EduCon Notes - Celini
Deep dive into inquiry based tech...etc.
partnership with Drexel and SLA - 3 credit class - week of July 15. Hmmm... housing available. Co-taught between Drexel and SLA teachers and students
- bit.ly/slateacherinstitute
Keynote - Dr. William Hite
- Skyping with grandson - thrilled at ability to watch him interact with and manipulate the “tech” world he experiences (iPad). Not tech to him, but he knows that if he pushes a button something happens.
- Levels of inquiry, curiosity, development. WHat happens in 4 years when he gets to school? We take away those opportunities, prohibit the tech, etc.
- It’s not getting to a correct answer, but the process we use to get there. Lots of learning with trial and error.
- book: Tony Wagner ,The Globla Achievement Gap
- 1:1 gr 6-12 and staff - miserable failure. Trying to use technology to define teaching. Utter failure.
- What is our value if we are only experts at content? Instead, we should be experts of context.
- How should we be thinking about our ability to make each other smarter? How do we make that a more public practice?
- As educators, we need to become much better at collecting and harnessing our individual and collective work, to help each other grow and learn.
- ‘
Session 1 - #standardizethat (Room 300)
- we require internet research, but we don’t teach how to read “non-linear” texts
- publishing is part of standards (on internet)
- How do we get there? I need to see best practices to implement these common core standards in the classroom?
- Mastery learning - imagine if we graded A, B, Inc?
- difference between evaluation and assessment of student learning
- Grading scale: 4, 3, 2, 1 - mostly 4’s = 95%
- here’s what exceptional work looks like, here’s what average looks like, and don’t even think of handing in below-average work
- can we combine a grading scale with the CCSS - i.e. “standardize” grading practices
- CCSS should be about pushing control to the students, not about keeping control for the teacher
- Teacher’s job is to tie content to students’ interests
- What things should be standardized in school? And at what level?
- “self-evident assessment” - when quality work is just, well, evident
- Flickr group: #standardizethat
- take pics, add short text to
Session 2 - Disruptive Innovation - room 207
Presenters
- @sirotiak02, @DrSpikeCook, danielle6849
- Clayton Christensen Harvard prof - why did big companies fail? Xerox, etc.
- they were doing everything right...
- they listened too much to the customers - too often, customers don’t know what they don’t know
- Innovators Dilemma (book)
- rate of utilization
- bells and whistles aren’t usable
- distinction between sustained and disruptive tech
- disruptive needs to be cheaper, for the masses
- Disruptive technology is an innovation that creates a new market where one wasn’t before
- disrupts normal business “flow”
- Google is #1 disruptive technology
- not best, but free.
- Microsoft Office would be sustained example
- Most heavily scrutinized market is education
- Getting lost in the semantics of disruptive innovation
- 1:1 iPad school - -allow students to choose which app to use to show their learning
- Let’s be disruptive and unblock it all
- speak the language of sustainability, disruption can occur
- Unmasking Digital truth
- Teach responsibility and let go of the restrictive policies
Session 3 - Why School - Will Richardson
Day 3
EduCon 2.6 - Jan 24-26, 2014
Keynote - what Does the entrepreneurial spirit mean for schools?
- Simon Hauger, Eunice Mitchell, Salome Thomas-El, Nathan Turner, moderated by Kevin Hogan
- Kevin Hogan
- If invention is a flower, innovation is a weed
- Entrepreneurship is someone who seeks and searches something out, then exploits it (Innovation and Entrepreneurship - book title?)
- students need to become more active in becoming problem solving; not just passive learners
- Entrepreneur center for students in orig big picture
- She consults with districts to help
- Did you hear the earth move when she said: teach children to solve problems
- Good schools for all children is the answer. Priority = kids first.
- The world passes us by while we are stuck in our foxhole repeating teaching of last 100 years
- stumbled upon an educationl program that allowed kids to solve real problems - what does this look like nationally
- pilot - school looks different. Centered on solving problems.
- 1 acre of urban farm (emeril loves creole tomatoes)
- i know of no sustained way to bring $1 mil a year to our neighborhood (lower 9th ward)
- KH - simon, talk more about your proj
- how does innovation happen in an “un-free” market?
- you can’t make high school worse...
- we’re hiding under things called standards and curriculum and calling it school
- students develop projects about things they are interested in in the real world
- bottom line is we need to push our own agenda
- be courageous and take the risk to do things that matter
- how do we lose seat time but not lose results?
- If it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen from the ground up
- There has to be a call to action. Someone has to let people know about these successful programs
- We have loads of leaders but no leadership
- We need to have enough courage to say it’s time to start a (civil) revolution
- What do kids (in NO) need? Money, predictability, a safe space. A chance to find the thing they want to follow.
- All kids have it inside them to be good at something
- Simon - how is risk taking encouraged in schools? It’s not. Through that process you learn persistence and resilience.
- Salome
- Fear is motivating; success is paralyzing
- Are we afraid to piss off someone, to the highest of “pissivity”?
- principalel.com
- we need to elevate the status of the person who works with children.
- we need to start our own school
- left NYC because there was no one doing what he was
- get yourself in a school where you have allies and take over
- Simon - how do we educate parents that they is a different way to do school?
- Salmoe - Persistence overcomes resistance
- Q: Parents see unions as the death of innovation?
- Wrap up - advice as how we can begin with the e. spirit
- Nat - recognize your fear and overcome it; you’re what you’ve been waiting for
- Eunice - feel empowered - you are the answer
Session 4 - Empathy: THE 21st Century School
Samantha Morra - @sammorra
- Obama - biggest deficit we have right now is empathy deficit
- Empathy is the action of understanding - not a passive state
- Is this something we value? Can this be taught? How do we assess it?
- Flex the empathy muscle by reflecting
⇒ Switched to “Politics of Edtech
- perfect metaphor is Zuckerberg funding Christie’s campaign
- Watch the money being spent on the state level
- Pearson doesn’t have to lobby federal government b/c they’ve already bought it
- Policy makers don’t understand tech - they base their decisions on friends, lobbys, who took them to dinner
- Issue at National Writing Project is automated grading
- unions may be swayed by teachers that say they want the time-saving tools
- why are we taking the human being out of the human equation?
- in rank and file the problem? Should the discussion be shifted to “re-training”
- Corps that are members- verizon, microsoft, kaplan, amazon
- Ed orgs that are pro-tech are very interested in shaping online learning in a certain
- What are the politics of the tools we use in the classroom?
- When you do a Google search, it’s not a neutral transaction.
- If you use a free online tool, you are the product
- Google search is tailored to the personal; personalization - downsides? Polarized results...
- Will FERPA be “re-jiggered” soon?
- How important is Johnny’s 2nd grade math score?
- Is it worth millions of dollars of protection?
- Has anyone asked Johnny? Student participation in educational decisions
- Are we too accustomed to handing over our data to care? To Realize?
- Are we branded as teachers? Difference between being Google Certified Teacher (or Apple) and a “Philip Morris “teacher
- Google Certified Teacher - no one questions why Google is doing what they are doing - they support education to benefit/promote themselves
- Do the participants ask that question? Should they?
- Are there downsides?
- What’s the worst case scenario?
- Big Data - we are giving/given vast amounts of data to corporations...what is the tragic case? What is the crisis? What could that be?
- What if Google decided to go away?
- We are giving it away for their (companies’) profit and not living up to the ideals of this country?
- Perhaps so Google can use it to make more money
- Is it our job to provide a product that corps can profit from? (sarcasm)
- What is it that they object to - that point might be the catalyst for change
- Textbooks as new tech industry
- Danger - industry dictates ed, as opposed to vice versa
- Challenges faced by software designer
- You choose the product, then that company owns the data
- Service - more control over the personal data, especially
- Challenge - no definition of what “learning software” (LMS) is
- software industry needs to develop common language and needs (etc) with education profession
- response - 50 states means 50 different approaches (there is no “school”)
- This leads to standardization: tech hat loves it, but educator hat is scared by it (larger issues arise)
- Shared Learning Initiative
- attempting to solve “communication” issue amongst various groups
- we socialize the investments, but privatize the benefits
- Doesn’t industry have a huge investment in keeping us traditional?; business has a vested interest in making sure we don’t change (WillRich)
- Textbook industry is heavily invested in keeping learning traditional
- look at ebook investment
- corps banking on teachers “going with the flow” and not questionning
- If you are a programmer, you are less likely to be programmed (AudreyWatter)
Session 5 - Adopting, Using, Reusing Open Content
- CC Attribution Share-Alike license - best to use?
- CC Licensing is really about how to re/use work
- can also ask permission
- CC = licensing intellectual property; laws still apply
- Open Educational Resources (OER)
- tax-payer funding R&D for for-profit companies
- OER Commons
- Licensing provides context and credibility as/for author
- Not licensing original content means author retains all control
- There is no copyright police - you police your own work
- Can you imagine the public outcry if Company X sued a district for saving money to teach its kids?
- How many of you work in a place where you teach different courses?
- What do you do with the materials? Pass them off
- How do you share a good lesson, for instance?
- Write about it. Post plan. Reflect on good/bad
- If you share out, PDF and PowerPoint is where things go to die
- Curate on OER.org - create an account and share out there as well.
- If you did something that worked well with kids, not sharing is ludicrous
- fear of response - embarrassment, mockery, etc.
- Districts can sell lesson plans, etc.
- Teacherspayteachers.com
- If you are under the idea that your content defines who you are, you are under-selling yourself.
- Content is easy - it’s out there. Expertise? Harder to come by.
- Consider students as co-educators
- students as creators of material
- Some teachers afraid of new students “finding out” lessons
- Collaborate Early. Collaborate Often. Listen to your students.
- CommonCurriculum.com - -I’ve started sharing my lesson plans publically on my class website - has informed my practice
- Build an element of OER into ongoing PD / faculty meetings
- If you treat your students as your most valuable resource, they will become your most valuable resource.
- Shift from content to “open” leads to improvement and reflective practice
- big shift: we don’t own the content anymore
- Original purpose of academic publishing was to share your methods
- Attitude: be less helpful.
- Get out of the way
- Admit you don’t know a lot and let others flex their expertise
- curation is an undervalued form of creation
- People need to step up and get this done. We (in this room) are put of the solution.
- Student-centered 21st methodology
- Corollary - the unspoken curriculum
- if you only do design thinking, you won’t give students ALL the skills they need
- DT - hard; but not about being smart
- Team Literacy
- Christian Long - speaker’s entry point into DT
- diff btw 21st century skills and 21st c leadership
- Waterline as metaphor
- above - all the stuff we normally do to get stuff done
- below - all the other stuff
- leaders need to be aware of both parts of waterline
- group/individual identity - back and forth tug
- Form, storm, norm, perform
- Speedback - quick debrief (point to who did something - i.e. who led group most today), 1 comment, 3 min. Go.
- Gives kids a chance to become aware of HOW
- Task (above): we spend most of time on task (longer meetings, bigger checklists)
- Maintenance (Below): whatever you do to take care of group and its function
- Ramifications for classroom? How do we need to be aware of what’s below the waterline with our students
- If we are going to build creative, collaborative cultures, then we need to redefine leadership
- Make the meta transparent
- Waterline: Maintenance
- Structure - anything that happens apart from human behavior. Group norms, assign roles, track progress, etc.
- Group - group behavior. who participates, who doesn’t. who dominates. who’s checked out.
- Interpersonal - bullying, etc.
- Individual - leaning into discomfort. Do they “yes, and” or “no, but”. Do they take care of themselves?
- Cultural tendency when a group isn’t working is scapegoating.