I won’t summarize all the panels I went to and the conversations I had, but instead will talk about two panels in particular that I found especially inspiring and that highlighted a concept frequently at play throughout the conference: Learning partnerships do not have to begin in the classroom to affect what happens there, and learning partnerships will be integral to the future of education.

The first of these panels, DML: Case Study in Digital Media and Learning Partnerships: A Youth-Centered Design Framework in San Francisco, featured Jill Bourne, Deputy City Librarian for San Francisco; Elizabeth Babcock, Chief Education and Digital Strategy Officer at California Academy of Sciences; Ingrid Dahl, Director of Next Gen Programs at Bay Area Video Coalition; and Matthew Williams, Educational Technologist at KQED. These four individuals, and the institutions with which they are affiliated, have come together to contribute the room, the resources and the expertise required to train youth to create digital media. Bourne explained that San Francisco’s main library would be allotting some 5,000 square feet to develop a teen-friendly space for young people to learn all manner of media production under the guidance of instructors from Bay Area Video Coalition. Cal Academy is hoping some of what the students will produce will be interesting multi-media productions aimed at helping children and teens get excited about science. And by airing the content the teens create, KQED can help bring these productions to a broader audience.

Here’s what I love about this partnership: First, each group brings something to the collaboration, and they each get something from it as well. And second, the partnership fills a need. Most schools do not have the money to buy and maintain the kinds of equipment necessary to do high-quality video and audio production, and they also lack the staff with the expertise required to teach these skills to students. This collaboration among various parts of the community helps to fill a void in “traditional” education. Jill Bourne, the Deputy Librarian, told me that she has recently formed working relationships with three different public high schools in San Francisco. I’m excited to track the progress of this partnership and see what the teens produce and how the teachers work with the group to incorporate media projects into their curricula.

The second panel discussion that had me feeling all fired up was Short Talk Panel: Playful interventions: libraries, college access, after school and media arts, which focused on creating richer learning experiences through games. “Gamification” (“Is that seriously a word?” a friend asked, when I was telling her about the conference. “Yes it is,” I replied) was a popular theme at DML2012, and I’ll be honest when I say people might be a little too game-crazy right now, for my taste. Learning activities need more than just badges to be innovative. Still, I also subscribe to the Alfred Mercier notion that, “What we learn with pleasure we never forget.” And I’ve been know to create games in my own classes when teaching elements of syntax and sentence style, and I’ve found those games to be quite effective in reinforcing the “nuts and bolts” of solid sentence structure. So I was down to hear what the folks on this panel had to say about the role of games in teaching and learning.

Adam Rogers, Emerging Technology Services Librarian at North Carolina State University, gave a lively and interesting presentation about how he and his colleagues redesigned freshman library orientation at NC State by using iPods with the Evernote app installed. Freshman Composition instructors singed up their classes for orientation, and the students in the classes were broken up into teams of four or five students each, with one iPod per team. The students were also given maps of the library and a list of scavenger hunt questions to answer and activities to complete. They logged their answers using Evernote, which allowed them to do things like capture pictures of themselves with a librarian and make note of information contained in certain volumes in the library. It was a fun, engaging way to introduce the students to the library, its staff, and even each other, as they worked together to complete the scavenger hunt. I told Adam that I thought his game had potential to be reworked throughout the year to help students become really good at research. Teachers in various disciplines could work with the librarians to craft a similar game that results in the students collecting preliminary research on a specific topic, further helping them internalize where various kinds of information are to be found in the library, and where to turn if they need help finding better information than what their own search yields.

What both of these panels highlighted for me is the idea brought up at one of the plenary sessions–that education is moving from a one-to-many model to a many-to-many model. That is to say, it really does take a village to raise our youth and educate them and give them the skills they’ll need to survive and succeed in this rapidly changing world. Districts can and should capitalize on the potential of this “many-to-many” model by evolving traditional professional development days into learning partnership days. Teachers often have very little time or space for networking with others–inside and outside of their schools–and yet building relationships with other educators and with those who could contribute to education beyond the school walls helps to make the educational experience for both faculty and students so much richer. I left DML2012 full of hope for the future of teaching and learning and fully ready to be part of that future. My hope is that schools will embrace this future by thinking outside the classroom to find innovative ways to help the village contribute resources and expertise to the educating of our youth.

While all of the presentations look worthwhile, there are two in particular that are heavily on my radar. The first is a “featured session” on day one of the conference titled, “This is Not an Orientation: Gameful Layers for the Freshman Experience,” which will provide the results of two case studies in which college freshmen participated in “gaming” their freshman year. From the presentation description:

Just Press Play, from the Rochester Institute of Technology, … is an achievement-based system that encourages students to think of the obstacles in their path as part of a narrative of their educational development. Reality Ends Here, from the University of Southern California, is …[s]tructured as an alternate reality game [that] introduces students to the culture and history of the school, encouraging them to become part of that tradition from day one.

I am so very interested in what those involved learned about the role of technology in the “freshman experience,” particularly as it pertains to involving students in the community of their campus, as the USC experiment seems to have done. As instructors, we know how important it is to create community in our classrooms in order for students to learn, grow and participate; often, though, that sense of community can get lost outside of our individual classrooms, particularly at a place like San Francisco State (the large public university where I taught), where many students do not live on campus, and often commute to school from jobs where they work full or part time. The need for such a gaming experience might be even more pressing at a community college, where none of the students are living on campus, and they might not have obvious connectors–like similarity in age or life stage–to help them bond with one another. I read an article recently about a site called Alumn.us that seeks to be a way for public schools to develop “a strong alumni network” that donates back to the school in the way that private school alumni often do. What struck me as I read the article was that in order to have a strong alumni network, you need to first have a strong student community; students who do not identify with their school will likely not become alumni who can’t wait to “give back” after they graduate. The challenge, then, is to create that strong community so that all students feel connected to their school in a way that enhances their learning and social development while they are there, and exists as a lasting part of their identity when they leave. Can games that upend the traditional freshman orientation by focusing on fostering community-building and strong school ties help begin creating this community? I’m excited to find out at “This Is Not an Orientation.”

The second presentation I can’t wait to attend is the symposium titled, ”Democratizing Computer Science through Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in Urban Schools: Building on Students‚ Funds of Knowledge and Community Cultural Wealth.” From the description:

While those using computer science(CS)-developed tools are extremely diverse, those studying and working in CS-related fields are not. By limiting the production of new technology to a homogenous group, much of our digital world is being dictated by a shrinking sphere of influence.
CS’s lack of diversity can be traced back to secondary education where women, Blacks, and Latino/as are routinely denied access to high-level computing classes due to tracking, a lack of teacher preparedness, differential curricula, and the absence of culturally relevant CS curricula. Deficit ideologies rationalizing CS’s lack of diversity to an inability to learn or disinterest further exacerbate this divide.

We devote a lot of attention to the “achievement gap” as it relates to math, English and science, but just as worrisome is the digital divide and how the underlying assumptions that contribute to its growth create a profound lack of diversity in tech-heavy jobs; this divide is even more worrisome when you consider how rarely we measure computer skills in school, and how much of the workforce–indeed, even just “regular life”–will require increasing degrees of technological savvy (many could argue–and I would join them–that we are already living in such a space). I’m excited to learn about what concrete things people are doing to erase this divide, and I’m eager to hear the results of their efforts.

Those are my “big picks” for the upcoming Digital Media and Learning Conference. What are yours? And what’s missing from the schedule? What issues do you think are pressing but are still not being addressed by those working in education and technology?

The story has everything I’ve come to expect in articles about education reform efforts: quotes from teachers who hate the idea, quotes from teachers who love it, and plenty of tired cliches that speak to a general misunderstanding about the current state of life in the classroom.

Among those cliches is the oft-repeated idea that teachers see technology as a threat to the authority they have in the classroom. Such phrasing irritates me to no end, first because it primarily serves to depict teachers as people whose chief concern is ensuring that they are the center of attention at all times, rather than as people whose primary goal always is to educate their students in the most effective ways. Second, this classification also reveals a general lack of understanding about how teaching and learning occurs in the classroom of today. Take this bit, for example, from the article:

And the plan envisions a fundamental change in the role of teachers, making them less a lecturer at the front of the room and more of a guide helping students through lessons delivered on computers.

*Big sigh*. Alright … first, most modern educators are being trained–and have been trained for at least the last fifteen years–to be facilitators of learning, rather than authorities who talk at students instead of engaging them in the work of discovery. And guess what? We’ve known about this theory of education for a long time. Check out the work of Lev Vygotsky, who died in 1934, but whose ideas about collaborative learning still guide teacher training programs today. Computers are not a threat to a teacher’s “place of authority” in part because a good number of teachers already adopt a style of learning coach rather than professor in the literal sense of that word.

I get that reporters might not know this. They might not have been in enough classrooms to see how often students are not sitting in tidy rows listening to the teacher, but rather are working in groups to discover answers, perform research, or wade through difficult concepts together. But it is concerning when school superintendents seem to lack such an understanding, as is the case with Idaho schools superintendent Tom Luna, who had this to say about the coming changes to Idaho schools:

The role of the teacher definitely does change in the 21st century. There’s no doubt. The teacher does become the guide and the coach and the educator in the room helping students to move at their own pace.

Again, this is not new to the “21st century.” Teachers have been playing the role of the “guide on the side” for years. And if Mr. Luna has teachers in his district who aren’t doing that, he should address that problem first before he worries about getting a laptop or tablet into the hands of every student at the school.

The frustrating thing here is how these kinds of articles so often play into an anti-teacher sentiment that appears to be creeping across the country. Once again, teachers are portrayed as merely lazy autocrats whose chief concern is for their own job, rather than for the educational well-being of their students. Are there some teachers who fit this description? Most certainly–just as every profession has people in it who appear to care little about being good at what they do. But the majority of teachers I know are people who are creative, innovative, passionate and dedicated, and who continually evolve their practice in order to serve their students better.

Obviously, as someone who is a huge champion of technology in the classroom, I think there is great potential here for Idaho’s schools to help their students become technologically literate as well as academically proficient. To me, this is not an either-or proposition. But the superintendent and others charged with implementing these changes seem to have made the classic mistake of forcing them on educators without a clear plan as to how they will help teachers make use of the new hardware and software with which they will soon be equipped. According to the Times, the details of how teachers will be trained in best practices for working with technology “were still being worked out.”

Hmmm … Well, if technology is Idaho’s number one priority going into the next academic year, my advice would be to start with focusing professional development days on technology. It’s clear some teachers have followed their own passion for these tools, and they could be the professional development leaders for their colleagues in their respective disciplines. Have a science teacher in your district who uses Google maps to chart sightings of native and non-native bird species? Great! Have her lead a session on that for the other science teachers in the district. Know an English teacher who uses Twitter to teach parody? Fantastic. Have him help colleagues learn how to use Twitter so they can then understand its implications for teaching.

Without good training, teachers who have not yet adopted technology and explored its uses in the classroom will continue to harbor fears that they won’t know how to use it or that it has no purpose. As educators, we should understand well what is at the root of people’s resistance to change–we see it all the time with our students, and we know at its core is often a simple fear of failure. If we empower educators to use technology well, they will do so.

I haven’t even addressed Idaho’s plan to require that all high school students take online courses for two of the 47 credits required for graduation. Perhaps they could begin with Code Academy, which provides free interactive lessons on coding for anyone, anywhere. High schools everywhere often lack the resources to offer coding classes, despite the fact that this skill is one that will likely seep into all manner of jobs in the years to come–not only those once referred to as “webmaster.”

The times, they are a-changin’–and they’ve been changing for quite some time. What hasn’t changed, sadly, are they myriad ways that those outside the classroom talk about change to those who work on the inside. Maybe Idaho’s superintendent Luna can find an online course somewhere in effective relationship-building and organizational management. From there he can lead by example, while also hopefully learning a few techniques to get teachers under his leadership to embrace technology rather than resist it.

“Think of the ingredients that make for a good school,” Jordan Weissmann, the post’s author, begins. Are you thinking of them, readers? OK. Well, hopefully “Small classes. Well-educated teachers. [And] plenty of funding,” weren’t  ingredients on that mental list you just made, because if they were, according to Weissmann, “your recipe would be horribly wrong.” Ruh-roh!

Weissmann draws this conclusion from the newly-published results of a study by economist (and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient) Roland Fryer, and his colleague Will Dobbie, whose determination after studying data from 35 charter schools in New York City is that far more important than money to a school is its culture–primarily one that supports teachers, allows for maximum instruction time and maintains “a relentless focus on academic goals.”

Does this information really turn “everything we know about education” on its head? I certainly don’t think so. A large part of the problem surrounding our nation’s conversation about education is how much it leaves out the voices of the people who know the most: the teachers who do the work of educating our youth, and the youth themselves, who know a decent school culture when they experience it. After ten years of teaching, I’ve come to know quite a few teachers, and none of them would find the conclusions of this study surprising. None would say that teachers would not benefit from more support and mentoring; in fact, nearly all of the teachers I know and have talked to have said that one of the great needs in education as a field is for newer teachers to have access to and continued interaction with more experienced educators over a longer period of time than is allotted during one’s student teaching days. Schools that do facilitate this kind of mentoring have vibrant departments in which all staff can learn from one another, making for a more cohesive department and a better-scaffolded learning experience for all students throughout their time at the school.

And do we really need to have a “genius grant” to figure out that more instruction time equals better academic results from our students? While they might have a reputation for watching the clock, students know when a class period is too short to allow for any mastery of the subject matter. If one of your aims is to make your students not simply know certain material but also have a degree of appreciation for it, you’re better off not zipping on through the course content at lightning speed with no time for reflection.

Perhaps the only surprising finding in this study is that schools wouldn’t need “plenty of funding” to be successful. I do wonder how schools could offer the “high-dosage tutoring” that Dobie and Fryer’s study concludes is a big factor in students’ academic success without some decent funding. Are these schools bringing on volunteer tutors who can spend hours of time after school with students without getting paid for it? That’s fine if they are, but that would be an impractical model at best if it’s one we should be trying to replicate in schools across the country.

I can’t speak for every teacher out there, but I know I personally would love a little less sensationalism when it comes to reporting on education and the changes we should or shouldn’t make to the institutions that provide it. Bringing in more voices from the teachers on the “front lines” and the students making their way through “the system” could go a long way toward providing a clearer look at what is and isn’t working in our nation’s schools. And maybe then “Everything You Know about Education” would be a lot more than what the major media outlets currently offer in their education reporting.

Thanks to this post from Mind/Shift KQED for the tip.

I think schools are probably three to four years behind the rest of the world in how we’re communicating.

Those are the words of Richard O’Malley, Superintendent for Edison Schools in New Jersey, as quoted in the article, Social media go from school ban to teacher’s tool. I can relate to this statement—the California schools I’ve worked in have often been at least “three to four years behind” in terms of the technology they use to communicate within the school and beyond. And this is not an issue that confines itself to how we communicate within our schools. That schools “are three to four years behind the rest of the world in how we’re communicating” is a symptom of a larger problem–a lack of available, up-to-date, working technology in schools. When I taught a group of New York City high school teachers this past summer, their concerns were the same. Their reasons for not making use of technology in their classrooms included that the technology available to them was either outdated or frequently broken. Or, in the cases in which they did have access to working technology, the resources were limited, making it difficult to share the few available computers amongst an entire department full of teachers and students.

Common frustrations that transcend departments and districts… How can we as teachers and administrators work to ensure that we don’t fall further behind as technology continues to advance?

Kids need to start establishing a positive digital impression of themselves. Without question, it will be the norm for these students to be Googled when they begin to look for jobs — even if it’s part time.

Yes!! Yes. Do read this post, via @MindShiftKQED.

This piece, by José Picardo, explores some barriers—both on the teacher side and the student side of the equation—to using social networks in the classroom. As Picardo points out: 

Loss of control is also an important factor for many teachers who might see the adoption of social media, not only as extremely disruptive, but also as a further erosion of academic rigour and, ultimately, of their traditional role and relevance. This may be because the tools that are familiar to our students are not so to teachers who might therefore feel unable to control their students online.

I definitely think one barrier to the adoption of various forms of technology is this lack of familiarity with the tools and platforms involved. The key to removing this barrier, from my perspective, is to help train teachers in a way that makes them feel empowered by and excited about the possibilities afforded by these various technologies. (Shameless plug: Read about my experience teaching New York City educators involved in school change to use social media and blogging platforms to aid their research and reform efforts.)

Picardo also notes that students may not be interested in using social networks in their classes. 

Anecdotal observations have led me to believe that secondary students see the internet as their territory and that they feel uncomfortable when this territory is encroached upon by their teachers. In my experience, teacher attempts to engage students using social networks can be seen by some students as initially intriguing but ultimately futile and, above all, uncool.

I have also experienced this pushback firsthand with my students, but have found that they can get past those issues if you integrate social media in a way that really has a purpose in your classroom.

Picardo’s piece is definitely worth a read, particularly if you are working to convince teachers in your school to begin incorporating new media into their classes. Those of you who have begun using social media in the classroom: What roadblocks have you encountered? How have you surmounted these obstacles?

Great tips for strategically developing a technology integration plan for your school or district.

Last week I taught a class for the New School’s Institute for Urban Education summer institute program. The class, called Rebooting Pedagogy: Digital Tools for School Change, provided hands-on instruction for teachers to learn how to use social media and blogging platforms to create a professional public presence for the work they are doing in their schools toward education reform. I turned the teachers on to free tools they can use to gather and then edit images on the web, so I thought I’d share those tools here as well.

First, one of the best free resources for fair-use images is Flickr’s “Creative Commons.” The link above takes you to Flickr’s “Advanced Search” page. From there, put in the key words you want to search for, then check the following box:

 Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content 

From there, you can also check either of the two boxes below:

  Find content to use commercially 

      Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon

Since you will likely not be using your image commercially, the only other box to think about is the second box—“Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon.” Checking this box will prompt Flickr to search for photos that users have uploaded and made available for use and adaptation by others. So if you wanted to modify the image in any way, checking “Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon,” ensures that you have permission to modify any of the images returned in that search.

Wondering how to modify images without paying for Photoshop? There are lots of great, free photo editors out there. Two favorites of mine are Aviary and Pixlr. There’s also Skitch, which I found out about from a student in class last week. One of the other students used it in a presentation and loved it:

Image editors can be extremely helpful for drafting instructions for students to follow, particularly if you are trying to show them how to do something online. They could also be a fun way for students to illustrate creative projects for various classes. So try them out! Experiment! It’s fun! 

Have favorite image editors not listed here? Let me know in the comments!