Educational Innovation as a Metaphor

"They want teachers who are 'yes' men, teachers who will carry our the mandated curriculum. Not visionaries." So, before I continue, is anyone else feeling anger pulse through their veins? Is anyone else wishing that they had the power to make their own school and higher their own visionaries? I know I am somewhere on that train of thought... wondering what fool would buy into this. 

Let's run with this idiom: "train of thought". 

What is the point of education if it can't gain power? If the students that spend their days sitting in these classrooms, swallowing whatever information is force fed to them without any time to mentally "chew" and to process what they've heard, how can this student gain power? I mean, we don't put rocket fuel in our cars assuming that its going to power it in a better way. It won't work. A rocket is a rocket while a car is a car. Students are students in the same way. 

If we as teachers are going to allow administrators to demand that things be done in a certain way, but then also watch as they demand that we  produce on a greater and greater level that is based less and less on our actual improvement in practices and techniques,  then we are allowing them to fuel our cars with jet fuel. Its not going to work. This is not how people learn. When we get into college we are expected to take everything on the fly. Experience is our teacher once we leave the high school classroom. Why would we not be taught how to innovate for ourselves before it becomes vitally important. 

We need to create for the teachers and we need to invent new ways for this knowledge fuel to help the machine that it is intended for. Don't leet principals tell you that sticking to the curriculum is the only way. Begin inventing now and continue to invent.

To all my future teacher colleagues: be brave and create. 

What People Focus on Becomes Their Reality - Sustaining the Momentum

People live in a world larger than themselves but children are taught within a bubble. Why? Why is it that in life we need to be prepared for anything, and in this preparation, we need to have the appropriate response and be able to use the appropriate resources to formulate that response. If everything is spoon-fed to us in schools, how are we supposed to react at the drop of a hat to something that we never expected? The answer is that we cannot. Teachers MUST model for their students how this thought process works. Unexpected situations cannot doom students to fear and therefore failure. Preparation and reflection are everything. 

The inquiry model of teaching is a fairly new model to the classroom. In saying that it is new, I am not saying that the idea of inquiry is new to the classroom. I am saying that inquiry is newly being welcomed by teachers across the globe. New methods are being created all the time and the sharing of these methods between teachers is constant. [If you have any ideas please share them with me!] In this model, students are asked to pay the closest attention to what matters to them. So in effect, they are not learning a specific topic. They are given a category of ideas or a method of questioning and they are supposed to use the information that is gathered to greater their understanding of the structured topic, or to gain knowledge of how to research and develop ideas upon something that is completely foreign to them. Regardless of the prompts or instructions, everyone participating in an inquiry lesson MUST be willing to reflect fully on every aspect of their process. Did they ask the right questions? Did we take the right steps to find an answer? Is the conclusion a fair one? How can we improve what we did to come to a stronger understanding of the topic or a more appropriate answer?

WE MUST REFLECT ON ALL OF OUR THINKING. OUR STUDENTS MUST DO SO TOO.

This is how we will sustain the "momentum" in our classrooms. If we let students learn what they want and reflect in ways that best motivate them, momentum will not stop. In letting students drive their own learning our learning community keeps growing. (Pretty similar to our online network of perpetual teacher-learners, huh ;-))

HOW Do I Make My Website Useful!?!

The education of an educator is exciting, situational, and far more complex than most people could imagine. At some points, the practice methods (lesson or unit development for example) are the most important components. At other points, the public speaking or affective domain abilities become far more important. Teachers need to be able to speak just as effectively in public as they do in one-on-one situations. They need to be feeling, sympathetic, organized, and motivated. Just as genius in art, music, and oration calls for just the right combination of well-honed abilities, a good educator is defined by their overall product.

Over the past week in my Digital Portfolio class we have been reviewing presentations that were developed by many of the classmates. The presentations were reactions to a chapter in our class text, "The Connected Educator", that discussed the difference in qualities found in good and bad websites. What makes a website good and why on earth should we as readers visit your site? After the reading of this chapter, many students completed a presentation using a screen cast apps. They reviewed a good website and bad website using the information provided in the textbook chapter. I have provided links to my five (personal) favorite presentations and I have also included commentary that would help both the author and myself improve the next time we have to create online presentations.

Nicole's Review Good v Bad Juice Websites - Good: There was a good mixture of website examples and powerpoint-driven images/text . -
Improve: Maybe it was a bit too casual and maybe a little too much detail. Instead of reading every flavor of juice that they have to offer, just state that they offer the flavors at the bottom of their page.

Natasha's Review - Good v Bad Car Dealing Websites - Good: Organization and choice of detail was very helpful and the color schemes made it very easy to pay attention. Improve: Actually demonstrating the websites would be helpful. While your descriptions were clear visuals are helpful for many learners in different ways.

Christina's Review - Good v. Bad Furniture Websites - Good: You use pausing very well to add to the effect of your presentation. You are not rushing and it makes the listener/audience feel comfortable. If this does not happen with you during face to face conversations, I would suggest that you use this talent in the future! Also, I think it was a very good idea to use your image in the corner of your presentation. It gave the feeling that I was listening to a real person and I felt that it was easier to listen Improve: The room you chose to record/the microphone you used gave an echo effect that made it harder to understand the sound

 Olivia's Review - Good v. Bad Tattoo Parlor Websites - Good: I loved how you talked about the bad website in terms of your experience rather than dictating how the audience should feel about the sites. Reader's are supposed to be learners and not followers when it comes to blogging and you provide a personal contribution rather than a demand.  Improve: It seemed as though you were scanning the website for the first time because I felt like you were just going through everything the site had to offer in detail. In the future, I would chose a few things to highlight throughout the site. Touch on these things quickly and concisely, making sure to close your statements with a brief summary of the information reviewed.

Matt's Review - Good v. Bad Hotel Websites - Good: Very concise and specific. If a reader has a specific question, they will definitely be able to find that detail in your presentation. Nothing that you have to offer is missed -- However, it would definitely help to break up your criticisms for the auditory learner. You flow very seamlessly from one topic to another, and while that is good for academic writing, it helps your audience to perceive the end of one thought and the beginning of another.

It was a wonderful experience to listen to these presentations and I hope that through listening, you can learn a thing or two that will help beef up your website and attract some traffic!

Our Globalized World

While the direction of my blog is primarily guided by my own personal interest in the field of education, the content of each post was inspired by a specific chapter in "The Connected Educator", a book written by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Lani Ritter Hall in 2012. Chapter 4 in particular digresses from the typical rhetoric found throughout the rest of the book, and in doing so it perfectly captures the idea that the authors were trying to convey.

Instead of discussing specific individual web based resources and things of that nature, the two authors truly delve into what supported the backbone of their entire book writing experience. They discuss the nature of face-to-face relationships, their development, and the adaptations that should be made to construct a similarly productive relationship using an online platform. They hadn't met in person before completing their book and they have only the power of the internet to thank for this success. In this day and age the internet is everything besides a limitation. Its an open door that continuously beckons the eager and informed learner. "Technology has thinned classroom and school walls, blurred the boundaries of time and space, and has provided opportunities for authentic teacher learning in networks and communities" (Nussbaum-Beach & Ritter Hall 2012). They gained immensely from their experience and the authors hope that educators (like you readers and myself!) can learn how to foster productive online relationships that can better foster learning for all internet users of any age.

(Acknowledgments - Paragraph 1)

"Our first acknowledgement is to the power of a connected collegial relationship and the technology that made that relationship and this book possible. Two connected learner leaders, separated geographically by more than five hundred miles, availed themselves of technology to collaborate, share insights, and generate ideas. Using Skype led to words flowing on Google Docs as each chapter of this book emerged and evolved" (Nussbaum-Beach & Ritter Hall 2012).

Collegial Relationship- The sharing of academic information and development between colleagues

Congenial Relationship- The sharing of humanly and polite interaction - in accordance with literally any topic

People have needs and among those needs is the need for human interaction. We as humans, want empathetic people in our lives and we as humans are motivated by these positive human interactions in a variety of ways. Herein lies the authors' connection between the world of learning and the world wide web. Herein lies the secret to the authors' success. After the advent of internet based learning, teachers have been challenged by their willingness to adapt to their surroundings. Can teachers effectively deliver concepts that, to them, are completely foreign? Can an educator born in an cyber-hypotonic solution of a generation genuinely be ready to pioneer a 21st century education? Yes. Yes, they can. It merely requires a little bit of commitment and a great deal of appreciation for the power of internet tools. If we can sufficiently learn about these internet tools and maximize our utilization of these resources, then the internet has been used to our advantage as users.

Finally, none of this is relevant unless there are many users that are willing to come together to collaborate ideas. Just like the authors, internet learners need to collaborate to really be taking advantage of the power of the internet. Users that are just passive learners and that don't share their ideas are missing a major component of what 2017 technology has to offer. So, teachers encourage your students to collaborate using collegial and congenial relationships on as many online platforms as possible and use the internet to its fullest potential.

Good luck learners!

'

Opening Up Your Options

"I believe knowledge construction comes from experiencing or building something yourself or collectively as a team using tools". I ask you all: do you agree?

Chapter five of the connected educator by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach & Lani Ritter Hall focuses on different tools that can be used to support connected learning in a classroom. As a society we need to strive towards "keeping up with the Joneses". As the world becomes more digital we must respond accordingly or we will be left behind. Learning in schools is molded by the materials we use and this can generally be witnessed in an average classroom. In the late 1700s and 1800s a "text book" called the New England Primer became popular in schools. The themes that were portrayed in this book series were religious in nature and focused on a great deal of repetition and memorization to learn about reading and writing. This reading and writing was very plain and typically focused on religion and religious values. This was a widely used reader therefore many students only got to learn through this point of view.

Moving into the days of Web 2.0 tools and classroom 2.0 technology, these limiting (and frequently religious) barriers have been shattered. Using the internet, students and learners of all ages can connect with people across the globe. Students now have access to a much wider variety of cultural information. Students in America can learn through the eyes of a student in Bangladesh or listen to religious ceremonies that are completely foreign from their own. Students can watch what they want, read what they want, and they most certainly are not constrained to one view of the world.

What kind of tools are suggested in The Connected Educator?

• Social Bookmarking!
• There has always been an option to save a link to a site that you have visited in the past. However, archiving websites has become much more complex and useful! 
• Instead of just saving the sites and hoping that they are still active later, users can now archive their favorite articles and easily search hundreds of saved items and then they even have the ability to share these sites with other users. 
• One example of this is the website that is titled Delicious . This creates a community of website savers that extend across the globe. 
• You can also use applications such as digo to save and annotate information directly from a web page. A digo tool can be added to your regular web browser fro convenience. 
• Blogging!
• Blogging has been mentioned in many of my past posts so please feel free to navigate my blog for further information! 
• This is one of the ways that people can connect based upon shared interests and they ride the waves of internet freedom!
• Sites such as edublog.org help teachers or administrators create an online community for their learners on any level. 
• School wide or only in the classroom - edublog.org makes this easy!
• For people that are just starting out with blogging, Googlereader will help you find and organize your new sources for information.
• Microblogs!
• Just about everyone knows what twitter is these days. Its up to us to make sure that it is correctly utilized for professional or academic development! 
• Staying consistent and remaining dilligent about the information you seek and provide promotes success in the world of microblogging. 
• Wikis 
• Ever have problems working on a group project? Is it too hard to email the same document back and forth while communicating all changes between group members? Use Wikis! 
• This is a shared space where people can update and work on documents with one another in real time. No more confusing emails between a bunch of people!

These are not the only options educators have when they want to stay connected on the internet.. I encourage you to look for more and share as many as possible with me so my classroom can become more connected too!

Connect to What Makes You Tick

As I have previously reviewed the concept of blogging and all of its potential roles in our daily lives, I have also highlighted its connection to the world of education. It is just as important for people using online platforms to be connected as it is for people using face-to-face means of communication. From the day we are born we use our interactions with other people to learn about ourselves and our surroundings. We learn to speak from our parents and we learn to read from our teachers. Interpersonal skills are learned from our friends and hobbies are learned from different resources throughout our lives. Continuous learning is the cornerstone of being an effective member of society and, in school, where children learn to actively participate in their development, is the best time to expand their means of exploration in every way we can.

Online learning is in an opportunity to expand on teacher instruction and student learning. Chapter two of "The Connected Educator: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age", focuses on the idea of developing a connected learning model. In this chapter, the author focuses on the transition from a small local community of learning that generally isolates the learners, to a larger interconnected global network of learning that opens up doors to worlds that would otherwise remain unknown. (On page 27 is an illustration of the change that has occurred). But how does online learning excite the process?

Originally, learners only had access to a small amount of resources. Whatever literature was made available to them only collaborated with the information they may have gathered from lectures or personal conversation; the internet smashed these boundaries. Educated people began sharing their information, increasing the amount of literature available. Then, others began to respond to this information increasing the amount of thought surrounding the individual ideas. Soon after that other people stumbled upon these interactions and they begin to find interest in things they had never heard of.  None of these changes required the learners to hold a book or have a face-to-face conversation.

The process became an ongoing learning cycle and it has never stopped. Online sharing passed ideas along. It questioned and expanded upon those ideas. Most importantly it invited new learners to be a part of this idea expansion. Connected Learning Communities were formed. Learning communities occur in many different settings. Local communities, global networks, and bounded communities.

• Local communities are face to face communities that will work on changing the pace or learning process that is occurring within a certain building or school district. 
• Global networks are primarily online communities that pass information to people that may have never met or may never meet in the future. 
• Bounded communities can either be online or in person, however, they are focused on inquiry and going as deep as possible into the information about a certain topic. 

Utilization of all of these communities to pass along learning is absolutely key and the way the technology opens doors makes it the best way to be involved in all three. 

Please view a Video of a personal view of the Connected Learning Model

Keeping it Balanced and Keeping it Connected

My previous post addressed the idea of what a blog is, what it can do for the people that partake, and what the responsibilities might be of someone that is developing a blog. The research that was used included the three articles that I used to gather a guiding idea of how to start my blog and this post will basically be expanding on those ideas. Essentially, now that I have a basic understanding of the process, I went out in search of information that will help me begin to flourish as a blogger.

One main idea that was consistently addressed in my resource, chapter 6 of The Connected Educator by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, is the difference between a network and a community and how an understanding of this difference will help someone flourish in the blogging world. "Networks are about the individual" (Nussbaum-Beach) and communities are about all bloggers.

An efficient network refers to a group of blogs that one person has followed that does a good job of streamlining information for that one person's interest. Bloggers literally share information about anything you can think of but a good blogger will keep their relationships limited and mutually beneficial. Many times it is best that someone entering the world of blogging finds themselves a mentor that has "been around the block" once or twice. They won't necessarily need their mentor for every little action they take, but rather to help them set a basic list of rules. For instance, a blogger that has found a variety of posts and posters that meet their needs will do their best to keep it to just this: a relevant group. Someone that is starting a blog about marine life may enjoy sporadic information about travel but it is important that they stay focused and streamlined towards their goals. To avoid having irrelevant information overshadow the bloggers goals they can use RSS aggregators. They can filter out what they don't want to see and relevant information grows at a much faster rate. When bloggers have more information they can share more information and the other people in their network can benefit even greater. Networking is about having a good source of people from which you can learn, but bloggers need to be careful in their decisions if they want people to trust them enough to open up their information to them.

On the other hand, a community is a group of bloggers that follows a similar purpose and uses the information of each other to promote strong relationships. If you think of the term community outside of the online definition it literally means a group of cohabiting people that interact on a variety of different levels. A blogging community has the same idea. A bunch of people meet under an online interest and these people share information back and forth. However, bloggers in a community will also interact with people that want to join. Its more than just people sharing and reading information on one end. For instance, there should be a person that takes the job of welcoming people into their blogging community. Another person could have the job of filtering out irrelevant information. A network really only involves the decisions of one person to make the blog sink or swim while people in a network work together to develop a blog and help each other to grow as both learners and teachers.

A good blogger will build a strong network by being a productive member of a blogging community. How will I apply this to education? Simple.

I envision that a way my class will share information is through blogging. I can give them options of topics to research and they can blog about their findings. My students can develop as bloggers by making smart decisions in who to follow and who to let follow them. The people that want to research dinosaurs can do that while another group of people can research asteroids. By making smart informed decisions behind the guide of their mentor (myself), they can all find research that will mutually benefit each other and the unit can become more than a unit. It can become an online community of smart young networkers. "Technology is an amplifier that can accelerate students and teachers towards wider understanding and deeper learning. Technology is not an elixir. It is not a silver bullet... Learning Transforms us and our students, not the tools" (Nussbaum-Beach).

The students can provide information for themselves and work to understand the information on a much deeper level.

Just remember: As a blogger you are committing to being a perpetual learner.

Enjoy!

For those of you with a linked schoology account --> please address the original article!