Tag Archives: Coaching

Give A Kid A Blog

I had two eye-opening experiences this week, both really got me thinking about online sharing, curation of digital versus “real” work (E-portfolios) , and overall student learning, both in terms of motivation for and expressions of. The first was the grade 10 MYP Personal Project exhibition, the second my daughter, Kaia’s, student-led conference for her PYP Kindergarten class.

I will start with Kaia. This was her second student-led conference, and again I was very impressed and proud of her autonomy and independence. After greeting me at the door, her teacher handed Kaia a checklist which Kaia had filled in with the different examples of work she wanted to show me at the various stations: Portfolio, Math, Reading, Art, etc… Kaia proceeded to take my hand and lead me to her favorite spots. The first was her portfolio, at which she carefully and deliberately articulated her learning. She was a bit nervous (Still not sure how they can be nervous at that age) but she did a great job of explaining what we were looking at and was able to answer nearly all of the questions I fired at her! (Not sure if having your parents as teachers is a blessing or a curse.) She was confident and proud of herself and her work. We must have spent at least fifteen minutes discussing her learning. It was awesome to watch.

Next stop, she led me to a shiny iMac where she adeptly opened a folder called Kaia and hit play on a Keynote presentation. Before I continue, let me say that the presentation was beautifully made and showed tremendous amounts of work and time. Each slide had photos, text and little video clips of Kaia playing tennis, reading, acting, singing and more, but the weirdest thing happened–after twenty minutes of her being engaged and talking about her learning in a non-digital format, she became silent. We simply sat and watched a ten minute slide show. When I tried to ask questions, she said, “just watch daddy.”

Of course I see the irony here– part of my job is to promote and facilitate technology and the use of digital tools to enhance student learning. We have spent countless hours discussing what this looks like at every level of our school, but here I was wishing we could just turn off the video and go back to when she was telling me about what an herbivore is, or the features of a Triceratops. What is going on here? Let’s take a look and start with some questions.

Is a collection of photos and videos an effective use of technology? Is the presentation of an E-portfolio as part of a student-led conference the best use of time? I cannot emphasize enough that this post is not a critique of Kaia’s teachers. She has done an amazing job. Kaia is excited and passionate about everything they do in class. I am sure that the format they use is a standard protocol, that they have worked out in the elementary school. As a player in the decision making apparatus at our school, however, I feel that it is my duty to reflect on how our ideas are carried out.

As I mentioned early, the product itself was great. A well told digital story of my daughter’s learning. It was great to see a slide that had a copy of the book she had written coupled with a short clip of her reading said book. I saw her in the art room, in PE and on the playground. I couldn’t help thinking about a few things as I watched: I wish her grandparents could watch this, I wish I wasn’t watching it now at this conference, I wish I could have seen this unfold throughout the year and not all presented in one package, I wish I could interact with it and leave comments. I wish others– family friends etc…could also interact with it. You guessed it, I wished this portion of the conference was on a blog, and that I had had access to it months earlier.

In a world that is increasingly applying pressure for the digitization of our lives, we must be careful not to go digital for its own sake. Sometimes, most times really, sitting and talking with a five year as she talks about symmetry, while building a perfectly symmetrical house– using blocks, is far better than sitting in silence as you both watch a video of an assembly that happened months ago.

What’s my point? None of this is easy. Finding the balance between the digital and analogue is a major theme for this generation. We cannot, however, assume that one method is better than another simply because it is digitized or “real.” In this case, I really enjoyed watching and interacting with Kaia’s independence and confidence as she showed off her work. I was disappointed, however, when we sat and watched her video. Especially when I knew that in a proper blogging platform, we could have been watching these digital events and interacting with them as they occurred in real time.

Final question–is curation of work in a digital format really using technology to enhance learning? Every school in the world is grappling with these questions. We are all at different levels of understanding and implementation of technology. Our school has made tremendous progress in the two years I have been here, but as we start crossing one bridge, it is time to look ahead and ask what’s next. What if Kaia had shown me content she had created using digital tools? She is an adept photographer and storyteller. I would have loved to have seen a movie that she had made. What if she had interacted with another classroom? What if her peers had commented on her work as well? What if…..

Soon we will have our middle school student-led conferences, and we are working hard on building a structure for students to highlight and eventually curate their work through their blogs. I would hate to see, however, parents and students, simply watching a screen and not talking. A blog should be an ongoing space. A place where work is current, relevant and interactive. While I feel, that our blogs will eventually be great e-portfolios housing a range of student work and learning, I do not think that they serve much of a purpose in a student-led conference. Unless, the students are coached on how to navigate their work on a blog, so as to engage their parents in conversations, not simply click from link-to-link.

The second experience I had this week, was the grade 10 MYP Personal Project exhibition. Once again an incredible display of student learning, motivation, and independence. A huge round of applause to everyone who was involved. The weeks of work and learning were evident in all the displays. Students had created original perfumes, compositions for piano, iBooks about golf and more. Students confidently presented their guiding questions and were able to answer all the annoying questions I asked.

All except for one? Is this online? Not one of the grade 10 students had thought to share their work and final product online. True that the majority of them had used their blog as a process journal, properly tagging their posts and keeping impressive running diaries of their progress, but not one student had felt the need to share their final product with a global audience. They saw nothing wrong with spending weeks on a project, building a display that would last only two days and then being done with it. Up and down. Gone! Why is this?

I think students are still thinking of everything they do at school as a part of school. Even their personal projects, which are meant to be based on a passion and personal interest are nothing more than a school assignment to be shared and evaluated by teachers and perhaps a few peers. Why? How do we change this? How do we instill in students that what they create has value in a larger context?

I want to teach kids that their content has a place on the web? It has value and they should look forward to sharing their ideas and content, rather than being afraid of the exposure. If you spend over ten weeks writing an original piano composition, doesn’t it make sense to post it on Soundcloud and have it live on the web? If you wrote an iBook on golf, why not go the extra step and put it on iTunes so other people can download it?

I will be talking to the grade 10’s today about the ephemeral nature of their projects. Ten weeks of work, two days of presentations and then gone! Vanished like dust in the wind. I hope that they see the value of etching a space online for their minds, for the work, for themselves. Like Kaia’s conference, there is definite value in the physical personal project exhibition. It is just disappointing that they are gone. I cannot go home and listen or watch and comment more deeply on what I saw. I cannot share their work with you or your students. We cannot build conversations and community around their content.

In conclusion, I hope I have laid out the value of online spaces for students from kindergarten to grade 10. Give a kid a blog as a space to tend their garden. Let them learn how to be just as independent and confident online as they are off. Teach them how to balance the digital and the organic. Let them present and talk to peers face-t0- face, but also create lasting portfolios of their work online. This is the road ahead. These understandings are what people mean when they speak of 21st century skills.

Would love to hear your ideas. Share your experiences in the comments below.

A Day in the Life- The Making of Time

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“How do you have time to all of this?” This is the first question most people ask me after I give a talk or present a workshop on networked learning and the use of technology. By “all of this” they most likely mean: blogging, checking RSS feeds, Tweeting, or any other of the million things I most likely prattled on and on about during the previous hour. To them my life must look something like this:

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by porschelinn

Or maybe this:

There is probably some truth to both images, but the reality is quite different. I have written before about what ubiquitous daily technology use looks like for me…

…She said, “Yeah Jabiz but you seem to spend a lot of time on the computer. I want to have a life.” I am paraphrasing what she said. I know this teacher fairly well, so I didn’t take offense to her comment. I am quite certain that she wasn’t implying that I don’t have a life, and this post is not a defense of my behaviors, but it really got me thinking, do people really think that using technology is a choice to be made that opposes having a life? Do people think that tech-geeks choose the vacant lifeless draw of their screens over “real” life?

You can read the post in its entirety here. Scary to think that it is over three years old, but still somehow relevant. In this post, however, the one you are reading now, I have tried to do things a bit differently. Sure you can repeatedly read about the many ways that people use technology as a tool to enhance their daily lives, but sometimes it helps to actually get a play-by-play visual.

That is what I tried to do. I have created a fifteen minute film about my daily workflow. Exercise in ego? Maybe. Come on Jabiz who the wants to watch fifteen minutes of your daily life. I know, I know, but making the clip has been a very eye-opening experience for me. Perhaps it is a bit much, but I hope that people find it useful when thinking about their own technology use. I hope you can use it, or parts of it, to help talk to your staff about different ways that people use technology. It is not the model, but a model to help you think about the ways you organize your day.

“We don’t have time, we make it.” Nothing can be more true in the digital age, when there is so much pressure to do so many different things. Kudos to anyone who actually watches the whole thing. I hope it gives a balanced and accurate view of a typical day in my life. I’ll meet you on the other side for some reflection and closing thoughts.

As I was watching myself go through the day, I couldn’t help but think of a passage I recently read in a post by Alan Levine:

I find even the terminology strange– to “go online” as if it were a place. Do we sit down on the couch, press the remote, and say we are “going TV”? Maybe that’s a poor analogy, but using the “go” makes it suggest we are having some sort of out of body experience.

Part of this seems historic, because in the previous decades of networked technology, we had to go to a place- first it was some special building with a mainframe computer, then maybe a computer lab, then as microcomputers hit the home front, we were picking ourselves up from the living room, and going to some other room to be connected.

But with tablets, ipads, internet connected phones, we can go online almost where-ever we are. It’s my personal contention that a suggestion of ourselves moving from “offline” to “online” is a false binary construct. We are who we are, period. Read more

I have no idea how to answer when people ask me how much time I spend online. In a sense, I am never offline. Like Alan mentioned, the web is not a place I go; I don’t go online, I live online. We can discuss how this type of connection can be problematic and unhealthy in the comment section below, but I hope my video and previous post illustrate that I am not having a consistent Clockwork Orange experience.

I am a father, a teacher, an artist…blah, blah, blah, you have heard it all before. The point of this video and post, if there is one, is that how we incorporate technology into our lives is a very personal experience. Your school is most likely demanding that you use more technology in your classroom, but until you are using technology in a comfortable way for you, in your daily life, it will not make sense. The comfortable way is crucial. No one is saying that you need to get up at 5:00am and check Twitter. You simply need to find how much time you can make to try new things and adjust your time appropriately. We all want balanced, rich, interesting lives, so we should try to find out how and when technology enables these ideal lifestyles, and when it inhibits us from experiencing reality. Finding this balance is an ongoing personal negotiation. It does, however, have large implications for how we view and interact with students, as they are in the process of their own negotiations. I recently wrote more on that here.

After making this video, I am finding places that technology is infringing on my life too much for my taste. I can see that some of my no screen times are becoming tainted with the occasional Tweet, or checking if I “missed anything” glances at my phone, but even your friendly neighborhood tech coach is still figuring it all out. Taking inventory of every minute of my day has been a great way to see where my negotiations are headed.

I would love to see more videos by people who read this blog. Would be cool if we could post them all somewhere for others to watch. After all, the lack of time is the number reason most people give for not being connected and part of a network, so let’s create a bank of models for people to look at for ideas.

Feel free to take this conversation anywhere you like, but I would love to hear what you have to say about how you balance your life. When and how does technology become intrusive? When does it enhance your reality?

Final note: You maybe asking why I am never marking or planning. The main reason is that I am currently in what I like to call the “meat” of my unit. The planning has been done and kids are working hard. I hover and poke and prod and get kids on task, but the planning and teaching are all but done, and the assessment has yet to begin. In a more stressful marking period, I would use my time at home to mark (sometimes till midnight) or some time during school. I also try not to assign too much work that is marking heavy. I balance out long essays with assessments that are easier to mark. I rarely give homework. (I find it useless, more on that topic in another post) I find if I give kids less busy work, I have less busy work to monitor and mark. I try to keep most of the work I expect from students to be mostly longer unit project based assessments.

All music from CCMixter:

Feeling Dark (Behind The Mask) by 7OOP3D
Goodbye War, Hello Peace by teru
Kids then Age by Fireproof_Babies
Myxtery by Pitx

Building A Culture

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When I first start teaching DC101 a few weeks ago, I had no idea what to expect. I could not have anticipated the level of reservations and anxiety teachers would have about writing. I didn’t not realize the effect that past experiences many of our staff would bring to the table in terms of writing and sharing, furthermore I never imagined the influence these experiences would have on how they view digital citizenship. It goes without saying, that I have learned a lot in the last three weeks.

In short, I am beginning to see that for many teachers with a limited understanding of connected learning and life online, opening up and publicly sharing (blogging) is a much larger obstacle to overcome, than the fear of insufficient technical skills needed to run a blog. The latter are pretty basic and can be learned with some time and training, but the paradigm shift of understanding online life is a much bigger issue. It’s as if people are realizing that running a blog is not very complicated, but writing one is. Perhaps, the early development should focus on writing, on learning, on sharing. Leave the tech stuff for phase two.

I am seeing that many people still struggle with the notion that their voice matters. People feel that they don’t need to add to the noise. Why would anyone care about what I have to say? Is a common question I see. I get the sense that due to time, stress and administrative expectations, the notion of reflections, sharing and writing about their teaching feels superfluous. What if we gave teachers time to blog throughout their work week? We spend so much time and energy on reports, what if teacher reflection and blogging was considered as important to the administration of schools? What if we allowed our teachers the freedom to be learners? Created supportive communities of fellow teachers, who could blog during school time? What if this wasn’t considered a luxury, but an expectation?

At our school, we are trying to work toward a learner based coaching model. We want to encourage inquiry from our teachers as well as our students. In the realm of technology, we are trying to move away from the traditional notion of training and moving towards a more holistic understanding of how technology influences our personal and professional lives. We are not interested in transferring technology skills, but of building a culture of sharing and learning. An open community, where all members have a space (blogs), where they can feel comfortable collaborating and sharing ideas, creating content, communicating and connecting to each other through the use of various tools on a platform we are calling e-hub, which at this stage consists of a system wide multi-user WordPress platform and The Google suite for education.

When I began, I thought that DC101 would be a way to give staff members the tools they needed to access e-hub, but half-way through I am realizing that we need to start with understanding the why first. Once we have e-hub up and running, and every knows how to access it, then what? Trouble is that I find myself in a chicken-and-egg scenario: We need blogs and a basic understanding of how blogs connect ideas and people to build community and culture, but we cannot understand the power of these networks without using the blogs to connect people.

cc licensed ( BY ND ) flickr photo shared by US Embassy New Zealand

Having said that, things are going well. The conversations are starting. People are feeling challenged I hope, and they are having conversations about things like Creative Commons for the first time. It will, however, be a long road. Culture is not created overnight. This understanding is important for schools hoping to implement blogging and expecting kids and teachers to magically use them authentically. It is not very difficult to set up a few class blogs, or even to implement blogging school wide. It is also not very difficult to train students and teachers to write posts, add hyper-links, add photos, video, etc… but creating an organic system where teachers openly share their ideas without fear, where they read the work of their peers and comment, collaborate and create together is a much more time consuming situation. If you are interested in blogging with your class or in your school, you may want to have some pretty big discussions before hand.

It is clear that we can create blogs as portfolios and have students upload post-after-post of homework. We can create class blogs, which teachers use as administrative tools to share curriculum with parents and students, but is this enough? Is this blogging? Of course not this is content management. You might as well use Moodle or Studywiz. Blogging has to be more than content management. So what next?

I am not sure. We have only been doing this for two months. I should be pleased with what we do have so far, but as always I want it all and I want it now, to quote Jim Morrison. Perhaps, you can share some of your ideas. What does blogging culture mean to you? What can it look like at a school? What do you do at your school that promotes a culture of sharing? How do you get teachers and students to write authentic posts, not just upload assignments? As you can see there are many questions, but very valid ones I think, before we assume that since we have blogs at school that we are really blogging.

Act of Love

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I am tried. Exhausted. Spent and empty. For some inexplicable reason, however, writing/blogging whatever you want to call it, seems to be the only activity that restores my energy. Let’s see where this train leads.

After four days of working as a Technology Facilitator, I jokingly asked my principal if I could go back to being a classroom teacher. He grinned, “No way man. You can’t go back once you have jumped into the rabbit hole.” Fair enough, so let me vent a bit. Things that are bugging me about my new job:

There is always something wrong. Every second. All day. Everyday. There are issues. And while it may be self-induced, I feel I need to solve them all. Right now. In addition to my own anxiety about the glitch in Gmail contact creation, people stop me in the halls to ask how to add a tab in their browser, or pull me over because their keynote isn’t working. The false mantle of expertise is heavy and often gets in the way of what is important– planning my units for my Grade 10 English class that starts next week. I am quite certain, this balancing act will be more manageable with time. I am excited to watch myself learning how to be patient and kind and open. I often find myself wanting to belittle how little some people know, it is shocking, but then I imagine them as if they were a kindergartner, or my daughter, and remind myself that I am still a teacher. The difference is that I have a whole new batch of students. Yes, they are grown college-educated adults, but they still need differentiation. They still need to be told they are doing a good job. That they will get it. That it is normal to be nervous about learning. This understanding makes the job worth it. Teaching adults is more complex than teaching kids in many ways. This complexity is helping me be the best educator I can be. It is reconfirming my understanding that teaching is a social experience, and it is about building and maintaining relationships first and foremost. Teaching is always an act of love and trust.

Having said that, I am tired of feeling as if I am the sole defender of all things digital. I sometimes feel that people are projecting their fear, frustration, and resentment with technology towards me. As if I am somehow responsible for their inability to navigate this changing world, or worse that I blindly believe that we are headed in the right direction, simply because I have chosen to explore what the digital world means to my life, my family, my students. Just because I enjoy investigating the digital age, does not make me blind to the necessity and wonder of the world beyond screens. I don’t like the assumption that I prefer to chat on a phone rather than a face-to-face conversation, or that I enjoy the anxiety that comes from being over connected. That I have somehow forgotten what it feels like to close my eyes and enjoy a passing breeze or the warm sunshine on my neck. Watching the giant bees penetrate the flowers on campus. As if technology could ever surpass the subtle beauty of a string of words on a page. I feel that when people see me, they only see a screen. Cold and metallic. I find it hard to express the breathing, stinking organic mess that operates the device they see.

I am sure, as always, I am over thinking and being too sensitive, but this is why I write– to sift through emotions and find clarity. Reflection should show us something right? It is still early days, but I feel like I am being pulled in many directions, not necessarily places I want to go. After a day of putting out a series of fires, I spent an hour in my classroom: moving furniture, blasting the Strokes, and putting up posters and quotes to populate and give birth to my new space. Tomorrow, I will find some plants; I am pricing a cheap guitar for the room , and next week I will spend time with some young adults who don’t expect much from me. We will laugh, get to know each other and begin to explore.