Oops, I Made a Mistake- Am I Still Learning?

  by  dingler1109 

A comment from Wendy Young (#Kidlutions) on a recent post I wrote, (Technology in Education- How to Support a Tip in the Right Direction), and an #edchat conversation about creating passion in students on Twitter this evening has my mind racing.

In reaction to my perspective that mistakes are an integral part of the learning process, and not to be feared, Wendy commented that,

as fear and mistakes go, "BRING IT". It is truly the best way to learn. My wish is that all teachers would learn to EMBRACE mistakes as part of the process of learning...and be able to transmit that to the next generation. Needless to say, some of the biggest mistakes have turned out to be things we might not want to live without: post-it notes, potato chips, chocolate chip cookies, velcro, etc! Some mistakes become discoveries in and of themselves!

What a truly insightful comment; one that I fully agree with. I was speaking to my class not so long ago, and it struck me as they were asking me what was going to be on the upcoming test, that they felt a compulsion to know  because they were literally afraid of getting  the answer to a question wrong. They were asking me for a study sheet to take home so they could memorize, and subsequently recall, the correct answers. I was saddened in that instant, and resolved immediately to have a conversation with the class about intelligence... what it means to me, and what I hope it will begin to mean for them.

Intelligence to me is not a thing, it's a process; one that never stops. I believe that those who are willing to submit to the fact that they don't really know much at all are the most intelligent because they have everything to learn... therein lies the process. At the core of intelligence as a process is the concept of thinking. When my class challenged me to provide a study sheet for them, I believe Benjamin Bloom was rolling over in his grave. During my conversation with the class, I explained Bloom's Taxonomy, and they were mystified... I was explaining that there are different categories of thought, and that my teaching and learning philosophy aligns more with the organizing, synthesizing, evaluating and characterizing side of Bloom's learning objectives classification. On that day in my class, my focus on the importance of teaching kids higher order thinking skills became a little sharper.

I believe a culture of learning is a culture of inquiry; one that supports discovery and values creativity. I need to create this culture in my classroom, and I think, as simple as it sounds, Bloom's Taxonomy is the place to start if I want to combat the fear my students feel toward getting stuff 'wrong.' To promote discovery and creativity I need to teach them how to advance their thinking so learning (intelligence) becomes a process for them; not a means to an end (the end being knowledge.)

How have we got to this place in education where recall of facts appears to be what kids think intelligence is? No single person, teacher, parent, school authority or even the students themselves are to blame. The problem is systemic. Schools bear the responsibility to react to perpetual changes in society. The complexities of our ever-evolving world pose an overwhelming challenge for schools to produce citizens who are prepared for them. Educators appear to have responded to this challenge by striving to create people who know. I believe what we should be doing is preparing people who know how to think.

I want my class to be filled with kids who passionately believe they have everything to learn, and that the path to becoming intelligent is paved with the ability to think without fear of mistakes. It's OK to be wrong, right?

The More Things Change, the More They Should Stay the Same...

flickr CC image via robinrkc

We live in a strange and wonderful time. Our world is changing at a rate never before witnessed in virtually every aspect of society. Arguably, the advancement and integration of technology in society is at the forefront of this change. In the context regarding how technology is changing our lives, a curious irony is taking place.  As our technological capabilites expand, the distance and wonderment between previously unreachable networks of people shrink at the same time.

Technologically speaking, we appear to be rewriting the book on so many things: collaboration; cultural awareness; sharing of skills and knowledge; popular culture; real-time news... navigating this change is a fast-moving train. As a result, I am anxious that ethical and moral relativism is rearing its ugly head. Responsible utilization of digital fluency means different things to different people, and the rationalization of purpose and need regarding technology can take questionable forms. This is why I say, the more things change, the more they should stay the same.

In times of quantum change, there is a tendency to focus on rewriting the rules we think need to align with the change. We forget that, philosophically speaking, everything worth discovering has already been discovered, and that the challenge is to discover it again. In our quest for increasingly faster channels of technology evolution, I believe we can lose sight of deeply entrenched, historical values and essential truths that should be guiding our evolution; timeless bits of wisdom that never go out of style. Ethically and morally speaking, in order to guide the evolution of our new technology paradigm, I believe we should get back to ideological basics in the way we treat each other, the way we govern and the way we lead change.

I have stated before that there is no better arena to lead technology change than within the institution of learning. Can there be a better environment to synthesize timeless truths with the minute-by-minute advances occuring within the digital world? However, in order for this to happen, attitudes and perspectives need to be re-evaluated.

In virtually every collection of thoughtful insights since the beginning of intellectualism,  whether within Toltec wisdom, the Ten Commandments, the Book of Tao or countless others, sages have been extolling the virtues of ethical and moral well-being. Can we define a set of contemporary moral and ethical guidelines for the use of our expanding technology knowledge? Is anybody writing this book? Assuredly, everyone has an opinion related to how technology should be affecting and shaping our lives, and this needs to be respected, but also analyzed from a critical perspective... grounded in the timeless ethical and moral frameworks that already exist throughout the world. As a teacher and advocate for children, I believe school is the perfect place to begin filtering these frameworks alongside the technology integration challenges facing society.

A culture of learning is a culture of inquiry that values discovery and supports creativity, but it's also a culture that acknowledges discoveries of the past that guide our inquiry. Relative to the intense inertia surrounding advancing technology, there is without a doubt, contemporary wisdom to be gained through modern thought processes that will help us continue to learn and develop insight into how to maximize the advance; but there also exists timeless wisdom yet to be fully acknowledged by contemporaries about how leaders of technology change can ground their work ethically and morally. It is the integrative nature of combining the two spheres of wisdom that will allow us the largest capacity to frame technology so its potential to affect society positively will be fully realized.

Calling all schools: this is our task... are you prepared for the challenge?

Education Reform- Just Get On With It

flickr CC image via Lance Sheilds

I have had the opportunity a few times within the institutions I serve to contribute towards the conception of mission, vision and values statements. As much as I agree these statements are vital to the long-term sustainablity of any organization, I must admit, the process can be taxing to say the least. An excellent Twitter conversation I had recently with Jerrid Kruse (@jerridkruse) spurred me to reflect further on my thoughts regarding purpose, and where it should originate in education.

One of the most profoundly thought-provoking books I have read recently is Viktor Frankl's (1946) Man's Search for Meaning chronicling his experiences as a concentration camp inmate, and describing his psychotherapeutic method of finding a reason to live. According to Frankl, the book intends to answer the question "How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?" I took away from this book the notion that without purpose, there is nothing. I think I already knew this on some level, but not to the point where I was considering the concept as part of my minute-by-minute navigation of daily challenges. I have come to realize implicitly that purpose needs to be at the core of everything I do. As an educator, I believe it is critical that a sense of personal and professional purpose is reflected in the mind of every teacher.

Back to the mission, vision and values (MVV) statements issue...
During my conversation with Jerrid, we reflected on the question of where the MVV should originate. There is a two-fold context to this question; the organizational context and the individual context. As I stated above, MVV statements are vital to the long-term sustainablity of organizations... this is undeniable. A successful organization is one that knows explicitly what it does, the preferred future it is aspiring toward and how its beliefs will help them get there. Running alongside this collective, organizational principle of MVV statements are individual people who make up the organization. I believe that successful organizations are a sum total of the successes of the people who belong to them. For this reason, it becomes crucial for the people within an organization to be highly attuned to the MVV of the organization they belong to, but even more importantly if the organization is to thrive, these individuals must be dialed in to their personal MVV philosophy and how it syncs with the collective MVV of the organization.

At the core of our conversation was the issue of education reform. There are few who don't believe our western education system can be improved in multi-faceted dimensions. Virtually every bastion of traditional education appears to be under scrutiny in reaction to quantum changes in society demanding a proactive response from schools. We agreed that authentic change comes from the grassroots element, and in education, that element is teachers. Teachers have a unique vantage point relative to those dimensions of education that need to be changed... they are the people within education who know what is done well, and more importantly, what isn't and needs to change. With respect to MVV statements, I believe strongly that it's time for teachers to step out and share their perspective toward change in education, and in order to do this convincingly, they must be capable of articulating not only their personal mission, vision and values, but also how these are synthesized with the organizational mandate, or more critically, how they aren't. Consider the evolutionary possibilities inherent in a process where teachers are given a forum to share this reflective dialog with other education stakeholders; an intellectual environment where teachers' perspectives are not only heard, but respected because they have been shared sensibly, intelligently and proactively... and most vitally, with purpose.

It's time to just get on with the business of education reform, and there is no better cohort than teachers to lead the focused dialog about how it should be done; teachers willing to confidently share their personal mission, vision and values, the ones that reflect what's good about education today, but more importantly, the ones in opposition to what isn't.

Teachers... find your purpose, find your voice.

• Special thanks to Jerrid Kruse for cranking up my thoughts on this topic.

Technology in Education- How to Support a Tip in the Right Direction

flickr CC image via Hampton Roads Partnership

There are so many issues surrounding education. People all over the world are tweeting, joining personal learning networks, participating in professional development and lobbying about all of these issues... there is seemingly no end to it, and perhaps this is for good reason. One of the most current extremely hot-button issues in education is the integration of technology in teaching and learning. Considering the pace at which technology is advancing in our world, there is a very real challenge in education to keep pace. (I would argue that keeping pace isn't even good enough. I believe that educators should be leading the charge in society regarding technology integration and utilization. Can there be a better environment for this to occur?)

As correlated to so many variables influencing the tone that technology integration in schools takes place, (age, access to technology, desire to learn, socioeconomic status, school division philopsophy, personal teaching philosophy, parental support, etc.) all of us who influence children's education fall somewhere on the spectrum of attitude toward the use of technology in schools as  microcosms of society, and society in general.

By creating an us (those who endorse, support and nurture digital fluency) against them (those who don't support, for whatever reason, the advancement of social, educational and scientific technology applications) adversarial environment in schools, there is no opportunity to move from transactional forms of leadership to idea-tipping transformational leadership (what we so desperately need to effectively synthesize tech. integration in schools, and in reality, so many other change-requiring elements of N. American education institutions.)

I'm a fan of eastern philosophy. In Taoist philosophy, the word "Tao" is loosely translated as "the way." I believe that in order to find 'our way' on the technology transformation journey, education leaders need to be less provocative and more transformative.

Those of us who are keen to explore, understand, discover and utilize technology in our teaching and learning practise are duty-bound not to alienate those who, for whatever reason, are not. (I would assert that most who appear opposed to tech. integration actually aren't; they simply are anxious about something that they don't fully understand, and they're waiting for someone to just 'tell them what to do' so they can reserve the right to continue feeling, dare I say, safely dictated to by powers beyond their control.) Many teachers suffer from this default perspective, in my opinion. I also feel that the vast majority of them are intensely passionate professionals who have simply been dictated to too many times; they've lost their verve. It's up to us who's flames haven't gone out to re-ignite their desire to explore and discover the tech. integration possibilities that have yet to excite them.

We do this by treating our colleagues the same way we would responsibly treat our students when they feel anxiety toward a new challenge; we lead by example as pioneers unafraid to make mistakes. Stepping out in front as teachers constructively utilizing technology in schools will provide a bit of necessary Teflon for those who are apt to hang back and not take this sort of risk. Stepping to the back when their incremental efforts produce success is a great way to support this 'tech pioneers as leaders' mentality.

Self-esteem comes to those who become good at something, and then are provided a means to share that with others when comfortable. My strategy in leading a technology integration process aims to provide opportunities for colleagues to watch and learn without anxiety (the art of protecting,) and then to illuminate their learning progress by creating opportunities for them to share new skills (the art of celebrating). The desired outcomes are a comfortable tech learning environment where success is unaffected by stress and external pressures, and an expanded set of tech skills and insights on behalf of the teachers I work with. How can this lead to anything but a transformational change?
The most effective revolutions are the ones nobody realized were happening.

Education Reform- How then shall we be led?

flickr CC image via bpende

**With the utmost respect, and in response to Aaron Eyler's "Some Things Educators Need to Stop Saying" post (Synthesizing Education Blog) 

With all due respect, (and I don't necessarily disagree with you,) there are many professionals among us who aren't as attuned to the realities of education reform that you allude to. The terminology, (rhetoric as you refer to it,) educators are using to attempt to make sense of the change going on around them is just that; terminology.

I personally appreciate your honesty, and I get the "good fun" element of your post, but in all seriousness, I think you illuminate a much larger and complicated issue in education. You refer to the transparency and lack of substance of statements such as "who wants to leave a child behind?" I agree; this is a feeble statement, however I also believe that our agreement on the feebleness of this statement would not be shared wholely by the rest of the audience who heard it. Here's the rub: teachers NEED to be led. Many, many teachers buy into this sort of 'rhetoric' because our North American education system has left them feeling powerless to think for themselves, be creative and serve their students instinctually. The focus on externally placed standards of practice and curriculum in North America has become so pervasive that teachers have literally lost the ability to think for themselves, and even worse, lost the priveledge of sharing their professional insight with the continental institution of educational planning and policy-making that assigns these controls.

So, although I agree with your tongue-in-cheek commentary on the educational version of stating the obvious, (the 'child-centered classroom' is another favorite of mine,) I really believe that teachers latch onto these statements hanging on for dear life because they have been left feeling under-valued, controlled and manipulated to the point where any statement about education perceived to be well-meaning and designed to influence thought and perspective becomes popular.

I also wholeheartedly agree that it's time to just get on with things in education. However, to do this, a revised form of leadership would suit the task. I share your fondness for integrative thinking, and honestly (perhaps simplistically) this concept is where we need to begin. There have been many reforms, statements, programs, catch-phrases and movements in education... not all of these were, or are unsound. What we need to do is combine what has been good for education in the past with the best of what forward-thinking educators can come up with today, and design our own destiny.

This is possible.