International Education News

Yesterday at NECC was one of those yin/yang experiences, with one of my worst conference moments ever, which, as these things go, preceded probably the best conference feel good ever.

The Yin: I was on a panel with two other featured speakers that I thought was supposed to be a discussion about how Web 2.0 and School 2.0 are playing out and what it all means for the public education system. What it ended up being was about a total of 15 minutes total of actual conversation and 45 minutes of attempting to coax the audience into submitting best practices for the panel leaders’ new book about Web 2.0 tools in schools. Not to say that the ideas that many of the people submitted weren’t interesting and of value and worth listening to. But I have to say, I felt pretty used. And the total irony of the moment was that in this “Web 2.0″ and “School 2.0″ session that was supposed to celebrate the uses of the tools, the random notes were being taken on screen in a very un Web 2.0 tool called Microsoft Word. No transparency. No collaboration. No thought to sharing.

And no surprise.

I’m sure this is going to come across as conceit, but as much as there are many sessions about 2.0 this and 2.0 that, as much as the exhibitors are trumpeting all this great 21st Century learning stuff (all labeled “Safe for Your Students!” btw) there is still very little real “getting it,” real understanding of how these tools change everything, real appreciation for the transformation that so many folks at EduBloggerCon expressed on Saturday. Yep, everyone is on the train, but hardly anyone still knows what’s feeding the engine.

But the folks at the Blogger Cafe do. And that’s the yang. I don’t know how many of them will blog about it, (probably most) but the cafe is turning more into camp as people basically say “forget the sessions…this is SO much better.” And so we linger and talk and teach and learn and bond and I swear this is the best experience I have ever had at a conference (and I’ve been to a lot of conferences.) It’s just too much fun sticking around all of these people who share this itch and want to continually keep scratching it. (Check out Jeff’s Twitter feed to see what I mean.) The passion is palpable. In some ways it’s extended what started on Saturday, and it feels like more of a classroom of the future than most of the other models being bandied about.

The important thing for me is that even though we’re all heading out today, class is still in session. We’re just moving over to the virtual cafe where the pace slows down a bit and the laughter isn’t as loud. And just like the physical space, we drop by, hang out, speak up or listen when we’re able. And the learning continues. That’s what’s so powerful about all of this. That’s what I keep hoping more people will experience.

Don’t get me wrong, NECC is great this year. But he highlight of my week was an e-mail I got from one of my former students who has a novel coming out this fall. Seems I played a small role in saving her from a dreary life as an investment banker and helped nudge her toward a professional writing career. (Financially, of course, this was a dreadful mistake.) Absolutely gave me a warm fuzzy, and made me, just for a few minutes at least, long for the classroom and the kookiness and creativity and angst of teenagers. Diane was a great one.

And the best part? She’s got a blog, too.

Pretty amazing that the 40 computers in my open source session at 8:30 were claimed by 7:45 and that a good 150 people (if not more) crammed into the room by the start time. (The photo was taken at about 8:15.) And even more amazing that the Internet connection basically went dead but I think the presentation went pretty well anyway. I’d guess about 40% of the people raised hands when I asked how many were bloggers or used blogs. And some really good questions saved me from tap dancing too much.

But what was really amazing was that totally unannounced, the superintendent at my own kids’ school up in New Jersey showed up. (And Laura, if you’re reading this, it was great of you to come.)

The Blogger’s Cafe has been the place to hang this morning, and yes, it’s official…”we” have “arrived.” At least on the surface. Maybe David has already done it but I wonder how many Read/Write Web sessions there are going this year. Must be close to if not over 100. And “2.0″ is everywhere on the exhibit floor, where I did my annual 30-minute walk just to see all the stuff I wouldn’t buy. (A couple of exceptions, but once again, if you totaled up all the money being spent on displays and schwag and the carbon footprint for getting it all here, you could easily buy a laptop for every kid in the country who needs one. And I’m sorry, but from the “let’s see how much junk we can give away that will end up in a landfill” category, Best Buy needs to be outlawed next year. This sound eerily familiar to a post I wrote last year, I think.)

Not to be cynical, (just can’t shake it) I’ve been wondering (and having great discussion with Cafe-ers) about just what station we have “arrived” at, however. It’s feeling like “I Can Blogville” which I guess is somewhere on the route to “I Can Help My Students Build Their Own Learning Communitiesville” or something like that. At the Google booth, I watched a line 10 deep snake up to take a turn at trying out Blogger. One after another, the Google guide showed people how to post. One after another, you could see the “Gosh, that was easy!” reaction. It was pretty cool just lurking, watching it. But again, I wonder to what extent that will somehow lead to an understanding of what changes in a network, where the real power is.

It’s not in the publishing. But I guess we have to get there first.

At any rate, if anyone from the session is reading, thanks so much for coming…would love to hear what your reactions are, and welcome to the blogosphere.

You’re halfway there.

So I added the “I” in the above because I have absolutely no doubt there will be many more of these unconferences to come. This has been a good day, on a number of different levels. I’m really, really fortunate in that over the years I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many of the people in this community, and it’s been very cool seeing them all again and being all in the same space. But there are many folks here who I don’t know or haven’t met, and it’s great hearing those perspectives and voices as well.

I’m not going to dive too far into the topics and the readouts…lots of other folks are doing that. But I’m really thinking about community in the physical and virtual contexts. We had a pretty provocative discussion led by Sheryl that reminded me how different these spaces are, and how complex they are to navigate. It’s something that, once again, has to be folded into our curricula throughout our time with students. And I really believe that we have to have our own brains around these different iterations of community that our kids will be working in.

I’m not sure how far down the road we’re getting on answering any of the big questions. But we’ve started some conversations that I’m sure are going to continue. Steve, who has done such a great job of making this happen, said at the outset that he’ll be interested in seeing what transpires from this six months out. I’m feeling, at this moment at least, that we may have actually pushed further forward by that point. And I’ve come away with at least one “big” idea that’s relevant to my own search. But I’m still trying to listen and divine (if that’s the right word) some guiding principles for this conversation…

Anyway, so far, so good.

Those of you who have read this space for a while know that Lawrence Lessig is one of my heroes. I know…it’s somewhat of a geeky choice. But he’s without question been one of my greatest teachers in the last six years. I’ve seen him speak on about half a dozen occasions, and each time I am just inspired by his passion and dedication to challenging the traditional thinking about intellectual property and copyright. In many ways, I’ve tried to emulate him in my own presentations, albeit badly.

The news is that Lessig is moving on to different challenges, leaving the focus of the last 10 years to take on political corruption for the next 10. In his recent blog post about the subject, he talks about how he has come to believe that while we will eventually come to our senses about IP and copyright issues, real lasting change is incumbent on changing the system that makes the laws first. “Our government can’t understand basic facts when strong interests have an interest in its misunderstanding,” he writes, noting that this is at the heart of the corruption of the process. And later, “I’m convinced we will not solve the IP related issues until these “corruption” related issues are resolved.”

As I read the post, I heard all sorts of echoes to the school reform conversation we’ve been having in this network, much of which I’ve articulated here already from time to time. It’s no secret that I have not been optimistic of late that systemic changes can be made to this thing we call public school education through grassroots understanding of why change needs to occur, a position that in itself has not been made exceptionally clear to date. And that while I still really believe that helping to start conversations around these ideas and these changes can have a positive effect (in terms of in some way helping to generate some thinking and discussion around where we need to go,) I’ve been feeling myself moving away from the school reform conversation of late. I’m not so much interested in figuring out what School 2.0 means or is right now as I am just looking at my own kids and asking what are the skills and literacies that they are going to need when they their life’s work and what’s the best way to help them acquire them. I know this: it’s not their school in it’s current state (again, nothing new if you’ve been reading for a while.)

And so, as I write this (and post it) while barreling down I-95 somewhere in North Carolina, about three hours behind schedule, I’m heading to NECC with some real questions on my brain. My hope is to do a lot of listening and thinking, and less talking. I’ve gotta figure some stuff out…

This may be a first for a huge national conference, but Steve Hargadon and NECC have put together a list of every session being offered in Atlanta and given each a specific tag that presenters and attendees can use with blog posts, photos, video…whatever content they want to publish. Just bring all those tag feeds together with a tool like PageFlakes and you’ll have your own session magazine. Pretty cool.

Which has me thinking about how to use that tag as a presenter… I’m open to ideas.

Greg Farr’s post on LeaderTalk a couple of days ago resonated on a couple of levels, but none more than his reference to reframing the timeframe:

As I visited with staff and friends, it became increasingly apparent that I need to adjust my whole sense of timing on this.  A fair analogy would be to say that as I plan for implementation of Everything 2.0, I want to use a stopwatch.  But my staff wants to use a calendar.

I really enjoyed the way he made his own thinking transparent…his struggles are obvious.

But as I try to get used to life off the road for the next five weeks, I keep wondering. What’s the best way for us to define where we’re trying to get? Framing it in the context of schools? Of our own learning? Of the global shifts? All?

And more interestingly, I think, is do we really have a calendar’s worth of time to figure it out?

Every week, my kids bring home their “Friday Folders” from school, usually packed with paper…torn out worksheet pages, handouts from school, permission slips, tests taken, more worksheets, lunch menus, letters from the principal, more worksheets, more tests, an occasional fund raiser, and yet more worksheets. Wendy and I sign our names to much of it, usually in a Monday morning blur, our kids shoving it in front of our faces saying “Just sign it Dad, it’s nothing” or something similar when we ask just what it is we’re signing. And the next week, that signed paper comes back with another flurry of worksheets and tests and quizzes and god knows what else.

We’ve been collecting it, all of this Friday Folder paper, growing what’s become an enormous pile of it in the corner of our bedroom, a pile that I guess in the eyes of their school in some way represents the learning that my kids have done this year. I’m guessing we’re supposed to be proud of all of this accomplishment, this big pile of paper that my kids never, ever revisit as it sits there, growing week by week. Sometimes I look at it and see 1,000 paper airplanes. And sometimes I look at it and wonder if what it really represents is not so much what my kids know as what they have become, a couple of highly dependent learners, enabled by their teachers and their school to produce a constant stream of, of…of what? Knowledge? Learning? Busy work?

I was reminded of this by David’s post today where he writes about the need for students to become more self-directed, to take charge of more of their own learning in a world where, for the kids who are connected, at least, there is so much more to learn. I know this isn’t anything new; we should have been teaching kids that all along. But the fact is that what we’ve taught them is that the teacher sets the agenda, defines the method, assesses the outcome and controls the whole process. And as David suggests, it’s no wonder many teachers and adults in general seem to be waiting for someone, anyone, to teach them instead of taking the initiative to teach themselves; we are most all products of the system.

But I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to what my own children are going to need to be able to do when they get to where they have to support my wife and I in our old age, and I’m convinced that none of what they are learning now is going to in anyway ensure a pleasant retirement for us. They are not being empowered to learn, not being helped to become:

• Self-learners who are able to navigate the 10 or 15 or however many job changes people are predicting for them by the time they are 30
• Self-selectors who must find and evaluate and finally choose their own teachers and collaborators as they build their own networks of learners
• Self-editors who can look at a piece of information and assess it on a variety of levels, not simply believe it because someone else does
• Self-organizers who can manage the slew of information coming at them by developing their own structures and strategies for making sense of it all
• Self-reflectors who are not solely dependent on external evaluation to drive their decision making and their evolution as learners and people
• Self-publishers who understand the power and importance of sharing and connecting information and knowledge and can do it effectively and ethically
• Self-protectors who understand where the online dangers lie, can recognize them, and can act appropriately to stay away from harm

Of course, all of this requires a certain willingness to relinquish control, not just of the things we know but of the things we don’t know. In fact, that second part is even more important, I think.

The teachers in my kids’ school are good people, and I know I’m a tough parent. But the more I look at it, the more I’m convinced that my kids just are not being served by the constant passing of paper back and forth, by a curriculum that’s driven by stupid assessments that require answers that may no longer be accurate or relevant by the time my kids need to actually call them up later in life. It’s the exact opposite of what they need. And I’m not sure I can sign off on it much longer…

(Photo “fly the flickr skies” by gadjoboy.)

From the “Sometimes This All Scares Me” Department comes this item from today’s Wall Street Journal (fee today, but maybe not tomorrow.) Basically, it’s about a couple that decided on their newborn son’s name by…well…just read this:

So when Ms. Wilson, now 32, was pregnant with her first child, she ran

every baby name she and her husband, Justin, considered through Google

to make sure her baby wouldn’t be born unsearchable. Her top choice:

Kohler, an old family name that had the key, rare distinction of being

uncommon on the Web when paired with Wilson. “Justin and I wanted our

son’s name to be as special as he is,” she explains.

So now, thanks to Google, her son is named after a plumbing fixtures company. (Oh wait…buried in the story is the tidbit that they actually came to their senses and went with Benjamin instead. “Kohler,” it seems, whould have subjected him to playground ridicule. Just wait ’til he gets online…)

My kids are going to be so, so unclickable…

I’ve been waiting to get my hands on David Weinberger’s latest book Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, but unfortunately it arrived from Amazon the afternoon I left for my four day trip to Illinois. (Btw, anyone see where I was yesterday???) Being the impatient type that I am, I picked up a copy in a bookstore yesterday, and while I haven’t gotten too far into it, I’m glad I did. (Plane ride home tonight…)

Anyway, I know it’s cheating, and on some level ironic, but the first thing I did was check out the decidedly un-miscellaneous index to see what he had written about education. Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, the answer was not much. And I have no doubt that as I read through this, there will be all sorts of connections to our own issues and struggles with the changing structure of knowledge and information. But anyway, here’s a taste.

At one point, Weinberger discusses “Social Knowers,” and he describes the typical Massachusetts classroom at the end of the year where students are taking standardized tests.

The implicit lesson is unmistakable: Knowing is something done by individuals. It is something that happens inside of your brain. The mark of knowing is being able to fill in a paper with the right answers. Knowledge could not get any less social. In fact, in those circumstances when knowledge is social we call it cheating.

Nor could the disconnect get much wider between the official state view of education and how our children are learning. In most American households, the computer on which students do their homework is likely to be connected to the Net. Even if their teachers let them use only approved sources on the Web, chances are good that any particular student, including your son or daughter, has four or five instant messaging sessions open as he or she does homework. They have their friends with them as they learn…

One thing is for sure: When our kids become teachers, they’re not going to be administering tests to students sitting in a neat grid of separated desks with the shades down.

I hope he’s right…

One last observation. Yesterday in a workshop with some independent school teachers, we were talking about IM, and someone said that she had a student tell her that IM is where the drama in her life plays out. It struck me how powerful that tool can be and how different that is even for me.

Anyway, more on the book as I plow through it…