“We wanted flying cars. Instead we got 140 characters.”

       The above is the motto of Founders Fund, a venture capital firm started by eBay cofounder Peter Thiel. Their concern is that tech companies have lost interest in the “big questions” being asked by society – poverty, climate change, disease, productivity...big changes that make things better in a profound way – and are, instead, merely happy to rearrange existing content in creative ways, for the sole purpose of making money. In the lead article of this month’s MIT Technology Review, Jason Pontin compares our current state of technology advancement to that of 50 years ago, a decade which began with President John F. Kennedy’s charge to NASA, to “…commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon, and returning him safely to the Earth.”

       Kennedy’s challenge was met, but the effort was herculean – at one point the NASA budget was 4% of the total US Government budget. There were hundreds of technology problems being researched to support the lunar mission. But, more to the point, this charge, and the scramble by both public and private organizations to meet it, took place (could take place!) at a time when technology was viewed as a vehicle to make fundamental improvements in how we do the business of being human. It certainly helped that the US economy was on the rise then, but even if that were true now, the interest in funding research and development projects with distant and grand goals seems to be gone… from the political landscape, but also from the interests of entrepreneurs. Hence Founders Fund.

       That, of course, is not to say that Twitter and their social networking brethren aren't valuable. They are. But they provide only incremental change over previous technologies which did similar things. And, as such, they answer a question that no one was actually asking (or has largely been answered already). It’s like the difference between the questions “How can I make a better mousetrap?” and “How can we make personal transportation compatible with the coming massive increases in global wealth and population?” We can already trap mice. A better one might be profitable, but it’ll have only an incremental impact on our lives. In contrast, the second question has two few entrepreneurs asking it, and too few research and development projects addressing the large number of technologies that must be a part of its answer. It might have worked in 1961, but it's not working now.
       So, as an educator who selects and uses technology in the classroom, why should you care?
       There are three lessons we can apply directly in our classrooms.

1. Set the goals first. Often, the way tech innovation gets lost is that entrepreneur selects a technology (social networking connections online, for instance), and then tries to figure out how to make it different enough to be attractive and profitable. In the classroom, that mistake plays out by selecting the technology before the learning goal. If you’re selecting your technology first, you’re just generating self-interest and temporary motivation in students, without actually embedding its use in the greater interests of learning. Even global education technology “answers” like 1-1 laptop programs and universal access to “intelligent classroom” tools can only work if they are paired with real learning questions.
2. Make instruction real. This is closely related to #1 above. As an example, project-based learning is very popular now, and fits well with some of the other goals associated with technology-rich instruction. As anyone with experience in this lesson paradigm will tell you, if the goals (the "guiding questions") of the projects aren't real, engaging, and important, students won't care, and won't learn.
3. Connect across the curriculum Many of the current tech start-ups are often just the same techies, trying to re-invent the same techy answers to the same techy questions. The real innovators out there are connected to real people, real needs and interests, and real goals. As a matter of fact, the best technology start-ups are began by people with arts and humanities degrees, and tech company hirers often specifically target such people. In our world, technology use which provides and leverages connections across disciplines will have the best chance at achieving goal #2 above. It will also serve to connect all of the teachers in your building in the joint pursuit of preparing students for innovative and constructive work after they leave us.

       Thomas Friedman and others have stated that our students (and the economy in which they’ll live) will only survive if they learn how to connect, create, innovate – a truism which transfers to educational practice, and should serve as the mantra for tool selection and technology use in the classroom.

Disassembling the Education Cat

       I apologize in advance.
       Not just because I'm married. (As a stand-up comedian of distant memory once said, "Always start any conversation with your spouse with 'I'm sorry' -- chances are it'll be required, perhaps even demanded, anyway.") I apologize because my normal habit is to dig down through the silver lining in anything, and find the dark cloud. Being, of course, that this blog originally started as a protest (see "About this blog" for details), I am simply continuing the tradition here.
       I also apologize 'cause this posting marks a return to the abstract -- in stark contrast to the previous one, which was all hands-on.
        I have mentioned that I started my early adult life as a musician -- a performance major on viola, a singer/songwriter, a performing tenor, the son of a PhD musicologist and choir director. I lived through the "digital revolution" in recording and sound production. There are a lot of folks in my past (and some in the present, for that matter) who fought the move to CDs and MP3's. They contended that sound itself was analog and continuous. Reducing it to a series of zeros and ones made it clunky, machine-like, un-human. (I was certainly not one of them -- I do not miss my turntable, and destroyed enough vinyl to cover a kitchen floor the size of Wyoming. Work with me, here, it's a metaphor... ;-)
       The conference I just attended, based on a 20-minute presentation format, had the impact of carving up educational practice into a series of small pieces. This reflects trends happening all over education...

• National trends in curriculum, assessment, and teacher certification ("Common Core," "Quality Core," "National Board"...you name it), in conjunction with major "big data" movements (Kentucky's Continuous Instructional Improvement Technology System/CIITS is one) have the effect (if not the intent) of reducing the goals of instruction down to easily-measured discrete bits of knowledge.
• The tablet/personal device revolution has taken the world of computer programming and tool design out of big projects and platforms, and reduced it to discrete pieces called apps -- small programs which do specific things, often written and marketed by people with no educational vision.
• As illustrated by presentations like "20 web tools in 20 minutes," the "Interactive Internet" reflects the app trend, with thousands of tools doing clever, discrete, and isolated tasks.
• All of these changes are being shared and discussed through Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, which  sound-bytes them, often without analysis or comment.

The end result is a massive jumble of pieces of discrete information assaulting the classroom teacher (and everybody else), who often has little ability (and all too often little interest) in sorting it all out. It places pressure on teachers to translate these discrete pieces into instructional practices which address big goals and practices, such as project-based and collaborative learning.

Douglas Adams

       I'm not stupid. I do know that my professional life surrounds me with masses of early adopters and bleeding-edgers, and these are exactly the sorts of things they do, and are interested in. I'm also not stupid enough to ignore that, behind the tweets lies a community of thinkers and practitioners who drive exploration and innovation interactively. But the difficulty in reducing things down to discrete pieces is that one forgets what the whole looks like. In the immortal words of Douglas Adams, "If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat."
       Twitter did not invent the professional community. Online professional communities started with The Well, moved through UseNet (now Google Groups), diversified to bulletin boards and LISTSERVs, deepened and connected through RSS and the blogosphere, and only recently leverage social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Each of these platforms improved on the previous ones, and each sustained the loss of some of the earlier platforms' benefits.
       One thing that has changed, of course, is the level of participation. The Well certainly can't boast that it supported a billion members. But it would be a mistake to assume that the advantages of recent social networking platforms provide the sole reason for such increases. They provide only incremental improvements over what is already a huge advantage -- a way to connect anyone to anything across space and time, something shared by all the above platforms. It's just taken that long for a billion people to discover and embrace it. But I digress.
       The goal here is to keep our eye on the cat. As long as presenters and participants identify Twitter as the community, you've tied the characteristics of professional learning and knowledge construction to the platform -- it's foibles and limitations, its business model, its retched excesses, its 140 character limits...but even more important, its shelf life. The speed of change continues to accelerate  If we want our professional practice and discourse to improve, to continue to re-invent and extend our ability to "commune," we have to pay first heed and attention to the people and ideas the platform are connecting.
       Research really bears this out. An article in The Atlantic looked at participation in Facebook and social connections. According to the authors, FB does not improve or alter one's overall happiness or social connectedness -- it provides a distraction from the world of face-to-face family and relationships, and tends to reinforce them, but it does not replace or enhance them to any level of statistical significance. Restated, happiness and social connectedness does not increase for folks with high levels of FB use. If we applied that to the world of online learning communities on FB and Twitter, we can extrapolate that attending to the platform will not, in itself, improve your participation in the "social connectedness" of your professional life. Attention to professional connections needs to be working already -- that is, that world needs to have a life separate from the platform.
       Again, I apologize. I know that these tools and trends are important (I do participate in them myself), and they have the possibility to make things better. And a quick look at new tools is, if nothing else, just a lot of fun for teachers and observers. My only goal here is to insure we don't forget the cat. If you're focused solely on discrete pieces (and platforms which tend to traffic in/promote discrete pieces), the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working community.

What you can do NOW to get ready for BYOD

[This blog posting is in support of my presentation at TeachMeetKy, WKU/Bowling Green, Friday, Oct.5, 2012]

       A lot of districts are looking at the possibility of supporting student-owned personal devices in the classroom. There are a lot of good reasons...

1. Students are already familiar with, and can quickly and easily use, their own technology.
2. Schools/Districts can leverage student-owned devices, getting close to 1-1 computing in the classroom, but without the expense and support problems.
3. Just-in-time access to activities and resources online can transform the classroom.

       My district (Fayette) made the decision to support student personal devices near the end of last year, causing everybody to scurry around, thinking about what that would mean. If your classroom/school/district is contemplating this shift, here is a list of things you can do right now to make that happen successfully.

       This is a wish list -- a collection of talking points to get you thinking about what this means. No district will be able to do them all. 

The Technicals

1. Can we support it?
• Be prepared to help all platforms onto your wifi. It's a very good idea to buy examples of each (Android tablet, Kindle, iPad), and try them. Help teachers/adults get their smart phones online!
• Write the limits of your support of, and liability for, student personal devices into their AUP contract.
2. Secure? CIPA-compliant?
   • Needless to say, it's critical that your students know and use their network login accounts and district-supplied email address.
   • Make sure your system can register and associate devices with login accounts. 
   • Design AD groups to scale student access based on training (“Digital Drivers License”)
3. Will it connect and work?
   • Not just wifi capacity, but bandwidth all the way upstream.
   • “Transparent proxy” eliminates proxy dependency of apps and browsers
   • Encourage the selection of resources (tutorials, videos, etc.) which are “device neutral”

Fears

1. Student Monitoring, and Off-Task Behavior
• Begin the discussion now about the impact of more autonomous student work on lesson plan design. Teacher instructional practice is so huge, it gets its own section below, but be aware that a teacher's desire to leave their instructional practice unchanged in the face of omnipresent  information and content creation tools will result in lots of off-task behavior!
• Leverage a Learning Management System to manage links, and monitor student access to materials and activities. "Google" is an instructional resource, but if you want to use and track specific online tools, an LMS can serve as a first-stop portal, and a method of tracking individual student progress.
2. The Scary "Cloud"
   • Make teacher, school, and district online presences interactive. The cloud is about connections. If leadership and classroom presences don't accept and use input from students, it's unlikely teachers will be interested in doing so. 
   • Have teacher participation in crowdsourced knowledge construction and discussion a part of their professional responsibilities. It should be a quid quo pro -- require it, but acknowledge its importance by awarding professional development credit for it!

Instructional Practice

1. The  disappearing lecture 
• Start the move away from the teacher role of information deliverer (“Sage on the Stage”), and towards facilitation (”Guide on the Side”). 
• Find and leverage online materials, media, and experts. The teacher role becomes more than simply selecting the content. S/he now has the ability to select the resources which deliver it. 
• Examine the "Flipped Classroom" concept, which leverages class time for tutorials, mentoring, and answering questions.
2. Differentiation
   • BYOD supports an increased focus on project-based learning and collaborative learning, which  also supports a better reflection of differentiation strategies.
   • Promote a classroom practice which supports a variety of activities at once, including an increase in student autonomy. Start now to get away from the idea that all students have to be doing the same thing at the same time!
3. Assessment and Accountability
   
   • Increase the use of online and electronic assessments, especially for formative purposes. Online assessments can be accomplished at any time, and can be used as instructional platforms. Electronic ("clicker") assessments can be used to drive the classroom.
   • Add changes in teacher’s instructional practice to teacher accountability processes. Student learning accountable measures are important, but don't get at the kinds of changes needed to drive them in the new environment.

Fairness

1. Access to Devices
• Provide small numbers of student-use classroom computers for projects which require them. This can help to support projects that a student's device might not be able to handle, and provides access for students who might not have support for out-of-class work.
• As much as possible, purchase and make available devices to take home for students who do not have anything they can use there. The goal of BYOD is a 1-1 classroom access paradigm on the cheap. True 1-1 requires support for students who cannot afford hardware themselves. (Accessing online resources might imply the use of textbook funds for delivery devices.)
2. The “Digital Divide” (broadband access outside of school)
   
   • Expand alternative access through ESS/extended school library hours, and community partners such as city libraries and businesses. The goal here is to get all students to learn how to use these new capabilities for learning...wherever they are!
   • Connect to parents through the Acceptable Use Policy process. Make sure they support your interests, and provide the ability for them to participate.

This last point is pivotal. Although BYOD can help schools change to a more connected learning experience, it isn't "free lunch." We still have a responsibility to serve ALL students, regardless of what resources and abilities they bring to the classroom. But even if we can't fully-fund such support, changing to the new learning environment is most important to our students without home access. If we do not support these experiences for them, the result is a reinforcement of the divide between the haves and the have-nots!

The Catch-22 of Technology-Driven Learning

       I have a new tablet – a Samsung Galaxy Tab. I really like it. It has a lot of the things I’m familiar with, including full file access to the Flash memory. So, if I want to read something using Amazon’s Kindle reader app, it’s as simple as dropping the file into the Kindle folder. Otherwise, its user interface is virtually indistinguishable from the iPad it replaced – another familiarity plus.
       But enough about my toys.
       I’m finding that a smooth transition between technology changes is a very good thing for me. I’ve spent much of the last 20 years trying to keep up with trends and changes, and I must say my taste for it is beginning to wane a bit. That, of course, makes me a little bit more like the overwhelming majority of the teachers I support, which might be a good thing. After all, the technology early adopters tend to look askance at those who can’t (or are unwilling to) keep up, which does bad things on both sides – it tends to foster a distorted sense of power and gatekeeping amongst the early adopters, and a sense of powerlessness and neglect amongst everybody else. There’s a lot of research on this issue. It’s definitely not new, it’s just gotten worse as the pace of change increases.
       They say, of course, that comfort with unfamiliarity is a good thing. I watched a TED Talk by social studies teacher Diana Laufenberg titled “How to learn? From mistakes,” a wonderful collection of instructional vignettes which brings together a lot of the project-based learning ideas my colleagues and I have been promoting for a long time: digital storytelling, collaborative projects, multiple modes of expression, student-driven learning and decision-making. Her point is that, with the shift away from educators and schools as the sole sources of information (any smart phone can provide more information than any teacher), we have to work out a better role for ourselves. And, of course, the above list provides the hints. Underlying it all is this idea that learning actually happens through failure, not success. That is, we grow by engaging in a series of unfamiliar experiences, learning from our mistakes.
       One might say that this is a very good argument for being a technology early adopter, and we should push those who aren’t in that category, to join it.
       But I suspect most people’s ability to negotiate unfamiliarity can be stretched only so far. Hence, learning-through-technology advocates might run the risk of squandering that ability to stretch in the pursuit of tools, rather than ideas. Once again, we’ve run the risk of putting the cart before the horse, technology goals ahead of educational goals, giving fuel to the argument that too much attention to technology tools slows, rather than enhances, learning. This is, of course, why so-called intelligent classroom tools have made such inroads into classroom practice – these tools do not require teachers to change their practice one whit, so they must meet and overcome only one arena of unfamiliarity. But that pretty much misses the implication of access to information, Ms. Laufenberg’s primary point, and mine.
       So how do we beat this rap? Taking a page from intelligent classroom tool integration, the goal is to reduce the amount of unfamiliarity, and we can do that by simply ignoring the tools. Do we need the latest tablet, cloud computing tool, media editor, etc., to implement student-driven, project-based learning? Certainly not. That’s a change that has its own merits, and we can advocate it without running the risk of giving ordinary classroom teachers the Catch 22 of requiring them to embrace new classroom habits only when and if they will use and embrace the tools we have designed to support it.
       But doesn’t that defeat the point? Not necessarily. In most settings, access to tools and technology resources is, for the most part, set by district and school policies rather than integration strategies. Most students already have the exposure and skillset they need to leverage the tools, as long as they have access. Hence, it isn’t necessary for the classroom teacher to have mastered the tools. They only need to allow for their use. That might, of course, be pretty scary too, but it’s a great deal less scary than requiring them to be in charge of teaching to, and providing, the tools themselves.
       Of course, the appropriate use of tools is something that a teacher can’t completely ignore. But the overwhelming majority of these concerns are (or at least should be!) already on their plates. Distracted and off-task behavior, critical thinking and evaluating the credibility of resources, etc. – are all things that scare teachers from allowing tech tool use, but those issues aren’t new, or even radically different, from those needed in an ordinary library.
       It’s time to cut our teachers a little slack. Instead of requiring them to embrace tool use as a metaphor for instructional reform, we should allow them the luxury of addressing the reform directly. I, for one, am willing to do that, knowing full well that, within a few short years, I’ll probably be one of those for whom some slack is required.

Would You Buy a Used Car from this App?

       With Facebook's IPO already in the wild (and apparently not doing that well), I am prompted to look at how its heavily-analyzed and second-guessed business plan might fit into the social history of homo sapiens. 

       I will admit to a little Facebook participation, though, as you might infer from the title of this blog, I’m not much of a fan of “sound-byte” platforms which celebrate the short quip over the thoughtful analysis. I square that circle by using Facebook primarily as a method of keeping up with my family, and a short list of friends I like and respect.
       Recently, I noted an article posted by one of those friends, about the “un-friending” trend on Facebook (and Facebook’s attempts to stem that tide through redesign), with some interest. There’s a lot happening in Facebook of which I don’t approve, and I must say I’ve un-friended a number of folks in that category. I view this trend as a good thing, in general.
       But this essay isn’t about that.
       When I clicked the Facebook link to the “un-friending trend” article, I was immediately prompted to add a Facebook app which posts back what I’ve read. The article itself was actually hosted on VentureBeat, a technology blog with heavy social networking ties. The app seemed to be branded by The Washington Post (their icon was there), but I could find no other evidence of any association between VentureBeat and The Washington Post. But no matter. What got my attention was the app. If I agreed to its use, it would automatically post back to Facebook the simple fact that I had opened the article. Not that I liked it, not that I agreed with it, not that I thought it was good, not that I even read it…just that I clicked through to it.
       This, of course, is the trend. Facebook wants you to post your location when you’re sitting in a restaurant. It wants you to post your purchase when you go shopping. The underlying assumption is that simple consumption is worth celebrating, worth noting, worth passing as data to someone else…without even the pretense of having actually approved of the restaurant or purchase. The result is a white noise of meaningless data crowding into the same space as the “likes” and forwards.
       There are so many things wrong with this idea that it’s difficult to find where to start. Data does not constitute information. Information does not constitute ideas. Of course, ideas require information, which require data, but the direction of flow here is absolutely critical. Facebook, and just about any smart phone app you can think of that requires access to your GPS, is really only interested in data. It wants you to display where you are, what you’re doing. If you choose to enhance that with what you think about where you are, and what you’re doing, then that’s up to you, and Facebook certainly supports it. But, increasingly and predictably, social networking is being driven not by ideas, or even information…but by plain data.
       Here’s how this is supposed to work. I read something. I’m excited about its ideas. I submit my analysis to a friend who already respects my opinions, and based on that respect, the friend reads the same article. She may or may not be as excited as I was, but she will place what she thinks of the article in the context of how she views me, and my ability to think critically about what I’ve read. In short, she will have taken the time to read the article based on the fact that I read and recommended it. '
       This process reflects the notion that, to select and process information, we need context, and we need help. None of us are stand-alone data processors. We depend on people who know more than we do on a particular subject to help us wade through the data. That’s the true value of a social context for ideas.
       In contrast, automated “I ate at this restaurant” and “I read [i.e. clicked through to] this article” has absolutely no help. It’s all just data, and we’re still on our own deciding if the article is worth the read. Even the person who generated that “read” data didn’t know what the quality was before the Facebook notice appeared. The Internet has done a bang-up job of delivering almost any information to almost anyone. That does not make us all experts. That does not make us all able to negotiate all that information without help.
       All too often, the folks I have decided to un-friend are exactly the ones who send on without thinking the latest political rant, the latest insensitive joke, the latest spin on a celebrity gossip tidbit. Facebook, and those apps on your iPhone, are one step beyond that. I can quickly figure out the folks who mindlessly forward without a critical look,  un-friend them, and stop the stream. But if it's an app, I know nothing about the article, and nothing about the person who supposedly read it, ‘cept that she clicked something Facebook tricked her into clicking. (Who would guess that “cancel” would take you to the article without the post-back?)
       Yes, we need to teach our students how to think critically, how to evaluate ideas and information meaningfully and dependably. Fifty years ago that meant evaluating the people we depended on for ideas. I am absolutely still convinced that the idea of the “expert” is still important, and there’s no way we can negotiate our way through all the data thrown at us without them.
       But one thing’s for certain. A Facebook app will never be one. And with a new, incredible pressure on Facebook to pull data from, and push advertisements to, the massive collection of users it serves, this is going to get worse.
       And especially watch out for apps selling used cars..

If it’s “Viral,” Will You Get Sick?

       I’m currently a little enamored with the TED Talk video format. The videos got their start documenting talks at two annual conferences on “Technology, Entertainment, Design.” TED charges presenters to provide inspirational and game-changing ideas in 18 minutes or less. Not all of the presenters (and the videos preserving their talks) have something to offer, and there are even a few wildly misguided ones. But I’ve seen a slew of really inspiring ones – at least a couple which I would place in the epiphany category. Recently TED has moved to supporting short educational lessons  on specific ideas, produced by exemplary teachers in partnership with innovative animators. It was in pursuit of some of these new videos that I happened to catch Kevin Allocca, a YouTube “trends manager,” in a TED Talk titled “Why videos go viral.”

       As TED Talks go, it was pretty lightweight, getting some entertainment punch from such viral videos as “Friday” and “Nyan Cat.” Allocca states that three things can cause a video to go viral:

·         Tastemakers.  If someone already has a huge presence in pop culture, their endorsement (or indictment, really doesn’t matter which) will propel a video into the spotlight.

·         Communities of Participation. A large number of comments, satires, and parodies will add to the buzz.

·         Unexpectedness. No one will get excited about a video that portrays a predictable sequence of events. Videos which surprise and twist have a better chance.

       Allocca, of course, is doing a TED Talk because of a larger point – that viral videos (and the processes which produce them) represent broadly democratic participation in popular culture, empowering the creativity and ownership of people who might be, otherwise, simple consumers.
       Well, maybe.
       Interestingly, there is one thing missing from Allocca’s list: content! As the several examples he uses very ably illustrate, viral videos do not necessarily have great ideas (or, perhaps, any ideas at all) as a part of what makes them so popular. As a matter of fact, if you look at the list above, only the third point has really anything to do with content, a point further reinforced by the fact that most videos go viral months, sometimes years, after their first posting on YouTube. Viral videos are clearly, in themselves, not fulfilling any particular content or informational need.
       This is the Pandora’s Box of broad participation in social media – it is heavily slanted towards popular culture and mass entertainment, a place where interesting or high-quality content isn’t a sufficient condition for broad attention. It’s not even a necessary one.

       There are educators who think that the forces of social networking have broad implications for learning and instruction. (Yes, I’m one.) And the recent funding of greatly expanded wifi connectivity in many schools (and, with it, the possible support of personal, student-owned devices in classrooms) seems to be, at least in part, poised to leverage this potential. In this blog, I've written pretty extensively about how student ownership and collaborative knowledge construction can be greatly improved through online interactive project-based learning. However, a lot of teachers will be quite worried about this, for a few very good reasons. After all, a step into the world of social networking might very well be a step into the world in which content-free “viral” entertainment rules. This observation can even be heard by the better of our own students, a fact I witnessed at a recent student focus group meeting. 

       The word “viral” used to have a negative connotation, and the other declensions of its noun form, “virus,” still do. Take “virulent,” whose first two definitions are “…actively poisonous; intensely noxious..,.” and “…highly infective; malignant or deadly…” Maybe the new use of the word “viral” still should have a connection to its old meaning.  The fear isn't just what social media produces, but what it displaces – if socially-produced content is given a presence, does it take the place of something much more valuable?
        Of course, there are lots of examples of “viral” videos with actual content (some TED Talks amongst them, and Randy Pausch’s “The Last Lecture” being another I can think of quickly). Crowdsourcing media production, and learning, has potential value, but it is the presence of a guiding editorial force which makes TED so much better than most of the YouTube fodder. So the trick will be to leverage the best of participatory culture and media in an environment which includes knowledgeable, experienced guiding forces.
        Seems a little like a classroom, doesn’t it?
        We have been here before. This isn’t really a substantial shift from the first use of Internet access in instruction over 15 years ago. Then, as now, It will become an educational wasteland, if teachers fail to participate in it themselves, and fail to help facilitate its effective use.  The solution then, and now, isn’t just to turn off the computers. Nor is it to pretend that social media production constitutes, in itself, a lesson plan. (I can still remember teachers coming to the computer lab, handing a general research topic to their students, and then sitting in a corner reading the newspaper for the entire class period. The results were a waste of time and technology. That is my biggest fear!)

        Like the treatment of an enormous number of virus-inducing diseases, the best way to avoid getting sick is to have been slightly infected already – the guiding principle behind most vaccines. It’s tricky – there are teachers out there who have actually become fully infected. (I know a half-dozen who spend more time on Facebook pursuing entertainment than they do reading, and the 10-hour version of “Nyan Cat” has had over 12,000,000 views. Ten hours? A-choo!!)
      We should recognize the bulk of viral videos for their banality. But with the addition of the goals and experiences of content-driven education, we should be prepared to embrace the participatory nature of social media production. If you want to be an effective teacher in the coming changing classroom landscape, some exposure to the “virus” will go a long way towards making it work for learning.

Dancin' With Myself

       I don’t know if any of you have been following particularly closely, but my blog entries seem to regularly wander into 80′s pop music. I’ve cited Devo, Re-Flex, Talking Heads, and here I am with a line from Billy Idol. But as always, this isn’t about music. In this case, it’s about writing, something one wouldn’t normally associate with the bad British rocker with the bleach-blond tangle and the Elvis-like snarl.

       In the early days of social networking, most online participants were pretty self-consciously anonymous. This tendency was equal parts self-protection and self-indulgence.

       The former was a natural reaction — if you had no idea who anyone really was online (and a lot of people were pretending to be someone else for very suspicious reasons), the best defense was to not be yourself, either. The latter, of course, was a way of getting something for nothing — if you couldn’t be yourself, it was fun and exciting to re-create yourself as someone else — older, smarter, better-educated, even a completely different nationality or even gender. In a real sense, it was “dancing with yourself” – you were creating a personna with which you could play. It was a perfect reflection of the overwhelming majority of the social-networkers back then — tweens, teens, and young adults, who were, in fact, trying to create themselves in real life at the same time. But it was a great deal more self-serving, a little less purposeful, and a whole lot more self-indulgent.
       There’s nothing really wrong with all that. But the overwhelming majority of “dancing” we do in our professional and educational lives is with someone else. That is, we select a partner, and we coordinate our moves and steps to fit what that partner is good at, or interested in. We certainly have our own flair, abilities, and personna, but that doesn’t solely define the purpose, or even the character, of the dance.
       Writing is like that — when we write, we certainly want to be creative, skilled, individual, maybe even flashy. But in so-called real life, we’re most likely writing for a purpose, and that purpose requires that we attend to someone else — our audience. If we’re writing an advertisement, we have to know who might want the product, and leverage their other interests to create this new one. If we’re a newspaper reporter, we should know the reading habits and abilities of the audience of our report. If we’re simply applying for a job and writing a resumé, we’ll have no chance of winning the job unless we incorporate our future employer’s interests into our story. We do this by opening up, watching, listening — stepping out of ourselves enough to become aware of the person we hope is watching us, to learn what they’re like, what they want, what they hold as important.
       As teachers, we have to be aware that writing online brings with it some challenges. Our students have their own habits — habits they developed long before we (or any other adult, for that matter) decided to watch. They will tend to be brief, and will feel justified in purposeful misspellings and Internet slang. But even more important, when writing online, they’ll naturally stop caring about audience, since the audience can be, well, anyone and everyone. The results at best self-indulgent, disconnected, and at worst, embarrassingly inept and even, perhaps, insulting. If you don’t know your partner, you’ll be constantly in danger of stepping on toes.
       This is not to mean that online writing in a social context has no purpose, or can only produce terrible results. All writing (on or off line) takes place in a social context, but good writing is self-aware, consciously recognizing that context, and leveraging it for increased effectiveness. Like all things in education, there has to be a “smart person” in the room, guiding and critiquing the student to focus outside of himself. With such guidance, the student will improve, as will the massive amounts of content almost all young people produce online every day.
       Dancing with someone else is almost always a lot more enjoyable, as well as being much more valuable. Besides, I really can’t say I ever liked that Elvis-like snarl….

Will the Real KySTE Please Stand Up?

[Editor's Note: This posting was in anticipation of a "President's Talk" at KySTE 2012, the March conference of the Kentucky Society for Technology in Education.]

       I couldn’t resist a little research. The quiz show “To Tell the Truth,” from whence the title of this entry comes, had a simple format – three contestants attempt to convince a panel of celebrities that each has a single, specific profession, usually a very odd or interesting one. Only one, of course, is the real deal, the other two being impostors, making up what they didn’t actually know about their “chosen profession” in an attempt to throw off the panel, who would then attempt to guess which was the real professional. The quiz show was immensely popular, and has the distinction of having at least one original episode produced in all of the last 6 decades (according to Wikipedia). It ran for an astounding 24 full seasons.
And while I was on it, in preparation for our annual conference, I decided to do a little research on KySTE. KySTE isn’t quite as old as “To Tell the Truth,” but, as an organization, it is nearing the end of its second decade. One thing that KySTE has not done well is document itself, kept good historical records. I had a few names, and they produced a few more. As folks responded to my queries, I began to get a sense of this organization’s historical roots.
        Like a lot of Kentucky education initiatives, the original Kentucky Association of Technology Coordinators (KATC, the precursor to KySTE) owes a lot to the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), passed in 1991. That act, amongst other things, established the Kentucky Education Technology System (KETS). KERA noted the importance of education technology, and the Kentucky Department of Education was charged with KETS’ implementation. KDE had focus groups in the early days of KETS, bringing together education technology professionals from across the state. KATC was formed, according to some of the early players, at the encouragement of Lydia Wells Sledge from KDE, as a response to, and watchdog of, this process.
        KERA also divided the state into 8 regions, and established the Regional Service Centers to help support school districts in their ability to implement KERA, and the reforms it instituted. The 8 Regional KETS Engineers (KDE employees) met with their regional district constituencies, a structure and habit which outlived the Regional Service Centers themselves, and served as the basis for the 7 regional technology organizations (plus Jefferson County Schools, large enough to be its own “region”) which still exist today.
       Hence, the historical origins of KATC (and hence KySTE) was as a service to district tech coordinators, in coordination with regional structures serving the same population at the regional level, as they attempted to implement and make sense of the goals of KETS – specifically the systems (email, student records, etc.) and infrastructure (wiring, Internet access, etc.) that KETS specified.
       But that isn’t the whole story.
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The Mission of KySTE... (Kentucky Society for Technology in Education) is to empower the educational community in the Commonwealth of Kentucky to infuse technology as an integral part of the educational process through advocacy and leadership, promoting educational excellence and supporting technology-based innovation.

        According to some of the earlier players, the seeds for a larger vision for KATC existed right from the start. In the mid-2000’s, two years of bylaws work, a name change, a mission statement, and affiliate status with the International Association for Technology in Education (ISTE) culminated in the formalization of a very much expanded vision. The mission statement itself (see at right) implies that technology is a change agent for how the broader business of education is done. As a direct result of this vision, KySTE’s membership, and the attendance at its yearly conferences, has grown exponentially, through the addition of a lot of other education professionals – most notably classroom teachers – who share in this vision, and implement it with students through their own practice.         KySTE seems poised, as is education technology in general, to move into the mainstream, to have a seat at the table of all meaningful discussions of education reform and change. This shift can also be seen at the regional level in some of the regional organizations’ meetings, and in the work of many district technology leaders. But, of course, any expansion of work and vision brings the possibility of historical connections becoming lost or frayed.
       In its very recent history, KySTE has taken two huge steps in attempting to widen its role. It has applied for true 501(c)(3) status, which allows it to receive tax-deductible donations and award grants. And, in anticipation of that status, it has begun to implement fundraising and vendor partnerships which will make such work possible. KySTE is poised to move to the next level. But what level might that be? And what, exactly, should KySTE become? There are three possible answers to that question.

1. An extension of the original KATC. One of the major strengths of KySTE is its continued connection to regional groups with a clearly-defined and familiar membership base, drawn primarily from district technology leadership. Through these regions, KySTE has been able to successfully balance a state-level presence with a connection to real practitioners in the field. Of course, a lot of KySTE’s new constituency does not participate in these regional organizations, because, in fact, many are in the classroom when the regional groups meet. In addition, as standard systems (email, student records) have been adopted, and many previous district-supplied capabilities (such as online content management) move to the cloud, many of the huge issues facing the early KATC members have largely disappeared.
2. A true education professional organization. The Kentucky Council of Teachers of English (KCTE) is an example of an organization which serves to support and advocate for a defined part of education: English/Language Arts. It is member-driven, and serves that membership through trainings and conferences. It partners with the Kentucky Department of Education to institute standards and reform relative to that defined part. Although education technology is certainly a “defined part of education,” “education technology professionals” might very well include everyone, making it difficult to define an exact constituency.
3. A service organization. The implication of true 501(c)(3) non-profit status is that of a charitable organization like The United Way. Such organizations have governing boards, but exist primarily to service a general population (rather than a specific defined constituency or membership), through services addressing an identified general population need.

Of course, these three visions of KySTE are not mutually exclusive, but a primary focus on one would substantially impact how it might implement its vision. With one grant already “in the wild,” KySTE’s grants and member services arm, branded as KySTE Outreach, is already in the business of attempting to implement KySTE’s vision.

        Let’s assume, for the sake of illustration, that KySTE wanted to implement a new grant program. Who should it serve? At what should it be aimed? Here’s what this might look like using each of the three models above…

1. KySTE’s first grant program (still in effect) offered funds to support training through the regional tech organizations, for use as each saw fit. The audience was clearly district tech leadership as reflected by the regional group membership, with no attention to membership in KySTE itself. That more closely matches the first vision above.
2. A grant for which only members could apply, regardless of regional affiliation (or professional status), and aimed at the defined mission statement of the organization, would reflect this second vision.
3. A grant available to any educator or educational leader in Kentucky, regardless of KySTE membership, would fit the third vision.

...and that’s before we even get around to discussing the specific goals of the grant!.
        KySTE is poised for great things. What sorts of great things will be determined by the membership and leadership of this organization. It won’t be enough to depend on history. It will depend primarily on hard work – on being willing to show up, to collaborate, to provide direction for change. Like any great organization, the vision of KySTE, the next level it will achieve, will be determined by who shows up and rolls up their sleeves.
In "To Tell the Truth," the goal of the panel membership was to successfully pick the professional from several impostors. In contrast, the KySTE membership has the luxury of defining the profession itself. So when they ask, “Will the real KySTE please stand up,” will it be you?
       [The conversation about KySTE’s history, vision, and future, continues at KySTE 2012. Look for the KySTE President’s Talk, “Will the Real KySTE Please Stand up?” Friday, March 9, 9:15 a.m. For a timeline of KySTE History, see our History page.]

Mobile Computing and the Polyester Leisure Suit

       In a recent posting on EDTECH, the international discussion list part of the Humanities Network (H-Net) at Michigan State for which I was a moderator, several participants voiced the opinion that mobile devices such as the iPad and smart phone are substantially changing the way we do things. That is, anytime, anywhere access to information and processing power are a game changer, a paradigm shift our students have already made. As educators in the 21^st Century, we would be foolish not to attend to these devices and their implications for learning.

       Maybe all of these folks who’ve drunk the iPhone/iPad Kool-Aid are on to something – maybe a piece of hardware really can have a substantial impact on human history and behavior. I was reminded of an old BBC program which aired in this country on PBS channels 40 years ago called “Connections” – a quirky British historian names James Burke, decked out in the ubiquitous 1970’s polyester leisure suit, traced how significant technological advances proved to be pivotal in historical events, such as the stirrup’s role in the rise of horse-borne combat and the Byzantine Empire. Of course, I had no idea whether these “connections” were being portrayed accurately. I was very much enamored with the idea of technology-driven change, caring somewhat less about the facts.

        In the context of the broad brush of human history, one can often easily identify some big technology game-changers. Some of them, like the piano and the telephone, were (at least from my perspective) almost entirely positive in their impact. Others, like personal transportation (and its dependence on the internal combustion engine), were a bit more of a mixed bag. But for the Twentieth Century, that list must surely include the computer, and, probably even more so, the Internet – the two providing a one-two punch impacting everything from creativity to warfare.

        So does mobile computing fit into such a grand category? Needless to say, we don’t have the benefit of historical perspective, since portable devices which support information access and multiple communications capabilities are a distinctly new phenomenon. One could argue that the so-called Arab Spring as a huge historical event owes a substantial debt to mobile computing. But one could also argue that that impact is really just an extension of connected computing – that the game-change was already in place before folks began carrying that power into the streets of Cairo or Tripoli in their jeans pockets.

        But when we look at the classroom, the argument gets even more difficult. Historically, universal education is a little more than a century old, and that change has been completely tied to that distinctly human cultural unit, the classroom. The classroom is a closed space with its own information ecology, its own community and social structure, and its own workflow. There is no question that the Internet has had a huge impact on information access in the classroom, but at this point in history, the classroom as a closed space in which education takes place remains virtually unchanged. In fact, most education technology approaches (the “flipped” classroom, the “intelligent” classroom are two) are quite comfortable there, since they reinforce the closed space nature of instructional practice in the classroom.

        So what would happen if mobile devices were the huge game changer their advocates are promoting? The difference between your parent’s laptop and your iPhone is not about “apps” (another word for software). It’s also not about the human-computer interface, since that will most certainly continue to change (from touch screen to voice recognition to gesture recognition). It’s mostly about mobility. But in a closed classroom, mobility has limited meaning. It might very well be that the classroom as a closed space is destined for the dustbin of history, but a lot of social change will have to happen before that. Almost everything else we’re doing in education (notably high-stakes testing and accountability) is dependent on the classroom and school remaining intact.

        So why the buzz? There are three reasons why personal devices are very interesting to policy people and other onlookers …

1. As a substitute for school-provided 1-1 computing. Many districts are exploring whether student-supplied devices might help them reach the utopia of every student being able to access and create information from their own device. Under this scenario, the decision to use personal devices is driven by simple economics (the district wants 1-1 computing, but can’t afford to purchase every student a device).
2. As a way of leveraging existing student access behaviors and habits. As mentioned above, many of the advocates of personal devices in the classroom are noting that students are already using such devices for learning. They speculate that these behaviors might be leveraged in the classroom.
3. As a way to blur the space-time boundaries of the classroom. Advocates of access/use patterns such as “hybrid instruction” have, as their goal, the ability of students to access and create content online, beyond school class time. Personal devices can help that happen.

        You might have noticed that only the third option reflects the fact that a personal device is mobile, thereby implying the greatest change in school/classroom structure. But what’s interesting is, if students are, in fact, allowed to bring their personal devices into school and use them, the results might very well be the same in any case -- the classroom will be "disrupted," regardless of the teacher's or policy-maker's intent.

        So is this a James Burke moment? Are we going to look back at this decade and say it was the beginning of the end of the traditional classroom? As I state above, my contention is that connectivity (not device) is the “stirrup” of this trend, but the smart money is to prepare teachers for #3, regardless of what else happens. That is, the classroom teacher must be willing to allow their traditional classroom structure to be disrupted, and, in many cases, learn a completely new teaching role which better utilizes the coming changes.

        But then, I never actually owned a polyester leisure suit…

Footprints In the CyberSnow

        Watching the changing face of professional electronic discourse is a little like following footprints through a popular snow-covered woods. The trails are sometimes single file, sometimes a wide swath. Individual lines of footprints join and veer off the main trails, seemingly at random, without a clear sense of consensus and direction. You might join the common trail for a sense of belonging, or if its direction coincides with your own. But you will veer off in a new direction if both wane.
       That was me this past week, when I resigned as the lead moderator for the international discussion list EDTECH. EDTECH began 22 years ago as a project of Michigan State University doctoral student Vickie Banks Gaynor. I joined it as a member in 1997, becoming a moderator three years later. For more than a decade, my and the EDTECH members’ footprints had a common direction, and I reveled in it.
        The new, hot discussion platform in the 80’s was an email-based distributed discussion system called LISTSERV. (Nope, I’m not shouting – its name, and the name of the EDTECH discussion list itself, were traditionally typed in all caps.) At that time, LISTSERV was freeware (it's now commercial), and was often integrated with the groupware program BitNet. Discussion postings were delivered to members through email by LISTSERV, and also in threaded form on BitNet in what looked very much like an Internet bulletin board or forum. A few years after its inception, EDTECH was absorbed by Michigan State’s humanities discussion system, H-Net, an affiliation it retains to this day. The original BitNet feed still exists, though most such feeds were purchased by Google and added to Google Groups quite a while ago.
        EDTECH was by no means my first LISTSERV. Nearly ten years before joining EDTECH I’d discovered a discussion hosted by graduate students at Indiana University called “The Dead Teacher’s Society.” Unlike EDTECH, it was an un-moderated list. Between LISTSERV, Bitnet, and UseNet, there were thousands of un-moderated discussion feeds. At that time, the idea that postings could be delivered instantly in multiple directions to thousands of participants instantly was pretty revolutionary…and scary.

Flame War: ...a series of flame posts or messages in a thread that are considered derogatory in nature or are completely off-topic. Often these flames are posted for the sole purpose of offending or upsetting other users. The flame becomes a flame war when other users respond to the thread with their own flame message. (http://www.webopedia.com/)

       Such unmonitored (and largely “off the social mainstream grid”) platforms produced lots of off-center feeds, such as sexual fetishes and political extremes. Even for serious mainstream topics, un-moderated lists followed a cycle of initiation, enthusiastic growth, mature discussion, deterioration through “flame wars”/spamming/off-topic contributions, and eventual decline and extinction as the original and more serious participants grew disillusioned and abandoned the list. The trail would go from thousands of footprints, to a very few, stomping through the drifts, before evaporating altogether. The Dead Teacher’s Society was still relatively active when I joined it (and I was completely enamored with the concept), but it quickly became a megaphone for a few self-promoting individualists and an occasional flame war.
        In contrast, EDTECH was moderated – postings were screened and distributed only by the list’s moderators. This had one disadvantage: every post had to be touched by a list moderator before it was distributed through email or appeared in the BitNet feed (which slowed things down); and one advantage: the quality of the postings was consistently high, very professionally focused, and often quite scholarly. Missing were the “me too” and off-topic fluff of ordinary social interaction, the flame wars, bad language, self-promotion and commercial advertising. That’s why it enjoyed such a long and glorious history, with hundreds of postings daily in its heyday.
        BitNet and LISTSERV were powerful stuff. BitNet subjects were “feeds,” being fed directly by participants, and through the email contributions of the LISTSERV. Since it was threaded, you could search/display by subject thread, or by author, or do open text searches. Its tools would be quite familiar to anyone using Twitter today, with the possible exception of the lack of Twitter’s point-and-click ease of use. LISTSERV/list archives/Google Group feeds remain a very powerful technology. That’s not why I left EDTECH. Like everything else in life, I left it because nearly everybody else had as well. A year or two ago, the trail I was following there had dropped to a very few footprints. EDTECH’s volume has fallen from hundreds of postings a day to hundreds of postings a month (or less).
        Social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter are certainly GUI-er, but their main advantage these days isn’t “how,” but “who.” Almost anyone of consequence is Tweeting. The online discussions of 20 years ago are now Twitter feeds and hash-tag threads. But even more importantly, since mainstream society has embraced it, the wretched excesses of BitNet and UseNet are largely missing, or at least hidden, for the average user of Twitter and Facebook. The early discussion platforms like BitNet were dominated by libertarian, geeky college students. It’s really quite remarkable what can happen when those students’ parents suddenly show up and start participating. My Facebook news feed has gone from a minefield of “F-bombs,” to PG, in a little over a year.
        I must say – at the risk of sounding like one of the die-hard EDTECH participants – I’m not really excited about the switch. LISTSERV had no restriction on posting length. It also enjoyed a more traditional “question and answer” back-and-forth pattern of participation, which in Twitter has been replaced by short declamatory sentences with a self-promotion feel. Because of this, I had arrogantly predicted that Twitter would be gone in two years; that was over three years ago. I obviously did not anticipate the masses of people and activity – social and professional alike – that would flock to this new platform. But they did. And if one is to be in the conversation, it behooves one to join it, or at least feed it.
        But whether by un-moderated excesses or simple popularity, all things tend to cycle. Twitter will, itself, become yesterday’s news and disappear, just as BitNet and UseNet have. (Interestingly, the KERA list of the University of Kentucky – KYDTC and others – are keeping LISTSERV alive in Kentucky, at least for now.) So my prediction above is probably not wrong, it’s just off in its timing. No platform is forever. But, for me, it is time for me to move on, and join the currently better-used path. I’ll miss EDTECH, but being as most of the better players in it are gone, I won’t miss it that much. We’ll see if the structural limitations of Twitter can still support the sort of professional discourse which is my habit and passion. After all, online professional discussion isn’t about platforms, it’s about ideas and knowledge construction, the one thing that SHOULD transcend the changeover in platform popularity.

        Goodbye, EDTECH. It’s time to try another trail of footprints.