graham glass

the future of ed

what's missing in ed reform is 

lack of innovation 

because of 

lack of competition

ie: telecommunication,, gone from bulky landlines to 3g cell phones in 20 years, because of competition and innovation.

most innovative country...sweeden

main thing they have done - modular learning

government opened up free marketing for ed... for every child they have they get certain pay... and parents get to send kids wherever, and anyone can start a school with some basics.

now 10%??? go to these innovative schools

knowledge schools

when you join, you are allocated a personal advisor, 

all various subjects are modulized... all online... with tests...

you study for modules however you want

can learn what you however, whenever you want, and test out whenever you want

they have decoupled what you learn and when and how you learn it and when you get assessed on it.

nothing to do with tech... (except the modules????)

at some point... there is going to be a completely free mod ed

so graham decided to build one... 

one problem - hard for teachers to create high quality re-usable models..

creating the modules will take money (or kids making them?...)

maybe there's even a fundamentally better way ...

adventure learning

notion of a game in ed is misleading, most games are a way to practice what you learning in traditional setting

what if you came up with an adventure... you could learn all of math (you go chase) 

tell me and i forget

teacher me and i remember

involve me and i learn


on graham's free classroom management system - edu 2.0

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audrey hepburn wisdom

for lovely eyes, seek out the good in people

for beautiful lips, speaks words of kindness

for beautiful hair, let a child run their hands through it 

for a slim figure, share your food with the hungry

thank you @sofia_henriques

tim ferriss

his art - decomposing things that scare him.

best results in life are often held back by false constructs and untested assumptions.

thank you @jessicadforeman for encouraging me to revisit this talk.

interesting... lifelong swimmers often couldn't teach what they did... hmmm.....
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Ben Michael Ward

writes, Understand the Web

comment on his post... People get lost in their tools far too easily and forget what the original purpose of those tools were.

another comment... (a lot of apps) are building a “tool” that is focusing on being an application, rather than sharing content.

 from a conversation on cooperative catalyst with @paulawhite :

it’s not that so much has to change.. (from teachers who really know how to make those connections happen)..it’s that the web allows more of those connections to happen… which – as messy and different as it seems – makes everything simpler and much more meaningful.
we have to help teachers understand the web – that it’s not tools and apps and bling – it’s those connections to people and content – per passion – that makes it so beautiful – that can make all we do so valuable.

i only wish more teachers could see and believe this – you wrote:

I have time, because they are mostly self-directed and internally driven, to work with individuals or small groups, DIRECTLY on the skills they need at that moment in time.

most resonating part to me from his post:

Want to know if your ‘HTML application’ is part of the web? Link me into it. Not just link me to it; link me into it. Not just to the black-box frontpage. Link me to a piece of content. Show me that it can be crawled, show me that we can draw strands of silk between the resources presented in your app. That is the web: The beautiful interconnection of navigable content. If your website locks content away in a container, outside the reach of hyperlinks, you’re not building any kind of ‘web’ app. You’re doing something else.

Palm WebOS applications are awesome, but they are not part of the web. An app might interact with data on the web, and they are built with similar HTML, CSS and JavaScript technologies. That’s great, but they are not a connected, interlinked part of the web.

We’re talking about two very different things: The web of information and content, and a desire for a free, cross-platform Cocoa or .NET quality application framework that runs in the browsers people already use. The latter cause is louder, and risks stomping over the more valuable, more important, more culturally indispensable part of the web.

post via @gsiemens

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school of the future

Our their mission: Art will be the foundation of the American public education system. Art is a way to learn about everything else. Learning is about experience and exchange. Art is the bridge between both. 

their fundraiser 

where is your school? everywhere... but we'd like a building..
interesting....

via @pushingupward

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shoestring democratic school

how very cool to have read this green paper... so many similarities to what we're doing with the innovation lab..

bravo and thank for your insight Chad on Classroots.org at @chadsansing who also writes at Cooperative Catalyst..  http://cooperativecatalyst.wordpress.com/

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tony wagner on 7 skills

what great insight from - would you hire your own kids... 7 skills schools should be teaching them.

1. critical thinking and problem solving - the challenge is this: how do you do things that haven’t been done before, where you have to re-think or think anew, or break set in a fundamental way—it’s not incremental improvement anymore. That just won’t cut it.

2. collaboration across networks and leading by influence - the ability to influence vs direct and command

3. agility and adaptability -  I can guarantee the job I hire someone to do will change or may not exist in the future, so this is why adaptability and learning skills are more important than technical skills.”

4. initiative and entrepreneurialism -  One of the problems of a large company is risk aversion

5. effective oral and written communication - not necessarily grammar, punctuation, or spelling—the things we spend so much time teaching and testing in our schools...  complaints heard most frequently were more about fuzzy thinking and young people not knowing how to write with a real voice.  {via fried's rework - writing is deciding trait when hiring and also skill most need to unlearn from schooling}

6. accessing and analyzing info - not just the shear quantity of info - but how rapidly and constantly the information is changing.

7. curiosity and imagination - engaged, interested in the world, inquisitive


after sharing insight from observing ap classes - he writes:
Even in our best schools, we are teaching kids to memorize much more than to think. And in the 21st century, mere memorization won’t get you very far. There’s too much information, and it’s changing and growing exponentially. Besides, most of the information we need is readily available on the nearest computer or PDA screen—provided we know how to access and analyze it. Where in the 20th century, rigor meant mastering more—and more complex—academic content, 21st century rigor is about creating new knowledge and applying what you know to new problems and situations.

The Seven Survival Skills can and must be tested through a combination of locally developed assessments and new nationally-normed, online tests such as the College and Work Readiness Assessment, which measures students’ analytic reasoning, critical thinking, problem-solving, and writing skills.


thank you for directing me to this post.. Adam Burk @pushingupward from  Cooperative Catalyst...


also just reading The Real Time Web and k-12 Ed - how school should be..

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small pleasures

2008... brought to us today by @nikpeachey
enjoy...




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vanmeter at tedxdesmoines

take a good listen....


vanmeter in the news...
 

you go vanmeter
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my dear lucy

the latest in Uganda...





and she's on tv... isn't she lovely....

more videos


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is learning social...

purposeful eavesdropping on an intriguing conversation...
logging it all here for future reference and continued learning   - social learning in my thinking just now


trying to wrap my head around the verbiage... 
we spend countless hours caught up in verbiage... 
perhaps that's why the new standard is individualization...
would/could we ever have the same image in our heads for even just one word?
i don't think so.
i think that's why we form personal learning networks per passion... common images optimize rigor in learning.


anyway... on the term social....

The social element of learning occurs when I engage my network for feedback and understanding. via @gseimens

tweets from claudia's collection

gsiemens @budtheteacher is reading a book an interaction with the author or with concept  post from bud hunt - learning is social.. it just is

post from claudia

and from stehpen downes

Personal knowledge consists of neural connections, not social connections. Very important. The reason why this is important is because when we understand personal knowledge as neural connections, then personal knowledge does not consist of the artifacts that we use to describe social knowledge. The artifact that we use to describe social knowledge might be 'a sentence', "Paris is the capital of France." But personally, in our own mind, in our own neural network, it might look like that (see diagram). And this is not simply the representation "Paris is the capital of France," it's als

it appears to me that downes is describing social knowledge vs personal knowledge - (like nouns).. which i get.. but that personal knowledge.. came about in a social way (verb). seems to me that there is no value without an interaction, a relationship,...  that learning is verb - and verb implies social...

i don't see learning as ever stopping... 

outcomes are snippets of time... but then it's back at it.. (or did you ever leave... wasn't that just a photo taken... when it could/should have been video?) ...redefining, editing via some social aspect.

he writes:

So the key thing that I want to underline here, that makes my approach to education a bit distinct from other people's is that the product {noun} of the educational system is not a social outcome. And it's interesting because when you think about how people define what the objectives of an educational system ought to be, they are so often social and cultural objectives. "We want everyone to know our underlying social values, we want everyone to know mathematics, we want everyone to be able to take part in the creation of a jumbo jet that flies from New York to Buenos Aires." They're all socially defined.

But learning is in fact a personal outcome, not a social outcome. It (defining learning as a social outcome) is like having the picture of Richard Nixon tell the pixels what they ought to be. 

i agree that we shouldn't define other's social outcomes... but could those outcomes even come - without social interaction? not a prescribed social interaction... a connectivist interaction for sure... but social either way...   i don't know... who has learned anything truly on their own? and then after learning...who doesn't share...

i know i'm grappling with giants here. i can do that... safely on my blog...

and that's a good example.. on my blog... i appear to be alone - but when i study and read and write - literally - all alone in my room - this feels quite social. 
i would not have any of this personal construct in my head without others' insight.

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do..be...

so.. a dear friend spent yesterday with her colleagues, crafting the right written words for guidelines required of us as teachers, before we attempt most things in public ed. call these words a curriculum map, standards, lesson plans, rubrics ... any will do. 

the most frustrating part... we get the right words and punctuation - to a t - but rarely use the document again... most certainly never embrace it.  {i've spent many summer hours doing much of the same.}

then she spent the evening with some students and parents and teachers, discussing how they were going to video log all they did for the next year, because most all of it hadn't been done yet. what a contrast. what a paradigm shift.

i think today more than ever, and especially in public education, we need to take heed to a phrase we all know:

actions speak louder than words.

in looking up who penned this phrase.. i was bombarded with not that one, but all these.. and .. they make the point as well..

Trust only movement.  Life happens at the level of events, not of words.  Trust movement.  ~Alfred Adler

Talk doesn't cook rice.  ~Chinese Proverb

Ironically, making a statement with words is the least effective method.  ~Grey Livingston

Don't find fault.  Find a remedy.  ~Henry Ford

Action will remove the doubts that theory cannot solve.  ~Tehyi Hsieh

When deeds speak, words are nothing.  ~African Proverb
As I grow older I pay less attention to what men say.  I just watch what they do.  ~Andrew Carnegi

I believe half the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight at things.  ~William J. Lock
People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do.  ~Lewis Cass

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.  ~John Locke
Well done is better than well said.  ~Benjamin Franklin

one that especially resonated with me... i found in reading Andi Kenuam's excellent post on Learning Today - this post in particular on podcasting in ed and edcamp philly highlights.

"We create elaborate lesson plans, intricate assignment sheets, and detailed rubrics that prevent the creativity and curiosity we are trying to cultivate." @aaron_eyler   Aaron Eyler

not to be lazy or lax in rigor... but today.. playing it safe, doing things the way we've always done them, following the rules, .... those are the things that are proving to be more risky... than taking risks.

so 

with sophistication and grace. 

and especially with a responsibility to logging/giving back a process that is replicable - in order to scale and level the access to learning.

students who say they are bored, teachers who say they are stressed, parents who say they are afraid, .... schools that Kozol writes about... underdeveloped countries..... folks with the money who say they have all the answers... and just keep writing about them... 

we all need this revolution.

  ________________________________________________________
   

passionate learning network

Shelly Terrell

An interview : Shelly on her pln.

A blog post: exactly one year after she started the site.

An amazing story.

An amazing person.

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innovation lab 1st meet up

why are we meeting?   may 25

for everyone:

1. want you to see/know each other and parents and (csu) Jim and (district tech) Diane and ?  
    please share name and class you are creating/taking
      {for future collabs: everyone please join talk-ed and everyone please check your cell # on
        our phone sheet - fill others in if you know them}

2. want you to see/know our face-to-face meeting space
      {help paint, hang dry erase boards, ..think about design,.. eyes/ears open for bldg}

revolutionary intermission:

3. want to charge you to read this summer
    a) linchpin or the element - find passion - help Jim and i with tool and process  (Jim share)
    b) diy u - for seeing how this can happen... without messing up future.. de-stress
    c) rework - how we will spend our days - how to run class
30 min 4 days a week, 2 hrs a week, 16 hours... - disenthrall yourselves

4. want to make sure we all have the stuff we need...
    a) pay $1-3 each for talk-ed? put bricks on wall?
    b) each get own book or audio - and then perhaps donate back?
    c) more flipvideos?
    d) laptops/ipods/?

5. want to inform you of 3 shipments this summer
    a) june 8, 8pm, rework meet up (join) - ?...
    b) june 14, 8pm, linchpin meet up (join) -perhaps even in our newly fashioned innovation lab
    c) june 26, 8am-4pm, join fb page iste in denver, share our venture with the world, literally
       (chase, molly, lucas, madi, austin, morgan, aimee, emily, gus, noah, .. 
        meet up at least twice before then to do a run through, chase got elluminate for 30 days)


for global connection students:
1. join new school
2. read blue sweater - connect with wei wei in ny - with acumen fund


for tech interns:
1. inventory and scanner if not done yet
2. marketers... (and parents) plan parent meeting... talk with diy u author... etc
3. start creating/collecting for fall presentation... safe, ethical, effective - meet Diane..
    thanks to Diane - this situation is not real..about cry of the dolphins  but still great resources
    and couros/boyd: worst part of youtube.. comments
    set some meeting times... and plan on first week of august for official training


for foreign language:
1. join livemocha (no longer in service .. suggested alt via Алиса: https://www.lingq.com/ )
2. start texting in spanish?....



want more info:

• innovation lab video
• innovation lab doc per Lucas
• innovation lab doc (original)
• the whole kaboodle... redefine school - click on "tumblr" for innovation lab, your school design it, your pd design it... documents linked below each video
• tsd fridge worthy project

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the element

by Sir Ken Robinson

p. 7 Never underestimate the vital importance of finding early in life the work that for you is play.

p. 12 on the ed system:

1) preoccupation w/certain sorts of academic ability

2) hierarchy of subjects

3) growing reliance on particular types of assessment

p. 14 - the value of dance - the Gillian Lynne story

p. 22 - the Element has 2 main features: aptitude (i get it)  and passion (i love it)

                                  and 2 main conditions: attitude (i want it)  and opportunity (where is it)

p. 31 - there are the 5 senses, the 6th sense - intuition, and a basic sense - balance

p. 35 - too many people take for granted our ideas about intelligence, ie: athletes, dancers, musicians, etc.... draw from the deep reserves of feeling and intuition and of physical reflex and coordination that use the whole brain and not only the parts at the front that we associate with rational thinking.

p. 38 - Alfred Binet, one of the creators of the IQ test, intended the test to serve precisely the opposite function. ..to identify students w/special needs so they could get appropriate forms of schooling. Binet says: the scale he created does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured.

p. 41 - Carl Brigham, inventor of the SAT... disowned it 5 yrs later, .. the SAF is in many ways the indicator for what is wrong with standardized tests: it only measures a certain kind of intelligence.....via John Katzman, founder of the Princeton Review, "what makes the SAT bad is that it has nothing to do with what kids learn in high school. as a result, it creates a sort of shadow curriculum that furthers the goals of neither educators nor students..."

p. 42 - wrong question.. how intelligent are you.... right question... how are you intelligent.

yeah.. just read the book... 13th root guy... needs a brain rest.. etc.

p. 69 - brilliance of Feynman from playing... the pleasure of finding thing out.

p. 74 - find the medium that excites your imagination

p. 84 - if you find a place where everybody else likes the same thing that you do, it really becomes fun..  (pln baby) ... you're almost unconscious to what's going on around you...

p. 92 - Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - pronounced "chicks-sent-me-HIGH-ee" - the flow guy.. where work and play become one... {i really just wanted to write his name}

p. 114 - tribal dynamics: 1) validation  2) inspiration  3) synergy

p. 117 - up to a point, you welcome being interrupted because it is only by interacting with other people that you get anything interesting done... physicist Freeman Dyson. 

p. 118 - find your people

p. 120 - Dylan spends the day listening to Guthrie... and he says... a voice in my head said - so this is the game.

p.  121 - when tribes gather in the same place, the opportunities for mutual inspiration can become intense.

p. 126 - on committees vs teams... creative teams have a distinctive personality and come together to do something specific. they are together only for as long as they want to be or have to be to get the job done.

p. 137 - Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist, was put in an asylum by his parents 3 times because they wanted him to become a lawyer not a writer. they believed they were protecting him.

p. 140 - Arianna Huffington - the biggest obstacles to achievement can be self-doubt and the disapproval of other people.

p.164 The Element by @SirKenRobinson - ...catching polio opened many more doors for me than the one it so firmly closed at the time...

p.159 The Element by @SirKenRobinson -.. it's not what happens to us that determines our lives - it's what we make of what happens..

p. 178 The Element: ..mentroing takes an elevated role for people when it involves directing or inspiring their search for the Element.

p. 179 ff:

4 roles of mentors

1) recognition  (specifics w/in discipline)

2) encouragement  (things thought impossible before meeting)

3) facilitating   (can even be other kids)

4) stretching  (push us past asymptotes - self-reliance)

p. 181 - zig when everyone else is zagging..the fastest path to success is often to go against the flow..

p. 183 - it's important for students to rub up against people who have actually done or are doing the thing that the students are learning. they don't really need to tell you much, just show you what they do.

p. 184 - it might be overstating things to suggest that the only way to reach the Element is with the help of a mentor, but it is only a mild overstatement.

p. 184.. equally as important as having a mentor is to mentor others... it is even possible that you'll find that your own real Element is as a mentor to other people.

3 small chapters left....

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bob dylan's pln

p. 120 of Sir Ken Robinson's The Element...

he shares Bob Dylan's words after spending a day listening to Woody Guthrie...

i felt like i had discovered some essence of self-command, that i was in the internal pocket of the system feeling more like myself than ever before.

Robinson continues.... Like Newton, he (Dylan) saw further because he stood on the shoulders of giants.

What if we got to hear every student (and teacher and admin) say that... and mean it...
.................................................................so this is the game.

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what to standardize

I think we are just testing or standardizing the wrong thing.

Content is no longer fixed, so no longer standard.
Process is fixed… now that we can individualize with personal learning networks via web access.

 

In order to validate whether or not our kids are getting an optimal learning experience in an optimal learning space.. we should be standardizing/validating:

 
1) access (to web, via tool of choice, during time at school)
2) process (is teacher in personal learning network)
3) connectivity (is student creating -via teacher example/facilitation- their personal learning environment)

 

 

same song

 

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passion (element/zone/sweet spot/....)

what leads you to mastery...

I asked my dear friend and expert Karenne Sylester about learning a 2nd language -

her 3 tweet reply:

1) @kalinagoenglish in 140 characters, the absolute foolproof way? Marry a native speaker! Failing that: you must 'need' to learn it, to learn it.

2) @kalinagoenglish it's a funny thing, but without an intrinsic need driving the learning it's rare to get to stage where mastery of L2 (second lang) occurs

3) @kalinagoenglish Marisa wrote a post with some good free downloadable books! http://tiny.cc/k45cm

Wondering how true this is for any mastery....

wondering about flow/sweet spot/element/zone/passion... where work and play are one..

Sir Ken in the Element talks a lot about dance...the arts...theatrepp. 1-3

- makes me wonder... do they get paid less because they don't care about money as much...  or because they care more about ie: their "need" to dance ...

Godin writes in Linchpin p. 98- 

Passion is caring enough about your art that you will do almost anything to give it away, to make it a gift, to change people.

I'm thinking that standardizing a way to find/refine fashion, and then personal learning networks per passion, makes more sense today than standardizing any content.

Currently engaged in an ongoing conversation here, about standardized tests, where I replied with and am totally committed to realizing this:

Another friend Raymond Johnson @mathednet just sent this from the Challenge to Care in Schools:

"Often we begin with the innocent-sounding slogan mentioned earlier,
'All children can learn.'  The slogan was created by people who mean
well.  They want teachers to have high expectations for all their
students and not to decide on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, or
economic status that some groups of children simply cannot learn the
subject at hand.  With that much I agree.

But I will argue that not all individual children can learn everything
we might like to teach them.  Further, the good intentions captured in
the slogan can lead to highly manipulative and dictatorial methods
that disregard the interests and purposes of students.  Teachers these
days are expected to induce a desire to learn in all students.  But
all students already want to learn; it is a question of what they want
to learn.  John Dewey (1963) argued years ago that teachers had to
start with the experience and interests of students and patiently
forge connections between that experience and whatever subject matter
was prescribed.  I would go further.  There are a few things that all
students need to know, and it ought to be acceptable for students to
reject some material in order to pursue other topics with enthusiasm.
Caring teachers listen and respond differentially to their students.
Much more will be said on this highly controversial issue in later
chapters.  For now it is enough to note that our schools are not
intellectually stimulating places, even for many students who are
intellectually oriented." (p. 19)

Feeling extremely passionate about this myself... believing it to be an ultimate even.. in helping others.. 

So...

another dear friend (and colleague per passion) Jim Folkestad and I are working earnestly (because we need to) on fashioning

1) an authentic passion detector (not for a grade, but in order to then purposefully select your personal learning network)

2) a tool to help develop/facilitate/validate personal learning networks (what we believe to be the new standard)

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toms shoes & charity:water

mash up


charity: water + TOMS shoes from charity: water on Vimeo.

Viktoria Harrison on design and branding... and passion:

Viktoria Harrison from shatterbox on Vimeo.

charity:water log site

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bangladesh's info ladies

via @umairh - two-wheel triumphs

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the drive - RSAnimate

amazing visual of Pinks, The Drive:

you probably want to do something interesting.... let me just get out of your way...

video appears to be missing.. can't find it anywhere? anyone else? - missing on other people's blogs as well.. and can't find it on his site.
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graduation speech

Emily spoke at our awards banquet last night for graduation.

She spoke about her fellow classmates who have made an ongoing decision to have no excuses. Who choose to pay attention and get all they can from each day.

Bravo to a brilliant and kind and alive salutatorian.

perhaps if we focus more on unleashing that drive/determination... learning wouldn't be such a battle .. for any of us.

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michael furdyk with taking it global - live

taking it global live

his bio

Michael Furdyk is the Co-founder and Director of Technology for TakingITGlobal.org, a global online community for young people, providing a platform for millions of youth across more than 200 countries to engage with social issues. Along with managing the technology team at TakingITGlobal, Michael was involved in developing the TIGed education program, and has spoken to over 50,000 educators about the importance of engaging students and integrating technology and global perspectives into the classroom. In 2008, he was named by Contribute Magazine as one of 10 Tech Revolutionaries Redefining the Power and Face of Philanthropy.

In the past, he has turned his interest in technology into a series of successful online companies, co-founding MyDesktop.com (later sold to Internet.com) and BuyBuddy.com (which raised $4.5-million of venture capital). Michael has provided insights on the Net Generation to a number of Fortune 500 companies, including a 6-month engagement developing youth strategy with Microsoft in Seattle, Washington.

As one of Teen People's "20 teens that will change the world", Michael has shared his expertise in youth engagement and experiences bringing the power of technology to the non-profit sector by speaking at dozens of events, including the World Congress on IT, the US Government's National Youth Summit, Microsoft's Anytime, Anywhere Learning Summits, The Business Council, and TED. He has made numerous media appearances including The Oprah Winfrey Show, Time Magazine, Fast Company, BusinessWeek, and USA Today. He is a board member and advisor to numerous groups including Better the World, Microsoft Partners in Learning, Virgin Unite, Greenpower Canada, and several other national and global organizations.

why can't we engage kids in solving the most important problems in the world...

millions of pages of content - mostly by students.

only 5% of activity is happening in schools

celine: @jackiegerstein Nice summary from that site: "Teenagers are capable of learning a lot, but the parts of their brains related to emotions and decision-making are still in the works". That's one reason why bringing TakingITGlobal into a classroom is a good idea..

PeggyG: is Rushton Hurley connected with TakingITGlobal with all of his wonderful global video resources on nextvista.org? Seems like a perfect match!

$30 a teacher per year to use tools.... for unlimited amount of students

thematic class lessons;

we grow more slowly here - because we all have our own laptop... and tons of bandwidth..in africa - there are many - say 10 around each computer and with limited bandwidth - so more of a community activity...  - much more of them involved and know about taking it global

homeschooling online... 

can search any country...

country.takingitglobal.org

had to bug out before it eneded...

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