Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

The Missing Layer

By

From Teachers and Policy Makers: Troubling Disconnect in the NY Times:

Michael Petrilli, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a pro-charter education analyst with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, worries about this lack of exchange. He recently conducted an analysis of Twitter and the tens of thousands of followers of Ms. Rhee, who is pro-charter, and Ms. Ravitch, who is anti-charter, and discovered that only 10 percent overlapped. Just as conservatives gravitate to Fox News and liberals to MSNBC to hear their preconceived notions and biases confirmed, Mr. Petrilli speculates that those in education are now preaching solely to the converted, a phenomenon known in the media world as “narrowcasting.”

Worse, in Mr. Petrilli’s view, those who follow Ms. Rhee tend to describe themselves in their Twitter profiles as policy makers or otherwise removed from the immediate realities of the classroom, while Ms. Ravitch’s devotees are typically self-identified practitioners: principals and teachers on education’s front lines. Surely these folks should be talking to one another, but in Mr. Petrilli’s experience, they often aren’t.

No doubt an important finding. Read the whole thing. 

But I wonder this: do either of these groups, the reformers that follow Rhee or the practitioners who follow Ravitch, really have enough of a context for modern learning to have a fruitful, relevant discussion even if they were talking to one another?

I ask that really sincerely.

I totally respect the work that those advocating against test based reforms are doing, and I support that pushback every chance I get. But I’m not convinced that the changes they would put in place even lightly take into account the fundamental shifts that are occurring regarding learning and the literacies required to flourish in the world as it exists outside of schools. If we can get rid of the tests, what do we get? Fairly traditional classrooms and curriculum without the tests?

That “context for modern learning” piece is the missing layer in all of this, I think.

You?

Curators Rule the World

By

Joe Coleman:

We’re now at a point where curators rule the content world, by collectively deciding whether content gets amplified or lost. As a result, quality of content is again starting to win out over quantity, with an assist from smarter search algorithms and the death of content farms. As power continues to shift to the curators, great long-form content continues to increase in value, as it’s shared and consumed by more and more people. Today, one exceptional, widely shared essay is far more valuable than a thousand disparate tweets.

The “better filters” conversation is an important one. But I don’t think it’s just about algorithms. At the end of the day, while the technology can help us aggregate potentially relevant and interesting content and information, if we don’t have the “curation” skills to make sense of it for ourselves, it doesn’t really matter much.

And, while curation may mark the return of the long form essay, just because it’s shared doesn’t mean it will get read. There is still a lot more work and thinking to do about how to cultivate reading and writing habits in ourselves and in our children that reflect the opportunities and challenges of this writing-rich moment.

Like…now that our kids have access to an authentic audience, why don’t we give them all sorts of opportunities to write about the things THEY care about in ways that have a real purpose and meaning in the world. Becoming a great writer starts with developing a passion for writing, something we too often extinguish in schools.

The Future of Learning Is…

By

(from EduCon via Christian Long…more here)image

…“asking better questions.” –Zac Chase
…“unlimited.” –Diana Laufenberg
…“self-organized.” –Will Richardson
…“unknown…and that’s ok.” –Jessica Ross
…“every classroom a Maker space.” –Jaymes Dec
…“There are multiple futures of learning. We all decide” –Rob Greco
…“fun, playful, always morphing and evolving.” –Ethan Bodnar
…“real work in a human context.” –Greg
…“them.” –Jeremy
…“communal.” –Chris Lehmann
…“close relationships between teachers and students.” –Lizzie
…“spontaneity.” –Ray
…“connecting the needs of our cities to our classrooms and the youth and multigenrational teams most apt to actually generate and implement innovative solutions.” –Alex Gilliam

You?

Educon 2.5-ish Random-ish Reflections

By

Just some quick reflections on this year’s most excellent EduCon 2.5 at SLA in Philly, an event I love for the conversations but also for the chance to catch up with a whole bunch of amazing educator friends who consistently push my thinking, and for the chance to meet a whole new bunch who I’m sure will do the same in the future.

image

(photo by Steve Ransom)

I’ll be blogging more about my session on “Why School?” which at the last minute turned into an attempt to come up with “95 Theses” reflecting the world of contemporary learning and schooling. It was a great discussion with some interesting results that I hope to suss out in the next few days. But until then, just a couple of quick snips.

—-

At one point, Christian Long came up and asked me to take part in an informal, “anthropological study” that he was doing as a part of his design work with The Third Teacher. In essence the task was to finish the sentence “The future of learning is…” There were two other choices but that one leapt out at me. My answer was short: “self-organized.” Not earth shattering, I know, but an idea that I’ve been bouncing into more and more.

One of my mantras of late has been this idea that we can now “design our own learning,” one that is no doubt informed by the work Christian and others are doing in designing spaces but just as much by this moment of abundant access to teachers and knowledge that we find ourselves in. The reality is that we are now the central organizing force in our own learning and education. It’s not the school or in the institution any longer. 

I keep looking at my own kids and wondering if “Learning Design 101 (and maybe 102)” shouldn’t be a core class in their studies at school. (As a side note, it is happening to some degree at least with my daughter, who is struggling a bit with the inquiry approach of some of her teachers. “I don’t know what she wants” is a common complaint about her English teacher, one that I respond to with “That’s the whole point, Tess. She wants you to figure out what you want.” Getting there…) And I wonder to what extent teachers see their roles as “Learning Designers” in their own practice and as coaches in that for their students. 

But it’s not just learning. More and more I’m coming around to the idea that not only will my kids learning be “self-organized” or “self-designed,” so will the work that they do in their adult lives. And so will the education they cobble together for themselves to get to those work opportunities. When we have access to all that we do now, we can’t wait for someone else to do any of this for us. Or, at least, that can’t be our only option.

So, I’m wondering, are we preparing students for a “self-organized” world?

—

Some of that thinking was also spurred by the  Krista Tippett interview with Seth Godin for her On Being Podcast (which is one of the few I subscribe to, btw) that I listened to on the drive down to EduCon. In it, Godin talked about his belief that at this moment, it’s incumbent upon all of us to create art in the sense that we now have the ability and the tools to influence the world in ways that have never before existed, and that seizing and making the most of that opportunity is one of the keys to living well both professionally and personally. I find his argument compelling and relevant to another point I’ve been making of late, that we need kids to be makers and sharers. 

Godin makes the point that in Industrial times, one person designed something that thousands of other people then created. Today, one person can design something AND create it and share it and own it.

“We are all artists now.” And, our kids need to be artists now more than ever. And it’s not art in the sense of fine art as we’ve known it. Art is creation that makes a difference in the world, a blog post, a program, a video, a connection. To quote:

“Now, one person working by themselves can make an idea, a product, a service, something in the world, and that shift in leverage means you’re not gonna make it as a worker bee. You’re gonna make it as someone who is figuring out what to do next. And more importantly, finding the faith, literally the faith to walk up to your tribe, your community and say ‘here, I made this.’”

That last part is not always an easy thing. As Godin points out, it’s fraught with fear of rejection, comparison, disappointment, etc. It’s a hard thing to do, even still for me, now almost 12 years into this blogging thing but still fretting as I write this if people will find it banal, boring, or stupid. That’s a part of the “artistic” process that many struggle with.

So, I’m wondering, are we preparing our kids to be artists?

–

I sat in on Audrey Watters session on “The Politics of Ed Tech” which, in my thinking, should be required context for every parent, educator and student. It was an interesting, wide ranging conversation which at the outset Audrey feared would become “exceedingly grim” and in that respect, it didn’t disappoint. We talked about the big players, their motivations, the visions, etc. 

But the one thing we kind of danced around that I wish we’d had more time for was the “ok, so what do we do about it.” Two snippets spoke to that. First, at one point we began talking about the inroads that companies had made into education via the Apple Distinguished Educator or Google Certified Teacher brands, and whether or not there was a downside to helping to market companies that at the end of the day may not have the best intentions or visions for the type of progressive reforms that many of us are calling for.  Kevin Jarrett was nice enough to put himself in the crossfire, and he said if aligning with one of the big companies meant increased access to tools and technology for kids, it was worth it. (To be noted, SLA has a huge “Apple Distinguished School” banner hanging in the hallway, and Chris has taken the same path to get computers for his students as well.) Not sure how I feel about that, but it was a moment that gave all of us some pause, I think.

And finally, at one point I blurted out something along the lines of “ed-tech businesses have a vested interest in keeping education the same.” We’d been talking about buying textbooks and learning management systems and all sorts of other stuff that have become a part of the fabric of traditional education. I started thinking of the vendor floor at ISTE, all sorts of stuff that we don’t really need but we’re talked into buying because of that traditional thinking.

We don’t need textbooks anymore. We can make our own with our kids. But textbook companies need us to need textbooks. Other companies need us to need LMSs even though we don’t really need them. Etc. What, at the end of the day, are the products that really serve the vision of teaching and learning that we’re now talking about?

Still thinking about that…

Anyway, as always, two days at EduCon are two days really well spent. 

Educon 2.5-ish Random-ish Reflections

By

Just some quick reflections on this year’s most excellent EduCon 2.5 at SLA in Philly, an event I love for the conversations but also for the chance to catch up with a whole bunch of amazing educator friends who consistently push my thinking, and for the chance to meet a whole new bunch who I’m sure will do the same in the future.

image

(photo by Steve Ransom)

I’ll be blogging more about my session on “Why School?” which at the last minute turned into an attempt to come up with “95 Theses” reflecting the world of contemporary learning and schooling. It was a great discussion with some interesting results that I hope to suss out in the next few days. But until then, just a couple of quick snips.

—-

At one point, Christian Long came up and asked me to take part in an informal, “anthropological study” that he was doing as a part of his design work with The Third Teacher. In essence the task was to finish the sentence “The future of learning is…” There were two other choices but that one leapt out at me. My answer was short: “self-organized.” Not earth shattering, I know, but an idea that I’ve been bouncing into more and more.

One of my mantras of late has been this idea that we can now “design our own learning,” one that is no doubt informed by the work Christian and others are doing in designing spaces but just as much by this moment of abundant access to teachers and knowledge that we find ourselves in. The reality is that we are now the central organizing force in our own learning and education. It’s not the school or in the institution any longer. 

I keep looking at my own kids and wondering if “Learning Design 101 (and maybe 102)” shouldn’t be a core class in their studies at school. (As a side note, it is happening to some degree at least with my daughter, who is struggling a bit with the inquiry approach of some of her teachers. “I don’t know what she wants” is a common complaint about her English teacher, one that I respond to with “That’s the whole point, Tess. She wants you to figure out what you want.” Getting there…) And I wonder to what extent teachers see their roles as “Learning Designers” in their own practice and as coaches in that for their students. 

But it’s not just learning. More and more I’m coming around to the idea that not only will my kids learning be “self-organized” or “self-designed,” so will the work that they do in their adult lives. And so will the education they cobble together for themselves to get to those work opportunities. When we have access to all that we do now, we can’t wait for someone else to do any of this for us. Or, at least, that can’t be our only option.

So, I’m wondering, are we preparing students for a “self-organized” world?

—

Some of that thinking was also spurred by the  Krista Tippett interview with Seth Godin for her On Being Podcast (which is one of the few I subscribe to, btw) that I listened to on the drive down to EduCon. In it, Godin talked about his belief that at this moment, it’s incumbent upon all of us to create art in the sense that we now have the ability and the tools to influence the world in ways that have never before existed, and that seizing and making the most of that opportunity is one of the keys to living well both professionally and personally. I find his argument compelling and relevant to another point I’ve been making of late, that we need kids to be makers and sharers. 

Godin makes the point that in Industrial times, one person designed something that thousands of other people then created. Today, one person can design something AND create it and share it and own it.

“We are all artists now.” And, our kids need to be artists now more than ever. And it’s not art in the sense of fine art as we’ve known it. Art is creation that makes a difference in the world, a blog post, a program, a video, a connection. To quote:

“Now, one person working by themselves can make an idea, a product, a service, something in the world, and that shift in leverage means you’re not gonna make it as a worker bee. You’re gonna make it as someone who is figuring out what to do next. And more importantly, finding the faith, literally the faith to walk up to your tribe, your community and say ‘here, I made this.’”

That last part is not always an easy thing. As Godin points out, it’s fraught with fear of rejection, comparison, disappointment, etc. It’s a hard thing to do, even still for me, now almost 12 years into this blogging thing but still fretting as I write this if people will find it banal, boring, or stupid. That’s a part of the “artistic” process that many struggle with.

So, I’m wondering, are we preparing our kids to be artists?

–

I sat in on Audrey Watters session on “The Politics of Ed Tech” which, in my thinking, should be required context for every parent, educator and student. It was an interesting, wide ranging conversation which at the outset Audrey feared would become “exceedingly grim” and in that respect, it didn’t disappoint. We talked about the big players, their motivations, the visions, etc. 

But the one thing we kind of danced around that I wish we’d had more time for was the “ok, so what do we do about it.” Two snippets spoke to that. First, at one point we began talking about the inroads that companies had made into education via the Apple Distinguished Educator or Google Certified Teacher brands, and whether or not there was a downside to helping to market companies that at the end of the day may not have the best intentions or visions for the type of progressive reforms that many of us are calling for.  Kevin Jarrett was nice enough to put himself in the crossfire, and he said if aligning with one of the big companies meant increased access to tools and technology for kids, it was worth it. (To be noted, SLA has a huge “Apple Distinguished School” banner hanging in the hallway, and Chris has taken the same path to get computers for his students as well.) Not sure how I feel about that, but it was a moment that gave all of us some pause, I think.

And finally, at one point I blurted out something along the lines of “ed-tech businesses have a vested interest in keeping education the same.” We’d been talking about buying textbooks and learning management systems and all sorts of other stuff that have become a part of the fabric of traditional education. I started thinking of the vendor floor at ISTE, all sorts of stuff that we don’t really need but we’re talked into buying because of that traditional thinking.

We don’t need textbooks anymore. We can make our own with our kids. But textbook companies need us to need textbooks. Other companies need us to need LMSs even though we don’t really need them. Etc. What, at the end of the day, are the products that really serve the vision of teaching and learning that we’re now talking about?

Still thinking about that…

Anyway, as always, two days at EduCon are two days really well spent. 

The Problem with “Personalized Learning”

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James Paul Gee:

People who never confront challenge and frustration, who never acquire new styles of learning, and who never face failure squarely may in the end become impoverished humans. They may become forever stuck with who they are now, never growing and transforming, because they never face new experiences that have not been customized to their current needs and desires…

Success in the 21st century at work and in life requires collaboration, collective intelligence, and smart teams using smart tools. In our fast-changing world, a world that faces many serious crises, being able to cope with challenge, to persist past failure, to learn in new ways, and to adapt one’s skills and style to other team members are all 21st-century skills. Yet new technologies and the Internet allow us to enter our own customized echo chambers and identity niches where we can comfort ourselves with what we are and do not have to confront ourselves with what we can be and, indeed, must become as fellow citizens in a diverse and complex global world. This is particularly dangerous for students.

What happens when people with different “sweet spots” have to learn, solve problems, and collaborate with others who have different “sweet spots,” as people so often have to do in modern workplaces? I wonder what would happen should, God forbid, children run into learning situations in the world that cannot be optimized for them individually. What if the world changes and the problems that arise just do not afford solutions that fit their sweet spot? What if their sweet spot is just no good for certain types of learning and problem solving?

This is the problem with adaptive platforms that attempt to “personalize” learning to each individual’s inherent strengths. We don’t live in a world where only our inherent strengths make a difference. By eliminating struggle and failure, we risk more than we realize. 

Results That Matter

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Nicholas Carr in MIT’s Technology Review:

Looking toward the future, Kuntz says that computers will ultimately be able to tailor an entire “learning environment” to fit each student. Elements of the program’s interface, for example, will change as the computer senses the student’s optimum style of learning.

The advances in tutoring programs promise to help many college, high-school, and even elementary students master basic concepts. One-on-one instruction has long been known to provide substantial educational benefits, but its high cost has constrained its use, particularly in public schools. It’s likely that if computers are used in place of teachers, many more students will be able to enjoy the benefits of tutoring. According to one recent study of undergraduates taking statistics courses at public universities, the latest of the online tutoring systems seem to produce roughly the same results as face-to-
face instruction.

Adds to my post from yesterday, but don’t miss the point. The most important word to parse in this snip is “results.” And this is what drives me crazy when we talk about this stuff. We all know that Carr is talking about performance results as measured by competencies or tests or grades, but are those the only results that matter in face-to-face instruction?

Apparently so.

Let me be really, really clear. The teaching profession is absolutely important and worth fighting for. But I’m convinced, in the current climate especially here in the US, that simply pushing back against these types of innovations by attacking their lack of humanity will not work. At the end of the day, if technology continues to bring better scores and better economics to the equation, I’m not sure the separation between “tutoring” and “teaching” will be deemed worth saving.

I appreciate the stories of learning that many are telling now, stories of inquiry and creation and authentic work using technology to deepen and scale the experience.  Somehow, we’re going to have to make those stories scale.

Utter Lack of Intellectual Bravery

By

Jesse Stommel:

Those of us responsible for education (both its formation and care) are hugging too tightly to what we’ve helped build, its pillars, policies, economies, and institutions. None of these, though, map promisingly into digital space. If we continue to tread our current path, we’ll be left with a Frankenstein’s monster of what we now know of education. This is the imminent destruction of our educational system of which so many speak: taking an institution inspired by the efficiency of post-industrial machines and redrawing it inside the machines of the digital age. Education rendered into a dull 2-dimensional carbon copy, scanned, faxed, encoded and then made human-readable, an utter lack of intellectual bravery.

That last is precisely how I think of current education reformers who are tied to efficiencies over real opportunities to think about education and learning differently.

The list of things we need to “break” is daunting and almost all-encompassing. But the justifications are spot on. 

Read the whole thing.

Our New Value: Making Stuff With Kids

By

Joshua Glenn and Elizabeth Foy Larsen

The sixth graders at Marymount School – an independent Catholic school for girls in Manhattan – have a problem they need to solve. The American Dental Association recommends that kids brush their teeth for two minutes, twice a day. But the students know that most kids fall well short of that goal. How – their teachers ask – can they find a solution to this challenge?

The girls open their sketchbooks and doodle possible solutions. One toothbrush plays music. Another comes with a timer. Still another has a tiny TV embedded into the handle. One model grows larger as you brush and then gets smaller when the two minutes are up.

The project takes several weeks and involves more than a few trips to the school’s Fab Lab, a state-of-the art digital prototyping and manufacturing facility that Marymount started in 2011 to more thoroughly engage its students in math and science. It’s here that they transfer their sketches to computer-automated drawings, which are then sent to the classroom’s MakerBot, a 3-D printer that seems like it was plucked straight out of The Jetsons.

While there’s a lot of laughing in the Fab Lab, the class also comes with its share of frustration as students try their hands at solutions that don’t work. That’s all part of the process, says Jaymes Dec, the lab’s administrator, who started Marymount’s program after a grant to facilitate these same kind of lessons with South Bronx high schoolers ran out. “My goal is more about inspiration than education,” he says. “I don’t believe you can just pour knowledge into students. They have to learn things by trying them out.”

Two things:

1. Read the whole thing. I’ve been droning on for some time now that if we are to save schools, our value proposition has to change. We can’t be the places kids come to learn stuff that they can learn on their own in a gajillion different places now. We have to become the places where we help kids make interesting, meaningful, useful, beautiful artifacts of their learning that they can share with the real world. That’s our value moving forward. That stuff that can’t be “Khanified.”

2. This is “unflippable” if you will. I’ve come around to the idea that flipping classrooms has helped teachers individualize with students and make the content more meaningful in practice. But it’s still our content. It’s still about what we want kids to learn when we want them to learn it absent any real context or purpose that makes it meaningful outside the classroom, context that helps them to love it. I’ll take a Fab Lab every day. I’ll take spaces where kids are engaged in work that is meaningful to them, not us.

I know…the Fab Lab is hard. There’s no money. There’s no space. We’d need training. Lots of “Yeah, Buts”. But I’d argue the bigger problem is there is no vision. If we see this as better learning than the lockstep curriculum that we’re currently delivering in a variety of ways in schools, then why aren’t we fighting harder for it? Why aren’t we demanding it? Why aren’t we at least starting conversations around it?

The good news is, some people are.

Need a roadmap? Follow the kids at Marymount. We have a problem we need to solve. Schools are under a huge challenge from the Web, and we’re not changing. Take out your sketchpads. Start fabricating. Start talking. Start dreaming. Start creating a vision for teaching and learning that makes more sense for this moment. Engage in that conversation anywhere you can. 

And then, start making stuff with your kids.

The key, as with all of hands-on learning, is for the grownups not to do what really should be the child’s work. “We want to teach kids that they have a lot of answers inside of them,” says Jason Chua, one of SparkTruck’s founders. “If you don’t get things right the first time it’s OK to continue prototyping and iterating until you find a solution that makes sense.”

We have answers inside of us, too you know. Are you iterating toward change?

Born To Be Taught?

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Chad Sansing:

Kids have to own learning. To hold on to it, to connect it, to love it and launch from it – they do. Learning without love isn’t learning; it’s production. It’s not freedom; it’s indenture. It’s not an awakening; it’s a sedation.

Why, I wonder, do we stop seeing kids as creatures who were born to learn and, instead, start seeing them as born to be taught?

Especially now when access provides kids with opportunities to learn so much more than schools could ever hope to deliver, when kids now have a freedom to learn that schools are more and more going to be competing against, how do we stem that shift?

How about this: find one interest, one passion in each child and, regardless of the subject, let them learn. Engage them. Encourage them. Nudge them into places the curriculum can’t follow and, as Chad suggests, make room for the perhaps unexpected learning that may well sustain them much more than the teaching we’ve prepared for them.

Just one thing.

You Gotta Go to Educon 2.5

By

Just a quick reminder, Educon, the most excellent unconferency conference held at Science Leadership Academy, is coming up at the end of next month. If you haven’t already done so, you might want to head on over and register as there’s limited attendance.

Not for nothing, but if you haven’t had the Educon experience yet, you need to. For me, it’s one of the if not the best conference I get to every year because it’s small, intimate, thought-provoking, features students, and brings together many of the good friends I’ve made over the years in this online eduspace. I’ll be running a fun session on how we’d like George Lucas to spend the $4 billion he’s putting toward education, but there are far more serious and important topics on the conversation list as well.

Anyway, hope to see you all there…

You Gotta Go to Educon 2.5

By

Just a quick reminder, Educon, the most excellent unconferency conference held at Science Leadership Academy, is coming up at the end of next month. If you haven’t already done so, you might want to head on over and register as there’s limited attendance.

Not for nothing, but if you haven’t had the Educon experience yet, you need to. For me, it’s one of the if not the best conference I get to every year because it’s small, intimate, thought-provoking, features students, and brings together many of the good friends I’ve made over the years in this online eduspace. I’ll be running a fun session on how we’d like George Lucas to spend the $4 billion he’s putting toward education, but there are far more serious and important topics on the conversation list as well.

Anyway, hope to see you all there…

Rethink Learning Top to Bottom

By

Cathy Davidson

But there is also an investment opportunity for any educator (with or without degree) to rethink learning top to bottom, inside out. We have a potential for a learning mash-up of the loftiest, most creative, learner-centered kind. Whether we are talking about Khan’s millions of learners who have a handful of teachers or Ito’s billions of teachers learning from one another, the idea that we educators don’t have to force education, that people like to learn if there is something worth learning, is the gold mine for the digital age…

What would we do without “forced education” I wonder…

Applying the Learning

By

John Abbott:

And here is the crunch…it is far easier to measure what has been learnt than it is to assess how effective are the learners skills when they have to be applied outside the domain in which they were originally developed, in other words proof that you have learnt something under certain circumstances is no true indicator that you will be able to perform as well somewhere else on a different kind of problem.

Unless of course the learning takes place through performance to begin with.

What I Know Now

By

In her overview of Learning to Code as one of the top ed-tech trends of 2012, Audrey Watters also shares her favorite ed-tech quote of the year, a pithy suggestion from designer/programmer Bret Victor:

“For fuck’s sake, read Mindstorms.”

It wasn’t the first time that I’d seen that quote, but it reminded me that it was in fact that quote, nearly 30 years into my life as an educator, that finally led me to read that seminal work on learning by Seymour Papert.

About time, don’t you think?

The irony is that the first edition of Midstorms was released in 1980, just a year before I decided to go back to school to get my Masters and become a teacher. And I can’t help but wonder what a different type of educator I would have been had someone, anyone in my program understood its importance and led me to it. Just this one snippet early on in the book might have changed much about my teaching:

For people in the teaching professions, the word “education” tends to evoke “teaching,” particularly classroom teaching. The goal of education research tends therefore to be focused on how to improve classroom teaching. But if, as I have stressed here, the model of successful learning is the way a child learns to talk, a process that takes place without deliberate and organized teaching, the goal set is very different. I see the classroom as an artificial and inefficient learning environment that society has been forced to invent because its informal environments fail in certain essential learning domains, such as writing or grammar or school math. I believe that the computer presence will enable us to so modify the learning environment outside the classrooms that much if not all the knowledge schools presently try to teach with such pain and expense and such limited success will be learned, as the child learns to talk, painlessly, successfully, and without organized instruction. This obviously implies that schools as we know them today will have no place in the future. But it is an open question whether they will adapt by transforming themselves into something new or wither away and be replaced (9).

Now, 32 years later, I’m just coming to know Papert and Mindstorms and much more about learning and education that I never knew or understood before. And I think about that often. My contextual knowledge of how kids learn, the history of progressive education, the workings of technology has only been developed over the last decade, moreso even in the last five years as my important new teachers like Gary Stager and Chris Lehmann and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Ira Socol and Sylvia Martinez and Tom Hoffman and many others have led me to the ideas and authors and thinkers who have framed education for me in a totally different light. I’ve envied (and still do envy) their brilliance, and the lens that they’ve brought to this conversation for far longer than I. And, importantly, I’m thankful for their willingness to share those lenses with me on an ongoing basis as I find new questions that need answering. Better late than never, right? 

But aside from giving me the chance to frame my thinking about schools and kids and learning in a much different and, I think, more relevant way, it’s made me wonder the extent to which most educators carry these lenses with them as well. How many have read Mindstorms? How many are really familiar with Piaget’s learning theories, with Dewey’s progressive vision for education, with Sarason’s thinking on learning? How many of them truly understand why we have the schools we have today? How many have a context for teaching that’s based on learning? How many know what they don’t know? 

I didn’t. Looking back, my preparation to be a teacher was abysmal. And I still have a lot to learn.

It all speaks, once again, for the need for us to see ourselves as learners, more than teachers, especially now that technology and the Web have “enable[d] us to so modify the learning environment outside the classroom” in ways that allow us to meet great teachers and debate important ideas with others far removed from our schools or programs, ways that allow us to learn the things we should have been learning in school. If we’re going to adapt, as Papert suggests, it’s going to be because we as a profession see our role much differently now, as something new, something different, not just something better. 

And so it’s been with a lot of frustration that I’ve been watching the proceedings at Jeb Bush’s Excellence In Action National Summit on Education Reform in Washington DC these past two days. I won’t go deeply into the details, but suffice to say that as I watch Bush, Joel Klein, Condoleeza Rice and others talk about their views on “reforming” education, of using technology to deliver curriculum in new ways, of “raising student achievement” via the Common Core Standards, of competing against the world and making America strong again, I find myself wanting to scream one thing at them all:

“For fuck’s sake, read Mindstorms!”

Please.

Papert writes:

My own philosophy is revolutionary rather than reformist in its concept of change. But the revolution I envision is of ideas, not of technology. It consists of new understandings of specific subject domains and in new understandings of the process of learning itself. It consists of a new and much more ambitious setting of the sights of educational aspiration (186).

Schools and teachers and classrooms still have an important role in our communities, and as I’ve said before, I don’t want them to go away. But, as Papert and many others suggest, they must change. They can’t be about courses or credits or grades or curriculum or teaching first and foremost. They have to be about learning. But the way we understand that word must be grounded in something much deeper than test scores and competition. We as educators have to own that word in its purest sense if we’re to move schools in ways that best support and nurture our kids. And we don’t have much time to waste. 

So if you haven’t already, for goodness sake, read Mindstorms.

Please.

I Wonder…

By

Michael Wesch:

I used to think of the shift we need to make in education as one in which we move from making our students simply knowledgeable (knowing a bunch of stuff) to being knowledge-able (able to find, sort, analyze, criticize and ultimately create new information and knowledge). But more important than anything is that we must inspire them to wonder. Wonder is the wellspring from which ideas and creativity flow. One could even argue that there is no truly creative act or critical thinking without wonder, for it is only through wonder that we attempt to go beyond what has been said and done.

Maybe Ken Robinson is wrong in that schools don’t kill creativity as much as schools kill a sense of wonder, and that without wonder, we have no reason to be creative. Without that initial question… But schools can’t dictate what kids wonder about, right? 

And therein lies the problem…

Quae Non Possunt Non Manent

By

Clay Shirky:

Open systems are open. For people used to dealing with institutions that go out of their way to hide their flaws, this makes these systems look terrible at first. But anyone who has watched a piece of open source software improve, or remembers the Britannica people throwing tantrums about Wikipedia, has seen how blistering public criticism makes open systems better. And once you imagine educating a thousand people in a single class, it becomes clear that open courses, even in their nascent state, will be able to raise quality and improve certification faster than traditional institutions can lower cost or increase enrollment.

College mottos run the gamut from Bryn Mawr’s Veritatem Dilexi (I Delight In The Truth) to the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising’s Where Business Meets Fashion, but there’s a new one that now hangs over many of them: Quae Non Possunt Non Manent. Things That Can’t Last Don’t. The cost of attending college is rising above inflation every year, while the premium for doing so shrinks. This obviously can’t last, but no one on the inside has any clear idea about how to change the way our institutions work while leaving our benefits and privileges intact.

This is an important and, in a way, ironic point. That the more we rail against and criticize those that attempt to undermine the status quo, the more we provide a path to improvement. Especially now when the world is much more connected and transparent than it was a short time ago. And it also makes me think of Clay Christensen’s assessment of the news industry:

“I think we didn’t quite understand, and still don’t really understand, how quickly things fall off the cliff.”

I’m convinced we’re going to look back at what happens to education at all levels in the next 5-10 years and shake our heads.

My reality check? I’ve got a 15 and 13 year-old, and the cost vs. premium argument Shirky makes is compelling to me. I know there are amazing schools out there. And I’m not saying that there isn’t still a path that sees my kids going to college. But there is a part of me that wishes these new paths that are just taking root were more established, more clear.

A few weeks ago, my daughter’s friends were shocked that she wasn’t taking the PSATs as a sophomore. She came home one day a bit exasperated, and asked me “What should I tell them?”

I hesitated, and then said “Tell them we’re just keeping our options open." 

"What does THAT mean?’ she asked.

Still working on that answer…

A “Behaviorally Different Species” of Learner

By

Ben Williamson

In the traditional conception of school, the learner was invoked as a docile individual who turned up to school to be instructed in a core canon of curricular content and codes of behavioral conduct. Now, in our digital times, the learner is being reimagined as a more active, interactive, connected and collaborative individual—a behaviorally different species to the normalized learner of mass schooling. The contemporary connected learner travels continually between formal and informal sites of learning, building networks of knowledge through the use of sophisticated software and the real-world application of soft skills, positive attitudinal dispositions, and behavioral competencies. For such a learner, the behavioral competencies of communication, perseverance, interaction, thinking skills, emotional literacy, empathy, problem-solving, and other personal attributes are now increasingly desirable in a world where more jobs will be recruited on soft performance criteria such as relationship management and customer satisfaction.

I’ve been thinking even more about this shift away from formal (traditional) learning to more informal learning within the classroom. Could we at some point give credit (real credit) to a student for the development of those “soft skills” as they manifest themselves within her work to learn something she chooses, not something that we have assigned her to learn? 

Echoes of not valuing the immeasurable…

You a “Tenacious Oddball”?

By

Jaron Lanier:

Roughly speaking, there are two ways to use computers in the classroom. You can have them measure and represent the students and the teachers, or you can have the class build a virtual spaceship. Right now the first way is ubiquitous, but the virtual spaceships are being built only by tenacious oddballs in unusual circumstances. More spaceships, please.

Amen.

Interesting Disclaimer by Common Core Assessors

By

Via John Chase, here’s a snip from PARCC’s recent (October 25, 2012) release on performance level descriptors:

It must be noted that the academic knowledge, skills, and practices defined by the PARCC CCR Determinations in ELA/literacy and mathematics are an essential part of students’ readiness for college and careers, but do not encompass the full range of knowledge, skills, and practices students need for success in postsecondary programs and careers. For example, Conley (2012) includes learning skills and techniques such as persistence, motivation, and time management as critical elements of college and career readiness, along with transition skills and knowledge such as awareness of postsecondary norms and culture and career awareness4. The Association of Career Technical Education (2010) includes employability skills and technical skills, as well as academic skills, as critical components of career readiness5.

A comprehensive determination of college and career readiness that would include additional factors such as these is beyond the scope of the PARCC assessments in ELA/literacy and mathematics. Many states, however, are engaged in identifying these factors and determining ways to support students in strengthening them as part of a broad agenda to increase college graduation rates and career success.

Since these non-academic factors are so important, PARCC College- and Career-Ready Determinations can only provide an estimate of the likelihood that students who earn them have the academic preparation necessary to succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing courses.

Accordingly, the information and process used to identify the scores on PARCC assessments used to make College- and Career-Ready Determinations will be designed to promote confidence in the estimate, realizing that no estimate can be 100 percent accurate. [Emphasis mine.]

I’m not sure if this is good news (they’re admitting that they can’t account for everything kids need to be successful in college and career) or bad news (we’re right back where we stated in terms of states trying to figure it out on their own.)

Either way, part of me wishes the emphasis was “flipped”. 

This Learning Thing Really Isn’t That Complicated

By

Nicholas Negroponte:

Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. “I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch … powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android,” Negroponte said. “Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.”

What if we just got out of the way?

Palliative Care

By

Richard Elmore from Harvard, quoted here:

“I do not believe in the institutional structure of public schooling anymore,” Elmore said, noting that his long-standing work at helping teachers and principals professionalize their practice is “palliative care for a dying institution.” Elmore predicted “a progressive dissociation between learning and schooling…” His comments reflected his concerns that technology, and the networked learning that is emerging in the 21st century, is a key reason for the collapse of institutional schooling, and that nueroscience is revealing how inadequate our schools are for addressing the way children actually learn. “The modal classroom in the modal school [in the United States] is exactly the opposite of what we’re learning about how human beings develop cognitively,” he said.

(Full, unfastforwardable video here. See 1 hour, 20 minutes in.)

Good news. Bad news. For the record, I like Elmore, and I can totally see where he’s coming from, but I don’t think he’s arguing that school is going away. But the institutional structure of school cannot and will not weather the affordances of the Web. 

So, like it appears Elmore’s next book will be about, what now?

Compulsion vs. Commitment

By

Sam Chaltain:

Worse still, programs like RTTT reflect a technocratic insensitivity to the actual rhythms of human beings, and a complete disregard for the necessity of building a shared emotional commitment for the changes we seek (Chicago, anyone?). So whereas attaching a dollar sign to the “recommended” reforms of RTTT was an effective strategy, as was tying each state’s conditional funding under ARRA to its agreement to adopt the common core learning standards, it’s equally true that there are short games and there are long games. And what I loved about The World is Flat was its recognition that to win the long game of the current century, compulsion was fool’s gold; commitment was the gold standard.

Really well said. Read the whole post.

Low Tech Search Lacking in College Grads

By

Interesting findings from a research study by Alison Head at Project Information Literacy titled “How College Graduates Solve Information Problems Once They Join the Workplace (pdf).” In short, the answer is “not very well”:

The basic online search skills new college graduates bring with them are attractive enough to help them get hired. Yet, employers found that once on the job, these educated young workers seemed tethered to their computers. They failed to incorporate more fundamental, low-tech research methods that are as essential as ever in the contemporary workplace.

And:

Most college hires were prone to deliver the quickest answer they could find using a search engine, entering a few keywords, and scanning the first couple of pages of results, employerssaid, even though they needed newcomers to apply patience and persistence when solving information problems in the workplace.

And, finally:

A majority of employers said they were surprised that new hires rarely used any of the more traditional forms of research, such as picking up the phone or thumbing through an annual report for informational nuggets. Instead, they found many college hires—though not all—relied heavily on they found online and many rarely looked beyond their screens.

There’s much, much more in the report, which is worth the read.