Tag: school

Lucky Iron Fish and Dynamic Equilibrium
Culture is defined as the beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a social group. These attributes are agreed upon and shared by that social group. There are five key tenets of culture:
1. Culture is learned
2. Culture is shared
3. Culture is based on symbols
4. Culture is integrated
5. Culture is dynamic
Understanding culture is paramount in leading positive change. Take for example the story of the Lucky Iron Fish:

In 2008, a Masters student travelled to Cambodia for a research project. While there, he was shocked at the high rates of iron deficiency anemia and anemia in the region. He decided to dedicate his future research to developing a safe, and affordable solution.

The student was Christopher Charles, now Dr. Charles. He was inspired by previous research which showed that cooking in a cast iron pot increased the iron content in food. He developed an iron ingot that could be boiled in soups or drinking water. But not everyone was ready to throw a block of iron into their drinking water. It was clear that Dr. Charles had to better understand the culture in which he was working.

After doing more research on the culture, he realized what he needed to do in order to persuade people to use the ingot, Dr. Charles cast the ingot into the shape of a fish that was considered to be lucky in Cambodian folklore. As explained in his thesis “the concept of a lucky iron fish design did not pander to superstition”, but created a cultural relevance for a solution based on science. To make the fish more attractive to the users, he gave the fish a smile. He called this prototype the ‘Happy Fish’. He went on to show that almost everyone used the fish and results from his research showed that regular use of the Happy Fish decreased anemia by 46%. In 2013, his thesis Happy Fish: A Novel Supplementation Technique to Prevent Iron Deficiency Anemia in Women in Rural Cambodia was published. (1,2)

To promote a positive culture that is ready to change we must work to create a dynamic equilibrium with dialogue and shared understanding driving our decisions. Dynamic equilibrium is when a culture accepts change and is able to adapt. This occurs when the rate of change in culture is at a rate that is related to the culture’s ability to cope with it. The ability to cope is not fixed. We can change it for the positive or the negative. With purposeful intent and action, we can grow our togetherness, become more resilient to change, and be more capable of accepting change as a constant. In other words, we can promote a real culture of innovation and start a positive culture shift.

If you liked the Lucky Iron Fish Story, you will LOVE the Ax Story found in Chapter 5 of WanderlustEDU: An Educator’s Guide to Innovation, Change, and Adventure.

Sources:
1. “A Randomized Control Trial Using a Fish-Shaped Iron Ingot for the Amelioration of Iron Deficiency Anemia in Rural Cambodian Women” https://www.longdom.org/open-access/a-randomized-control-trial-using-a-fishshaped-iron-ingot-for-the-amelioration-of-iron-deficiency-anemia-in-rural-cambodian-women-2329-9088-1000195.pdf Accessed 12 Sep. 2019.
2. “Why an iron fish can make you stronger – BBC News.” 17 May. 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/health-32749629. Accessed 6 Sep. 2019.
September 12, 2019
Who are you? #WanderlustEDU #edtech #teacher #change

Sounds like the makings of a 70’s rock song…

Well, who are you? (who are you? who, who, who, who?)
I really wanna know (who are you? who, who, who, who?)
Tell me, who are you? (who are you? who, who, who, who?)
‘Cause I really wanna know (who are you? who, who, who, who?)

…but I digress.

You can take a personality test, a learning style inventory, or even a which-character-are-you quiz, but I would argue the power of meaningful self-perception. Perhaps a better title for this post would be “Who do you think you are?” It is extremely important that we recognize our strengths and weaknesses in our professional practice, such recognition can lead to real, positive growth. While you may take up the role of champion as a general way of perceiving your fit within your school system, we may find ourselves identifying with one adopter category or another when discussing emergent technology. We call these categories: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards. Adopter categories can be illustrated on a bell curve on the basis of innovativeness.

If you were to identify yourself as an adopter of innovation, where do you think you would fit in?

Image originally illustrated in Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations. New York: Free Press.

Make a mental note about what you think your “adopter category” is.

Now let’s try one of those tests. Think about your overall approach to innovation or change, compare all five words in each row and rank the words from 1 to 5.

1 = not me at all
2 = not very much like me
3 = sometimes like me
4 = often like me
5 = most like me

You may want to do this on a piece of paper and list out A – DD. Then tabulate your responses in the “TOTALS” row… and keep reading for the interpretation of your results.

Now that you have gone through this check the results here.

Understanding who you are in the change process is important. More about each of the categories and understanding people involved in change can be found here… better yet check out Chapter 3: Who Are You? in WanderlustEDU: An Educator’s Guide to Innovation, Change, and Adventure.

Let’s Do This!

August 27, 2019

Understanding School Culture

“The productivity of a work group seems to depend on how the group members see their own goals in relation to the goals of the organization.”

– Ken Blanchard

Schools are a funny thing. No really. Have you ever stood in front of a class of students and thought, “I am glad they do not realize that there are way more of them than me” or “Oh no, I’ve lost control, what do I do now?” I have found it is best to keep these as inside-thoughts. Where else do you have a small authoritarian rulership (administrators and teachers) oversee a body of free people (students) with little to no voice in decisions, who vastly outnumbered their oppressive rulers, yet we find relatively few uprisings? Sounds like the making of a dystopian young adult novel… super meta.

In education, we plan very hard to organize and arrange our careers, content, and clientele into a predictable structure of choices and consequences. Our preloaded, university-education-based decisions are not always very realistic. Our best-laid plans do not always work out. The Teacher Experience (TX) we gain on our journey prepare us more than almost anything else. A map of our journey that clearly lays out all possible outcomes for classrooms and schools, frankly, does not exist. The teacher journey better reflects a “Choose Your Own Adventure Story” where we keep trying for the best outcome.

We have learned to organize our schools and our school days to maximize learning potential in the most effective and efficient ways possible… or at least that’s what we tell ourselves. The way we think about schools in terms of a hierarchy can, of course, support certain levels of efficiency, but it is important that we do not allow this structure to define us and box us in declaring “That’s the way we’ve always done it.” Our most basic school organizational structures we have reporting lines that operate with certain levels of interaction between school administrators, teachers, students, parents, and our communities.

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These interactions, particularly the lateral ones do little to support or encourage interdisciplinary instruction and therefore support one of the greatest detriment of modern education, silos. Silos, or cross-content barriers, illustrate industrial revolution thinking around preparing an individual for a certain task in a certain place. Think of a traditional assembly line where a worker adds one single widget to one machine, they do this as they have been trained to with no real comprehension of all of the moving parts. This training and preparation for tasks can be seen in the lack of interdisciplinary instruction we often see.

Conway’s Law

According to Conway’s Law, the lines by which we explain our interactions with each other can tell us about ourselves (2). An organizational system built on sharing and collaboration will look very different than that of which fosters a competitive atmosphere. Take for example this satirical look at Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google.

(3)

Would a review of our school hierarchical structures match conversations with teachers and administrators over the same communication structure? Would we be Google or Apple… or Microsoft? Would we see instructional silos which limit our collaboration? Would an exploration of our school building schedules reveal an even worse case of ubiquitous isolation? If so, we have just identified a barrier in growing a culture of innovativeness, we have to spend time with each other to develop and establish our shared cultural norms, our shared beliefs about school.

The Activity System

In education, we develop school-wide vision statements that explain our educational focus and mission statements (which explain how we are going to get there). The process of developing these should take into account all the activity that goes on in our schools and communities. While accurately reflecting who we are. The word “activity” represents a cultural phenomenon (4) which is unique to each school context. We cannot automatically generalize our context-specific activities to other settings when we discuss school culture we want to be as specific as possible about what “school” we are talking about. Analysis of a school building will yield a more intimate result than of a school district. Therefore, we must first decide on the school to be explored.

With our specific school in mind, we need to understand how all the actual moving parts are connected we call this an Activity System. Our understanding of the Activity System can go a long way in increasing our understanding of how our school cultures work and more importantly how to help us toward innovativeness. The Activity System illustrates how we engage in achieving organizational goals (school vision). The system points out that we must seek to describe the subject(s), object, outcome, tools, community, rules, and division of labor and how they are interconnected, in order to understand the full picture of our school culture at work. This provides us with a critical lens, a context-template, to investigate the unique activity of innovation adoption within our school culture. In short, we can better understand our rich journey by exploring it with this magnifying glass called the Activity System (5).

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The many moving parts each dynamically contributing to the school vision (GOAL) we hope to achieve. In the case of this book, the quest for innovativeness, let us frame the “vision” as a school culture that embraces innovativeness. To making full use (and sense) of the Activity System we must then describe the various components involved (see School Culture Analysis Chart).

Here’s how to think about all the components:

Goals – are the vision statement which explains your school’s focus to embrace innovativeness.
Community – comprises people that share in the same general mission. They consist of people that share a set of social meanings relevant to their context.
Object – for our quest for innovativeness discussion, is TPACK, a mission for a school to embrace innovativeness. TPACK illustrates that the teacher experience (TX) is dynamically formed and reformed by the interconnectedness of content, pedagogy, and technology.
Rules – refer to the regulations, norms, and conventions that constrain actions and interactions within the activity system. Economically speaking, these are the financial opportunities and limitations that inform a school’s activity process.
Division of labor – refers to the work requirements to be fulfilled by the subjects. The functionality of a school’s hierarchical structure is a school’s own cultural phenomenon.
Tools – can be methods employed and/or the devices (technology) used by the subjects toward fulfilling their work requirements. We not only use tools, we also continuously renew and develop them, whether consciously or not, further we not only obey the rules, we also mold and reformulate them while we work. The tools are as dynamic a part as any to the Activity System.
Subject – describe Faculty and Staff as Adopters (Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, Laggards), literally we need to list who fits within these categories when framing our understanding around innovation.

Thinking through the components of the Activity System (1,5) (before moving forward) can help us to frame powerful insights into our school culture. Recreate and complete the School Culture Analysis Chart before moving on:

School Culture Analysis Chart

Goal	Vision – What will be produced?	Innovativeness
Community	How would you describe your school community? Locally? Regionally? How are they connected?	Building(s) – District – Region – Organizational Hierarchy –
Object	What types of interventions might work to help create a culture of innovation?	TPACK
Rules	Content area requirements? Diploma fulfillment requirements? Financial opportunities and barriers to adopting emerging technology? Technology deployment strategy?
Division of Labor	How does your school’s organizational hierarchy look? (Who are people accountable to?)
Tools	What technology-based solutions are available? (hardware and software) What learning environments are available?	Devices (hardware) Apps/Extensions (software) Open Rooms/Flexible Spaces
Subjects	Who are the people in your school?	Innovators – Early Adopters – Early Majority – Late Majority – Laggards –

Once you identify the different components of your school culture, it is time to dive into what is going on. Perhaps the most important piece to this cultural analysis puzzle is how each part interacts. The arrowed-lines that connect each of the components are meant to force us to investigate more than just who or what is in place. Looking at the lines, ask yourself the following (4,6):

Does the Community actually inform Tool adoption and expectations?
Do Subjects have the ability to take risks and try new things or are they confined to their job as described in the Division of Labor? What are the approval channels for Faculty and Staff to innovate?
Can Subjects inform the adoption of specific Tools? How?
Do the Rules and Community allow/want Subjects to adopt emergent technology?
Do the actual activities of Adopters match up with the Division of Labor? Are their reporting gaps?
Tools change over time… What funding is in place to support this? What funding can be pursued?
Who has a voice in the decision-making process?
- Parents?
- Teachers?
- Students?
- Administrators?
- School Board?
- The Workforce?
Whose voice is not heard?

Contradictions

We then can summarize our school culture in terms of how are we achieving TPACK as individuals and as a school culture. We must also discuss the contradictions between how we defined the components and how they actually work. Do not regret having contradictions, they are very important to the innovation adoption process. Contradictions are the moving force, the disruption necessary, for the change and development of the system (1). As the contradictions come to the surface, we can expect, some of our Adopters to begin to question and deviate from our established norms5 which is just the change we often need. Contradictions can escalate into collaboration and a deliberate collective change effort (5).

The Activity System illustrates how the multiple variables in our schools are involved in the success or failures of our Vision. The Activity System provides a critical lens to investigate the activity of innovation adoption within an organization. The Activity Aystem reports on our living/breathing school culture as best it can, as a snapshot in time. School is not stagnant, not totally predictable. Reiteration, Reformation, and Redefining are tenants to design and development of school cultures embracing innovativeness (4). As educators if everything went as planned, every time, we would likely question what we did wrong or what we missed. But the discussion around the activity at our school centers on an in-the-moment analysis. A more clear understanding of where we have been and where we are going can be found by exploring the process on which we embark on this epic disruptive saga.

Image Credit: Chris Stein, a superstar Teacher, and illustrator Extraordinaire!

Source Notes (in order of use)

Engeström, Y. (1996). Developmental studies of work as a testbench of activity theory: The case of primary care medical practice. In S. Chaiklin & S. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice: Perspectives on activity and context (First., pp. 64–103). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Amrit, Chintan, Jos Hillegersberg, and Kuldeep Kumar. “A social network perspective of Conway’s law.” Proceedings of the CSCW Workshop on Social Networks, Chicago, IL, USA. 2004. https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/iebis/staff/amrit/SocialNetworksConwaysLaw_latest.pdf
Cornet, M. (A reimagined illustration based on the work of Manu Cornet). Featured in the New York Times, Business Day section July 12, 2013.
Jonassen, D. H., & Rohrer-Murphy, L. (1999). Activity Theory as a Framework for Designing Constructivist Learning Environments. Education Technology Research and Development, 47(I), 61–79.
Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive Learning at Work: Toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work, 14(1), 133–156. doi:10.1080/13639080020028747.
Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by Expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit. Retrieved from http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Paper/Engestrom/Learning-by-Expanding.pdf

November 8, 2018

Helping Others Along – Motivation Theory and the SAMR Model
“We awaken in others the same attitude of mind

we hold toward them.”

Elbert Hubbard

As a second year teacher, I remember being very excited about leading my students to participate in a project-based learning activity. With great enthusiasm, I ran down the hall to see a teacher, much my senior, that I greatly respected and I wanted to share with him how excited I was. I was a bit taken aback and confused how negatively it was received. I soon realized that sometimes the things that we do with our students when they are a little out of the box can be perceived negatively by our colleagues. I realized that while enthusiasm can be infectious it is not by default, attractive to others.

As innovators and early adopters of emerging technology we often find ourselves in the situation to help our colleagues. How do we best help them to understand the value of new technology and how it might benefit their students lives (rather than how might it help my fit into their classroom). How do we ask colleagues to adopt technology and help them to adapt the technology without putting our hands on their keyboard or their mouse and doing it for them. It’s important to adopt the sage wisdom of the old proverb: “If you fish for a man he will eat for a day, but if you teach a man to fish he’ll eat for the rest of his life.” This mantra in education particularly in adopting emerging technology is incredibly important. It is important that we help our colleagues to understand the value of the technology and how the technology can be used. This is best achieved through vicarious experience, guide-on-the-side coaching, and the right frame of thinking. We cannot approach supporting our colleagues with a mindset that says “Ugh. They are doing it wrong!” perhaps followed by “AGAIN!” We must do our best to understand the context in which our colleagues operate, what motivates them to teach, and how we might serve them best.

While we may be leading the adoption of innovation, we must take on the role of a guide, explaining to our colleagues where we are going, why we are going there, and what we hope to see when we arrive. It is easy for us to think “Save time, see things my way!” But this will not foster an innovative school culture. At times an innovator will have difficulty persuading those they know, after all an innovator is not without honor except within his home.

Innovation is an amplifier, it will amplify the good and bad of our teaching practice. Subconsciously, most of us recognize this amplification, which contributes to our fear over technology adoption. As champions we must learn to put ourselves in the shoes of a late adopter or laggard, then try to help them along. Empathetic understanding and leveraging real, meaningful relationships can not only promote adoption of innovation but can inspire for positive change.

The constant for all teachers is students and their learning needs. All teachers hope that they can make a difference is what can contribute to their decision to continue teaching.1 One researcher quoted a beginning teacher, as saying, “I’ll need a sense of success, not unqualified constant success, because I know that’s completely unrealistic. But, overall, you know, on average, that I’m making a difference for kids and that they’re learning from me.”1 The teacher’s desire to feel successful with his students was echoed by many of the teachers who chose to stay in the profession with their school community.1 A very healthy faculty room conversation would be about why we became teachers to begin with. I regularly encourage anyone in education to think about this as a reminder of who they are and how that informs the expectations they hold on themselves to prepare students for a different future.

ARCS Model

There are certain key stages which are important to helping others to adopt emergent technology and innovativeness in general. These concepts can be conceptualized in the ARCS Model: Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction.2 Think if these as a process, starting with getting their attention and moving toward their satisfaction that they can do it.

Attention

When we relate the relevance of using emergent technology in the classroom we must describe how adoption is advantageous. Emergent technology can increase workflow efficiency for both teachers and students. For example, a paperless classroom takes time and energy to begin, but a teacher who makes over 100 copies a day might find themselves saving a significant amount of time if you consider the time it takes to stand by the copier over a year. Time savings and workflow efficiency are super important for educators but they need to see what you mean as well. Seeing others perform new, or threatening, activities without adverse consequences can generate expectations in observers that they too will improve if they intensify and persist in their efforts. Finally, in this first step, take into account your delivery style and method, newbies can easily conjure up fear-provoking thoughts about their ineptitude and can rouse themselves to elevated levels of anxiety that far exceed the fear experienced during the actual threatening situation. Take it easy, go slow.

Relevance

The adoption anything new must first be framed by something old, something familiar, and then advantages should be explained. For people to try new things and begin to adopt innovation, they general frame their understanding around how it relates to their previous practice and that they feel a need/problem. For example, VCRs allowed us to record, play, fast-forward and rewind, but the tape was not usable after many showings and sometimes the tape ripped. DVDs allowed us to also record, play, fast-forward and rewind but the digital quality remained constant… unless you scratched your DVDs. YouTube videos can be recorded (added to a playlist), played, fast-forwarded, rewound, they do not lose their quality and we can upload or own. Thus the advantage of using YouTube is framed around our past adoption. When we take the time to persuade our colleagues about adoption we are providing them with context-based application effective action which makes them more likely to mobilize greater effort than those who are not persuaded, but told.

Confidence

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” — Michelangelo

Emergent technology can be pretty complex, to be told that things are going to change every 6 to 18 months3 can be overwhelming to those who have yet to embrace innovativeness. We need to help people to aim high by creating a safe environment to try new things. When we work with colleagues they must feel comfortable to fail in front of you and learn with you (guide-on-the-side). We know that failure is the greatest teacher, but we are so afraid of it! Through a productive struggle, we can help our colleagues to personal mastery experiences with something new. Leveling the difficulty of the task will allow for early successes which yield increased attempts at more difficult tasks later on and eventually leading to a decision to adopt.

Satisfaction

What does it mean to be successful at adoption? What does it mean to do something right or correctly? A teacher’s efficacy belief is a judgment of his or her capabilities to bring about desired outcomes of student engagement and learning.4 Research has shown that a teacher’s efficacy is related to how teachers’ decisions are made, how goals are shaped, how planning and organization are implemented, and how teachers react in the classroom and relate to students.4 In addition, teachers with high self-efficacy embrace new ideas and methods for teaching.4 In developing a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward an innovation, an individual may mentally apply the new idea to his or her present or anticipated future situation before deciding whether or not to try it.5 The strength of people’s convictions in their own effectiveness is likely to affect whether they will even try to cope with given situations.6 Satisfaction resides in the willingness of the teachers being studied to adopt the technology and apply it to their professional settings.

SAMR Model

One of the most powerful ways to have a discussion with colleagues regarding technology adoption and pedagogical-shift strategies is the SAMR Model.

7

We start by Substituting our existing strategies for one that are supported by emergent technology, we then Augment the strategy when we find that technology can improve (rather than replace) the strategy, next we use technology to Modify the strategy, and finally we Redefine the entire strategy when we find technology may offer us a better way of doing things. Simply put, the SAMR Model helps each of us to rethink individual lessons, units, and instructional practice. For example, we can take a paper worksheet-packet, make it digital, then use tools to annotate on it, then redesign the activity with a slide deck or video, and finally we create a brand new activity, different from where we started. For the teacher and student workflow SAMR might look like these examples 8:

Professional Development: Designing, Developing, and Implementing

Professional Development offerings can be the catalyst of positive change. We have spent a great deal of time in this book discussing adopters and who we are in the story. Understanding ourselves and our colleagues can yield context-based, empathetically considerate, professional development opportunities.

A combination of the SAMR Model and the ARCS Model are excellent for developing professional development offerings. When planning a training session there are a few things from the ARCS model to consider…
1. 1. Attention: arouse interest and curiosity
    
    Described:
    
    Stimulate perceptions (surprise, uncertainty, novelty, juxtapositions).
    
    Engage inquiry (puzzles, questions, problems, dilemmas).
    
    Create variety (different kinds of examples, models, exercises, and presentation modalities).
    
    Examples:
    
    incongruity, conflict
    
    games, roleplay
    
    hands-on/minds-on methods
    
    questions, problems, brainstorming
    
    videos, mini-discussion groups, lectures, visual stimuli, storytelling
    
    Reflection: How does an instructional leader’s enthusiasm change attention?
  2. Relevance: relate to experience and needs
    
    Described:
    
    Allow audience to select or define goals, give examples of goals, discuss value of goals.
    
    Adapt to what the audience wants to cover or how to cover it
    
    Use familiar communication modalities, relate goals to something familiar such as prior knowledge or experiences
    
    Examples:
    
    paraphrase content, use metaphors, give examples
    
    ask audience to give examples from their own experiences
    
    give audience choice in how to organize what they learn, explain how the new learning will use students’ existing skills,
    
    explain or show “What will the subject matter do for me today?…tomorrow?”
    
    Reflection: Reflection: How do teaching models, field trips, portfolios, and student choice change relevance?
  3. Confidence: scaffold success of meaningful tasks
    
    Described:
    
    Set clear goals, standards, requirements, & evaluative criteria.
    
    Give challenging & meaningful opportunities for successful achievement within available time, resources, & effort
    
    Encourage personal control, show or explain how effort determines success (personal responsibility = achievement).
    
    Examples:
    
    allow audience to choose goals
    
    allow small steps for achievement
    
    give feedback & support
    
    provide learners with some degree of control over their learning & assessment
    
    show that success is a direct result of personal effort
    
    give confirmatory-corrective-informative-analytical feedback rather than social praise
    
    Reflection: Reflection: How do clear organization and easy to use materials change expectations for success?
  4. Satisfaction: build a sense of reward and achievement
    
    Described:
    
    Support learning applied in real-world or simulated context with consequences
    
    Provide feedback after practice to confirm, analyze, or correct performance
    
    Apply consistent consequences for meeting standard consistent evaluation criteria
    
    Examples:
    
    avoid over-rewarding easy tasks,
    
    give more informative feedback rather than praise or entertainment value
    
    use practical examples related to audience interests award certificates for mastery of skills
    
    provide testimonials from previous audience about value of the learning
    
    give evaluative feedback using equitable criteria
    
    Reflection: Reflection: Why does social praise not work as well as informative feedback in creating satisfaction? How do rubrics change satisfaction?
Connections in Championing, Coaching, and Mentoring

In an effort to understand why teachers continue to teach in a challenging career I once conducted a survey of 75 Middle School teachers asking them to identify why they stayed in their profession.13 I was looking for attributes about success and I had tributes that they identified that set them apart. But what I found was many of them valued relationships with their colleagues more than most other outside factors. These findings are parallel with teachers who were identified in a federal study on teacher mobility as “movers” or “leavers” described teaching in isolation as one factor that contributed to their dissatisfaction. Movers left the schools where they worked in isolation for schools where colleagues interacted and shared ideas for teaching. Those teachers, titled “settled stayers”, described their supportive colleagues as a reason for their decision to stay at their school.1 Studies on the impact of colleague support on the retention of teachers have found those beginning teachers provided a common planning time with colleagues and a scheduled time to interact with colleagues on instructional issues had a 42% less likelihood of leaving as opposed to staying and a 25% less likelihood of moving as opposed to staying.9 Through my experiences working with schools, I found that directors of technology and key decision-makers seeking to roll out emerging technology, find a great deal of success when they have themselves positive relationships with their colleagues and with their employees. Our social-connectiveness is very important.

But let’s focus on boots and the ground, let’s focus on working side-by-side as a coach, as a guide, as a trainer, and more importantly, as a friend to our colleagues who have a little bit of difficulty adopting new technologies. Professional Development in education has the responsibility of promoting teacher growth in a valid and practical manner. A community of teacher-learners can effectively promote this growth beyond what simple in-servicing (alone) can accomplish. Workshop and other in-service events are magnified by collaborative, shared-experiences. As teaching professionals we need to learn, share, and collaborate with their peers, we need to feel successful and believe in our ability to succeed.

Our work as champions of innovation must be informed by the best practices examples provided through peer coaching and mentorship programs which can be high effective, when they provide collaborative atmospheres. Like championing a cause, mentoring is a professional role that requires professional renewal, enhanced self-esteem, more reflective practice, and leadership skills. The knowledge and skills that experienced teachers acquire as part of mentor training and practice is continual professional growth.10 When mentoring is viewed as a peer coaching requiring teachers to plan, demonstrate, and practice new instructional practices in a collaborative manner, schools may find less fragmentation, less teacher isolation.11 As we discussed previously, if you are alone in your professional journey, you are doing it wrong. Mentoring programs for teachers should serve to offer deliberate psychological and professional development conditions necessary for the development of teacher knowledge, skills, and dispositions, thus increasing teacher retention through effective, efficient mentoring. Champions, mentors, and peer coaches must develop their understanding of building helping relationships, effective teaching practices, effective coaching practices, and how to work with adults.12

As we think beyond working with one colleague at a time, we must begin to think about developing our culture. The best practices found in effective professional learning communities (PLCs) can help us significantly. PLCs can be defined at multiple levels (local, state, national, and international) in multiple contexts (team of teachers, building staff, school district of teachers, group of common content teachers, etc…) yet the focus of every PLC must be to explore three major questions: What do we want each student to learn? How will we know when each student has learned it? How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning?14

There are five major attributes of PLCs15:
1. Supportive and Shared Learning – the collegial and facilitative participation of the principal, who shares leadership (and power/authority) through inviting staff input in decision making.
2. Collective Learning – application of collective learning to address student needs.
3. Shared Values and Vision – a shared vision that is developed from the teachers’ commitment to student learning.
4. Supportive Conditions – time scheduled for teachers to come together to learn, make decisions, problem solve, and create work exemplified by collaboration.
5. Shared Personal Experience – a peers helping peers process, based on a desire for individual and community improvement founded in mutual respect and trustworthiness of the teachers involved.
These five major attributes are reflective of Bandura’s (1977)6 performance accomplishment, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion and emotional arousal. Clearly the research shows repetitive themes in community building and job satisfaction for teaching professionals.

The teaching can be a lonely profession complete with isolation and the close-my-door-and-teach mentality. Yet, the wealth of knowledge and experience that can be accessed through well structured professional development and collaboration opportunities. This takes effort on the part of the teachers, administrators, and institutions of learning, but the effort will yield positive results. The Reciprocal Nature of Inspiration: Inspiring Others Will Inspire You.

Image Credit: Chris Stein, a superstar Teacher, and illustrator Extraordinaire!

Source Notes (in order of use)
1. Johnson, S.M. & Birkeland, S.E. (2003). Pursuing a “sense of success”: New teachers explain their career decisions, American Educational Research Journal 40 (3) (2003), pp. 581–617.
2. Keller, J. (1987) Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction are developed in John Keller’s ARCS model of motivational design.
3. “Moore’s Law – Investopedia.” https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mooreslaw.asp. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018.
4. Tschannen-Moran, M. & Hoy, A.W. (2001) Teacher efficacy: Capturing an elusive construct, Teaching and Teacher Education 17 (2001), pp. 783–805.
5. Rogers, Everett M. Diffusion of Innovations. 5th ed. New York: Free, 2003. Print.
6. Bandura, A. (1977). Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change. Psychological Review 84 (2), 191-215.
7. Puentedura, R. The SAMR Model http://hippasus.com/resources/sweden2010/SAMR_TPCK_IntroToAdvancedPractice.pdf
8. Based on: Schrock, K (2013) “SAMR – Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything.” 9 Nov. 2013, http://www.schrockguide.net/samr.html. Accessed 20 Apr. 2018.
9. Smith, T.M. & Ingersoll, R.M. (2004). What are the effects of induction and mentoring on beginning teacher turnover?, American Education Research Journal 41 (3) (2004), pp. 681–714.
10. Hanson, S (2010). What Mentors Learn About Teaching. Educational Leadership, 67 (8) 2010, 76-80
11. Reiman, A.J. & DeAngelis Peace, S. (2002) Promoting Teachers’ Moral Reasoning and Collaborative Inquiry Performance: a developmental role-taking and guided inquiry study. Journal of Moral Education, 31(1), 51-66.
12. Dotger, B. & Reiman, A. 2006-01-26 “Measuring Fidelity and Concerns in the Process of Implementing an Innovation” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education Online. <PDF> 2009- 05-25 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p36187_index.html
13. Shippee, M. & Dotger, B. (2010) Perceptions of Success for Teachers: The Role of Mentor Programs. (unpublished).
14. DuFour, R. (2004) What is a “Professional Learning Community”? Schools as Learning Communities. Educational Leadership 61(8)
15. Hord, S. M. (1997) Professional Learning Communities: What Are They and Why Are They Important. Issues… about change. 6 (1). Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) Austin, Texas
October 4, 2018
Teacher: Know Thyself – School Culture Shift is about the people
“Courage is contagious.

When a brave man takes a stand,

the spines of others are often stiffened.”

– Billy Graham

Think: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or Star Wars, every good quest-adventure story has a team of contributors, each with a special skill set that contributes to the team’s successes. They fumble about lampooning the human experience on their way to epic saga-like success. We are often engaged by both their plight and how we can relate to them. A key character in these stories is the hero, or champion.

If you are reading this blog post it is likely that you are the champion, my friend, and that you will keep on fighting until the end, since there’s no time for losers, cause you are the champion of the world…. but I digress.

Champions

Many champions feel more like an imposter than an expert or leader. Perhaps it is this feeling that drives champions to keep learning and growing toward mastery. The mastery for the future is not in a tool or workflow solution, it is found in innovativeness, in the champion’s ability to change.

A champion is someone that is instrumental in successfully guiding projects through the approval hurdles: displaying persistence, expressing strong conviction in the innovation, and involving key individuals.1 In our quest for innovativeness we can embrace this role for ourselves and/or find allies within these ranks. The adoption of an innovation by an organization is more likely if key individuals (champions) are willing to support the innovation.2

This willingness is extremely important. We can very easily take the role of bystander in our school community. The bystander effect3 is a scary aspect of the human experience that we must all work against. It explains to us that we may look at a problem as “not ours” or that “someone else will take care of it.” This is a paralyzing condition that actively works against positive change in our schools. Champions are just the people who believe in positive change.

Champions are the organizational mavericks, they exist within a system but are given autonomy to explore alternative, creative solutions. They can be transformational leaders, who harnesses support from other members of the organization.2 The impact of a champion on both the adoption and sustainability of an innovation is undeniable. Selecting individuals who display these particular champion behaviors can increase the probability that adoption of innovation occurs.1 A champion in the organizational adoption process is someone who possess the certain attributes and skills. Champions are credible experts and planners that can network well with colleagues since they are perceived as sensitive to colleagues needs by demonstrating an objective approach to finding meaningful solutions. An innovation champion must be tenacious, assertive, decisive and should instill passion and positive thinking in the innovation process.4

Adopters

You can take a personality test, a learning style inventory, or even a which-character-are-you quiz, but I would argue the power of meaningful self-perception. Perhaps a better title for this chapter would be “Who do you think you are?” It is extremely important that we recognize our strengths and weaknesses in our professional practice, such recognition can lead to real, positive growth. While you may take up the role of champion as a general way of perceiving your fit within your school system, we may find ourselves identifying with one adopter category or another when discussing emergent technology. We call these categories: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards.5 Adopter categories can be illustrated on a bell curve on the basis of innovativeness.

Read through the descriptions below with one type of emergent technology and see how you fit. For example if the topic was gaming in the classroom: who do you think you are?

Innovators: “Lets do this!”

Innovators are interested in new ideas from outside of established local social system. Able to understand and apply complex technical knowledge. Innovators must be able to cope with a high degree of uncertainty about an innovation at the time of adoption. Innovators are risk takers, they learn from failure like a gamer.

Early Adopters: “Describe the value in it and how to do it and I am all in!”

Early Adopters are invested and respected in the local school community. They are cautious and want their efforts informed by research if not best practices. Early Adopters are not known for risk taking, but have a reputation for well-thought out execution of emergent technology. Change agents seek this group out a local voice missionary for speeding the adoption of innovation.

Early Majority: “Show me my colleagues using it and I will try it too.”

The Early Majority adopt just before the average person making them an important link in seeing the adoption process successfully take off. The Early Majority wants to employ best practices based on the experiences of Innovators and Early Adopters. They will make the necessary changes but do not want to go first.

Late Majority: “I am a team player, I will support this but I probably will not be the best at it.”

The Late Majority adopts just after the Early Majority. They adopt sometimes due to economic pressure, peer pressure, or both. The Late Majority must see the innovation as already being successful before they adopt. You might call the Late Majority our “team players” since they are willing to join the other adopters once they realize it is for the greater good. The Late Majority may not be super excited about technology of any particular kind but they make the change for the benefit of their school community.

Laggards: “I am not convinced this will benefit my classroom. I have done fine without it.”

Laggards are near isolates in the school community. Their point of reference is past practice and past perceived successes. Laggards must be positively certain that a new idea will not fail before they can adopt. They are concerned about being blamed if the innovation fails to yield expected results.

A review of these adoption categories is relevant for several reasons, it will help us predict how our colleagues may feel about adopting emergent technology, and this review will help us understand how to find Early Adopters who often have respected Champions in their ranks. Further, these adoption categories help us to better understand the sphere of influence each adopter has. For example, an Innovator can inspire Early Adopters and potentially some Early Majority, but would be hard pressed to motivate a Laggard. Why? Innovators can be seen as people doing some pretty far out there stuff, beyond the skill set of later adopters. Innovators, by definition are risk takers, they accept failure in a ways that make some people uncomfortable. This is why Early Adopters often serve as more effective Champions, they make up a larger percentage of people and have a reputation for a more measured approach to adoption.

Derek Siver’s Ted Talk “The First Follower: Leadership Lessons from a Dancing Guy”6 illustrates the importance of Early Adopters in the Adoption process (If you have not seen this three-minute video, please check it out). Siver’s explains that a Leader (Innovator) has the guts to stand out and be ridiculed, but that does not start a movement. The First Follower (Early Adopter) who joins the Leader validates the movement (Adoption) and makes it appear less risky for others to follow. These Late Adopters model their behaviors of after the First Follower, not the Leader. The movement gains momentum and then we see a real shift in cultural adoption. In this account, we must understand that the Leader treats the First Follower as an equal, as a co-leader.

Additional key roles include opinion leaders who have informal influence and change agents who positively influence innovation decisions. Change agents work to develop a need for change on the part of the client, establish an information-exchange relationship, diagnose the client problem, develop an action plan, implement, and shift the client from reliance on the change agent to self-reliance.5,7

Decision Making

If you are a decision maker for a school or organization there are multiple types you might consider which affect the adoption of innovation process. These types might even be considered steps toward adopting innovation: (1) Optional innovation-decisions, (2) Collective innovation-decisions, and (3) Authority innovation-decisions.

Optional innovation-decisions: The choice to adopt or reject an innovation is made by an individual independent of the decisions by other members of a system. The individual’s decision can be influenced by the norms of the system and by communication through interpersonal networks.5 An example of this may be a teacher from a school choosing to go paperless at their school while their colleagues continue to teach with paper.

Collective innovation-decisions: The choice to adopt or reject an innovation is made by consensus among the members of a system.5 An example of this may be like the above-mentioned person, except at a department level choosing to go paperless.

Authority innovation-decision: The choices to adopt or reject an innovation is made by a relatively few individuals in a system who possess power, high social status, or technical expertise.5 An example of this may be where upper-level leadership has decided their school community will go paperless so they will no longer purchase printers, ink or service photocopiers.

As a leader, if you were to allow your Innovators and Early Adopter, the flexibility to make optional innovation-decisions. Their successes may naturally lead the Early and Late Majority joining them in a collective innovation-decision. Finally, it may take the authoritative approach to move the Laggards forward in the desired adoption.

If perhaps you were to approach this same list of categories with topics like Virtual and Augmented Reality, the Maker Movement, Coding, and/or Robotics… you may find yourself in a different adopter category. The Maker Movement’s Innovator may also be the Robotic’s Laggard, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We all learn and grow at different speeds and in different ways. Identifying the value of emergent technology within the context of our classroom needs and content is the first step toward becoming a change-agent in our professional communities. The level of perceived relevance in our classroom will likely inform our adoption category and approach with any innovation. Once a specific innovation becomes a seamless part of our classroom we have reached the pinnacle of innovative adoption.

Image Credit: Chris Stein, a superstar Teacher, and illustrator Extraordinaire!

Source Notes
1. Howell, J., Shea, C., & Higgins, C. (2005). Champions of product innovations: Defining, developing, and validating a measure of champion behavior. Journal of Business Venturing, 20(5), 641-661. Retrieved from: http://www.sciencedirect.com.libezproxy2.syr.edu/science/article/pii/S088390260400075 8#
2. Greenhalgh, T., Robert, G., Macfarlane, F., Bate, P., & Kyriakidou, O. (2004). Diffusion Of Innovations In Service Organizations: Systematic Review And Recommendations. The Milbank Quarterly, 82(4), 581-629. Retrieved from: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0887-378X.2004.00325.x/full
3. Darley, J. M. & Latané, B. (1968). “Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 8: 377–383. doi:10.1037/h0025589. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9c2f/63826605843d83fd08f56fbf75790cf74614.pdf. Accessed 17 Apr. 2018.
4. Daily, Alisia (2014). “Social Innovation and Innovation Champions: An Analysis of Public and Private Processes.” Diss. Virginia Commonwealth U, 2014. Abstract. VCU Scholars Compass, n.d. Web. <https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=4460&context=etd>.
5. Rogers, E.M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). New York: Free Press.
6. Sivers, D. “Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy | Derek Sivers.” https://sivers.org/dancingguy. Accessed 17 Apr. 2018.
7. Clarke, R. (1999, Sept). Roger Clarke’s innovation diffusion theory. Retrieved from http://www.rogerclarke.com/SOS/InnDiff.html
September 16, 2018
WanderlustEDU – The Journey to Transform School Culture Starts with Teachers
“It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.”

― Robert M. Pirsig

As teachers we exist in a constant state of change… I call this state innovativeness. Like a hero in an epic tale trying to maintain our innovativeness, we must first learn to frame our efforts as that of a journey with ups and down, trial and error, reward and disappointment. Wanderlust is described as a strong longing, or desire, to travel. It is this desire I hope to relate to you as necessary to have a fulfilling career. A musician once said “Life’s a journey, not a destination.” I would argue that destinations in the form of goals are relevant and important as they provide us with compass-like guidance. Senseless, meaningless, directionless wandering is not what we will explore. We must focus on the waypoints in life, not just the endpoints… the process over the product.

In our professional (and personal) lives, we can frame our thinking around four attributes, that if identified and fostered, will lead to a successful journey: Knowledge, Skills, Environment, and Motivation.1 Knowledge is what we know through training and experience. Skills are gained along the way through a state of constant change, packing and repacking, like gear in a backpack, updated to suite our needs. Environment describes conditions in which we exist and embark. Motivation is both our waypoints and endpoints (destination) and what drives us to continue. If we do not take care to nurture a successful journey by addressing these attributes, we will have an experience rife with anxiety, frustration, a feeling of being trapped, and/or apathy. Here we will explore the the journey of the educator and learner as a journey that each of us take and that each of us must learn to embrace in order to be truly successful.

Knowledge: “Experience is the teacher of all things.” – Julius Caesar

As educators we develop our knowledge is several ways. We study our content areas with the intent of being the sage-on-the-stage, that is, the one who knows the answers. We are trained in educational pedagogy which is gleaned from psychology meant to understand the mind of our student and how to best meet their needs as a guide-on-the-side.

Yet, perhaps the most powerful form of knowledge is that which we gain through experience, this knowledge can, at times, appear to contradict our training. Experience-based knowledge teaches us to be both sage-on-the-stage and guide-on-the-side at various times, all while keeping our finger on the pulse of the classroom to inform our next move. Teacher Experience (TX) can be found at the intersection of our Pedagogical Knowledge (PK) and Content Knowledge (CK).2

In this intersection TX becomes relatively stable with some shifting due to adjusting of content standards and the implementation of new pedagogy-based strategies. TX is part of our knowledge growth as teachers.

Knowledge is naturally experiential and with that understanding I would ask that you consider the gamers mentality. We may not all be gamers or enjoy video games, but we all can learn so much from going and doing, from failing, and from success. And at each failure we should change our method, doing the same thing over and over again, even if well intentioned, is just plain insanity. The difference between a master and beginner is that the master has failed more times than a beginner has even tried.

Skills: If I got an F the first time I tried to ride a bike, I wonder if I’d try again.

Like a quest game, skills are gained along our journey. Skill acquisition is an iterative process, like knowledge, experiential application of skills will lead to mastery, here our mantra must me: out with the old, in with the new. Skills are directly related to emergent technology in our classrooms. Think about the most advanced piece of technology you use each day is the lowest piece of technology our students will use! Technology causes a real disruption in our TX, it forces us to exist in a state of constant change, a state of innovativeness.

Adopting Technological Knowledge (TK) causes a great disruption in our relatively stable TX.3 Technology is the great disrupter. Keeping a balanced TX with a rapidly shifting TK is the very nature of Innovativeness. In the midst of this, it can be intimidating to try to apply every new skill we learn. I think of the earliest explorers of the earth, that were told the earth was round. Scientist and cartographers explained that the earth was round and demonstrated it with stunning visual aids. These great thinkers gave direction and contributed to the planning of brave explorers, but not many of them went along to test their theory, to prove their point. So is the educator’s journey, we are told new innovations or best practices will work, but it’s up to us to bravely go forth and apply what we learn.

Gaming provides us with an excellent example of gaining and applying new skills. This form of growth is highly disruptive to our modus operandi, we must stretch our comfort zone to increase our skills.

Games (and simulations) are an important way to create meaningful, experiential knowledge for students. Games allow us to fail, the allow us to see the benefit in learning new skills through experience. A fail-forward mentality is a skill set necessary for our students. For our learners to master grit, a sense of stick-to-itiveness in adversity, they should must observe it modeled by adults who attempt new things with a certain degree of risk (in failure… not safety).

Games can capture the attention of our students, are relevant to their world, appeal as an appropriate challenge that students feel confident they can approach and offer frequent feedback leading to student satisfaction. When employing gaming in the classroom, it is the job of the educator to relate and connect the activities to the required content. Admittedly, there have been times in my own classroom where I got caught up in the student excitement over gameplay and let the content-learning take care of itself… which is seldom does. We must regularly accept that failure in implementing these types of activities is a very real possibility… so Why do I bother? The positive student reaction to gaming experiences in the classroom is both powerful and transformative. If you are thinking of taking on a little more advanced gameplay like the example discussed here, I highly suggest user testing. Start a club or find some kids in a study hall and have them work out the kinks for you, they will love it, and you will have meaningful data to inform a full class rollout.

Remember Oregon Trail? dysentery, cholera, broken wagon tongue… good times right? Even the 1980s Oregon Trail (OT) Game excites students. If you are not familiar with Oregon Trail: WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?

In my classroom, I use OT v5 (2001), but clearly of my own experience as a student with OT (I loved hunting on the MECC (1985) version and was not concerned with all that extra stuff: history facts), I redesigned this single-user experience into a multi-user experience, so that we are all focused on one adventure and we all can talk about the common shared experience. The teachable moments are numerous! Collaboration, Interdependence, Consequences, Critical Thinking…. monumental attributes for Social Studies Class can be gleaned from thoughtful gaming adoption and shared failure!

It’s so important for educators to embrace the gamer mentality and that we must innovate to support our student. But to innovate means to accept the possibility of failure, believe it or not, it is a good thing for students to see adults fail and to problem solve. Telling students to be resilient, to persevere, to struggle through difficulties is good, demonstrating it is better.

Environment: “I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn. – Albert Einstein

Environment are the conditions in which we exist and embark. The impact the environment has on an epic adventure is undeniable. In our classrooms, is that impact positive? Does your environment inspire? Have you ever sat in the back of your classroom and thought of yourself as a learner in that space? Think of your classroom from the standpoint of your students, what is their user experience (UX)? I have found that much of my classroom setup was designed for me (sage-on-the-stage) not for my students. My classroom UX was not working.

Maybe you just need some gamer cheat codes for your learning space, so you can #hackyourclassroom.

Setting out to prepare an environment conducive to learning is a daunting. We have limitations in space and money, but we can creatively look for solutions within our environments. This takes time and like building a road for our journey, it is a continual process of growth.

Many teachers can relate to a special class activity where we rearranged our seats to best facilitate a special lesson. I once changed the layout of my traditional seventh-grade social studies classroom to mimic a courtroom. We were learning about the Puritans in New England and I wanted to simulate the Puritan court. I was struck by how engaged the students were by simply entering the room and seeing a different setup. The thought that students could enter the room in be excited simply by seeing a different atmosphere was something I didn’t really think was going to happen. For the remainder of class, students were given jobs such as witnesses, defendants, magistrates, and bailiff. Student-centered tasks included writing the court notes on the board, standing and giving testimonies, and three magistrates passed verdicts (all guilty) complete with “appropriate” punishments. Each class a student was banished to the hallway for heresy. I loved the look on their faces as they were sent to the hall all in fun. This was a purposefully designed UX, but what about everyday class? Sometimes UX solutions are simple, accidental even.

Most classroom chairs and desks are not nailed to the floor. I highly suggest moving them around to try find a match for you and your students in a given lesson, there is no ideal classroom layout for all instructional activities.4, 5

The concept of hacking your classroom or developing inspiring spaces is something that teachers have been doing for many years. We find ourselves with a limited space: four walls usually one with windows and 25 to 30 desks. And we ask ourselves what am I supposed to do with this? Yet with a little ingenuity, sometimes with student input, we can create a space that inspires students instantly and we can leverage their excitement for the remainder of the class. When we first went 1:1 with Chromebooks in my school. I reorganized my classroom in the shape of a box, with desks facing out, so that I could stand in the middle and see/manage all the screens in the room.

I changed my room simply for classroom management sake. What I found was I had uncovered a huge projection screen… the floor.

This accidental discovery led to the mounting of a short-throw projector to an old computer cart so that I could project onto the floor. My new 7’x12’ “screen” allows for gaming and lectures in a new, engaging way, all born out of trying something different in my environment.

Motivation: The Reciprocal Nature of Inspiration, Inspiring Other Will Inspire You

Have you ever attended a conference that excited you? Have you ever had a speaker move you? Have you ever had fun playing with a new “toy”?

Motivation can be categorized two ways: extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic motivation comes from outside of each of us and includes: salary, tenure, retirement, and healthcare. Intrinsic motivation comes from inside of us, this is the stuff that keeps us, that drives us to accel for extended period of time. One or both can define our destination, but I would argue that the intrinsic motivation is the one that matters, the one that gives us a rich life experience.

It may seem a bit reckless to abandon our extrinsic focus, but maybe a little reckless abandon is just what we need to refocus our journey. What motivates you intrinsically? When you think to yourself: Why am I doing this? What is the image that pops into your brain? Think about that, tweet out your motivation, let’s backchannel with #wanderlustEDU and #whyiteach.

Backchannel – the practice of using devices to maintain an online conversation alongside the primary group activity or live spoken remarks.

We all started out our careers with a plan or focus to make a real difference in our various learning contexts. But as many of us learned, things do not quite work out as planned.

I had always viewed my tenure in public education as temporary believing that I would end up being a teacher leader at the small private school I attended as a child. After a decade of preparing and planning I was offered the position I had dreamed of, yet two weeks later it was taken away and given to another… a true heartbreak. I believe heartbreak is part of the human condition, if you have not experienced it, don’t worry, you will, and the rest of us are rooting for you.

So what did I learn in this part of my journey? Quit, give up on teaching? No and I don’t think you would either. I knew that I had literally, approached every school opening as potentially my last and every school year closing as my last. This was a real gift. I had nothing to lose each year, I devoted my energies and time into my students then and there, in that moment, with no concern about the next year, or about maintaining a long career by making people happy. I had no plans for a pension-retirement and I had not planned to rely on a stable teacher salary. I did not realize at the time what a liberating experience this had been. I have come to refer to this teaching approach as teaching with Reckless Abandon. I know, I know, it sounds like some crazy unrealistic approach to teaching, but let me define it for you with the tenants I have come to understand as teaching with Reckless Abandon:
1. Teach each day like it is your last (Embrace the Here and Now)
2. Seek forgiveness, not permission (Whose rules are these anyway?)
This is a re-framing of our destination to 365 waypoints a year rather than one big retirement. Be your best today, teach for now!

If you are alone on your quest for innovativeness, you are doing it wrong. You need to find your tribe, grow your world-wide Professional Learning Network (PLN), and communicate with your local Professional Learning Community (PLC).

Image Credit: Chris Stein, a superstar Teacher, and illustrator Extraordinaire!

Source Notes
1. Harless, J.H. (1973). An analysis of front-end analysis. Improving Human Performance: A Research Quarterly, 4, 229-244.
2. Shulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57, 1–22.
3. Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108, 1017–1054.
4. “Classroom layout – what does the research say … – Teacher magazine.” 16 Mar. 2017, https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/articles/classroom-layout-what-does-the-research-say. Accessed 7 Jun. 2018.
5. “What does your classroom layout say… – TES Teach with … – Facebook.” 15 Aug. 2016, https://www.facebook.com/TESTeachBlendspace/videos/857262131070472/. Accessed 7 Jun. 2018.
September 16, 2018
Innovativeness is the Pedagogy for the Future #edtech #wanderlustEDU

The journey of the educator is much like a quest. We strive to successfully gather the necessary skills and knowledge loading our brains and backpacks (teacher toolkit) with what we think will best benefit our students. But like any journey our supplies and frame of thinking need to be constantly refreshed, a state of constant change (innovativeness). Our supplies might be a new instructional strategy or program, but often the newest thing is perceived as a form of technology.

What is it about technology that compels us to believe it is a necessary component for a well-rounded education? We inventory how much of it we have, how many times it is used, and ask ourselves if we need more of it? Maybe we should stop and ask ourselves exactly what is it that we are talking about.

Perhaps you are feeling a little overwhelmed about trying to keep up with the latest technology and the newest thing for your classroom or school? Did you know that the pencil, the original 1:1 device, took nearly 100 years to be widely adopted in education?

It seemed that with each new decade, the 20th century brought some new thing for the classroom.

But the critical eye would notice that much of these tools would remain, overlapped in purpose, for a long time. Much of our instructional practices today have been informed by these tools, rather than good pedagogy informing how to use these tools. We must allow technology to amplify good instructional practice, rather than tell us what good practice is. Overtime cost of new technology have been reduced leading to an increase in accessibility, but accessibility does not equate to need.

To accept that incorporating emergent technology into our students’ educational experience is indeed a major step for successfully preparing for our future. But beyond that, the struggle comes between deployment and employment of new technology. To deploy is to distribute, but to employ infers activity in which one engages.

We use the word technology in the most simple sense to mean a tool used by mankind to achieve certain goals. Yet, the modern dictionary focuses on a different aspect of the word, pointing out that technology transcends a physical object and infers application, capability, and methods of accomplishing a task, in short, new technology might be thought of as a better workflow.

Educational institutions at every level struggle with the effective and efficient uses of new devices, new strategies, new workflows. Schools easily assess the quantity of instructional hardware but often express concern that the devices are just not being used. We must move past the 20th-century bravado which pointed to the quantity of computers we possessed and grow to foster learning communities where technology is simply the workflow we use to produce powerful learning experiences and the platform we employ to provide our learners with voice. Yes, we still boast about quantity, we have just changed our language and now say “we are a 1:1 school.”

Our concerns about how, when, and why instructional technologies are being used are merely symptoms of a greater problem, we need to foster a culture that embraces innovativeness. The word innovation refers to something new or to a change made to an existing invention (product, idea, or field), like the invention of the telephone led to the innovation of the smartphone. Can we begin to think about schools as inventions in need of innovation? We must frame our thinking around our school culture, as a collective understanding about where we are and where we need to be.

A school culture that embraces innovativeness is a group of people who chose to frame their thinking around change. Recognizing the need to dynamically approach innovation, in the form of tools and interventions, and realizing they will never arrive at a place where they can rest on the laurels of past successes. The idea of innovativeness is both exciting and scary: cutting-edge applications of emergent technology, embracing failure as a necessary component of the learning process, trying new things and falling in love with the process… but this mindset becomes an expectation, the way we now operate is, no cruise control, no this-is-the-way-we-have-always-done-it, we now are always changing.

So why choose this path? Why choose a state of constant change… the way of innovativeness? The path has been chosen for us. In the case of emergent technology, we cannot assume a static approach to teaching and learning is productive, we must consider technology to be dynamically changing, and thus triggers consequent changes in how we function. It is difficult to confront, but we know that our high-tech smartphones and tablets are the lowest form of technology our students will ever know. Simply integrating new technology will not change our practice, adopting a positive approach to innovation will lead to a paradigm shift. Innovativeness is the pedagogy for the future.

Image Credit: Chris Stein, a superstar Teacher, and illustrator Extraordinaire!

September 16, 2018