The Green Cup

My issue of Educational Leadership arrived a few days ago. It included an intriguing piece (What Would Socrates Say?) that contrasts the view of Socrates with the pop culture of today’s digital generation.

The author, Peter W. Cookson Jr., sums up his worry for today:

My greatest fear about 21st century education is that Socrates’ humility will be turned on its head. The noted philosopher once said, “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.” My fear is that instead of knowing nothing except the fact of our own ignorance, we will know everything except the fact of our own ignorance. Google has given us the world at our fingertips, but speed and ubiquity are not the same as actually knowing something.

I share some of his concern. We stand surrounded by a fog of information, a mist of data and opinions that often does more to obscure the truth than to help us discern it.

I liked the article in part because it gives me a chance to use one of my favorite words: epistemology. I’m not quite as humble as Socrates. I know a few things – and I know how I know them.

I Google. I Twitter. I blog. Those tools serve their purpose. But the idea that I found something on Google (and that that somehow makes it true) is a pitiful epistemology.

Cookson’s article reaffirms for me the need to teach digital literacy as an essential 21st Century skill. I agree with him that critical thinking skills (even when they are not used in a technological context) are more important than ever today. And I think Cookson’s has an insightful point when he argues that metacognition (or ability to monitor our own learning) is growing in importance.

You can read What Would Socrates Say? here.

I participated in a webinar yesterday on the use of cellphones as instructional tools. Edweek organized the event (sponsored by Sprint). It was enlightening.

A little self-disclosure… While I’d like to think of myself as at least a bit of a geek, I don’t own a cellphone. I can explain why. I lived in the wrinkled up terrain of rural Appalachia. In my corner of far western Virginia, I get one bar at my house (two if I stand on the back deck and hold my mouth right) and no bars at work. What good is a cell phpne. My wife has a cell phone; but she works within sight of a tower and has a marvelous signal at work. If I lived a mile closer to town and worked at a different school, life would be different. Anyway…

That said, the webinar changed the way I think about cellphones. The webinar’s presenters left you with the impression that laptops and PCs are, well, almost obsolete. They stated pretty clearly that hand held devices are the real personal computers. And they made a strong case for the idea that cellphones engage students more completely than PCs.

They also suggested that cellphones extend learning to outside class time (and they are far more portable than a laptop or PC) and that cellphones bridged the digital divide because they are as common in inner city environments as in the more well off suburbs. While that comparison may work well for cities and suburbs, it doesn’t do much in my rural environment. Still, the argument that hand held devices like cellphones, smartphones, iPhones, Palms and Backberries are the real personal computer and the wave of the future seemed compelling.

I won’t repeat the numerous ideas for actual instructional applications here, since the webnar is archived.

The webinar’s presents said pretty clearly that teachers should start by working within existing policy on cellphone use. But I already had reservations about policies that completely ban student possession of a cellphone. Now I feel even more strongly that cellphones have to quickly be embraced as part of normal life in the 21st Century and recognized as a valuable technology tool within the curriculum.

Note: Scott McLeod put out a call recently for people to participate in Leadership Day 2009 and blog about technology leadership. (You can find the results of his call from last year here). This post is my response…

I’m spoiled. At least I suspect I’m spoiled. I work in a state that was recently ranked top of the pile in the Technology Counts 2009 report. Only West Virginia and Georgia received an “A” in both technology use and technology capacity in the report. I’d like to think that my particular county is more aggressive in pursuing technology goals than many in our state. So I suppose you can take what I say with a grain of salt. Or you can look at it as something that could be helpful for predicting future problems as your school system catches up with us…

Even in our district’s smallest elementary school, we see new technology walking in the door regularly. Every classroom has a handful of PCs that can be used for learning station activities for small groups. Many/most of our classrooms have replaced overhead projectors with document cameras, chalk boards and dry erase markers with SMARTBoards and those little electronic slates that the kids can write on. Several teachers (right down to kindergarten) have electronic student responders. There are cameras and flip cams, laptops and mobile presentation stations – I could go on. All of this in a building that dates back to at least the Depression era, for a student population of less than 90.

The hardware is only half the story. We have a number of cloud-based curriculum tools that allow students to start an assignment in class and continue working on it at home (if they have Internet access at home). Those software packages allow the teachers to view and access student work at school or at home. I graded papers last year for a writing assignment while I was at a conference in Charleston, 100 or so miles away, by accessing the work on my laptop via a wireless connection in my hotel room. We have consistent broadband access, state-provided email accounts, and regular professional development opportunities that generally occur outside normal school hours and include a stipend. What more could a body want?

If we have a technology problem at the moment it’s that the maintenance of our computer systems is not a local issue for us. That is to say, we rely on outside sources for trouble shooting and repair of our systems. That outside source is primarily our RESA office. We send work order from repairs, upgrades, etc. to them. They cover several counties with minimal, and they get to us when they can. Sometimes that means that a particular machine is dysfunctional for a weeks.

If two or three of the machines in a lab become dysfunctional and stay that way for three or four weeks, the usefulness of the lab can be reduced. Instead of taking a class into the lab and sitting everyone down at a machine and giving them an assignment, you end up with a handful of students who don’t have access. There are ways to cope; it would be better to just have the machines working.

From a layman’s perspective, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a hardware or a software problem. And even a geek wannabe like me can’t usually tell which it is just from looking. We have someone in the building who’s been assignment duties as a sysop for the school. Maybe reloading Windows would fix the problem. The sysop doesn’t have the time or authority to do that – and doesn’t know if it would solve the problem. So we wait…

When the PC is one of 16 in a lab, it’s annoying. When it’s one of four or five in a classroom, it becomes a problem that can change the course of instruction because a teacher no longer has enough PC’s to have a functional learning station.

Technology integration is the simple idea that a teacher and a group of students have come to rely on some technology as part of their instruction to such an extent that they take it for granted. Nobody expects it to work perfectly all the time. But success in technology integration is a factor of reliability.

It’s not a particularly flashy issue. We’ve committed a lot of personnel resources and money to just having technology already. But to succeed in technology integration we will eventually just have to make upkeep and maintenance more of a local, in-school function. In my state, I suspect we’ve taken steps to better equip district personnel to cope with computer problems through our technology integration specialist (TIS) program. That seems likely to keep us ahead of the national curve. Eventually that level of training will need to filter down to the school level.

A friend of mine on a closed social network for WV teachers asked me a couple of weeks ago what educational uses I thought Twitter had. I thought I’d recycle my answer to her. Here it is…

I wrote a blog post a couple of weeks ago on an instructor at a community college in Texas who’s used Twitter to facilitate discussions in his history class. I’m guessing that similar applications would work in high school classrooms. Of course, Twitter in the classroom provides some liabilities regarding privacy and publishing student work. Maybe a parent’s signature on an acceptable use policy gets around that; I’m not sure…

Angie Dowling (teaches in Morganton, I think), pointed me to a microblogging platform with greater security, designed for educators: Edmodo (article at TechCrunch). I don’t know it the law is keeping up with technology, or whether having a closed (passworded) platform gets past the liabilities involved or not. Having a closed system with limited participants certainly serves to manage traffic. But there are other ways to do that – Twitter groups or communities.

I use Twitter as part of a personal learning network. I follow 130 160 people on Twitter at the moment. It’s one way I know, for example, that Scott McLeod (Dangerously Irrelevant) is having a summer book study and that Wesley Fryer (Moving at the Speed of Creativity) had a new post yesterday on copyright and the idea of creating a culture of information sharing (“sharing by default”). Of course, Twitter overlaps with my RSS reader for this. But I have a few dozen people in Twitter who

• don’t write a blog
• work as educators, often with some job focus on technology and
• will often answer questions I ask on Twitter, especially if I direct the question specifically at them.

Twitter is a marvelous professional development tool, IMHO.

Instructional use? If you can do it with chat, you can probably do it with Twitter. Slightly different limitations. You have to be a little more succinct. But you can create clickable links. And there’s a more-or-less permanent record automatically created. AcademHack has some interesting ideas for Twitter assignments. An example of middle school use is at Digital Directions (Education Week).

Backing away to a slightly broader perspective, Twitter (or one of the other microblogging platforms) is fast becoming basic literacy behavior for the 21st Century. If I can find ANYTHING that encourages kids to write words down and send them to each other in a socially productive framework, THAT’s a win. Literacy behavior as a form of social interaction is what social networking is about. It should be part of the educational environment for a 21st Century school. If I had my way, every child in the intermediate grades at my school would have a microblogging platform and a social network presence (like WebTop) where social networking skills could be practiced and modeled, and they’d have access to a keyboard as often as possible so they could READ other people’s replies to them.

I neglected to mention that microblogging is becoming a communication tool that businesses use to to allow employees to communicate with each other in the workplace – kind of a replacement for email. A microblog post could be used instead of an intercom system for announcements (”Teachers: please keep students out of the down stairs boys bathroom until further notice while the custodian deals with a plumbing issue…“). Of course, that relies on the idea that teacher will actually use the microblog.

VodPod had this fascinating five-minute video recently on a Twitter experiment. An instructor at the college level used Twitter to facilitate discussions in a history class with 90 or so students. The results? People who otherwise might not have participated took part. Distracting and off topic remarks were minimized by the 140 character limitation of the microblog format. A permanent record of the discussion was created (on Twitter) and the instructor could go back after class and continue the discussion by responding to student posts.

Can this be used in secondary school classrooms? Probably. I think I might could make it useful even in the intermediate grades…

All the way back in August I wrote a post with the title “Why Social Networks Are Bad.” I wrote the piece with the full intention of following up with this counterpoint on why social networks are good. Here we are, 96 days later – and I am finally getting around to it. So much for good intentions…

The problems I described in August really fell into two categories. There were problems of abuse. People misuse social networks in ways that hurt students/kids. Teachers think they are in a sheltered environment and behave unprofessionally. And there were problems that had to do with educators coping with change. Why do I have to learn to use blogs and Twitter and Facebook when I can just give the kids pencil and paper and make them write a five point essay…?

The truth is simple. Social networks and digital reality is here to stay. Barring the collapse of civilization and a reversion to life without electricity our students are going to IM and email, blog and Twitter, and sign up for MySpace (or something like it) before they’re really old enough.

We should like that. All of a sudden there are a variety of literacy behaviors out there that students view as recreational and social. We should encourage it. We should participate in it. We should build it into our curriculum.

Students who use online social networks are highly motivated to read and to write. We should learn to cope with the change that entails. And we should find a way to deal with the abuse that arises around social networking. And we should embrace it.

Social network is good for education.

One of President-elect Obama’s campaign promises was to create a cabinet level position for the Chief Technology Officer of United States of America. A lot of discussion has swirled around what such a person would do.

Steven Hodson at the Inquisitr (The White House CTO – Web 2.0 need not apply) talks about Google CEO Eric Scmidt’s statement that he wouldn’t be interested in the job. Hodson’s response is relief. He says that speculation about Scmidt is “centered around the singular idea that whoever fills the job should be a thinker from the Web 2.0 social networking social media world of the web.” He goes on to add that “Technology isn’t just the Internet and as important as that is it is only a small portion of what a CTO would have to be concerned with.”

My Creative Weblogging colleague Scott Wilson (CTO of the United States) give a good description of the issue:

The cabinet role has been bandied about as a proposed solution to a number of different problems; to help the country focus on the creation of technology sector jobs, to unify notoriously disconnected government information systems, to find ways to use technology to broaden public oversight and make government processes more visible to the average citizen.

Then he says “It is difficult for me to see a clear role for a CTO/CIO in the cabinet, however.” My response: Maybe that’s good. After all, it’s difficult to see a clear role for technology and information in our society. It’s too big, too fluid. And maybe that (size and fluidity) is a good reason to have the cabinet position…

Mashable’s Mark Hopkins (The Case Against Senator Obama’s National CTO) is afraid that the CTO’s job would be to get subsidies for telecommunication companies to spread broadband. He thinks the telecommunication companies get enough government money now. He’s probably right about that. But hopefully that won’t be the focus of the job.

Micah Sifry launched a site recently where you can suggest (and vote on) the priorities of the Chief Technology Officer of United States of America: ObamaCTO.org. At the moment, here are the top suggestions:

1. Ensure the Internet is widely accessible & network neutral
2. Ensure our privacy and repeal the Patriot Act
3. Repeal the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
4. Open Government Data (APIs, XML, RSS)
5. Kick Start Research and Innovation in Energy
6. Get broadband to every community in America
7. Ensure reliable & trustworthy election technologies
8. Complete the job on metrication that Ronald Reagan defunded
9. Start a “Green Collar Jobs” program
10. Gov to be run on 100% free software
11. Build a nation-wide smart grid
12. Carefully consider the future of Intellectual Property right

Some of these ideas are problematic. Interesting, but problematic. There are about 500 ideas to look at there now – things like a. mine the moon for helium-3 to use in the generation of nuclear power, b. mandate the transfer of medical records to a digital format, and c. leash RIAA, MPAA etc. before they rob and accuse everybody. You get the idea…

Among my favorites: Jumpstart Grade School Education (ranked 39th at the moment). My own suggest was similar: Bring public school education completely into the 21st Century. It is currently ranked 239th…

This series grew out of an academic project. Robert Smith and Emily Glodowski worked with me as part of a project for a graduate class on this topic.

The five videos combined are about 14 minutes long…

21st Century Learning – an Introduction (Part I)

(Watch this on Teachertube.)

21st Century Learning – Workplace Literacy (Part II)

(Watch this on Teachertube.)

21st Century Learning – Digital Learners (Part III)

(Watch this on Teachertube.)

21st Century Learning – Globalization (Part IV)

(Watch this on Teachertube.)

21st Century Learning – Tomorrow’s Teachers (Part V)

(Watch this on Teachertube.)

There are dozens of others, but the most well known social networks are MySpace and Facebook.

Wikipedia says that social networks are “online communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services.”

There are a number of reasons that social network web sites present problems. A few of the reasons:

• People create profiles and pages for themselves that are misleading. The simple truth is that when you meet someone on MySpace or Bebo, you don’t really know the simple truth about them. You know what they tell you. They say they’re 28 when in fact they’re 42. They say they’re single when in fact they’re married. They say they went to college when in fact they dropped out of high school. And you can’t tell (unless you know them in some context other than the Internet).
• Social networking websites provide a false sense of security and privacy. You think no one can see the things you say and the pictures you post there outside of a small group of online friends. But there are ways around that. And your “friends” may well show complete strangers what you’ve put online.
• Social networking web sites do give you a way to communicate with increased privacy. It’s one thing to have a relationship through email that might be inappropriate in some way. But the messaging tools of many social networking web sites add a new layer of “discretion” to your communications.

I could go on…

From an education point of view, the second biggest problem that social networking web sites present is that they provide a sheltered environment within which teachers can form less than appropriate relationships with students. I’m not talking about pedophilia, though obviously that makes the news from time to time. It’s just that Twitter and Friendster can blur a teacher’s relationship with a student. Students get confused and think that the fact that a teacher cares about them and is willing to communicate with them through their medium means they’re friends…

That’s only the second biggest problem . The biggest problem that social networking web sites present for education today is more fundamental. The problem is that they exist at all. Social networking web sites are a fact of life – part of the fabric of modern society. They’re an undeniably important relationship and communication tool. And they’re here to stay. That’s a problem because education in America has to learn to cope with them and to incorporate them into the curriculum.

Social Networking web sites can have a lasting impact on a teacher’s professional life. But simply pretending that they don’t exist and avoiding them isn’t the answer. Later this week I’ll look at what social networks have to offer us in education, and we’ll see if we can’t find some good in them.

My friend Hugo Kerr (link courtesy of the International Reading Association) posted a quote from social scientist Daniel Yankelovich to the reading teachers listserv recently describing the McNamara Fallacy.

Robert Strange McNamara (his middle name was his mother’s maiden name) was U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1967 under presidents Kennedy and Johnson. And during the Vietnam War he is supposed to have become obsessed with data.

Here’s the Yankelovich quote on McNamara’s approach to (evidently) most things…

The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can’t easily be measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can’t be measured easily really isn’t important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can’t be easily measured really doesn’t exist. This is suicide.

Hugo (a Brit) posted it to the Reading Teachers listserv and commented that this “is precisely what is happening in literacy (and other) ‘education’ in the UK.” Of course, many Americans would say that it’s happening here, too…

One of those Americans is Al Franken. Franken is a comedian and political commentator who is currently running for the Senate in Minnesota. Franken says this: I believe that the No Child Left Behind law must be dramatically reformed or scrapped altogether. I’m for accountability, but I’m not for the deeply-flawed NCLB system.

The danger is that Franken and other opponents of No Child Left Behind’s emphasis on testing will probably win. That, by itself, would be okay. But it seems inevitable that tide of rebellion swelling up against NCLB will result in a move to the opposite extreme.

The problem is that there is nothing wrong with testing. We should keep right on testing. But how we interpret the results and what we do about those interpretations – that should change. The first step really is to measure what can be measured. It’s the rest of the process that’s a problem.

We need an amalgam of different forms of assessment – some sort of a fusion of the hard numbers we’re using now with more subjective factors. But more importantly, we need to decide how to balance an effort to provide fundamental educational services to the various communities represented in NCLB’s focus on disaggregating test data with the search for individual educational excellence and the effort to implement the new curriculum focus that is needed to cope with the 21st Century’s demands. Without that balance what we have is a stagnant curriculum designed to ensure generalized mediocrity.

Albert Einstein reportedly had a sign hanging in his Princeton office that read: “Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts!” I think we could add to that and say that not everything that counts today will still count tomorrow. That truth makes the enactment of laws about student assessment problematic (which is a fancy word for silly)…