Innagication

Recently I have been made aware of “The Hacker Ethic” articulated by Steven Levy in his 1984 book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.

Looking at the ideas made me immediately think of how they applies to my business: education.
1. Access to computers – and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works – should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On imperative!

This is what the one-to-one trend is based on isn’t it?  Chris Lehman at SLA in Philadelphia often talks about how technology should be ubiquitous and invisible: Everyone should have it and use it but not think about it.

2. All information should be free.

Wow, I wish!  Wouldn’t that make teaching so much easier?  This is a big one to me and why I am a big Open Source/GNU fan.  The budgets in education get spread soooo thin that we need to be spending money on people, hardware and facilities, not software and information.

3. Mistrust authority – promote decentralization.

I read this as, “Question what you are being taught kids! If it is true and valuable, it will stand up to your distrust and you will not only learn it, but believe it.  If not, you shouldn’t need to.”

4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.

…Just like students should be judged by what they know and can do with their knowledge, not necessarily by standardized test scores.  Did someone say MYP?

5. You can create art and beauty on a computer.

Just like this blog post.

6. Computers can change your life for the better.

Since computing became part of education through email, digital grade books and other record keeping, word processing, spreadsheet manipulation, etc. It has become a much more efficient institution.  As we move into using computers for content  management and more, we will continue to evolve for the better.  The more we integrate technology, the better.

This has been rolling around in my head for years. I used to go on at length about it in staff rooms right around TAKS testing time when I taught in Texas. I was a service industry manager before I started teaching.  I was successful.  I ran several stores and restaurants very well and used very little math to do so.  Actually, I used quite a bit of math but not a wide variety.  I would make schedules based on projected revenue and order inventory based on current stock and projected foot traffic.  When I became a math teacher, I had to teach students how to solve quadratic equations with imaginary roots, factor polynomials, and find inverse matrices by hand. I would say to my colleagues, “I’m having the hardest time teaching these kids how to  ______, and they are never going to need it!” Recently, four things happened that brought these ideas to the forefront of my mind.

1. I had to document my curriculum.
   Prompted by an MYP evaluation visit from the IBO, my school embarked on a journey to develop and document all of our curriculum. This included documenting the vertical articulation of the math curriculum. As we are an IB World School, the IB Math SL course was our endgame. We took a long, hard look at what we were teaching our 6-10 grade students and, as a team of professionals, outlined a map for all of the concepts. Truth be told, we’re not quite done, but we’re close. We also began formalizing our unit plans, including MYP Area of Interaction and “Big Picture” unit questions. The frustrating part was that we came across a handful (more?) of concepts that were superfluous and/or disjoint from ‘The Real World’. That is, finding or creating learning activities that tied into ‘big ideas’ as well taught the skills necessary to be successful on the IB exams has been a challenge at times.
2. A colleague sent me a link to this blog post.
   In it, the author documents her revelation to only teach math in ways that are compelling to students.  She references using numbers that are related to public service and tied directly to the real world.  I was inspired and frustrated by the post.  Truthfully, my initial reaction was to click the About link, find that she taught grades 4 & 5 and dismiss the whole thing with, “Oh, she teaches elementary.”  After a fashion, I had another think on it and decided that it applied to my grades, too.  But there again was the question, “Can I do it for all of the math or just the really fun stuff (not necessarily factoring a quadratic expression or other mundane skills the kids need)?”
3. I watched this TED talk on starting a movement.
   The talk is great, you should watch it.  In it, Derek Sivers boils down the first phases of a movement: Lone Nut, First Follower, Three’s a Crowd, More-and-More, The Tipping Point-A Movement.  I have given the phases my own labels based on Sivers’ words.  I was inspired; I still am.  I thought about what movements I could start or join early enough to be considered as part of what Sivers calls ‘the in crowd’.  Nothing really came to mind.
4. Chris Lehmann posted this ‘Radical Notion’.
   The notion, as it relates to my revelation, is that non-math teachers should write math standards. After walking through his logic, he says,

   I want to know what math the CEO of NBC uses every day. I want to know what math a state senator uses.

   And I found my movement!

It all comes together to make perfect sense:

1. People who are successful, but not mathematicians, write the standards.
2. Diploma granting entities, such as states, provinces or the IBO rewrite the exams to test for competency relating to the new standards.
3. Professional teachers write the curriculum to support the new standards and connect the math to relevant, non-contrived situations.  Thus, creating compelling problems to solve and developing deep understanding.

I’m with Chris, dancing like a fool (you have to watch the TED talk), who’s with me?

A big shout-out to The Dalian Maple Leaf School!

I did a whirlwind 24 hour fly-in-to-fly-out-of Dalian in the Liaoning province to facilitate a workshop on the TI-84+ calculator.  It was an amazing 4 hours in which I learned from the participants and truly hope that they learned from me.  I think I first started to get the vibe that it was going well when I offered a break for a second time and was told, “No, we’re good; you can keep going.”  I was having so much fun that I never took a break, though I encouraged those that needed or want to to come and go as they so desired.  There were some that not only never left, but came and chatted with me at the end (which, I think caused some stress to the workshop organizer, who was trying to get me to start moving toward the airport – oops).  I have often heard that teachers can be the worst students.  This particular group of teachers make that extremely hard to believe.  They were engaged, fueling the discussion with their ideas and questions and awesomely collaborative, helping each other here-and-there.

It all really supported something I already knew: It is easy to get excited about personal technology.  It is not only fun to play with and explore and discover, but the fact that it is personal means that it is up to the learner how to go about doing so.

The personal graphing calculator (AKA graphic display calculator or GDC) in math was the original kid on the one-to-one block.  It has all of those cool benefits mentioned above about personal technology in general, not to mention it is tactile, tapping another part of the brain.  I know one has to touch a laptop as well, but the GDC is held in the hands – its different.  If you are a math teacher and just use it for routine calculations and graphing, your students are missing out.  TI has loads of learning activities on their activities exchange that exploit their calculators as a tool to explore.

I’m reminded that laptop/web-based tools are not the be-all-end-all when it comes to using technology in the classroom and just because your school isn’t a one-to-one laptop school doesn’t mean that you can’t embrace technology and integrate in to your teaching-and-learning.  It has a way of capturing an audience and encouraging the mind to do so very much.

On birthdays and Christmas growing up, it didn’t take me long to figure out the coolest of the features of new toys…we can incite the same ‘gotta figure it out’ emotion when we use any technology in the classroom – not just math and not just laptops and calculators.

So I’ve been doing a bit more leisure reading as I am on holiday and I’ve come across a few things that I want to write about. First I read in The Economist that NASA’s plan to return to the moon has been scrapped in the new budget.  This disappoints me.  I think, and I am no economist, that this is the type of program that should be nurtured, not trashed, to revive the economy.  Not only does it create jobs, but it has the domino effect of inspiring this generation of learners to pursue engineering and other sciences, which will then stimulate the education industry as well as, most probably, lead to new innovations that could better society (think microwave ovens and Velcro).  True, NASA isn’t shut down, it is just refocused to more attainable goals.  Maybe it is the Sci-Fi buff in me that really likes the big dream….it inspires me.  I have worked with High School Aerospace Scholars in the past and am curious how this impacts that program, as it was centered on the long-term mission to Mars.

Secondly, I read in Wired (UK), about sports performance indicator (SPI) monitors, gesture interfaces and personalized advertising and immediately thought of some cool ways these could impact education.  SPI monitors combine GPS, heart rate monitor, digital compass, gyroscope and accelerometer in one device about the size of a deck of cards.  The math teacher in me gets excited about all of the real-world data collection that could be done and used to develop some really cool models (mathematical, that is).  This type of data collecting is not new: Texas Instruments and Vernier have been designing devices for years now to get data into student’s hands, but the size, and in turn manageability, of this device excites me.  The piece on gesture interfaces and personalized advertising focused on Schematic, a design company in London and LA.  From the two paragraph blurb, I gather that the research interface used by Tom Cruise and the personal recognition and subsequent recommendations by advertising displays in Minority Report are almost a reality.  Why do I think it is so cool for education?  What if teachers could model inquiry and research skills for students by grabbing, modifying, and twisting ‘ideas’ at a giant display board?  Forget PowerPoint presentations, ‘lecture’ content would be created on-the-spot and influenced by the class discussion.  Regarding the personalized advertising, student ID badges are already being chipped with RFID tags, what if personalized daily announcements could be delivered on the bus ride to school as soon as a student sat down in a seat (I’m picturing in seat displays like on airplanes), or school libraries start making recommendations via walk-up kiosks?  I’m sure there are more (and more refined) possibilities, but I’m seeing school for The Jetsons.

This was sent to me recently via one of those ‘FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:’ emails.

Back in September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock, did something not to be  forgotten. On the first day of school, with the permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, she removed all of the desks out of her classroom.

When the  first period kids entered the room they discovered that there were  no desks.

‘Ms. Cothren, where’re our desks?’

She  replied, ‘You can’t have a desk until you tell me how you earn the  right to sit at a desk.’

They thought, ‘Well, maybe it’s our  grades.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Maybe it’s our behavior.’

She told them, ‘No, it’s not even your behavior.’

And so, they came and went, the first period, second period,  third period. Still no desks in the classroom.

By early  afternoon television news crews had started gathering in  Ms.Cothren’s classroom to report about this crazy teacher who had  taken all the desks out of her room.

The final period of the  day came and as the puzzled students found seats on the floor of the  deskless classroom, Martha Cothren said, ‘Throughout the day no one  has been able to tell me just what he/she has done to earn the right  to sit at the desks that are ordinarily found in this classroom. Now  I am going to tell you.’

At this point, Martha Cothren went  over to the door of her classroom and opened it.

Twenty-seven (27) U.S. Veterans, all in uniforms, walked  into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. The Vets began  placing the school desks in rows, and then they would walk over and  stand alongside the wall. By the time the last soldier had set the  final desk in place those kids started to understand, perhaps for  the first time in their lives, just how the right to sit at those  desks had been earned..

Martha said, ‘You didn’t earn the  right to sit at these desks. These heroes did it for you. They  placed the desks here for you. Now, it’s up to you to sit in them.  It is your responsibility to learn, to be good students, to be good  citizens. They paid the price so that you could have the freedom to  get an education. Don’t ever forget it.’

By the way, this is  a true story.

Please  consider passing this along so others won’t forget that the freedoms  we have in this great country were earned by U. S. Veterans.

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OK, so I get it.  I get that students of today’s American high schools need to be reminded that their education shouldn’t be squandered.  But seriously, kids in countries all over the world receive an education…not just in the States.  Forget countries like China and Cuba that aren’t “free” for a minute.  What about Canada or France?  Or even in the UK, that ‘oppressive’ country which the USA fought for freedom?  Students don’t have a right to learn in those countries?  Seriously?  This woman taught Social Studies?  I did a bit of Google-ing and found that, specifically, the class she taught was Military History.  I am guilty of trying to get my students’ attention with grand, flashy demonstrations, but we all should be careful to teach truth, not propaganda.

My grandfather died in WWII.  I never knew him.  My mom finished growing up without her father, which I’m sure has had an impact on me.  My father served in the Navy, as well.  I don’t take Veterans for granted.  I just don’t think that this particular demonstration does our students any service.  This type of domestic-focused propaganda is what sent my son home during his grade 1 year to announce that the United States of America is the only free country in the world.  This was not amusing to my Canadian wife.  At the same time that teachers are teaching national pride, they are teaching ignorance.

Let’s play pretend for a moment: If we didn’t have armed forces in WWII and we were invaded and taken over by the Axis, we, like our contemporaries in Italy, Germany and Japan would have received education in Math, Science, literature, physical fitness/health, and even social studies.  Granted the literature studied would have probably been different, as well as the significant concepts in the social studies classroom, but we Americans would have received an education.  According to the OECD’s  Education at a Glance 2009 maybe a better one.

So, how did the veterans in Ms. Cothren’s demonstration earn the right for those students to learn?

Education is not a right, it is a responsibility.  It is mandated that school-aged children attend school of some sort in every state.

We are teachers, not propagandists.

Awhile back, I read an article by Steve Reinhart in an NCTM journal, “Never Say Anything an Kid Can Say.” In it, Reihart states, “When I was in front of the class demonstrating and explaining, I was learning a great deal, but many of my students were not! Eventually, I concluded that if my students were to ever really learn mathematics, they would have to do the explaining, and I the listening. . . .”  It is a great article, definitely worth a read, even if you are not a math teacher. In the years since, I have tried to incorporate Reinhart’s ideas in my teaching practices and, at risk of sounding arrogant, have been relatively successful.  Thanks to Kathleen Hart-Abel for making me read it.

I now teach at an international school in China where my students and I do not share a mother-tongue. When we go home and speak to our families, we aren’t all speaking the same language.  Taking me out of the mix, the students don’t all share a mother-tongue either, as they hail from Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Switzerland and France (these are in addition to those from countries that either speak the Queen’s English, American English, or something in between).

Among the classes I teach is MYP Math 4 (Grade 9 integrated math).  Two of the MYP grading criteria are communication and reflection.  This particular year, I have some VERY bright budding mathematicians.  However, as many us do, they struggle with communicating their ideas and reflecting about their work.  Much of this has to do with the fact that they are expected to communicate and reflect in English (the designated language of instruction at our school). Yesterday in class we had this great moment that came from my belief in Reinhart’s ideas.  One of my students who solved a particularly difficult problem volunteered to share her solution with the class.  I have found that chocolate is quite the volunteer motivator.  She copied her work from her notebook on to the board and stood, as is practice in our class, waiting for questions.  And they came!  All of a sudden, we hit a wall.  She couldn’t explain in English. She obviously understood and her solution was beautifully laid out, but she couldn’t explain.  I was sitting there in the class wrestling with the decision to stand up and take over, let her pass the task to a classmate, or make her tough it out.  As is often the case, the solution found me: another student asked me, “Can I ask in [my language]?”  At first I was confused, because the student explaining wasn’t from the other’s home country, but after it was revealed that the explaining student was fluent in two non-English languages, I went for it.

Wow, it was great!  She explained it in both of her non-English languages and there was this “Ah-Ha! moment” throughout the class.  Then the kids that still were confused got an explanation from yet another (bilingual) student who was among the most confused at the beginning of the whole ordeal.  In the end, the “Never Say Anything…” principle held strong.  Just because the kids may not be explaining to me (as none of this occurred in English or Spanish, my two languages of comprehension), they are still getting the experiences of reflection and communication necessary to cement the concepts in their brains.

Before I moved overseas, I had a great garage. Besides housing my Jeep Wrangler that I miss more than words can convey, I had more tools than you could shake a stick at (please pardon the poor grammar for the sake of the colloquialism). What was really great about all of those tools was that when I had a task which I wanted to accomplish (i.e. fix something I broke) I often had just the right tool for the job. This was great because it made the job really easy. Well, in theory, at least. Many of the jobs could have been done with the not-quite-perfect tool, but it was so much easier to get it done with just the right tool. This had one caveat: Much to my wife’s chagrin, my tool collection grew, and grew…and grew. On the one hand, it gave me lots of options. On the other hand, it could become quite the storage and organizational problem. I find that I have a similar situation with technology tools, both inside and outside of the classroom. I have more and more tools, to the point that I sometimes forget what tools I have. It is not uncommon that I am only reminded of a tool that I have after I am faced with a particular problem. This has led me to two realizations.

One, a catalog for the tools is a good idea. Funny enough, a few tools to do this come to mind. For web-based tools or those that have a web-presence (i.e. a software publisher’s website) a social bookmarking utility like delicious.com would be good. For hardware, a well organized cabinet might be nice.

My second epiphany is that going to conferences and ‘collecting tools’ is a good practice, but unless I at least use the tool once before putting it in my mental tool cabinet, I will probably forget about it before I actually get a chance to use it or, more importantly, recommending it to a colleague. This of course follows the metaphor, as anyone who collects tools probably also participates in the age-old practice of loaning them to friends. This brings a new idea to the table: If you don’t feel like you have many tools, or are not sure you have the best tool for the job at hand, you can ‘barrow’ someone else’s tool by searching their delicious bookmarks or soliciting help from your PLN via Ning, Facebook or Twitter.

I miss my garage, but just as I used to go to Home Depot and browse for new tools to find my Zen, I now catch up on my Google Reader and hit my Nings.

After too long of a hiatus from the blogosphere I am back. My last go at this wasn’t much more than an electronic play on the weekly parent newsletter. I have recently felt convicted to reflect more on my teaching practice so here I am…

More to come later…I hope.