Fun and Games

6 Replies

A few days ago, I was bemoaning the existence of exams,  (Glad to see I am not alone in my dislike of exams by the way.) when Adrienne, bless her heart, said something like:

Reality is not all fun and games.

The conversation continued with a bit more detail–about the need for balance of assessments, the value in creating timed conditions for students to illustrate learning as a way to deal with future anxiety and stress, so on and so on. It was a great chat as usual, but I won’t say much more about it here, in case I misquote what was said. The gist of it, at least for me, the part that stuck in my head, was the quote from above: Reality is not all #funandgames.

My first reaction, the one that sprung from my gut was, “Sure it is.” Or “It should be!” or “You wouldn’t say that to a six year old.” At which point, I remembered that I have a six year old at home, and I often catch myself saying things like Reality is not all #funandgames to her all the time! Reality check. Damn!

It is okay to make a huge mess, but we have to cleanup afterward.

Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do,  so we can do the things we want later.

There is time for play, but there is also time to pay attention and work hard.

You get the point. I get the point of balance and hard work. I have swallowed the bitter pill of reality my fair share of times. I have sat through meetings. I have wallowed in bureaucracy. I have given exams; I have taken exams. I get it–life can suck, but we learn from it. We just have to do it.

We all know that as mature, competent, “successful” adults we need to balance our fun and work. We know, usually, when to suck it up and just do it, so we can kick back and enjoy other things. We have learned, through years of schooling and work and university and exams and tax papers and bank accounts and DMV lines that reality is not all fun and games. We have learned to navigate this reality, and for better or worse we function in it. We thrive in it even. But why do we compare learning with reality? With work? With chores? Why does learning become another chore we must slog through to get to the good stuff? Why can’t it be the good stuff? What if we created schools that exuded the idea that Learning is all fun and games and kept reality out of it all together? I know, I know balance, quantifiable results, assessments of learning, test scores, GPAs, university, back to reality!


cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by rolfekolbe

I guess what I am grappling with is–How successful are we as schools, teachers, and parents at instilling this balance in the people with which we interact? We can all litter our walls with Learner Profile posters and scream till our voices are hoarse about balance, but do we practice what we preach? For me, school has always been a place where Reality is not all #funandgames, and I have always wanted it to be Learning is all #funandgames. I hope I have been clear that I understand the value of both, but I think schools spend more time preparing students for a reality of exams and bureaucracy and work and taxes and things we dread, than inspiring in them a love of life and learning and creativity and art and fun. Not all schools, obviously. And yes, of course schools are doing amazing things like service learning, outdoor ed, drama, art and music programs, sports and many other things, but for some reason in the end, it all comes down to grades, achievement, scores, exams- preparation for Reality. We use words like rigor and excellence and college entrance to convince ourselves and our students that they need this, but do they really?

Can’t we teach students the value of hard work and learning and education free from the grip of academic reality? Can’t we focus on learning and fun and games and leave reality on hold for awhile, because let’s admit it, they will be dealing with it soon enough and for long enough. I think children who are confident, passionate and creative do not need exams to show understanding; they usually succeed anyway. But too often, we use academic rigor as the most important criteria for learning and success, and this leaves many children behind. I know, because I was one of them.  I never took the game of school seriously. Yes, I took the exams, I played my part. Some I passed, some I failed. In the end I got a 3. something from some Ivy League school, but that was reality and it was not fun for sure. I played the game to get the degree, and now have over $30,000 of debt to show for it. The learning, the who I am, has always been from from doing. It was all fun and it still is.

How long before we can look back on this system of preparatory education and create institutions where students are not preparing for a reality they find boring and riddled with anxiety? A place where they are not taking exams, but traveling, building, creating, living. Where in short they are having fun and playing games, but at the same time working hard and learning? I want a new concept of school. I think this new school needs more fun and games and less exams.

How do you find this balance in your classroom, in your school? Am I wrong in devaluing academic rigor and examinations? Why do you find it valuable? Curious to hear your thoughts on any of my ramblings. Sorry it took me a while to find my point. Good thing this wasn’t some English exam, I would most likely have scored low for not having a clear thesis and topic sentences.

People say I’m lazy
Dreaming my life away
Well, they give me all kinds of advice
Designed to enlighten me

When I tell them that I’m doing fine
Watching shadows on the wall
Don’t you miss the big time, boy?
You’re no longer on the ball

I’m just sitting here
Watching the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch them roll…

John Lennon

 

 

Crux of My Frustration

2 Replies

It’s a cold, dark, grey day and our normally glistening vibrant school feels a bit like a prison. True, the oppressive weather outside casts a long drab shadow of gloom upon all the buildings. True that tired students and staff are struggling to stay inspired as May begins her long trek up the summit to the end of the year, but it is what is happening inside that reeks of anachronistic, uninspired schooling. We are witness to the type of behavior that should make progressive educators want to jump out their windows. Yes dear reader, it is exam week at our school for Grade 9, 10, and 11.

Rather than watching excited students work toward personal goals and interests, I am watching gangs of anxiety-ridden zombies walk the campus cramming their brains with notes for exams. People on Twitter, reminded me that exams do have real life benefits, and I can see that, but I guess in my dream school exams either don’t exists, and if they do, they should feel very different than what I felt today.

I don’t know enough about the grade 12 IB Exams, so I will not write about that process here. What I do know is that at this moment, my grade 10 students are sitting in rows and taking an English exam in order to prepare them for the DP exams they will soon be taking. An exam, I was in a way forced to give them. I suppose, I could have fought back a bit more and at least asked why I need to give this exam, asked if we could opt put, but I took the path of least resistance. My colleague and I decided to simply turn the assessment we had already planned into our final exam. Students were to write a formal letter to a magazine editor, pretending to be a WWI poet, and explain why their poems should be published. They were to focus on persuading the editor of the value of their work in terms of theme, style and literary devices. Your basic critical analysis and articulation of understanding essay.

As I write this post and chat with people on Twitter, I realize I am not sure where I am going with it. I do not have any concrete ideas, and I do not want to be hyper-critical or rant about something I myself am confused and unsure about. So as always, I am throwing out some half-baked ideas in hopes that people who are more experienced and knowledgeable and have better formed ideas on exams and assessments can help me paint a clearer picture.

The crux of my frustration is the lack of student ownership and engagement that comes from exams and assessment in general. The assessment I described was created by teachers. So whether presented as an exam or as a project, it still lacks authenticity.  I am starting to realize that this lack of student input in most school decisions is what frustrates me about most aspects of school. I am just as guilty as most teachers. I plan units with my peers–complete with guiding questions, assessments, rubrics and more, but seldom do I bring student voices into the process. It is not that I don’t want to, or that I do not know how. I often feel that I am part of a system that doesn’t have time for this sort of student driven curriculum.

I totally understand that as a team, we are working hard to create a working curriculum, and as a new school, sometimes we just need to have a functioning scope and sequence. I am amazed and very proud of the work our English department has done this year.

We have created a 6-12 scope and sequence, basically, from scratch. Our units are diverse, media rich, interesting and show a great diversity of assessments. We have begun to integrate authentic use of technology and have achieved a nice balance of genres and content. We have done our best to identify clear and useful significant concepts, Approaches to Learning, guiding questions and more. In short, our department has done a wonderful job of collaborative planning to create a functioning and engaging curriculum in a just under two years. This is no small feat. It is a first step. I get that. I can appreciate that. I see its value. We have created a functioning curriculum? So now what?

Where are the students in this model? How do we give students more of a say in the planning of  curriculum? How can we empower them to create assessments that make sense to them and showcase their skills and understanding? How can we give them ownership of these units.

This lack of student ownership in planning the curriculum is my biggest frustration with the idea of schooling. I have ideas about how to change my own planning, but when working with a team, how do we make these changes? Do students even want this level of engagement, or do they just want to go to class, be told what to learn and how to learn it, take the exam and be done with it?

These are some random thoughts on a grey Monday during exam week. Any thoughts would be welcome:

  • How do you involve students in the planning process?
  • What are your thoughts on exams?
  • How do exams work at your school?

Let’s Form An Alliance

29 Replies

It’s hard to believe the chatter about #beyondlaptops continues. For those of you involved in the conversations, you know how intense and hopefully fruitful it has all been. I hope that, like me, you have been challenged and pushed and forced to think, defend and articulate your ideas. More importantly, however, I hope we can agree it is time to move on. Time to look at the now what. Or like Adrienne said,

Sitting and talking and planning and sharing is great, but what comes next?

I have been hoping to clarify some of my ideas all week, and so here I am to do it. Before I begin, I have three disclaimers:

  1. This post and the ideas it is proposing is not meant to be a debate about the merits of said idea. If you feel that what I am about to propose would not be useful for your school, then please simply ignore it. I see no need to re-hash this conversation. If however, you would like to get involved and help shape what it can become, then by all means please push, pull, criticize and help make it what we all want/need it to be.
  2.  I am moving to a new school and my role as educational technologist and decision maker will be greatly diminished. I am not even sure that I will be able to implement any of the ideas I am about to propose. I have yet to speak to my new team. (New team: if you are reading this, please don’t feel the need to comment now, just use this idea as a starting point for conversations next year.) I have a very faint idea of what is on the ground at my new school. I could show up and realize that nothing I am about to say is relevant or even possible. Having said that, I’ve never found relevancy or possibility important enough obstacles to  impede the dreaming and brainstorming stage.
  3.  Most of what I am proposing is for international schools in Asia, I hope that others will benefit from our conversations, but in order for it to work, we really need to have a small group of schools from similar backgrounds and working with the same sort of students. Perhaps this idea will be useful in a framework that mirrors your own and you can follow the process.

Okay, enough stalling. Let’s get to it.

I am proposing an Alliance–an agreement or friendship between two or more parties, made in order to advance common goals and to secure common interests. I am hoping we can create a confederation of international schools in Asia to share ideas, create shared resources and develop a broad understanding of what it means to use technology in existing 1:1 environments. These ideas, resources and understandings will be co-created and shared under an umbrella for all members to use, adapt or modify for their own individual schools.

Nuts and Bolts:

What can this look like? Where would it happen? Kim has suggest that we make the Beyond Laptops blog collaborative. I think this is a great idea and  fine starting point, but I was thinking a bit more in terms of wider use of tools under the “Brand” of whatever we call this thing.  (Thanks to Kim for offering the blog, but because of the sensitive nature of  previous conversations, I am not presuming to use the #beyondlaptops tag) I would love to keep going with #beyondlaptops or #waybeyondlaptops, which has risen to the top of the dialogue, but the name is unimportant right now, what is important that there is a name to our alliance and our work is tagged and curated accordingly.

Perhaps we have:

  • A shared Google collection where a variety of (group created) documents, that are in progress, can be shared and stored.
  • A Google site or Wiki to keep track of completed documents, presentations, and other useful resources
  • A blog, like Kim suggested, for reflection on the process and discussion

Let’s stop for an example:

Many of the people I regularly speak to are blogging at their schools. Some are using blogs as ePortflios, some are using them to help build community, others to create authentic audiences for their young writers. Different schools use blogs for different reasons, but there is a core understanding that blogs– should do something. We have a shared understanding of what a “good” blog should include. I am suggesting that rather than individually create these understandings, scope and sequences and rubrics of an effective blog, we create them under the banner of this alliance.

We have causally done this sort of collaboration, in the past, with disparate Google Docs, (remember the Blog Alliance) but why not have a K-12 blogging scope and sequence, complete with permission slips, rubrics, expectations etc… in a shared collection, on a wiki or a site for all of us to use. We create it together. Set up action plans and timelines. Delegate responsibilities and timelines and build it. These resources need not be one-size-fits-all. If an adjustment needs to be made for an individual school, then so be it.

The blog is just one example. I am sure we can brainstorm several other common goals and interests, that would be fertile ground for collaboration.  We share many common goals and interests, and by sharing what they are, we can help each other create something, someplace, useful. Some other ideas:

  • Digital Citizenship materials*
  • Professional Development materials
  • Community building and Cultural materials

* materials can include: documentation, posters, scope and sequence, standards, criteria, letters, rubrics, media, presentations etc…

As I mentioned earlier, I am not even sure if I can be involved with something like this at my new school. I need to get on the ground and get a lay for the land, but I have had too many casual conversations about something just like this at every conference I have ever attend. I think there are a core group of schools that could benefit from an alliance.

If you are interested, please leave a comment on this post or email me directly. I will compile a list of people who are interested and get back to you next year. Perhaps Learning 2.012 will be a good time and place to sit and layout a framework. We can consider Brady’s model or work out a different one. Maybe this is still too vague for you and you will wait till something more substantial is in place. Fair enough.  Just, think about it over the summer, and let’s regroup next fall. Maybe you simply feel this is not for you or your school. Fair enough. This is my pitch, if you are interested, please get in touch.

Lessons

4 Replies

Those of you who have been following my blog for the last few days, know that there is a pretty healthy/heated conversation going on at the It’s About Acculturation post. The back and forth in the comments section has left me pretty well-spent, but thankfully I have learned some  important lessons about digital citizenship, online communities, writing and most importantly, I have learn a bit about myself. I wish that these ideas were original in some way, they are nothing more than what we tell kids everyday, or that they were better articulated (I toyed with the idea of turning them into Haiku, but Friday afternoon exhaustion vetoed that idea) In the end, I brainstormed a list, in no particular order, of the lessons I feel I have learned after my “review” of #beyondlaptops and the affect my post and the conversation that grew from it, had on others.

  • Our words have power.
  • Our ideas affect others in ways we may not intend or even recognize.
  • We should think about the people in front of our words before, during, and after we write them.
  • Don’t write from frustration when what you write about is entwined with other people.
  • If something feels negative it is.
  • What you feel is explicit may have implicit meaning for others.
  • There is a reason why we teach things like tone, intent, and word choice.
  • Don’t be snarky or smug unless there is a reason for it.
  • Praising something only to follow it with a but, is annoying and not constructive.
  • Half-baked ideas can be misunderstood.
  • Online communities are complex and made up of people with different view points.
  • Passion can burn– sometimes a little time and distance may help objectivity.
  • Don’t take it all so personaly.
  • It is not always an argument to win, but a path to walk together.
  • We are on the same team.
  • Blogging (thinking, writing, communicating) can be exhausting.
  • We are figuring it out, this take time.
  • Being understood takes time and practice.
  • It is hard to say what you mean.
  • If you are going to engage in conversation with Adrienne bring extra water. (Good example of being snarky)

Thanks to everyone who was involved in the conversation. I hope that we are creating spaces where all of our voices matter. A place where we are not intimidated or made to feel vulnerable to the point of silence. I don’t know about you, but it is Friday and I am ready for the weekend.

Launch Forth

11 Replies

Did you know that Walt Whitman wrote a poem about social media and the internet? Yeah, I didn’t either, until Ze Frank told me in his video Thinks Like Me.

Side note… I am in love with Ze Frank. Not in a weird– please be my best friend, stalker sort of  way, although I did start digging through his online closet after he started following me on Twitter and sent me some great advice, through a spat of DMs, concerning my Daraja fundraiser,–but more in a, I really respect you man, sort of way.

Maybe in love is the wrong way to put it– I love Ze Frank? Still sounds weird. I respect, admire, am in awe of…no no love will do. I love Ze Frank. Perhaps my admiration stems from the fact that I am new to his work. Yes,  I knew of him through the Young Me, Now Me project, but I had never fully explored the extent of his work. Now that I have, explored, I  realize that much of what he does is everything I love about the web, about people, about life. His work is light, funny, deep, poignant, collaborative, beautiful, loving, self-deprecating, and true. While he doesn’t take himself too seriously, the work speaks volumes about the human experience in the digital age. …end side note.

Sorry this wasn’t meant to be a declaration of love to Ze, it was meant to be about Walt, Spiders, and The Interwebz. I love it when my passions collide: Poetry by ancient bearded queers, social media, arachnids, and online collaborative artists? Yes please. I am assuming you have already watched Thinks Like Me.

What you haven’t watched it yet? Decided to skip that hyperlink, cuz there were too many? I can’t say I am not disappointment in your lack of media literacy, but that is fine. You are learning and I am a teacher. I get that too many links can be annoying, but sometimes you need to stop and read the links that is what a hyperlink is after all: an embedded connection to other content to clarify and add context to existing text.

Anyway, watch the video, you need it for contextual reference if we are to continue. (Man! That is a lot of alliteration or is it consonance?) We will be dealing with the part around 2:3o where he casually mentions that (this) Whitman poem:

It’s about the web right? You and me? Connecting? We are the spiders right? Isolated exploring the vacant, vast surroundings? Launching forth filament, instagrams, filament, Facebook updates, filament, out of ourselves. Aren’t we ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them. Aren’t we surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of (cyber) space. Ceaselessly musing, blogging, venturing, you-tubing, throwing, tweeting—seeking the spheres, to connect them. You to me. Us? Till the bridge we will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold? Aren’t we hoping that flung gossamer thread will catch somewhere? That someone will read? Comment? Re-tweet? Spin the web of our consciousnesses?

O my soul indeed! I get it Ze. I get it. And so did my grade seven students when we looked at this poem and I mentioned it might be about the internet. They smiled, cuz it is that simple and clear and obvious. That technology and social media is not about technology or social media, it is about connection. It is about the human need to launch forth from itself! Whitman got it, over a hundred years ago. Only difference is that now, it is easier to find an anchor hold. The gossamer threads are  fiber-optic and packed with multi-media, which in and of itself adds layers of complexity, but the need to connect, to create, to share is timeless.

All of this philosophizing reminds me of a post I wrote last year, Far From Home on a Dark Night.

Maybe what you are feeling, someone else feels. Maybe what you are feeling, someone else feels.Wow! That is what I wanted all along.

Seems relevant somehow. Looks like more and more of us are feeling it. Interesting that Justin also uses the metaphor of threads. What do you think? Walt Whitman- social media expert? I can see his Twitter handle now: