Learning Habitats and the Educational Environment

The word habitat is defined as: The natural home or environment of an animal, plant or other organism. Humans put great importance on most of our habitats.  Our homes are designed with furniture and decorations that make us feel comfortable and put us at ease.  When we bring a new baby home from the hospital we have a newly painted room, with kid-friendly wall paper (whatever that is), and special furniture. Our habitat accommodations even extend to animals when we put them in a zoo. I once saw a prairie dog exhibit at a zoo.  They had special grass, decorative driftwood, hollow logs... for prairie dogs... underground rats.  One more example--carnival goldfish.  Even those free fish we reluctantly win at carnivals get a round bowl with rocks at the bottom, fake plants, a castle to swim through, and sometimes we even buy them a friend.  We are all about the habitat.

Consider all of that, and then think about most secondary schools and the classrooms within.  Our elementary years are spent in colorful classrooms with decorations and sometimes a special rug where students can comfortably sit.  As students transition into junior high and high school they typically enter bland walls, desks in rows, maybe some "inspirational" posters about doing your best--an environment more suitable to prison life than student life.  The inside of most classrooms are institutional, stiff, and unwelcoming.

I think we need to create a habitat of learning in our classrooms.  A comfortable, welcoming learning laboratory   Students should sit in groups.  Seating should be comfortable--how creative and engaged would you feel sitting in a school desk all day?  Leading companies like Google have embraced this, how have we ignored it for so long?

Going One-to-One: There Will be Blood

Image Credit

Unless you have a master plan, incredible support, and more luck than a leprechaun at the end of a rainbow, sitting on a pot of gold, up to his ears in four-leafed clovers, going 1:1 can be painful.  There will be blood.  Its going to be bad (at times), but hang in there, it gets better.

Going 1:1 is like jumping on a moving train.  The jolt of inertia immediately puts you behind.  You're not even sure which direction you want to go.  The only thing that helps you progress is to constantly move forward. Rely on your leaders and PLN to help establish a direction, and just keep moving. You have to have grit.  Its the latest buzz word in education, usually applied to students, but teachers need to have grit to go 1:1.

There will be blood, but eventually, as you learn to work with the train and not against it, you will be progressing, growing, and learning at a pace commensurate with the advancements in technology and learning.

You have your local leaders, an ocean of resources on the web, and probably some tech Jedi's that just became superstars in your school in at 1:1 environment. Use them and may the force be with you.

Our 1:1 Story
Beginning
End of Year One
More End of Year One
Beginning of Year Two
Mid Year Two
End of Year Two

15th Century Teaching Model Still Highly Relevant

Recently I visited a school to learn about their BYOD program.  I came away with lots of great insights and ideas.  One of them was a teaching method I had never heard of.  The Ignatian Pedagogical Model is based on the Jesuit St. Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises.  There are 5 basic components: Context, Experience, Reflection, Action, and Evaluation.  Though interpretations seem to vary on how it should properly be implemented, I think the validity of the basic components speak for themselves.

Context
Students must be provided with a reason for learning beyond traditional reasons of, 'state standards require this', 'because it will be on the test', or 'because I said'.  Those might be "context" to a teacher, but they are not context to a student of the 21st Century.  If you don't know or can't explain to your class why they are learning a particular topic, maybe you should look for some real world application or possibly rethink whether this particular topic should be a priority.  Like Daniel Pink says in his most recent book To Sell is Human.  Teachers have to "sell" their curriculum.  If the kids aren't buying what you're offering, you really have no one to blame but yourself.  You can sit back and blame parents or the culture, but that won't change anything and it certainly won't be a valid excuse as to why your students aren't doing well in your class.

Experience
After students have real meaning as to why they are learning something, they need to experience it.  Spoiler Alert: worksheets, web quests, and the like are not a way to experience curriculum.  Students have to be immersed into the field of knowledge with real world activities that produce an authentic product.  The construction of the product they produce should take them through an inquiry-based learning path.  Students should then present their product to an authentic audience.

Reflection
Context and experience should be done sequentially, but reflection should be done throughout the process.  Reflection is such a powerful tool.  Students greatly benefit from metacognition; evaluating their thinking process, finding ways to improve, and just being mindful of their learning habits.  A learning journal shared to the teacher and student would work well. A student blog would be a public platform for students to demonstrate their thinking and learning.  Regardless, a single reflection platform is not enough.  The teacher should have conversations throughout that force students to stretch their thinking and expand their sphere of learning.

Action
The goal of Jesuit education is to move the student into action, not simply the personal satisfaction of learning (source).  To me, in a school setting, this is a flexible component that can be worked into the "Experience" portion.  Once the student has the knowledge, what will they do with it?  Is the product they are making the final use for this knowledge?  Can it be incorporated into future learning? Can students take political action such as writing to their congressman or writing a letter to a newspaper or company? The "Action" component is a great way to exercise the new learning that has taken place and justify the context you provided initially.

Evaluation
As with all things education, assessment is important to get right.  While I don't think there is a "right" way to do this component, there certainly are some wrong ways, such as ending this teaching model with a multiple choice test.  We usually advocate for students to present everything they learn to an authentic audience, a group of students, or one-on-one to the teacher.  Our motto is: you can't hide from a conversation.  The ultimate summative grade should be discussed between you and your student.  No time for that?  An alternative would be to build a rubric as a class before you start your project in the experience phase.  In addition, you can put formative evaluation benchmarks along the way to see how students are doing.  It may be a completion grade for a journal entry or a qualitative grade on the weekly set of journals.  Either way, its nice to work in a few smaller grades into a larger project.

The Ignatian Pedagogical Model doesn't need to be a large project.  You could probably create a one-day lesson using this model.  Its simply a structure.  An apparatus that supports curricular content and instruction.  I like it because it is so simple; the five parts are very easy to understand.   The five parts address educational best practice and allow for great depth, yet they can be flexible and easily addressed.  In addition, I think students would learn to adapt to this method.  They might be critical about the context or curious about the action that follows.  These are both good signs that they are buying what you're selling.  At that point you got 'em, everything else is easy.

Concise Professional Development with Diigo

Education is a busy business.  Ask your teachers to participate in a book study and watch the eyes roll to the sky.  Its not you, its not your book--it a time thing.  Educators feel slammed during the year, but Diigo offers a great solution.  With a Diigo account, you can annotate articles with highlights and sticky notes and share the annotated articles to your colleagues or have them create Diigo accounts and create a group, which makes sharing very simple.

The real beauty of of Diigo is the ability to just grab the most important sentences and paragraphs (using the browser extension), which allows you to share the most important, actionable parts of a given article.  The selected text can be emailed or shared in groups creating a concise, digestible form of professional development for departments, administrators, or the entire staff. Obviously, this tools can be used in the classroom too!

In addition, users can make comments on annotated parts of an article allowing virtual conversations to take place right in the article.  This video (courtesy of Will Richardson) shows user conversations about highlighted areas of an article.  We all need to learn and improve our craft.  Tech tools such as Diigo allow learning and collaboration to fit into our busy schedules by cutting the fat and getting right to the meat.

Remember When we Couldn't Know EVERYTHING?

I'm lucky enough to be a part of the generation that was pre-cell phone and pre-Internet and I like that.   It makes me appreciate the information-rich, communication-saturated world we live in.  I remember a time when four friends were sitting in a car and someone posed a question, 'is it farther to New York or Panama City from Indianapolis'... an no one knew the answer.  AND NO ONE COULD FIND OUT!  We just sat and wondered and continued to... not know.

Those days are gone.  Smartphones, 4G, WiFi, etc. have created an information atmosphere that blankets most of the developed world.  While there has been a lot of ink spilled on this in the last decade, I had a realization the other day.

"There is no excuse for not knowing something."  

It happened when Joey and I were designing the plumbing for some rain barrels.  We don't know anything about plumbing or rain barrels for that matter.  We read research online, watch videos, and looked at pictures--we could probably start a rain barrel consulting firm at this point.

There are some major implications for education in this new world.  Why do we stress memorization in school?  How much school-organized PD training do teachers  really need?  How can schools and libraries stay relevant in a world when all of the collective known knowledge is floating in the ether?

Whether you want to build rain barrels, learn French, or find a better way to teach fractions--all you need is a computer, a connection, and the motivation to explore.  There is no valid excuse for not knowing something that you want/need to know... besides laziness.  It sounds harsh, but its true.  In addition, ubiquitous information also raises the bar both professionally and personally.  We should expect excellence, especially in our professional lives.  The cliche' 'where there is a will, there is a way' has never been more true.  By the way, Panama City is closer to Indianapolis by 48.4 miles.  Thanks Google.

Our Summer Schedule

Last year the Indiana Department of Education provided a grant to 17 schools to host a professional development conference.  This summer has been dubbed the The Summer of eLearning.  As a professional development junkie, I was really excited and proud of my State.  I decided to attend everything within 2 hours drive and take as many teachers from my school as I could. In the end, 25 of our 87 teachers volunteered their time to attend at least one conference, saying loud and clear, 'I want to get better'!  I was pretty proud of my colleagues.

If you want to connect with Education Shift, we will be presenting and/or attending several conferences/workshops this summer:

• Edcamp Indy (Franklin) June 6th (over)
• Knight Time (East Noble) June 12 and 13 (over)
• Southern Wells Workshop (Poneto) June 18 (closed)
• e3 Technology (Warsaw) July 29 and 30 (open)
• eQUIP (Plymouth) July 31 (open)
• The Digital Shift (Lebanon) August 1 and 2 (open)

This was the second year from Edcamp Indy.  Edcamp Fort Wayne was in early May.  Edcamp is an amazing concept that we fully support and hope will continue to gain traction in Indiana.  The Knight-Time conference just wrapped up last week.  It was a great opportunity to learn and connect with other educators.  Richard Byrne and Vicki Davis were the keynote speakers, and the good people at East Noble did a great job organizing their conference.  Southern Wells is a closed Google workshop for their staff.  The remaining conferences promise to be amazing opportunities to learn and connect.  We hope to see you there!  

What is an Expert?

What would you call a professional who did actual field research 36 weeks a year?  They were classically trained for 4-6 years and continue their education to stay current in the field.  They collect quantitative and qualitative data, evaluating singular and large samples sizes.  The record their data and make predictions, which they share with a community of other professionals who combine their findings to refine their theories.  Would you call them a scientist?  Would you call them an expert?  I would call them a teacher.

Unfortunately the de-professionalization of teachers throughout the history of public education has attempted to reduced our role to that of a worker on the assembly line.  More importantly it has reduced our public image and therefore our general influence over change in our own profession.  We are the receivers of educational policy.  We need to be the makers of educational policy.  Aren't we the experts?

De-Professionalizing Teachers

Today in education you may hear people talk about "professionalizing the profession".   It dawned on me recently that the teacher's role in education has been historically moving toward de-professionalization and recent conventions have rendered us nearly obsolete.  The fact that we are discussing how to "professionalize" a profession like teaching is evidence of the erosion of authenticity and specialized skills of the modern concept of what it means to be a teacher.  Several events in the history of education have been key moments that have slowly de-professionalized the teacher.

Teachers were originally professionalized by their content knowledge.  They held special knowledge that was not easily available to their students.  Later, standardized textbooks and teacher editions provided a content crutch.  Teachers could lean on this one resource rather than learn a rich body of authentic, specialized knowledge that was once a premium.  The component of content knowledge was stripped away from the profession.  More recently, the Internet has 'flattened' the world and put the collective knowledge of humanity at any students fingertips.  Teachers are no longer needed to be the 'knower of everything' and 'answerer of questions'.

The required professionalism slipped further when textbook companies started to offer resource packages and curriculum guides.  Another pillar of professionalism began to crumble.  Flash to today where many large school districts create pacing guides to be used among all the teachers of a given class.  A dozen or more 8th grade math teachers teaching the same basic curriculum at the same pace.  While I can understand the concept of a guaranteed curriculum, this reduces teachers to a simple deliverer of a one-size-fits-all 'education'.  Large online classes are are natural extension of this model.  In this type of course the 'teacher' simply needs a general disposition to facilitate the provided curriculum.

All of these developments or what I would label education de-form, rather than reform, have created a completely different role for the once professionalized job of being a teacher.  It has also created low expectations.  You don't need to know too much.  You don't need to be able to create authentic course work.  You really don't need to plan a curriculum.  You simply need to implement.  All of the art has been reduced to a calculated, one-size-fits-all science.  The salary (which began low) followed the decent of professionalism.  This has made recruitment of unique talent a difficult task, but then again it isn't really necessary.  Often, when it comes to hiring, schools are more concerned with filling a role.

I am not a role.  I am not a deliverer of a pre-formed 'education'.  I believe many teachers would reject this description, but we are the sufferers of a system of de-professionalization that has come to dominate mainstream education.  The progression of our education de-form has created a culture of low expectations and reliance.

Despite the sad story I've told, I truly feel the tide is turning, or being turned.  Leaders such as Sir Ken Robinson and Will Richardson are changing the conversation.  School leaders and teachers are listening and the ranks of educators that reject de-professionalization is growing.  I was never really aware of all of this.  I accepted the de-professionalized role when I first became a teacher.  It was only when I got connected to Twitter and reading other educators' blogs that I realized a battle was being waged to change the culture.  A great deal has happened since then and the change is clear.  Will Richardson calls for authentic, personalized, real world learning.  He is keynoting 4 of the 17 major professional development conferences being promoted by the Indiana Department of Education.  His message is not well received by traditionalists, so his mere presence is an exciting sign of change.  

How can we re-professionalize the profession?  I think we start by philosophically rejecting the conventions above--textbooks, pre-made pacing guides, workbooks, etc.  A massive gulf exists between connected and disconnected educators.  Teachers need to be connected--not just to those in our districts, but to greater world of education.  We have to be aware of the efforts to reform and deform education, so we can recognize the difference.  We need more educators, student, and parents talking about real education reform.  Teachers need to exercise their professionalism and promote positive reform--in their classroom and publicly in social media.  This is a numbers game and we need to grow our ranks.  We have to change the conversation.  What are you going to do about it? 

ASCD Final Reflection

Its Monday night and time to wrap things up and reflect on the whole ASCD conference. Prior to the conference I shared my inclination that large expensive conferences might be an obsolete form of professional development. I always think about the scene in Goodwill Hunting where he tells the ponytailed Harvard grad-student that he 'wasted $150,000 on an education he could have got for $1.50 in late charges from the public library'. I think that situation has relevancy to the annual ASCD conference. Our district spent close to $10,000 (from a grant) on this undertaking. How many books could we have purchased? How many hours could we afford to pay our entire staff to collaborate? How many in-house training sessions could we have organized to set up each teacher with a high functioning PLN? Do large conferences like this simply subsidize teachers and administrators that are too lazy to self-direct their own professional development?  

The first half of day one was nearly a total loss partly due to the lack of organization, my mistakes, and poor presentation skills. If WiFi is down for more than 30 minutes someone should be fired. After we went without an Internet connection for half of the first day I was jaded. The long line to "register" was another immediate sign of disorganization.  I should give them more credit I guess.  There was 10,400 people attending over 400 sessions and it went pretty smooth.  I pulled an arrogant, idiot move by leaving during the introduction of the first keynote speaker Freeman Hrobowski because I thought the guy introducing him was Hrobowski--who I knew little about until I read about him that night. The introducer called a hashtag a “pound sign” and my nerd hackles shot up. Shame on me. I heard Hrobowski was fantastic. 

What was not fantastic was being read to in the next session. I call for legislation against reading text from a presentation slide, enforced by corporal punishment executed by the suffering audience. The highpoint of the entire conference luckily occurred at the end of the first day, so I ended on a good note.  Will Richardson’s session From Old School to Bold School was the total package for me. He is a fantastic presenter. His message was challenging and provocative--this is the draw of a national conference for me. I want to be blown away. I don’t want an idea to refine what I’m doing, I want an idea that forces me to completely rethink everything I’m doing. I don't want to spend this kind of money for incremental professional adjustments.

The second day was very similar to the first.  There was very little that I found useful with one saving grace--Maya Angelou. It was a great honor to hear her speak. Mother Angelou is a national treasure; a "rainbow in the clouds" for us all. Most of the garbage sessions (sorry, at this point my professional filter is getting thin) were about Common Core--they were sooooo boring. Mind numbing may be a better description. Common Core is all over the place these days.  ASCD surely wanted to delivery sessions on hot ticket items, but engagement has to be considered.  This isn't the tax code, its education for crying out loud.

Today (day three) I got a late start, possibly due to my overall lack of enthusiasm. I missed an early shuttle and arrived late to the session, which was full. I wanted to wait around and hear Van Jones talk about a green economy and educational opportunities, but we had to meet back at the hotel by 11:00 to check out, so the day was a total loss. 

 
Despite my muckraking negativity I did enjoy the conference overall, and I deeply appreciate being included in the group from my school that was fortunate enough to attend. As I reflect I realize that the real value in this conference were the great speakers/presenters, not the content.  I think a good deal of my sour feelings stem from the fact that I was not a good attendee of ASCD.  I had overly high expectations. I chose sessions poorly and more importantly I’m a self-directed learner with a huge appetite. It sounds arrogant, but I’ve heard many of these ideas before. I’m sure many of the 10,400 attendees experienced amazing growth, but the best idea I heard all weekend came over lunch with my principal, and was completely unrelated to any session (a whole other post).  I probably learned more on Twitter and Google Reader this weekend than I did from my sessions.  Did I just waste $1,000 on an education I could have got for free at home?  In the spirit of Will Richardson's book Why School?, I think I can summarize my feelings with "Why Conference"?

ASCD Reflection Sunday

I’m not sure how to describe today. My first session was about Inquiry-based learning design. Sounds good. Not so much. The room was probably ¾ full when it began. When I left, about 50 minutes in, about half the people remained. There was a pretty steady flow of people exiting the room, I felt bad for the presenter. Maybe her best stuff was yet to come, but I was getting nothing besides a very general description of inquiry learning. Are my expectations too high? Am I picking poor sessions? Am I just a snob?

Maya Angelou is amazing. Plain and simple. She didn’t give a lecture, she told a story and today I really understand the stark difference between the two. She is truly an orator, which I think is a dying art. She is an inspiring speaker and definitely one of the high points of ASCD.  It was a nice gift for St. Patrick's Day. 

Disappointment struck after lunch when I couldn’t get in Common-Core related Performance Assessments. I love performance assessments, but the McCormick staff member stopped me in my tracks and wouldn’t let me enter, lest I break the fire code. I slipped into Using Common Core to Enable 21st Century Learning. BORING. I sincerely apologize. Really. I don’t know if a full belly and late night last night had something to do with it, but this session nearly put me to sleep. There was one really great slide with about 10 good ideas on it, but many of the slides were very wordy rubrics or screenshots of documents with fonts too small to read. The last speaker of the trio had a novel idea: provide the documents to the audience so we can actually read them and have a legitimate takeaway besides the awkward sounds of yawning and the door closing as people walk out. The final speaker of this session focused on problem solving and his handout was actually very useful, but 10 minutes into his speaking he lost my attention.

The last session of the day that I wanted to attend was full and my backup was cancelled so I called it a day. I’m still disappointed in the organization of the conference. They are cancelling sessions without updating the app they provided, or I can’t figure out how to access it. Hopefully Monday will provide some redemption. I also want to apologize for my lack of careful editing as I am trying to put this out as fast as possible.

ASCD Reflection Saturday Afternoon

Redemption and mistakes.  I would first like to apologize for misjudging what I thought was the keynote speaker of the First General Session.  Turns out I walked out during the speaker that introduced the keynote speaker.  I heard Freeman Hrabowski was absolutely EXCELLENT and I missed him because I walked out during the guy who introduced him.  My bad.

My day was totally redeemed by Will Richardson.  His session From Old School to Bold School was so inspiring.  He pointed out that some people attend conferences like this to make their school better and some attend to make their school different.  The difference is significant. Are you simply trying to do the same old things better?  Will explained how school began in a time of information scarcity, but we now live in a environment of information abundance.  What are schools doing differently? What should they be doing differently in an era when every answer is a click away and you don't need to go to school to learn anymore?

Ubiquitous information has allowed individuals to pursue their own interests.  As our society becomes more self organized rather than institutionally organized, so too should our education.  Richardson gave 9 Qualities of a Bold School:

• Learning centered
• Inquiry driven
• Authentic work
• Digital
• Connected
• Literate
• Transparent
• Innovative 
• Provocative

My spirits are lifted and I'm looking forward to Sunday's sessions.  Some of my original feelings are being solidified,  but I want to keep an open mind and give ASCD a change.  More to come.

ASCD Reflection Saturday Morning

Ok, so far off to a bad start. We arrived about 30 minutes early to the massive mini-city McCormick Center and were greeted by a line to register that rivalled an epic rollercoaster line. How can ASCD have such a poor organizational plan that leads to a half-mile line to register? Couldn’t the materials be mailed or registered online? Strike one. After a long walk to my first session I arrived on time, only because I didn’t register. I sat down and asked my friendly neighbor which wireless network we were using, “the wireless is down” she said. I laughed, she was probably joking, so I asked the presenter. He confirmed this unforgivable sin of education technology conferences. No WiF!?! Do they have bathrooms? Really? Strike two (and three?). WiFi was restored by 12:00, but the damage was done.

My first session was Game-Based Learning Design with Andrew Miller (@betamiller). Andrew was a great, high energy presenter with a nice presentation. He took us through the various styles and capabilities of gaming the connection to different learning objectives. My takeaways were the need for more play in education and a few games that might be used in some of my colleague’s classes. I also feel like I have a better understanding of the huge umbrella topic of “gaming in education”. I could have probably learned this from reading Andrew’s work online. We didn’t talk about creating our own games, and I wish we would have discussed gamification more. Andrew mentioned that would be more of a whole day workshop. So far, I’m not impressed with ASCD.

The First General Session was a bust too. After a lengthy address by the president we were introduced to our featured presenter Freeman A. Hrabowski. Although he seemed like a very nice man, I had to walk out when we referred to a hashtag as “pound sign”. I probably should have given him more of a chance, but the first 15 minutes of his speech seemed to be sending me a message that I would be better served at a lunch counter. I also want to mention the Exhibit Floor was a typical disaster of sad faces hocking overpriced technology (such as SMART anything) and content resources that a creative teacher could make on his or her own. Strike Three, I’m out. Hopefully the afternoon will rebound.

ASCD Conference Reflection One

Well I’m on my way to my first major national education conference--the ASCD Annual Conference. I hoped my first national conference would be ISTE, but my school was lucky enough to procure a grant to attend ASCD, so I’ll take what I can get. After reviewing and comparing ASCD to other major education-related organizations, it seems like ASCD has a more traditional focus. The conference boasts over 400 sessions, which was a bit overwhelming at first. Maya Angelou and Sandra Day O’Conner are two of the major speakers, which I think will be exciting.   I’m probably most excited to hear Will Richardson’s session, From Old School to Bold School.   I’m also excited to see a few members of my PLN.  Mark Barnes and Jason Markey each have a session that I plan on attending.

 

At times in my professional career I've felt that these large conferences were similar to an Ivy League education.  For those can afford it, they are great, but the same learning outcomes can be achieved through commitment and a quality PLN using Twitter and reading blogs.  Our school will likely spend $10,000 sending a dozen teachers to this conference, and without the grant it would be out of the question. This does not seem like a sustainable form of professional development (hence the birth of Education Shift!).  Obviously there are smaller state-level conferences such as ICE in Indiana, but they still come with a hefty price tag.  The ASCD conference costs $425 for non-members compared to ICE which is usually over $300.  A great alternative is the Edcamp movement that sprang up a few years ago.  I hav attended Edcamp Indy and Edcamp Chicago, and I plan on attending Edcamp Fort Wayne this May.  My hopes are high for ASCD and I plan on blogging about my experience each day after the conference.  

5 Characteristics of a Change Agent [Amended]

The following blog post is by George Couros.  He writes on his blog The Principal of Change.  Its fantastic and I wanted to share some excerpts of a recent post that really hit home for me.  Its about Change Agents.

5 Characteristics of a Change Agent: "In my work through school and organization visits, I have been fascinated to see the correlation between the speed of change and an individual who is “leading” the charge.  The schools that have someone (or a group of people) helping to push the boundaries of what can be done in schools seem to move a lot quicker with a larger amount of “buy-in” through the process..."
"Below is a list of what I have seen consistently."
1.  Clear Vision – As mentioned above, a “change agent” does not have to be the person in authority, but they do however have to have a clear vision and be able to communicate that clearly with others... It is essential to note that a clear vision does not mean that there is one way to do things...
2. Patient yet persistent – To have sustainable change that is meaningful to people, it is something that they will have to embrace and see importance.  Most people need to experience something before they really understand that, and that is especially true in schools... change agents just help to make sure that people are moving ahead.
3. Asks tough questions – It would be easy for someone to come in and tell you how things should be, but again that is someone else’s solution... Asking questions focusing on, “What is best for kids?”, and helping people come to their own conclusions based on their experience is when you will see people have ownership in what they are doing.  Keep asking questions to help people think, don’t alleviate that by telling them what to do.
4.  Knowledgeable and leads by example – Stephen Covey talked about the notion that leaders have “character and credibility”; they are not just seen as good people but that they are also knowledgeable in what they are speaking about...  If you want to create “change”, you have to not only be able to articulate what that looks like, but show it to others...
5. Strong relationships built on trust – All of the above, means nothing if you do not have solid relationships with the people that you serve.  People will not want to grow if they do not trust the person that is pushing the change...
"...positive change is not reserved to be the responsibility of any position... I can think of many people that I have encountered who have helped pushed their organizations ahead that have no formal “authority” over any individual... some of them do it in spite of their principal or superintendent and often feel that they are in constant conflict..."

I was part of a group of people who brought major changes to my school district.  We implemented a 1 to 1 program in grades 4-12 and are working to change instruction and assessment across the board, while maintaining rigor and expanding opportunities for students.  This would have never happened were it not for the change agents within our school.  The list provided by George Couros is excellent, but I would like to offer a few amendments.

6. Willing to challenge conventional thinking -- Change can never happen unless we have someone who is willing to think outside conventional wisdom.  This goes with 'asking tough questions', but the difference is important.  Traditions must be challenged, routines should be questioned.  Are we doing this, because it is what is best for kids in this day and age or because this is the way we have always done it?  I say question everything.  Often change means glueing a new idea to an old one, but rarely do we evaluate the entire substructure and foundation and consider rebuilding from ground zero.
7. Draws knowledge from a diverse PLN -- I don't know how an agent of change could have the knowledge and inspiration without being plugged into multiple social networks that help them maintain a diverse professional learning network.  A PLN dramatically expands the vistas of possibility.  My list of blogs in Reader, Twitter community, and other smaller communities in other social networks inspire and motivate me daily, e.g., George Couros.
8. Works overtime -- Change agents don't work from 8-3.  They are driven by passion, and that often means they never "stop working".  They reflect on their lessons all day, they think of new class activities at home, they listen to education podcasts when they have time, they participate in Twitter chats, they answer emails until they go to bed, they "talk shop" with teachers and non-teachers, and they read.  They read a lot.  Change never comes easy, and it will never happen during school hours only.

What else can we add it this list?

Are Universities to Blame for Stagnant Teaching Practices?

University scholarship usually lives at the cutting edge of a given field of study.  The latest technology and the newest practices are often developed and promoted at the university level.  After having 3 student teachers in recent years, I would have to argue that several universities in my area are about 10-20 years behind in technology, pedagogy, and assessment.  I want to be clear, I have had excellent, motivated student teachers.  They are not the problem.  In my opinion the problem is the training and expectations of their university.  To support this accusation, I have observed several patterns over the last 2-4 years of accepting student teachers and student practitioners (those doing their shorter practicum).

1. An over reliance on the textbook.  When I tell visiting college students I don't use the textbook, they are often concerned about how to find content for the class and how to organize the class. Universities should prepare student teachers for life without a textbook.  Assume it won't be available.  Its an overpriced, obsolete, static resource designed for a time without Internet access.  Student teachers should be learning how to assemble and digitally curate their own content.  That should be a major component of their content education.  
2. Direct instruction as evidence of good teaching.  When the university comes to evaluate the student teacher, they are explicit about observing direct instruction.  Why is this the observable technique that demonstrates teaching competency?  Should a university really be advocating this so strongly?  Lesson design, disposition, and enthusiasm and far better indicators of effective teaching that out-of-the-gate skill at direct instruction.  
3. Pre-test and post-test is the main way to demonstrate learning.  I have personal experience with this at the Masters level at one of these universities. The only way I could demonstrate student learning was with a pre/post quiz.  Pre/post tests are such a futile joke and an insult to learning.  Its an attempt to find quantitative data from learning.  Learning, much like art can't be quantified, and most attempts to do so create validity problems and unreliable data.  Talk to your students!  Ask them questions!  Record the conversation if you must.  
4. What is a PLN?  Despite my student teachers' fantastic motivation to learn, their university hasn't provided the professional scaffolding of a diverse PLN (professional learning network) beyond myself and the university supervisor.  This should be another cornerstone of their methods courses.  Methods change and grow, but if students don't have people to stimulate and challenge them after their student teaching semester they may stagnate.  
5. Progressive pedagogy is under emphasized.  I have yet to have a student teacher who has any operational knowledge about project-based learning or other progressive student-centered education models.  They are taught (or at least this is what they remember) to use limited direct instruction, but beyond that they don't seem to have lesson structures beyond standing in front of the class.  A few students have found it hard to limit the direct instruction, therefore perpetuating  the same static, unchanging model from the last 100 years.  Why are the universities not the agents of change in education? 
6. Progressive assessment is not even mentioned.  Every student teacher and student practitioner always asks, 'how do students turn things in' in our 1 to 1 school.  They seem to have no idea about any other alternative.  They should be taught and expected to use authentic audiences and performance assessments.  They should be asking how to publish student work.  What are our presentation standards. What software we use for digital student portfolios.  They should have at least heard about oral defense practices (1 on 1 conversations).  Instead, its more of the same traditional assessment measures. 

Most people seem to agree that education is long overdue for a change, but what keeps this traditional monster from starving?  Some say teacher unions, some say standardized test, but I would like to shift at least a little blame to the universities that could easily influence the new generations of teachers they turn out each year to replace the retiring classes.  An infusion of true reformers every year would change education from the ground up.  I realize there are many leading universities such as Stanford, Harvard, and Vanderbilt, but lets be honest, 90% of the teachers who will be replacing the babyboomers are coming from smaller schools, community colleges, and less prominent teacher education programs.  I think its time to hold university teacher's colleges' feet to the fire.  In this last decade of misplaced educational accountability (not reform) universities seemed to have escaped unscathed.  We can't expect true education reform to come from politicians or testing companies (who usually drive "reform"), so we must focus on institutions who are capable and legitimate.

Authentic Assessment and Professional Development

I made the complete switch to authentic assessment two years ago.  Since then, I haven't given a traditional quiz or test for a grade.  My students demonstrate their knowledge and skills by creating authentic projects and presenting them to an authentic audience--other teachers, community members, professionals--when time and personel allow.  Designing the projects and assessments has taken a great deal of time and effort, but my students have definitely reaped rewards of engagement and enthusiasm, as well as opportunities to build their collaboration and communication skills.  This is a tall task for many teachers.  Its hard to know where to begin on a journey to authenticity.  An article I read may supply an answer.

Recently Edutopia published a great article by Bob Lenz of Envision Schools.  Titled How Authentic Assessment Heightens Accountability in our Schools, the article explains how Envision Schools have their students create a public showcase of their work in a museum-style exhibit throughout the school.  Lenz extols authentic assessment, as opposed to traditional assessment, because it publicizes student work and by extension, teacher support.  Teachers feel the pressure of facilitating student growth that will be on public display at least twice each year.  When everything is in plain view, students and teachers both work harder to demonstrate their competencies.  Does this practice help students memorize facts and facilitate higher scores on standardized tests.  Probably not, and I'm Ok with that.  Just as I would not pander to a dictator, I won't indulge an inferior assessment model at the expense of authentic learning.

Another fantastic idea in this article is the idea of "instructional rounds".  Teachers, administrators, schoolboard members, community members, and other stakeholders...

"gather at each school in the Envision network twice a year to help each school investigate a "problem of practice." The school opens all of its classroom doors for observation from the group assembled in the morning. In the afternoon, the group works with the school to move from observations to action -- concrete next steps. Envision Academy asked the question, "How are teachers moving students towards more independent learning?"

This strikes me as a great professional development model.  When we train doctors, we don't stick them in a classroom for six years and then rush them right into surgery.  Doctors are constantly observing and evaluating their peers to learn new practices and hone their skills.  Teachers could learn a great deal from taking guided rounds through the school.  For teachers who want to learn authentic practices, observation is invaluable.  I've sat through several project-bases learning training sessions, but nothing prepares you more than experience.  I would have loved to be a fly on a wall of a few classrooms that were using project-based learning before I actually took the plunge.  The teachers being observed will also work that much harder to ensure their project goes smoothly because they are being authentically assessed by their colleagues.  This could completely change the climate of a school if exercised on a regular basis.

Assessing teachers with a one-time class visit will create a dog-and-pony show.  Using test scores and other quantitative data will encourage teachers to teach to the test.   Regular instructional rounds will create a more authentic assessment of a teacher's classroom.  The added benefit of using this a as supportive teacher observation/professional development process makes this a win, win, win.  A process is often defined by the method of assessment, so too is education.  In the famous words of Will Richardson, "if we don't assess what we value, we will only value what we assess."

A New Year, a New Site

Its a new year!  Its also a new year for Experimenting in Education.  I started this blog one year ago as a way to share what I have been learning in my 1 to 1 classroom.  It became immediately clear that education needed a major shift as we transition into the technology-rich environment of the 21st Century.  In the last 6 months my education consigliere Joey Till has also been blogging here.  He is definitely the most integral member of my PLN.  We both recognized that education needs to shift to the future after decades (centuries?) of stagnation.  We are constantly looking to the future and trying to find innovative ways to shift our classes from traditional classrooms to 21st Century learning laboratories.

We experimented with and had great success with new methods of assessment and pedagogy during the last 2 years.  Last summer we decided to take our ideas on the road and we launched Education Shift Inc.  We hope to share the knowledge we have gained to a wider audience.  We created a website and still maintained this blog.  This year we decided to merge the website and the blog into one, hence the new look.  Very soon this blog will also be found at www.educationshift.net

I would like to give our readers and supporters a profound thank you.  Its a great feeling to put your ideas out for the world to read, but its quite another to have them so well received.  Here's to 2013 being the year that tips the professional scale by reaching a critical mass of educators who agree that we need an Education Shift.

Status of Education in 2012

Technology has pushed education into a transition period on many fronts.  Our tech-based economy, ubiquitous information, the need for 21st Century skills, PLN's and the sharing of best practices, publishing to authentic audiences, and global competitiveness are just a few areas where technology has forced the education industry to question itself.  All of this questioning has led to, potentially, the most revolutionary period in public education's 100+ year history.  As in all revolutions, there are several interested groups pushing and pulling the revolution in the direction they think is best.

Generally, we have progressive education gurus such as Will Richardson, Alan November, and Sir Ken Robinson pushing school teachers and administrators toward a major paradigm shift.  On the other end legislators, politicians, and the high stakes testing industry hold school administrators and teachers accountable to standardized test scores.  The dichotomy of pushing and pulling has left teachers and administrators moving in two directions.  Teacher salaries and administrators jobs now depend on test scores, but we all nod our head in approval of people like Alfie Kohn.  We see the future, but we are still anchored to the past.

Some people feel there are not two different directions.  They would argue that progressive education will/should lead to higher test scores.  This can be argued and legitimized by data, but its new music in old ears.  I think it is safe to say the average teacher or administrator feels like they are being given opposing orders.  Mom says 'stay' and dad says 'go'.  The Google Story Builder video in this blog probably describes the general feeling across many school districts.  The polarized status of education in 2012 needs resolution.  A simple, well-framed resolution.  Opposing sides will need to come together, lest we live in pedagogical limbo, which will result in a low-profile maintenance of the status quo and continue public education's glacial slip into obsolescence.

DIY Education

I haven't cracked open a textbook in 2 years.  When I did use the textbook, I used it sparingly.  The Internet provided me with all of the content I needed to teach my 7th grade social studies class.  I would be willing to bet that ANY class's curriculum requirements could be met with FREE materials from the Internet.  I'd love to take that challenge.

Worksheets?  When I used them, I always used my own worksheets.  I don't even like to say the word. Worksheets are an artifact of an obsolete teaching method, especially in a 1 to 1, digital curriculum.  Engaging projects are easy to build and far more effective.

Most people love a good Do It Yourself project.  Why do we shy away from it in education and rely on stale, static resources (textbooks/worksheets) that everyone agrees are not best practice?  A DIY Education would be authentic, engaging, and cost effective.  A small district like mine can easily spend $90,000 on textbooks and related materials every six years.  EVERY SIX YEARS!  While we are reimbursed for that expense, the money has to come from somewhere.  It would be much better, in many ways, to pay teachers a higher salary and require them to create their own materials.  If teachers simply pass out textbooks, assign questions, grade, and repeat, we should probably be replaced by a computer program.

Redskin Rule got them Talking!!!!!

I either heard this on T.V or I read it on twitter.  The redskin rule is a meaningless interesting stat.  Since 1940 there have been 18 Washington Redskins home football games the weekend before the election.  In either 18 out of 18 or 17 out of 18 (Bush Vs. Kerry, long story) this has rung true.  If Washington wins the home game then the incumbent party wins (Obama) and vice versa is if they lose then a new party takes over (Romney).  I showed this to the kids on Monday and had them vote, not on their personal views (which let's be honest is their parents view understandably), but on their thoughts whether this rule would ring true or finally be busted.     

The kids from the looks of it were split 50/50.  I had a couple of kids tell me today that they were looking forward to watching the election tonight to see which way it goes.  Our Social Studies teacher also let me know that the kids were asking him questions about it and he had a couple conversations on correlation vs. causation.

They are talking.  This means they are interested.  This means they are thinking and talking about......school stuff.  They are talking.  They are interested.  They are having fun.........they are learning.

Photo Credit: [Source] ibankcoin.com/rcblog/files/2012/11/Redskins-Rule.png