In my recent post the “Three ‘E’s”, I make the case that the true evolution of public education should track from teachers who ‘Entertain their students’, to teachers who ‘engage’ their students, and finally to teachers who ‘empower’ their students.

The post generated some interesting questions:

1. What’s wrong with being an ‘entertaining/cool’ teacher?

There is nothing ‘wrong’ with being entertaining and having students label you as a ‘cool’ teacher. You can still be entertaining and cool when you make your class more ‘engaging’, only now, your students are doing more of the work and you are in the spotlight a little less.

Even in a classroom where students are ‘empowered’, you can be entertaining and cool, only now your job becomes easier in some ways because the students “OWN” their own learning. You are there more as a guide and an expert resource. Kids who have taken ownership and responsibility for their own learning aren’t looking for you to entertain them as much because by they have taken their learning into their own hands.

In this scenario John Taylor Gatto describes the difference between “Schooling and Education”.

2. When we empower students can we trust them to decide what they need to learn? Can we trust them to choose how they want to learn?

Gatto makes the case for students developing self-knowledge. He believes it is the keystone of a successful life. Pay particular attention to the student who talks about learning being his own responsibility…”teachers just open the door…”

3. Can we trust students to be responsible?

We say we want to foster responsible students; but we give them little or no ‘real’ responsibility. Gatto calls homework a ‘phony responsibility”. Gatto’s students run a homeless kitchen on their Friday independent study days. They learn responsibility by taking on real responsibility. You can see the entire “Classrooms of the Heart” video here; but pay particular attention to the last 1:40 seconds.

Empowering students is a radical idea. There are lots of obstacles to doing it, including the kids themselves who would rather be told what to do and follow a well-known script. As long as we progress no further than entertainment and engagement; the ownership for the students education falls solely us. The kids are just along for the ride. When students are truly empowered, they feel responsible for their own learning. We are there as responsible adults and experienced educators to insure that their learning experience is the very best it can be; but we aren’t in this alone anymore. We are joined by our partners in learning…our students.

pete

Re-Posted

How successful we are in transforming education is dependent on the stories we tell. The Vikings may have discovered the New World; but it was Columbus that brought back the stories that stirred imaginations in the courts of Europe. Centuries later, it was the stories of endless, fertile lands lying unclaimed in the mid-west that spurred a westward migration. Later still, stories of gold chunks shimmering in shallow streams pushed many men even farther west.

What are the educational technology stories that are resonating in America today?

Powerful stories can change the world. When I was a teenager I watched on television as Martin Luther King spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. He told the story of the equality of man. The “I Have a Dream Speech” described a world that did not yet exist. Its prose was so beautiful, the ideals so uplifting, and the delivery so passionate, that it touched something in my soul. Even as a teenager I wanted to help create the world it described so eloquently.

So what is your story? If we had a few minutes in an elevator and we were shooting the breeze, or you were standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, what story would you tell about educational technology in your district?

Would you tell me you had 1200 computers?
Would you let me know that you had purchased a Smartboard for every classroom?
Would you speak about high speed, fiber optic lines or a wireless school?
Would your story be a complaint that you want to do great things with technology; but the staff or leadership “don’t get it”?
Would your story be full of hope? Or frustration?

Would your story be “Big”? Or would it be about what you think is “realistically possible”?
Would your story stir my heart? Or be a litany of “reason”?
Would it sound like a call to action? Or like a wish list of items to be purchased?
Would it have hero’s in it?
What struggles did they have?
How did they grow along the way?

When you tell the story, is it with conviction? Do the listeners see that you believe it so deeply that you are ready to sacrifice yourself to achieve it? Or are they listening to good ideas that may go nowhere?

Transformative narratives can’t be phony. They have to be real because listeners know intuitively whether a story is just words; and when it is alive and filled with possibility.

Stories aren’t just the domain of charismatic speakers. Our gifts may not lie in oration or in writing; but we can inspire others with our actions, for they also tell a story. If our actions are oriented to the operational details, the technology itself, or our personal gain; that story is public to all. If we hold a larger story in our hearts that will also be heard by all.

Nicholas Negroponte has created the One Laptop Per Child initiative. The story, if told from a technology point of view; is of a low end laptop for children in Third World countries. Nice; but not much juice there.

When the story is told from a larger perspective; Negroponte is changing the world by unleashing the potential of every child on earth. He is providing them with the means to learn, commmunicate, and create no matter their econimic or social conditions. A little more juice in that. Given time, we could keep refining the story until the words accurately reflected a vision that we could feel deep within ourselves. A story we could support and to which we could commit.

Some of us have crafted a great educational technology story but it isn’t resonating with people. Look to see if the story is “in your head” or coming from your heart. When you have the right story and it is delivered from the right place, the results can be remarkable.

The reality is that we are our stories. We don’t tell stories; we live them. If we live them with conviction, they will come to life in our actions and through our gifts.

It’s our story. We live it every day. Will it have meaning and impact, or will it be a small story that is ignored by those around us? It’s our choice. What story do you want to tell?

pete

In a recent post I laid out a host of strategies that have been put forth by educators in an attempt to ‘fix’ whatever is ailing our schools. I asked, “What would you do?“. I understand that we need to do more than one thing at a time; but one key area I’d change is our orientation to the three “E’s” of public education

The first E is “Entertainment”.

In this scenario the teacher is entertaining and fun and therefore the kids enjoy the class. The teacher is labeled ‘cool”. Everyone’s happy. We’ve all had “cool” teachers like this.

The second E is “Engagement”.

The teacher is still entertaining; but now he/she has stepped to the side a bit more and lets the kids get more involved and more active. There are more projects, more discoveries, more creativity, and more construction on the part of students. The teacher is still “cool” and entertaining; but the kids are doing more of the work. Many educators feel this is where we need to be…ed tech folks see that technology can play a big role in creating this environment…and it is a huge step from the traditional classroom.

…however…..

The problem that I see with both of these strategies…is that the teacher “Owns” the learning. The kids attend, and they may be entertained and engaged; but it’s still the teacher’s gig. When I look at videos of classrooms in turmoil (see Dangerously Irrelevant), I clearly see students who do not “Own” their own learning. They could care less. They have decided not to “play school” with us anymore, and that is frustrating for everyone…especially the teacher.

They might not be aware of it on a conscious level but their unconscious dialogue go something like this,

“You educators set up this stupid school, decided what you were going to teach without asking me, chose to put me in this class, and then told me to shut up and take notes. I may not have much power; but I can shut you and your dumb system out. You can’t force me to learn. The stuff you’re teaching me doesn’t have any relevance to my life. As a matter of fact, acting out in school is the one place in my life where I can exert some power, even if I’m the one who loses out in the end.”

A sad comment; but understandable for a disenfranchised and dis-empowered student.

That brings me to the third E, “Empowerment”.

In this approach students are part of the system itself. They participate in decisions about what is taught, what they would like to learn, and what strategies and tools they would like to use in the learning process. Some may decide to work more independently, some in groups; but they are part of the process of deciding what goes on in their own learning.

This is a radical step forward from “Engagement” which seems to be the ed tech mantra right now…”Engage me or Enrage me.” But the students need more than engagement. They need to be empowered. They need to feel like they are not the just “bricks in the wall”. They need to feel they are the architects, masons, (and yes) the laborers that are building the wall.

Educators don’t need to feel threatened by this because we still maintain our own ownership and accountability; but to educate the disaffected, angry, and powerless students in many of our traditional classrooms, we must open the circle of power to include the learners themselves.

John Taylor Gatto says,

We have turned our students into parasites. It’s an ugly word but absolutely true. By reserving them in school rooms and having them think that they have nothing to give back to the world for 18 years….We need to give them real responsibility. Doing your homework is a fake responsibility.”

Empowering students is not a magic bullet. We will still need qualified teachers who know how to build trusting relationships with students and handle the many challenges that kids will present. We will need parents that are part of the empowerment circle and are involved with their children’s education. We will need the best technology tools; and school facilities that show society’s commitment to our children’s futures. We need all these things….

But without taking steps to empower learners to “own” their own learning, we will continue to see classroom dynamics that doom us to failure and to continued classroom turmoil…

…and that serves no one.

pete

Cross posted at Touchstones:

Today I received one of the greatest gifts of my life. My daughter, Colleen, who is 20 years old and a student at Rutgers University, has discovered one of her gifts and let her voice come forth. She has never had a voice lesson and she has never really shared her singing with us. Her older sister, Kate, sent me a link to music which she was quietly publishing on the Internet

left: Collleen right: Kate

How grateful I am to see my child manifest a gift that is hers, uniquely.

My father is undergoing heart surgery today and this is a link to a song that Colleen dedicates to him.

Angel

Here is more of Colleen’s music.

Each of us has a gift or gifts which live deeply within us. More often then not, we don’t honor them. One of my gifts is that of words, and most of my life I ignored it. I didn’t think it was a way to make a living. I didn’t think I was good enough. I minimized its importance.

Whether you can earn a living with your gift, or where you stack up against others doesn’t really matter, does it?

A gift is our deepest self manifesting itself in the world. When we use our gifts we are truly alive and present. It is joyous to do so. It is joyous to witness others.

Let us celebrate the beauty that lives in each of us.

in gratefulness, abundance, and peace,

pete

It gets frustrating hearing the never-ending drumbeat of complaints about our educational system.

We need to:

mandate that teachers use technology, get the hierarchy into our way of thinking about technology and change, re-write the curriculum so that it is more engaging and relevant, provide better and more frequent PD, develop new read/write web learning communities, repeal NCLB, create more school choice and charter schools, reform higher ed and insure that we are graduating teachers that are ready to use technology tools and are prepared to teach in ways that engage students, have more federal and state leadership, expand the message of change to a larger audience of parents and community members, provide better and more effective leadership at all levels, develop passion based learning, project based learning, constructivist learning, use data to differentiate instruction, provide a computer for every student, online learning, interactive smartboards, and more Internet bandwidth.

For some, the answer is to tear down the entire system and rebuild it from the ground up.

There are issues of:

smaller class sizes, principals as instructional leaders, finding and keeping qualified teachers, providing decent urban school facilities, the readiness of students to attend school, their readiness to read, the cultural and economic backgrounds of the families and communities of the children the school serves, school safety, bullies, drugs, cultural decay, the enormous pressures on teachers to work with non-English speakers, even those that are illiterate in their native languages, low teacher pay, and shrinking resources available to support schools.

And then there are the students: dis-empowered, silent, passive, bored, dropping out physically and mentally, expecting nothing, cut off from relevance, and removed from the conversation.

There are educational statistics to be delivered on all sides. Great progress. Great failure.

Minimalists like Keith Fromme contend that the transformation we seek is created by finding teachers who love students.

If you could do something, what would you do?

pete

For the past six years I have maintained a practice in Aikido. We learn Aikido in a ‘dojo’ which means “place of the Way”. What would it look like if we structured each of our classrooms like a dojo?

Aikido is a Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba as a synthesis of his martial studies, philosophy, and religious beliefs. Aikido is often translated as “the Way of unifying with life energy” or as “the Way of harmonious spirit”. Ueshiba’s goal was to create an art that practitioners could use to defend themselves while also protecting their attacker from injury.

First, there is a teacher, the sensei. Sensei is one who has demonstrated his mastery and continues to study and practice his subject. This is similar to the traditional teacher in our classrooms today.

The pedagogy is simple and direct. The teacher demonstrates a technique with a partner chosen from the students in the class. He generally chooses a senior student called a sempai. Sensei does not usually over explain the technique. He illustrates it by performing it with his partner. After a showing the move a few times, the students in the class begin practicing it.

Students of all ability levels take part in the same class. This is a throwback to the one- room classrooms of 19th century America. Senior students train with the newer students, and assist them in perfecting their technique. This is beneficial to both the new student and to the sempai, who by helping in this way, become more aware of the nuances of each technique themselves.

Sensei moves about the dojo, observing students at their practice. He may stop someone to show him how to improve a particular part of his move. He may provide encouragement to someone who has done something well. He may step in to work with someone individually, or to stop all the practice and re-teach the move, focusing on some point he feels the students are missing.

The key point here is that students are learning by doing. The amount of time sensei spends instructing in front of the class is minimal compared to the practice time of the students. All instruction from that point on is specific to the individual students and their needs.

Aikido training is structured for students to obtain mastery. What does this mean? There are basic techniques that are foundational and practiced nearly every day. No matter how basic the move may seem, there is always more to learn, and more to master. For example, a beginning student might be learning the footwork of the move, an intermediate student may be doing the same move but learning more about proper spacing, and a senior student may be focusing on feeling the energy of his attacker and maintaining a steady flow of movement and breath.

This is unlike our classrooms which focus on checklist type learning. “I took that already.” I already learned that.” This type of learning fades away into oblivion over the years, because it was never really ‘learned’, only memorized.

What about testing in the ‘Classroom Dojo”?

Sensei is always watching his students. When he feels one has reached a certain level of competency, he asks the student to ‘test’. When sensei asks someone to take a test it’s safe to say that they’ve already passed because he would never ask a student to test if they are not ready. Some students learn quickly and move through the ranks relatively fast; while other students move more slowly…always at their own pace. It doesn’t take long to realize that it is not helpful to compare oneself to others in the class.

The test itself is a chance to demonstrate the student’s level of mastery to the rest of the class. A student isn’t tested on what he knows; but on what he can “do”. Learning in a dojo is never about what one says, thinks, or believes; but it is more about what new actions one is able to take.

What if the ancient concept of the dojo were adapted to our educational system?

Could we find a way to group students that wasn’t solely based on age or ability level?

What would it take to create a culture of learning based on Mastery?
Is it possible to re-define learning from an abstract knowing to an ability to do something with what we know?
Could we build classrooms built on practice?
Might it be possible for students to learn from each other?
Could testing become a ritual meant to demonstrate what one has learned after one has already satisfied the teacher?

I’ve found my years in the dojo to be an incredible and affirmative learning experience.

pete

In two recent posts (Sustaining the Unsustainable, Towards a New Paradigm) I laid out the case for a new networking paradigm based on ‘virtualizing’ as much of our technology infrastructure as possible.

As I pointed out previously, a simplistic explanation of ‘virtualization’ is that we remove the software applications that now reside on individual hard drives and install them on centralized file servers. When a student or teacher uses a piece of software, it is not running on their individual workstation, it is running on a file server; thus their workstation is a ‘virtual’ one.

There are many benefits to ‘virtualizing’ workstations (see Towards a New Paradigm); but today I wanted to focus on the challenges that we face when setting out to ‘virtualize’ our networks.

1. More servers…
In this new paradigm, we run our software on servers and not on individual hard drives, thus we need more servers. In the current environment the file server is primarily a storage device. One server can service more than 150 workstations. In our new environment we may assign a server to every 30-50 workstations. Because these servers are actually using processing power and RAM to run educational software applications, we want to be careful not to oversubscribe them because doing so will affect application performance. Using a 500 workstation environment as an example, might require approximately (10) application servers.

2. Reliable networking infrastructure…
In the current environment most of the action takes place at the local workstation, and other than Internet use, the network itself is primarily used to store or retrieve files. In the new environment the network is used constantly because the software running on the servers is communicating with the local workstation. In fact, every mouse click and keyboard stroke is sent over the network. In order to create a seamless experience for the user, the network needs to be sound and reliable. The greater the network speeds the better. Typically, we’re talking about 100mbs to the desktop and a gig backbone.

3. High Speed and reliable WAN infrastructure…

If we decide to gather the application file servers into a centralized server farm, then the Wide Area Network needs to be robust and reliable.

Heidi Has Gable comments:

“In a virtualized world, you rely heavily on your WAN connection. Now, if your Internet is slow or even down, you can’t do anything with the computers! If your apps are running locally, at least you could work on the local machine until the Internet circuit gets fixed! I could write in Word, do mind-maps in Inspiration, etc…”

What Heidi observes is partially correct. In a virtualized world when your connection to the server farm is gone so is your ability to use the software that is on the servers. This has nothing to do with the Internet connection. If the Internet is down, you are still able to work, as long as your local connection to the server farm is up.

Some schools mitigate the chances of losing their connection to the application servers by abandoning the “server farm” and deploying their application servers locally in the buildings with the workstations they are serving. By eliminating the WAN they are eliminating a potential point of failure. However, there is no doubt, the most efficient and cost effective deployment is to locate all application servers in a single server farm located centrally somewhere in the district.

Another strategy to combat the worst-case scenario of losing the connection to the application server farm is to put a single application server in each building as an emergency back up. 98% of the time the workstations in the building are using the ‘application server farm’ ; but if the connection to the ‘farm’ goes down, the school building can temporarily log on to the local application server and work until the ‘server farm’ is back online again.

4. Hybrid environments…
One of the most frequently asked question is how does a ‘virtualized’ network handle large multimedia files, Photo Shop, AutoCad, movie making, digital story telling, and high end Adobe applications?

The key to remember is that we can create hybrid environments. Virtualization is not an ‘all or nothing’ proposition. If we have labs or workstations that do ‘high-end’, processor heavy applications, then it makes sense to load and run that specific software locally as we do today.

But a great advantage of software ‘virtualization’ is that even if the PhotoShop software is stored and run locally, we can also install a number of copies of the software on the application servers in the ‘farm’, so that when students go home they can continue to work on the application when they log in remotely.

Hybrid environments can also apply to the hardware employed in the virtualization paradigm. It’s not uncommon for folks to equate virtualization with thin client technology because it lends itself so well to a diskless hardware environment; but realistically, the most common and effective method of virtualizing a network infrastructure is to create a hybrid of older, existing computers with hard drives, thin clients where they make sense, laptops and smaller devices like the Asus Eee.

I will examine several other concerns and the costs of virtualization in a future post.

pete

Today I am feeling a sweet and abiding joy. There is a deep welling of gratefulness in me. I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you; over and over again. There have been so many wonderful people that have touched me along the way and so many that inspire me.

Sometimes the only thing that will do when I feel like this is to turn to poetry. Leaders should never stray too far from poetry. I offer this poem from Mary Oliver, which strangely enough is about death. How we contemplate death is a key to how we live our lives.

When Death Comes
by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

and therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and sisterhood,

and I look upon time as not more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as the field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world in my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Thank you, thank you, thank you….

pete

Note: This was cross posted at the Classlink Blog.

In my last post, “Sustaining the Unsustainable”, I examined the status of a small district completely overwhelmed by the trials and tribulations of maintaining a 500 + workstation network. National statistics show that this district’s technical support struggles are like many other districts throughout the country. There is no doubt that schools are struggling to maintain the technology that they have in place today. Unfortunately, the more inconsistent and unreliable the technical support and infrastructure becomes, the less it is used to its full potential by teachers and students.

If you believe, as I do, that we are on our way to a ubiquitous, ‘one laptop per child’ world, then the challenges we are experiencing sustaining the technology we have now, are just previews of the larger technical support and infrastructure issues we will be facing in the future. In the case of the little district we have been discussing, think about supporting 1500 computing devices (most of them mobile) instead of 500.

It’s time to explore a new networking paradigm; one that allows us to grow our networks in a way that doesn’t multiply our technical support workload the way present the ‘best practice’ of supporting hundreds, even thousands of individual hard drives does.

A simplistic explanation of ‘virtualization’ is that we remove the software applications that now reside on individual hard drives throughout our buildings, and install them on centralized file servers. When a student or teacher uses a piece of software, it is not running on their individual workstation, it is running on a file server; thus their workstation is a ‘virtual’ one.

So what are the benefits of designing our network infrastructures this way?

1. Instead of supporting the software installed on hundreds/thousands of hard drives, we manage a much smaller number of easily accessible, centralized file servers. In this new scenario, a network technician can support many, many more computers than is possible, in the old distributed computing environment.

2. We can easily install and update software on the servers so that every workstation runs the same version of an application. The time consuming work of ‘pushing’ software out to workstations, ghosting workstation images, etc. becomes a thing of the past.

3. Because our workstations are ‘virtual’, and we are using neither their processing power nor their hard drive space; we can keep our older computers for longer periods of time.

4. Once again, because we are using our files servers to run our software, we can begin to purchase lower cost computing devices, some of which may have no hard drives, or moving parts.

No moving parts, means fewer maintenance issues.

Lower cost devices translate into larger numbers of computers for students.

5. Improvements in ‘virtualization’ technologies make it possible to provide much higher application performance levels, as well as reliability, and ‘uptime’. Application file servers can ‘load balance’ as applications are being run. When you run a piece of software it will always open on the ‘least busy’ file server. In addition, when a file server fails for some reason, the applications don’t stop being delivered, they simple are opened on the other fully functioning servers.

6. Because the software is running on servers, you can access your applications from any computer (with network or Internet connectivity), from anywhere, including home. When you log into the network, whether at home or somewhere in the school building, your applications are at your fingertips even if they are not on the computer at which you are sitting. This translates to 24×7×7 access to all your applications and files.

Districts like Lemon Grove have gone a long way to showcase the benefits of ‘virtualizing’ their infrastructures.

Sometimes our current ‘best practices’ prevent us from seeing new possibilities. It’s time to begin to develop a new paradigm for our infrastructures; one that makes sense in an emerging, increasingly mobile, ‘one to one’ world.

pete

Note:
What are the technical challenges and costs of ‘virtualization’? What is the downside of ‘virtualization’? What are some of the concerns and issues that are raised by detractors of the new paradigm? This will be the focus of our next post.