blogging sessions, post photos, or just publish daily summaries of their learning at the conference. “Home Team” members can subscribe to the blog and get daily updates from their colleagues who are at the conference.

A Team Wiki

Similar to the blog idea above, a team wiki could be set up so that each team member could add articles as they attend sessions or to highlight new ideas gathered in informal discussions and scouting the vendor floor. The wiki could also be a place to collect ideas for a “mini-conference” that the team will organize when they return to campus, and the team could actually draft the mini-conference agenda directly onto a page in the wiki. One page of the wiki could also be a place for the team to collect a “wish list” of stuff that they see on the vendor floor that they are interested in learning more about for use on campus.

You can combine both ideas above and link both through linked RSS feeds (blog includes RSS feed from wiki and wiki includes RSS feed from blog). As team members attend sessions, all of their notes are collected in one (or two) places and the entire team has instant access to everyone else’s notes. This saves time and increases the shared learning that can occur during attendance at such a large conference.

Other tools to consider include Del.icio.us, Twitter, and Diigo — but I’ll discuss how teams could use those tools in a later post.

Would anyone like to share additional ideas for teams to consider before heading to San Antonio for NECC?

GridCafé - Grid @ CERN

tags: gridcafé, CERN, internet, web, network

Information about “The Grid” from the CERN website

Coming soon: superfast internet - Times Online Annotated

tags: the grid, cloud computing, superfast, network, grid, CERN, internet, web

The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection,

the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit
holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands
of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a
local call.

“With this kind of computing power, future generations will have
the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me
cannot even imagine,”

“It will lead to what’s known as cloud computing, where people keep all their
information online and access it from anywhere,”

“Projects like the grid will bring huge changes in business and society as
well as science,”

“Holographic video conferencing is not that far away. Online gaming could
evolve to include many thousands of people, and social networking could
become the main way we communicate.

About Exploratree & Enquiring Minds - Exploratree by FutureLab

tags: graphic organizers, exploratree, tools

A free web resource where you can download, use and make your own interactive thinking guides.

Wiki Way » CogDogBlog

tags: how to, cogdogblog, wikis, wiki, howto, education

‘No one has “forgotten” or “left out” anything. You just haven’t added it yet.’

If you are attending EduBloggerCon / Classroom 2.0 “LIVE in San Antonio” 2008 this summer (in conjunction with NECC 2008), you will want to check out the organizing wiki which includes a page for attendees to list contact information as well as a page for attendees to propose sessions. I posted a session proposal today and I am inviting anyone who is interested to join me in facilitating the discussion or to just participate in the discussion.

Here is what I wrote on the wiki:

Title: Designing the 21st Century Global Learning Environment
Facilitated by Stephanie Sandifer (and anyone else who is interested in leading this discussion)
Many educators in the “Edublogosphere” have recently been discussing “what ifs” around the idea of planning and implementing new 21st Century learning environments (schools) that utilize current best practices in combination with emerging technologies to meet the needs of 21st Century learners at all education levels. In the past few months, two wikis have sprung up to begin collecting some of the ideas around this planning — http://eduplan.wikispaces.com/ and http://globalschool.wikispaces.com/

I am proposing this session as a way for all interested parties to come together, face-to-face, to “flesh out” the ideas currently on the wikis, add additional ideas for logistics, and to discuss the “now whats” on how we will use these ideas to create the learning environments (schools) that our learners need today and tomorrow. The outcomes of this session include more solid and organized planning documents (the wikis), and firm ideas on how to use the wikis to create these new learning environments.

If you are interested in helping to facilitate, please visit the wiki page and add your name to the “facilitated by” line. Thanks!

The following post is another Guest Blogger post from Dave Intlekofer, one of the graduate students in Stephanie Flores-Koulish’s Innovations in Education course at Loyola College in Maryland. Feel free to share your thoughts about technology and imagination in your schools & classrooms by posting a comment on this post.

Technology and Imagination
By Dave Intlekofer
(Guest Blogger from Loyola College in Maryland)

When I was young (until I turned 7), my parents made a conscious choice to not have a television in the house. As the youngest of three boys, I was forced to think of other ways to keep myself busy (puzzles, math games, etc). This is where my love for reading began. I loved fantasy stories like the Lord of the Rings or Narnia books the best because they inspired all sorts of images in my mind. I did not spend countless hours in front of the tv (although I have since then) or online or using any sort of technology. Yet I learned how to think, and I learned how to use my imagination. This is a skill that I find horribly lacking in today’s students. Instead of imagining or thinking, students only want to be entertained. And technology caters to this.

Ever wonder why some schools have amazing technology (laptops or tablets for all students, multimedia centers in all the classrooms, etc.) and yet don’t score higher than other schools on any tests? Or how some teachers, with no more resources than a couple of wooden blocks, can inspire students to excel more than other teachers who are fully funded and technologically equipped? I believe that much of the answer lies in the teacher’s ability to get students to use their imaginations. Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” If we as teachers can help students use their imagination, then we are doing them a lifelong service. But does our press for technology do this?

I believe that technology can be an amazing benefit to students. However, I think that we as teachers use it incorrectly. Technology is not a panacea that will fix all of our students’ problems and magically allow them to achieve greatness. In fact, I think that with more technology, we must work harder to inspire our students’ imaginations.

Much of technology today seems designed (maybe unintentionally) to suppress thought. Don’t want to think after a long day of work? Come relax in front of the tv. Don’t want to spend valuable brain power thinking about what the dragons in Harry Potter look like? That’s ok—we’ll make you a movie so you don’t have to. Don’t want to learn how to spell? Send a txt. Don’t want to plan a lesson for tomorrow’s class? Show some YouTube videos and it will take care of itself.

Don’t get me wrong—I love television and movies as much as the next guy, and I value my “veg out” time greatly. However, I’m not going to pretend that this is as enriching as reading a good book or having a good conversation with someone. This is why books will never go out of style, because they inspire the imagination. Most people who read a book and then watch the movie version always say that the book was so much better. Why? Because the movie put limits on their imagination. Does the technology we use in the classroom do this as well?

I believe that the question we should be asking is not “How can I get more technology into the classroom?” but “How can the technology I have be used to inspire students’ imagination?” Is your classroom designed to “keep the students busy” or merely entertain, or is it designed to inspire thought?

Surprises in Houston | 2¢ Worth Annotated

tags: ALF, Classroom, Flat, Houston A Challenge, Warlick, change, education, leadership, learning

Summary/Highlights that David Warlick noted during his day at the Convocation 2008 in Houston on March 28th, 2008.

…very unconference.

However, the one main surprise that lots of people expressed was how much the entire group, regardless of their position among education stakeholders, agreed that old school does not serve today’s children.

A conclusion drawn by one group was that if we are to teach lifelong learning skills, then teachers and leaders should be willing to model these skills, to present themselves as master learners.

• We can’t drag this out. Stop demanding pilot projects and overhaul the system.
• (Classrooms) need to get updated.
• Technology is not the answer.
• If I (forty-something) am able help my children with Their homework, then there may be something wrong.
• Today I don’t need to know everything I just need to know how to find what I need to know.
• There is a disconnect between what we’re doing in school and what we need for life.
• Change is going to happen. Are we going to anticipate the change and facilitate it, or are we going to wait and try to rebuild in the chaos that ensues.
• Drop the text books and give (them) laptops. Textbooks are lousy.
• Give a sabatical to all teachers to make themselves an expert in some area that could be used by the school (leaning theory, etc.)
• Teachers talk about lifelong learning, but they are not willing to practice it (lots of paraphrasing)

Techlearning > > Bloom’s Taxonomy Blooms Digitally > April 1, 2008 Annotated

tags: bloom, digital skills, taxonomy, techlearning

Interesting article that adds “digital skills” to each category of the revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy. I can see connections between this and my http://Web2ThatWorks.com wiki.

The elements cover many of the activities and objectives but they do not address the new objectives presented by the emergence and integration of Information and Communication Technologies into the classroom and the lives of our students.

Key:
Elements coloured in black are recognised and existing verbs, Elements coloured in blue are new digital verbs.

Raise Your Hands : Metanoia Annotated

tags: education, learning, learning professional, metanoia, professional development, professional learning, ryan bretag, teaching

Great post about how educators need to be professional learners — a topic near and dear to my heart that I’ve also written about many times!

I’m talking about a collaborative learning culture where professionals are working towards continuous growth by engaging in daily learning: discussing and evaluating practices, challenging assumptions, engaging in new learning opportunities, embracing stretch moments, observing peers, etc.

• Allowing Diigo to Play Nice with del….
  Instructions for linking Diigo and Del.icio.us — very cool!
  (tags: bookmarks delicious diigo tips)
• I, Cringely . The Pulpit . War of the Worlds | PBS
  the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools.
  (tags: cringely culture edtech education learning netgen schools technology)
• Open Thinking
  Stephen Downes’ presentation around personal learning — includes powerful slides on how learning is different in this increasingly connected social web
  (tags: downes learning personal ple)