Should I be Afraid of Getting Old?

Recently, I was working with a staff member who kept apologizing for taking up my time because she needed someone to help walk her through using a new piece of software.  She explained that when she was younger she would  get frustrated with the elder workers in her office because they did not use the available technology as quickly and efficiently as she could.  Now here she was, closing in on retirement and feeling like she was one of those elder workers that used to make her frustrated as a younger worker.   

Afterwards, I wondered if I would be in her shoes when I got to her age.  Would I get to a point when some young new worker would be there patiently training me on a new piece of technology? 


Is this the natural progression for everyone?  Is it possible to always stay current?

   

Thoughts while Planning

Cannot remember where I read this but it is supposedly from General Ruben Cubero, Dean of the Faculty for the United States Air Force Academy.

As you enter a classroom, ask yourself this question:  "If there were no students in the room, could I do what I am planning to do?  If your answer to the question is yes, don't do it."

Always More

You are never done as a teacher.  No matter how much effort, energy, planning, grading, designing, and communication you do there is always more to do than you have time for.  It doesn't matter if you teach preschool, grade school, private school, high school, or college.  If you care about teaching you always leave work thinking about the other things you could have done.  I thought that making the switch from a classroom instructor to a technology integrator was going to change that, but it has yet to materialize.  There is always more work than I have time to do.


I wonder if the general public gets that about teaching?  I know from my previous government related work experience that I didn't often leave work feeling like I still had a lot to do.  All the non-teachers out there, do you experience this feeling in your own job? 

More Video!

Each month my department focuses on a particular training topic and this month we are working with teachers on how to create short videos.  Going through the preparation process and then beginning to train on this topic has opened my eyes to the effectiveness of this particular tool.  Considering the abundance of video on the internet and how easy it is to make your own I am surprised that more teachers don't take advantage of this tool.

If I ever get back in the classroom I am going to utilize a lot more video.  I think I would try to use a short clip every time I introduce a new concept.  Not only does it save me from having to do the talking, but I think it might actually help students remember concepts more easily.

What do you think?  Are short videos a good teaching tool?        

Teacher Job Satisfaction Drops 15 points over the Last 2 years.

I read on Joanne Jacobs Blog yesterday and the New York Times this morning about the MetLife Foundation Survey.  The result that got the headline and the one I find most interesting is that teacher job satisfaction has dropped 15 points in the last two years.  59% in 2009 to 44% when they surveyed at the end of 2011.

I find this alarming because one of teachings primary motivators is its rewarding nature.   I don't want my child taught by a teacher who does not like their job.  I am also concerned from a fiscal taxpayer standpoint. I believe this rewarding motivation for teachers helps to keep salaries lower than they might otherwise be.   I would say that might fall under the vow of poverty subsidy idea I highlighted last summer.          

I remember hearing in one of my masters classes that the November through February time frame is typically the point in the year when teachers are most negative in overall outlook so I am curious if that is impacting these results at all.

I am also curious how these results are impacted by the very public process of constructing school budgets.  I have certainly witnessed comments from some teachers in our area's newspaper who are frustrated with the way the budgeting process creates so much uncertainty for teachers.  Yet unlike private institutions who can keep their budgeting processes a secret until decisions have been made, public school boards cannot.  Thus they are forced to project possible cuts even if they don't end up materializing.  

  

A Unified Data System

Why haven't schools created a unified data system that tracks student progress through multiple subjects and the individual components that make up the content that we teach?

I am envisioning a system where student results are automatically included and accessible by all who interact with this student.  This system goes beyond grades.  It combines the Khan academy model, with the School of One model, and gives students freedom to pursue concepts and skills at their own pace, rather than the pace of the teacher.  Students are tested through adaptive means that help to pinpoint exactly where they are.  Teachers enter assignment data for things that computer cannot grade into the system as well.  This would be more of a grade like portion, but it would have clearly defined parameters similar to rubrics.

Why don't we have this yet?  What is stopping us?  

Celebrating Success

Success is hard to see in my job at the micro level.  I don't know if it is because I am split between two schools or that I don't spend a lot of time watching individual teachers put into practice what I taught them.  The nature of my job has me working predominantly with those teachers who do not know what to do with a particular technology.  Today was different though.

I have been working with a team of teachers who are not very digitally skilled, but who are eager to learn and apply.  We have a software that most teachers are required to use on a monthly basis.  I started working with this particular team on this software at the beginning of last year.  Progress has come in fits and starts, but progress was being made.  Today I saw that come to fruition. 

One of those teachers asked me to help her with some tasks in this particular software.  Then she proceeded to do exactly what she needed to do without my help at all.  I was just there for her mental support.  It was knowing that she had support if she needed it, that freed her up to succeed.  A year and a half of work had finally shown results.

Kudos to that teacher for persevering and continuing to work with a software even though others in our division gave up long ago.         

Schools are not Businesses, but they should innovate like them.

I came across a line from The Quick and the Ed that said 15 percent of the original 500 companies listed on the S&P 500 in 1957 still exist today as independent companies.  How many of our schools from 1957 are still operating today?  

I would be willing to bet that a lot more than 15 percent of the schools from 1957 are still operating today.  I think The Quick and the Ed were trying to make the point that innovation and change are good things and schools should operate the same way.  That is competition should help some succeed and others fail.

I want to take that idea in a slightly different direction.  I think the real issue is that teaching methods and styles have not drastically changed since 1957.  That is the innovation and change that we need.  The schools themselves can keep their names, but it is what happens on the inside that really matters.   

Teams in Education

One of the drawbacks of our current educational model in public schools is that we don't provide teachers with enough time to work together in teams.  The vast majority of a teacher's day is still spent independently in the classroom with the students.   Yes they do have "teams" in the sense of individuals teaching the same grade or subject, but these teams don't get a lot of time together.  It usually gets crammed in during planning periods which are also not long enough.  When a teacher is faced with dedicating extra time towards team efforts or being prepared for the next days lesson, you can guess what wins out.  That lack of the team ethos and energy is in such contrast to the team I am a part of as an ITRT. 

I am so energized and motivated every time I get together with my fellow ITRTs to plan a major training event or try to think our way through a problem.  What we develop collaboratively is almost always better than what we do as individuals.  We each bring our own perspectives into the collaborative effort and we feed off of each other.  We truly become greater than our individual parts.

The question in my head is how can public schools build in more time for this collaborative team oriented approach for teachers and how can they help build up motivated and successful teams?   Is it truly a reflection of the leadership provided or can other things be done?      

iPod Story

Part of my job as the Instructional Technology Resource Teacher (ITRT) is to manage the set of 28 iPods we have at one of my schools.  iPods are a great instructional tool for providing elementary students with an opportunity to practice skills they are learning, particularly in math.  One of the reasons iPods are great is that they help provide students with differentiated instruction.

Differentiated instruction is an educational buzz word that means adjusting the difficulty level of something so that it matches the users level of ability.  Differentiation is easy to talk about, but difficult to institute in the traditional classroom.  The more differentiation you try to bring into the classroom, the more sets of student materials you need to create.  This takes a lot of time and energy, two things teachers are always short of.  So what usually ends up happening is that everyone in the class does the same thing at the same speed.  Because teachers don't want to leave students behind, the class ends up moving at the pace of the slowest student.  Teachers construct class room routines and procedures around this same pace mentality and it becomes engrained into their thinking.

The problem with this, which I saw this week, is that the iPods eliminate the need for that kind of thinking.  The students had just gotten into a new app and were finding the difficulty level to be too hard.  So we had them back off to an easier setting.  One student piped up and asked if she could make it harder.  Almost without hesitation the teacher started to say NO at the same time I was saying YES.  She was defaulting into that same pace mentality.  The teacher graciously let me win out and the student was allowed to go to the higher level.  (Side note:  I applaud that student for taking the initiative to challenge herself.  You don't always see that.)

So here is my take away from this little event.  Use technology to free  students to pursue the challenge within the concepts we are teaching them.  We need less restrictions, not more.     

            

7 for Seven

Today was my birthday.  I don't get many so each one that comes along is extra special.  Here is what made today excellent.

1.  I have an amazing wife. 

2.  While I love what I do and work with great people who do nice things for me like email me happy birthday messages, bring me cake to celebrate, and play happy birthday over the intercom, these birthdays are too rare to spend them at work.  From here on out I am pledging to take off all of my real birthdays.  You get four years to figure out how to handle my absence boss.

3.  My son showed how much he loves an audience today.  He was hamming it up for my co-workers at lunch.  (His mom brought him to visit me.  Refer to #1.)

4.  I got seven....ty messages of birthday love on Facebook as of this blog posting.

5.  McDonalds gave me free coffee this morning.

6.  I noticed my parents were becoming more like their parents.  Then I realized I am becoming more like my parents too.

7.  I am loved by the God of this Universe, who gave his only Son, that I might have life to the fullest.  To Him goes all the honor and glory.         

Second Guest Podcast Appearance

I had my second guest podcast experience with the Ed Tech Co-Op Podcast.  Episode 11 was all about the daily life of an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher (ITRT).  Check it out if you find this kind of thing interesting or you are my mother who just likes to be super supportive of me.  Thanks mom!

 

My Lent Activity

I have been struggling about what to do for Lent until tonight.  My lenten goal is to post a quality post to this blog once a day through Easter.  Will you help hold me to it? 

My first post is to direct you to Seth Godin's newly released manifesto on education.  I am 2/3 of the way through it and am agreeing with a lot of what he says.  In short, our education system was designed with the 1920s and 30s in mind.  It does a great job of producing workers for that time period.  Too bad it is 2012 now.

If you do read the manifesto, let me know.  I want to talk about it with some folks.    

My First Guest Podcast

I had an opportunity recently to be a guest on the Ed Tech Co-Op podcast.  This was my first podcast and my first guest appearance on anything.  We spent the 45 minute show discussing technology integration using a recent New York Times article as our focal point.  If you are an education technology integration specialist, interested in technology use in schools, or my mother, I highly recommend you check out the Episode 10 - Determining the Value of Tech in School.   

It was (insert computer program name)'s fault!

Why is it that we always blame the program when something goes wrong?  I have been surprised at how many times in the last few days I have heard people blame a computer program for supposedly not working.  The assumption is always that the computer messed up. 

Sometimes the program does make a mistake, but more often then not the error people experience is one that they caused.  User error happens more often than we are willing to admit.   

Why do we blame the program?  Did we have bad first experiences with computer programs that have tainted our view towards them for the rest of our lives or is it easier to blame the program because it cannot argue back with us? 

Please, when you make a mistake, own it.  Don't try to hide behind a computer program.

Trying, Failing, Learning, Succeeding

I went into my departments SharePoint  testing site today in order to try out a new data gathering configuration.  The testing site is the place where we try out our ideas before we run them live.  I hadn't been to this site for awhile and seeing older test items that I had worked on made me realize how much my knowledge of SharePoint has grown in the last year.  When I started my current position, I knew nothing about SharePoint.  Now I am the SharePoint data guy and one of the few people in my department who know the program really well.  The crazy thing is that I learned everything I know from using the program and trying things out.  What started as a reorganization project to help me understand how my department worked,  grew into site design work, and then morphed into creating custom data collection tools for the entire division.

I tell you this brief technical story because I think it illustrates the best way that humans learn things.  We learn by doing.  By getting our hands dirty and trying things out.  We learn by tackling real world problems.  I think our K-12 education system has, for the most part, lost sight of this fact.  Students do not receive enough opportunities to tackle real world problems.  A worksheet is not a real world problem.

There is one more point, equally important, from my SharePoint story.  I had a testing ground.  I had a safe place where I could try out designs, fail, learn from my mistakes, and prepare a product that would succeed when put into actual use.  Without that safe place to fail, I never would have been able to create something useful.  Failure was a critical component of my learning. 

The question on my mind right now, is how do we build schools where students can safely fail as they tackle real world problems so that they can successfully build things that change our world?   



 

The Technology Feedback Loop

Today I had the opportunity to see two sides of education.  I started the day observing two high school Algebra classes in preparation for a data gathering project.  During my observations, I was surprised by the amount of down time the students had through out the course of the period and how boring it was.  The students had a number of practice problems to do on paper, but when they finished they had to wait until a teacher could review the answers.  If a student came across a difficult problem, more often than not they didn't do it, because they knew they could just wait for the teacher to review the answer.  During those periods of waiting their engagement with the content was lost.  In today's age of instant information and responses, this method seemed so antiquated.

On the flip side, later in the day I was able to participate in an iPod lesson with third grade students where they were practicing fractions.  Even though one of the apps we used had some really difficult problems, the students continued to try them.  They didn't lose focus and were really able to persevere through out the lesson.  I believe this has a lot to do with the immediate feedback that the app based practice provides.  Students didn't have to wait.  They could try a solution.  If it didn't work, they learned from their mistakes and tried again.  I didn't see the same frustration and lack of effort.   

I spent some time today thinking about how we can make the iPod example more of a reality in schooling.  I want to leverage technology to make learning more personal, exciting, and immediate.  We have the tools to do it.  We just need to find the right combination, put it together, and make it happen.   That is my goal.