Beyond School

I don’t want to analyze this stuff, when I can just link to it. I’ve blogged recently about the blog of Eeho, a student at my school with whom I’ve never spoken, and never had in a class. But I read him, and comment, and he comments back, and it’s real fun. It’s real, period.

We’ve discovered we share the same songwriter heroes (Bowie, Cohen, Cave, Waits) lately on this latest post on his blog.

And Lindsea from Students 2.0 has joined the conversation there too. (She’s everywhere these days, doing some incredible things to create student-led collaboration on a global, teacher-less scale.)

I said I won’t analyze, but I will go this far: We are engaged in discovering each other as people, sharing our passions and favorite things via Eeho’s blog. That means we’re writing, reading, learning from each other.

How this fits in traditional schooly norms of writing and reading and “learning,” how it can be assessed, and other such issues, I really can’t square with the natural, unsquare feel of it all.

But there’s a glimpse of a future in that post - and in the relationships forming in the comment thread - I hope to see more of in education.

[Update: Download link is fixed. Thanks!]

In this one-hour podcast (edited down from 90 minutes, and enhanced with chapter titles and quick navigation if you download it to iTunes), Dean Shareski, District Technology Coordinator in Saskatchewan, Canada, talks with me here in Seoul about NATURAL, “unschooly” global collaboration via student networked learning projects.

Topics:

• Natural vs. “Scripted” global collaboration
• How we see Networked Learning working in the classroom
• Four global networked learning projects in my Seoul PLN/Networked Learning elective
• assessing networked learning
• networked learning is NOT “flat CLASSROOM,” but person-to-person global collaboration
• student addiction to traditional, inauthentic learning, and resistance to real project-based learning
• how so many teachers can only hear through “teacher ears”, and are deaf to natural learning
• how my open network 1:1 PLN class can serve as a useful example to show administrators
• on books versus digital texts: a nostalgic, romantic outro debate.

Many, many thanks to Dean for giving me the opportunity to clarify how radically different this approach is from anything I’m aware of. I think it’s hugely relevant to any evangelistic mission to pull resistant teachers into global collaborations, and more importantly, to keep them doing them. Because I think - and have experienced - how whacked out crazy and exhausting a heavily scripted, assembly-line global project can be for students and teachers alike.

Download the podcast to iTunes for chapter navigation, or simply listen to the player below - and enjoy. I put music and cool sound effects in there for you ‘n’ everything.

Referenced links in the podcast:

• 1001 Flat World Tales
• David Warlick: Is Pedagogy Getting in the Way of Learning?
• KIS PLN/Networked Learning Group Planning Blog
• A Sophomore Grades Himself
• Apple Learning Institute Project on Self-Assessing and Rewarding Valuable Failure
• Scott Schwister’s Higher Edison blog
• The Flat Classroom Project
• Diane Cordell’s Journeys

I gave this presentation at the Apple Distinguished Educators Institute in Bangkok in December of 2007. The conference room was freezing, to explain the ski cap.

Not only does it tell the story of how the international school I work at went 1:1, how that groundswell was created, how admin was persuaded to choose Macs instead of PC’s (hint: comparing total cost of ownership destroys the expense myth), and the challenges of staff and student training; it also shows exemplars of digital teaching and learning in a biology and language arts classroom, as well as highlighting my own teaching journey since embracing technology in my language arts and history classrooms.

Added bonus: it also includes the first showing of the Students 2.0 promotional video produced and scored by Sean “The Bassplayer” Law of Scotland. ADE saw it days before the launch of s2oh, because the ADE Institute was during the fourth week of our pre-launch preparations for that experiment.

Finally, the presentation itself was a conscious attempt to model a minimalism I want my students - text- and bullet-junkies all - to emulate. And to provide information via not exposition, but metaphor and story. My goal was to inform without being a bore. (More on this presentation angle below the video, in a comment I left on an Anthony Chivetta post on Students 2.0 on teaching design to students - what I call “cutting the crap“.)

Here it is. It’s 30 minutes long. As you’ll read below, everybody else was stopped at 20 minutes. It’s not because I was better. It’s because my slides were. And my story.

The Backstory: It Takes a Story. It Doesn’t Take Bullet Points.

Storytelling is prior to and higher than design. Who wants a well-designed crappy story? (And maybe we should call this narrative, not storytelling, to open the frame wide enough to accommodate expository presentations?)

Here’s a story: I was one of three teachers asked to give a presentation at the Apple Distinguished Educator institute in Bangkok last month. We all were asked to address issues in 1:1 laptop schools.

The first guy gave a slideshow about his 4-year old laptop school. Lots of slides, lots of text, lots of pictures, lots of information. When he reached the alloted 20 minutes, he was told to finish up within a minute.

The second guy gave a slideshow with lots of examples of digital student work (much of it, I’m sorry to say, in need of crap-cutting and worse, to echo Dan, ideas worth watching in the first place - probably as much the teachers’ fault as the students, since the teachers assign this stuff). He also got fetishistic, predictably, about tools he uses. Jing this, Skitch that, blah blah blah.

When his 20 minutes were up, he was asked to wrap up in one minute.

(His school was an 18-month-old laptop school, by the way.)

It was my turn next. Imagine my joy at continuing the Chinese water torture with 20 more minutes of my own dripping slideshow.

I gave the presentation. When it was over, I said, “Was that shorter than my alloted 20 minutes?” The Apple guy said, “No - you went 30 minutes.”

Here’s why I think he didn’t make me finish:

1. I did have a story. I knew the age of the other two presenters’ laptop programs - again, 4 years for one, and the other 18 months - and I knew my own school’s 1:1 program was only 4 months old. So I gave this expository speech a metaphor: “Our 1:1 Baby Book.” The narrative thread of this informational “story” was: Conception - Labor - Birth - Potty Training.

To riff off some academic I read years ago in a literary theory graduate course, by giving the information some “narrative rails,” the audience enjoyed the ride and kept anticipating what was coming next.

And the occasional use of “ass” and “poopy” didn’t hurt, either. Somehow we need to mention emotion and voice in all of this. I didn’t talk like some constipated suit trying to impress. I was a guy in love with his story, telling it like the playful, caffeinated, silly bastard I enjoy being. I used my voice.

2. Also, Dean’s “design matters” and other explorations I’ve done since influenced my visual design. I had my story, but I wanted visuals without words. Pictures only. I didn’t quite succeed. I used slide titles and single-word lines of text. But to know my story and receive its information, you had to listen to me tell it. You couldn’t read it along with me.

A picture of a pregnant belly rising from a bubble-bath, of a new-born still gooey and umbilical in a doctor’s hands, of a poopy diaper-changing moment in some Flickr’d household - that was the bulk of my slideshow.

–

I still have a headache, but will try to sum up:

1. As Dan says (and hasn’t Warlick been stressing “telling a new story” for about a century?): storytelling first. I would add - and this was the point of my story - even expository can be transformed into a story via metaphor, extended analogy, allegory, etc. I got ten extra minutes to blather because people wanted to hear how my school is raising its baby. People like babies, generally (”especially with a little salt and pepper,” as WC Fields said ).

2. Visual design: I go back to Dean’s thrust - throw out the templates, eschew text, and arrest with less.

Oops. My twenty minutes was up a long time ago.

People referenced in the presentation: Jason Spivey, Justin Medved, Kim Cofino, Anthony Armstrong, Chris Watson

I’m going to let the pictures speak. If you’re new to this blog, you have to know that I’m reporting from my 1:1 Apple Laptop classroom in Seoul, South Korea.

Natural “Un-Lesson” Planning (or, “Goodbye, Teachery Headaches”)

Type A personalities, you’d better sit down before reading further. This lesson planning consisted of little more than Minnesota’s Scott Schwister of the Higher Edison blog, and Missouri’s Elizabeth Helfant of the new Helcat’s Rants and Ramblings blog*, reading my previous blog posts and Twitter tweets about this class, and dashing off a less-than-140-character “lesson plan” that looked like this:

From there, we went to….

A Cup of Skype Tea with Scott at the World’s End

Here’s Scott visiting our Bar and Restaurant Design project group for our Networked Project-Based Learning elective in Seoul, Korea. Why did he visit? So he could spend a few minutes on Skype offering some photos and contact info for a bar in Minneapolis made famous by the Prince movie Purple Rain. (He also visited because he has a sense of fun - read his blog, folks, he’s one of my personal favorites and a writer whose shoes I don’t deserve to shine - and a sense of the magical possible.)

Our view of Scott, compliments of the magic of Skype, the free internet phone and video-conferencing service:

(That’s our classroom in the inset.)

Scott’s view of the project group he’s helping (@kevinyi and company on Twitter):

(Left to right: me, Jihyung, Kevin, and Stephanie.)

Project group’s view of Scott:

And how laborious was Scott’s role as “teacher” here? About as much as any other friendly offer to help. Here’s his email to the project group, after their 20 minute or so chat:

Stephanie (and Kevin, Jihyung, and Jane),

A pleasure to meet and speak with you. I hope I was able to contribute something useful, and I’m looking forward to hearing more about your bar design project. First Avenue is a gritty place full of stories and history. It’s the antithesis of glossy, but it does have its own kind of legendary glamor.

Some links and other information you might find useful:

Contact for [name], former owner: [deleted to protect privacy]

• First Ave website: http://www.first-avenue.com/
• YouTube trailer for “Hayday”, a documentary about First Ave. More about the music history than the venue. But then, the venue has always been about the music.
• Many more YouTube search results.

I’ll try to find some representative interior photos and send those in the next day or two.

Good night!

ss

Naming the Concept: Natural Global Collaboration

This is the beauty. That 20 minutes of interaction from only one person in my network has provided a good week of project-based, connected learning - researching, interviewing, analyzing photos, writing, possibly podcasting, revising and editing, and real-world publishing - for my class. Don’t tell me this is not a solid learning experience. All the traditional, schooly, “English class” skills are there. They’re just real-world, self-directed learnings. And I can’t wait to read, hear, see what they discover through Scott’s help on their project blog next week. I also can’t wait to get a Tweet from Kevin in five years, telling me he opened his first bar or restaurant, if things unfold that way - and that this learning helped him in that chosen future.

To underline how radically different this “Quick-in, Quick-Out” global collaboration model is from most of what I’ve seen: it’s not scripted. It’s not teacher-directed. It’s what, thanks to a Skype call with Dean Shareski a couple days ago (podcast almost edited), I’ve decided to label: Natural Global Collaboration. And it requires only a few minutes from one cool person out there who finds helping people (notice I didn’t say “kids” or even “students”) simply an enjoyable activity.

Another difference: These students are not doing schooly collaboration with other students. They’re doing it with that other “class” of humans “beyond school” that we call “real-world people” - people who happen, in this case, to be adults.

(Feel free to contact the Vatican for instant canonization of Saint Scott of Saint Paul How cool is he? And Scott, I’d love to read your take on all this in comments. I wasn’t there for your talk with my class.)

Meanwhile, in a separate group working on a “future basketball stars of the world” project profiling high school and college standouts from around the world….

Elizabeth Chats with Younsuk and Jaeho from the Snows of St. Louis

Those snows covered Elizabeth’s satellite dish, knocking any hope of video-conferencing to another day, so they chatted on Skype instead. (Note Elizabeth’s sure hand guiding the planning process for the hook-up with her high school’s former and present basketball stars :))

That chat pretty much speaks for itself. (And the Vatican needs to hear about Saint Elizabeth from Saint Louis, too.) But I’ll let two “kwouts” from our class reflective blog speak for how this all felt to the “networking/networked learners.”

Here’s Jaeho:

PLN at KIS via kwout

And here’s Younsuk - read that last sentence:

PLN at KIS via kwout

A Word on Method

If you’re curious, I’ll just share that I will be playing writing and digital literacies coach to these students. The plan is that they’ll post their drafts for their weekly products on the group blog, and I’ll use the comment section to give feedback for revision. Once revised, they’ll copy and paste all finished posts on their project blog for the world to see. Just FYI. (And you’re welcome to come in and comment on these posts too, if you’re the type who likes to help people improve. That’s wonderful.)

Parting Shot

I often feel like a bad teacher. I almost never give tests or quizzes. I give very little homework. I don’t cover student homework with the red ink that hasn’t worked to teach them for all the years before they hand their papers in to me. I don’t like reading their homework assignments and academic essays. I don’t like teaching academic writing. I don’t believe in the value of academic writing (unless an individual says, “I want to be a professor”). In short, I often feel like a bad teacher because I don’t believe in the kind of education a teacher is expected to deliver.

This class feels radically different to me. It’s not about technology, either. It’s about connections being made for the sake of learning what the students choose to learn. In the last month, my students have connected with a Vermont high schooler for one class, with Dean Shareski yesterday - Dean invited us all to skype conference into a university class he’s teaching in Saskatchewan, Canada next week - and with Scott and Elizabeth today. The connections have not been mere gadgety text things, either. They started in twitter - voiceless, cryptic, fragmented - then evolved into emails, chats, and finally living faces and voices, in real time, projected on walls or computer screens. I’m not sure how important it is that the physical flesh of those faces and voices was on the other side of the world. The relations felt human - and the learning felt real.

I don’t know where it’s all going, and I’m sure there will be problems requiring solutions as it goes there; but I’m also sure that this feels so like teaching and learning - far more than my “elite” AP Literature class does. I want to read this student writing, to help hone it, to water the imaginations, the strategies, the methods and means of connecting and learning and communicating. Like never before, this class makes me want to teach - because I believe in the learning it promises.

—

*I also have Elizabeth to thank for leading me to enlist star student writer Anthony Chivetta to the Students 2.0 blog. I’m really lucky to have Elizabeth in my own friendly PLN!

A snapshot from kwout of Younsuk’s self-assessment in the project-based PLN class. It’s interesting to me. Click to read it all, and feel free to comment to Younsuk. (He’s interesting, by the way: Korean, but grew up in Japan, which is fascinating to anybody who knows the modern historical relations between these two countries. Speaks Korean, Japanese, and English. And a great basketball player, while only a sophomore.)

PLN at KIS » Blog Archive » Super Honest Post; This Is What Was Happening In Me via kwout

 The class blog itself is nothing pretty, but feel free to snoop around and leave any comments. It’s just a place to plan. The actual projects will have their own homes, wherever the students put them.

[Coming soon: A podcast discussion of this class with Dean Shareski - who visited us today from Canada via a Skype video call. Projected on our classroom movie screen, he looked like the Wizard of Oz's grandson.]