Teaching

Just caught this post from Read Write Web titled, “Can New Media Be Taught in Schools?”

Head on over and read it, Marshall Kirkpatrick brings up some great points from a non-educator’s standpoint.

Some of the reasons I kept reading:

Tests on Twitter, wiki-style study groups, students quizzed on yesterday’s most popular YouTube videos and the biggest hits on Del.icio.us/Popular - is this what the future of education is going to look like?

and

Academia tends to be woefully behind in almost everything it teaches. Experience in the private sector tends to be a faster and more effective method of learning almost anything. Hard sciences may be the exception.

The internet is changing faster than almost anything in this world, so expecting academics to be capable of offering timely teaching in this field may lead to serious disappointment. That may be shortchanging a lot of hard working teachers fired up about the web, though.

Honestly?

One of the best ways to find out where education is going is to look OUTSIDE - Read this.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to travel 2.5 hours (each way) to attend a presentation/workshop with Will Richardson in River Falls, WI. Will is extremely well known in the edtech community, but perhaps not so much outside of this niche group - this should change! Parents and business/social media people alike could benefit from the messages Will shares about online learning and connecting, specifically his thoughts on Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody” and media literacy.

I spent the hours after the workshop in the car with one of my best friends dissecting my thoughts/feelings/musings on the experience and want to share a few with you as well:

There was no backchannel

This was a rather small group of educators and administrators and probably only a handful of the people in attendance even knew what a backchannel was. No one had laptops or phones out trying to live blog or tweet the keynote. This was actually a GREAT experience! I had my college-ruled notebook and pen out making a few key notes that I wanted to follow up on, but my focus was on Will. Well, and my friend Laura sitting next to me - I guess we had our own little backchannel as we whispered tiny asides to one another during the presentation. Guess what? The small conversation Laura and I had during Will’s talk added to my understanding of his ideas while NOT drawing my attention from his voice/words. I engaged with the presentation and wasn’t distracted. Lesson learned: no backchannel/laptop = great learning experience. Not for everyone, perhaps, but I know my limits. In the afternoon workshop session, though, I had a laptop and ended up doing a few other things as members of the group were talking about things (learning RSS) that I have pretty much down already.

I brought my online connections offline

I had the opportunity to meet John Pederson and Will Richardson offline - 2 people who I have connected with online. John is someone who I met on Twitter and then engaged in email dialogue and blog discussions with, another Wisconsin edtechie. John actually told me about the workshop - I would have never known about it otherwise! I had never directly communicated with Will before, but had read and commented on his blog and followed him on twitter. I was also able to meet, through strange coincidence, the brother-in-law (I think?) of Diana Laufenberg, another member of my online network. The man I met is an administrator in a nearby district and a colleague of my friend. It never ceases to amaze me how our online world translates into face-to-face connections!

Crossing lines

John and I had a great conversation about his love of the game World of Warcraft (sorry for outing you, John!) and the richness of the gaming community. We talked briefly about the difference between WoW and Second Life (with which I’m not very familiar) and also about breaking out of niche networks. Will asked what other people I interact with online, if not just educators, and I briefly explained my connections with many people in PR, social media, mommy/daddy bloggers…….and just plain PEOPLE.

I tried to define what these connections mean to me and how interacting with only educators makes my world a small place - opening the doors to other professions and people mean I better understand the world I’m living in and raising my children in. I can’t truly understand how technology is impacting our students and our world until I understand how the rest of society is using it. The use of social technologies needs to be understood OUTSIDE education before being implemented within, I firmly believe this. This is one of my main reasons for starting This Mommy Gig - to use social tools to interact with people on a topic I’m passionate about - my children. As I explained, the cool thing about this is that my worlds collide - many of the people I’m connecting with about parenting are also in my educational network.

Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Philadelphia

As John, Will, and I talked, the words Philadelphia, Science Leadership Academy, and Chris Lehman kept coming up. I’ve been reading and hearing about Chris and SLA for a long time now, but it was great to get to talk about the school and the remarkable things being done there in more depth. John and Will both asked if I’m going to Philadelphia in January, and I had to laugh………..on my current freelancer/consultant schedule, lifestyle (mom of 2 toddlers with limited childcare), and budget, trips across the country just aren’t feasible. I had to pay out of my own pocket for the workshop on Tuesday. Everyone else was there on district/company dollar, I can be certain in saying. I also didn’t go to NECC or BlogHer this year - these just aren’t in my reality at the moment. Someday, someday……………

Focus on fear

The overwhelming tone of the questions from the audience members focused on fear of the online world. I believe Will did a good job of explaining the realities and possibly minimizing these feelings of the people listening, but it just exhausts me. Maybe I’ve talked to too many people this year about the topic, but it’s just depressing how many educators still avoid online work with students because of F. E. A. R. The fear-factor also focused heavily on parental fear of online interactions, confirming my belief that every school needs to implement parent workshops of the type I conducted last winter for a small group of middle school parents. I’ll work on forming those thoughts in more depth in the future……..

Filters

We had the opportunity to see the River Falls High School filter in work as Will tried to show a few different sites. Among the blocked were MySpace and Facebook - no surprise there. However, also among the blocked were Popular Mechanics, Google blog search, and Technorati. Huh? Teachable moment to be sure. What blew my mind was what WASN’T blocked - a website (pretty horrible one) for a militant Aryan nation group. Just goes to show what many of us have been saying for a long time - filters aren’t working for us, they’re working against us. Note: I’m not even particularly saying the Aryan nation site SHOULD be blocked (even though it was horrible), but that when a filter is blocking innocuous sites like Technorati and NOT a hate group site, something’s wrong.

We had some great discussion on this topic, including one teacher commenting on how she likes having the filter in place because it means she can work one-on-one with students and “not worry about the others.” Of course I opened my big mouth and talked about proxies, consequences, classroom management, etc in response to her remark. That attitude is one which MANY teachers fall back on again and again. I asked Will what his ideal filter would be like, assuming one was required - he said one in which teachers had the ability to immediately whitelist sites they come across that were unnecessarily blocked. Perfect answer!

Bottom Line

I really enjoyed the keynote address in the morning and was thoroughly engaged and challenged during the entire thing. Most of the time I was nodding in agreement as I share many of Will’s belief’s about media literacy and the need for drastic change in today’s schools. I loved sharing the experience with my good friend and meeting new people, some of whom I hope to connect again with in the future. I left feeling a bit overwhelmed with the challenges facing education in the U.S. today and have a LOT to grapple with as I try to understand my place in this system and the kind of system in which I want my children to attend school.

What next?

Kevin Jarrett made a great point on twitter this morning, saying first:

Finished grading 2/3 of Walden papers. Cool seeing MSEd students quote Schrock, Richardson, Warlick, others I am fortunate to call friends. about 6 hours ago from web

and then:

What I want to know is when will I see them quoting Bretag, Davis, Stager, Jakes, Martinez, Lehmann, Utecht, so many other friend/scholars? about 6 hours ago from web

When do we start hearing from some new names OFFLINE? When do these voices (among MANY others, way too many to name here) start becoming commonplace among administrators and educators worldwide?

*Will Richardson’s resource wiki contains additional resources about the topics on which he spoke

Think back to your first month of college, regardless of whether it was this year or 30 years ago. Were you prepared? Did you feel competent among your classmates and friends?

Yesterday Patrick Higgins made a comment that struck me as a perfect way to assess whether schools are adequately preparing students for the rigors of college - he mentioned the survey he’s giving to all of the students from his school who just completed their first year of college. This seems to me the perfect way to determine if the students from your school are actually READY for that wild world of academia - if I had a school, I’d be jumping all over this!

Back to that question - was I prepared for college? Academically, definitely. Overall? Nope.

Tim Walker egged me on and egged me on to write this post, and I first balked because when I write about something I’m really passionate about I sometimes have a hard time conveying my true feelings - the rationale is all THERE in my head and has been for so long that it’s hard to get it out. Here’s my stab at it, one of a multi-part attempt to get my head around the issue -

My friends and I weren’t prepared for college for one simple reason - we were lacking time management skills. Sure, some of us had “Life Skills” classes in high school, but it didn’t prepare us for the complete and utter openness of the college experience. We went from being scheduled every single minute in high school to having a college class schedule, but WAY too much “open” time.

Who’s fault was it?

The high school I attended was on the quarter block system, which meant that teachers used the 90 minute periods to teach a long-ish lesson and then we worked on our homework in class with peers. Helllllllloooooooo reality the minute we hit our first university course! There was no time to work on homework in class and there was also no parent scheduling our afterschool time or weekends. How about those gaps of time on Tuesday mornings from 9-12:30 when I didn’t have class? I was NOT prepared for that! The last time I wasn’t working or going to school on a Tuesday morning must have been the summer after 8th grade!

I also wasn’t prepared for the ability to just not go to class - sure, some professors penalized us for not attending, but back in high school we were given the threat of being arrested if we skipped too much school - they scared us into attending! Also, our parents were held accountable for our actions - they were notified if we didn’t attend class and expected to take action.

Fast forward 3 months and it was ALL on us.

As Patrick mentioned polling students about academic skills they felt they needed for success in college, I immediately thought - but what about LIFE skills? Are we preparing our students (and own children) for life after us? Are we preparing them to make the choice about going to class and to assess how much free time is too much free time?

As we schedule our children in activity upon activity from the moment they are born, are we doing more harm than good?

My intention is to avoid this with my own children - I want to minimize the number of activities they’re in and help them learn to manage their OWN time. What to do with a free weekend? Homework or play? I want the consequences on THEM, not me. The only way to learn from mistakes is to be held accountable for them. I learned this the hard way in my college health and phy ed class where I earned one of my 2 C’s - it was the easiest course EVER, but I didn’t go to lectures because they seemed pointless and I could get the material from the textbook. Huh, turns out they took attendance.

I suffered from my own bad decisions - I think we as a society need to start letting our students and children learn just a few things the hard way.

Stop scheduling, stop cushioning the blows.

And now I head out the door for a 3-day trip to my hometown where I’ll see some high school friends - I look forward to discussing their experiences from that time period now that we’ve had a *few* years to process it all……….

Wow! The response to my post about choosing between a Masters in Education or an MBA has been outstanding - check the comments out if you get a chance, there is a TON of great information from many very knowledgeable people.

Here’s the thing that’s striking me, and striking HARD:

Several people have mentioned the bias regarding online degrees and it’s just killing me. This came up in a discussion I had earlier this year with a college professor and I hoped that he was in the minority. It appears not. I want to share these comments with you and then get your opinion because I really hate to think that in this day and age online learning is still looked down upon. The only way to change it if it is? Learning about the misconceptions and FIXING the things that lead to them!

Here’s what John and Jon have to say:

John Tenny:

First this:

“on-line is not as good as a live program; not that what you learn would be any less, but in the network you will build by getting to know your peers in the program.”

and then this:

Re f2f versus on-line: it all depends on the goals of the degree. If it’s learning the information, then anywhere that has the info will work. Same with wanting credits for pay increases (by the way, in most states is the number of credits that raises the salary, not just the degree).

But if you are looking to both learn and advance your career, the importance of the network can’t be ignored. For instance, a large % of CEOs in the business world come from just 3 institutions. It’s more than just the old-girl-network, but being in a group that will become leaders and who know you, and your interests/talents exist.

In addition to that, the experience of interacting with a group of talented, dedicated, and energetic other professionals who are thinking through the same issues you are can really enlarge your thinking. I valued the discussions and arguments with peers in the program equally to the great classes I had in terms of new ideas and new knowledge. And now I know who to call if I have a question about some topic or other (that networking thing again).

Unless there are significant reasons to form a community that go beyond the course requirements to ‘comment on someone else’s blog’, the elearning community experience will not last. You can build friendships, but fewer and more tentative.

The world of education is rapidly transitioning from a ‘cells and bells’ model where the teacher was queen in her classroom to a collaborative and interdependent environment. While the larger community can include e-colleagues, the primary professional community will be f2f.

Besides, drinking a beer isn’t near as much fun alone.

That said, other circumstances can make one place-bound and you need to choose from the resources at hand.

Jon Becker adds:

Kate, given your update, I would add a bit to @John Tenney’s comment. In the P-12 world, human resources folks (and school boards who make the ultimate determinations in lots of cases) still look askew at online degrees. It’s probably a little different for ed. tech. positions, but not much. For lots of reasons (mostly not legitimate), there are all kinds of biases against distance learning and in favor of f-2-f learning. There will be lots of folks who will look at your CV/resume and think, “OH, she took the easy way out…”

That might change in a few years, and I hope it does. And, you might find a forward-thinking, open-minded group of leaders willing to keep your CV/resume in the mix and interview you. But, you should know that there are those biases out there.

My location and family situation make it impossible to travel very far or move for a degree program - it’s just not going to happen. I really want to believe that an online program will prove as valuable as a face-to-face program, and in my mind, it will be. I work with an e-learning company and have found the platform amazing and robust, connecting people that would have never come together otherwise. Unfortunately, in this world, it’s not about MY perception, it’s about employers’ perceptions, isn’t it?

Help me out!

Thoughts on the comments above? Has this held true in your experience? If so, what can we do to improve the perception of online learning? Are there severe limitations that you’ve experienced?