What Will You Learn Today?

I saw this yesterday at the entry to the Idea Factory at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago while visiting with my children.  It was a simple invitation for the children to come explore and learn.  Underneath, staff members wrote questions that rotated throughout the day to guide the exploration and assist parents in helping connect the activities to broader learning.  It made me wonder why we don't begin class this way every day?

Students begin school with a desire to learn, but often by the time they reach the secondary grades the joy of learning has gone out from them, replaced by a resignation that this is what they must do because the state, their parents, and the school have mandated it.  The joy that I saw as I watched my own children (ages 9 and 13) as they explored the museum's various exhibits and thought about what they were doing, trying new things, learning as they experienced new sights and sounds was a joy for me to watch.  It also got me thinking about how we may return this joy of learning to schools and in particular about two recent reading events.

The first reading event came when our trip to Chicago began, as I believe all family vacations should begin, with a trip to the local library to pick out books to read while we were gone.  I chose Bill O'Reilly and Matt Dugard's follow up to their best seller Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy which was good but not as good as Killing Lincoln.  It was my daughter's choices that intrigued me.  My youngest chose books that were stories about gymnastics, not surprising since she longs to be the next Gabby Douglass.  Additionally, she is my child that already knows what she wants to do when she grows up-go to Purdue and become a veterinarian.

It was the choices of my oldest daughter that intrigued me.  She did not choose novels, a book from a series, or books geared towards teens.  Rather she chose three books on photography.  For the past 6 months or so she has been saving up her money to purchase a new digital camera with removable lenses.  She has posted over 1100 pictures in the 4 months she has been allowed to have an instagram account and has even set up a secondary instagram account for her more artsy pictures.  She loves photography and it was very cool to see her choose to read and learn more about it.  Will this lead to a future job?  I am not sure, but for a student who when I ask what she wants to do says, "I don't know" it was a joy to see her follow her passion.

The second reading event occurred the morning of our museum trip when I read following article on 20% Time by AJ Juliani in Edutopia and this blog post on 10 Reasons to Try 20% Time also from AJ.  The article highlighted how schools could utilize this concept from Google to help inspire their learners to engage more in the learning process.  In short, it would allow students to daily ask of themselves "What do I Want to Learn Today?" and then pursue that learning.  Moving to a system would require a radical change by schools, teachers, and administrators-most because it would require the system to allow students to be in more charge of their learning and require us to trust that they were doing so-which might be the greatest challenge.

We regularly speak about learning about our students so that we can tap in to their interests to help connect learning to something they enjoy when they don't see the connection to what they are learning.  But what do we do, when what they are passionate about doesn't fit in to one of our curricular areas or can be measured by a state mandated test at the end of the year?  One way to start this process though may be through giving students a limited amount of time to define what they want to learn, and then supporting that pursuit at the same level we support their learning of state mandated items.

Special thanks to my colleague Reid Gault (@reidgault) the principal of Lincoln Junior High School in Plymouth, IN.  In the past 6 months, since he finished the book Inevitable,  he has been pushing my thinking about how we educate students.  He has continued to innovate at his school, bringing in student choices that allow them to choose their educational path.  In the past year Lincoln has begun a school within a school via the New Tech Network  focusing on project based learning and this year will add a SOLE program in which students in the SOLE study hall will have the opportunity to choose their own learning path to explore a passion of their own.

Book Review-Patrick Lencioni's Death by Meeting

Every once in a while during my reading I come across a book that is easy to read, completely relate-able to my life, and as I read it something I begin to wish I had read 6 months or even 6 years earlier.  Patrick Lencioni's Death by Meeting is just such a book.  In a simple fable, Lencioni accurately describes the feelings of loathing that most people experience when thinking about or attending meetings.  He then, continues to build through his thoroughly enjoyable tale of Yip Software a method to improve meetings along with the rationale as to why his method will work.  The book is a quick read at 258 pages and includes an executive summary of 35 pages for those who do not have the time to enjoy the full fable-although I recommend that you take the time to do so as it truly is a compelling argument for his methods.

In short, Lencioni identifies two main problems with meetings.  The first being a lack of drama or conflict during the meetings and a lack of context for the meetings.  Utilizing easily identifiable analysis that compares meetings to types of television shows he guides the reader to four styles of meetings and ways to use them to improve communication, effiency, and most importantly engagement in meetings.  It is a book that has helped me reflect deeply on the meetings I have been in charge of in the past, recognize many of the problems with those meetings, and caused me to think deeply about changes that I am looking forward to implementing for the next school year.

The Time Management Post

Yesterday at our school corporation retreat, Justin Maust of Leader Legacy spoke to us about how to develop a winning team.  In the course of his entertaining and enlightening seminar, he discussed his approach to time management, a binder in which he plans out each day to the minute on the left hand side of the page, and then on the right hand side notes what actually happens. The world keeps spinning at what seems to be a more rapid pace as our lives become more connected, information becomces accessible at all times, and the distractions that keep us from work more prevalent.  Due to this, many applications have sprung up in the past few years to help us digitally remain on task.  Two of my favorites have become Wunderlist and 30/30.

Wunderlist is a digital planning tool that harkens back to the old Franklin/Covey Day Planner, which by the way I often wonder way I have not seen a digital version of those books that were so prevalent in the 90s and early 2000s.  It allows you to input tasks into a list tasks, break long term projects in to smaller tasks, set due dates with email reminders, and have the satisfactory feeling of crossing items off your list.  It does not, at this time, allow you to schedule events or schedule to plan your day-as the Day Planner did.  It does however have the major plus of moving across digital access providers.  The app will sync between your mobile device, tablet, and computer, so no matter what device you are using to look at it, the information is up to date and accurate.  I have found Wunderlist to be a great way to organize the daily tasks that I need to complete, keep me on track with long range planning-although I wish the reminder system was more seemless and thus effective.  It often seems as if the reminders never come, even when set.  The greatest joy though comes from being able to digitally cross items off the list.

30/30 is an entirely different productivity app.  It combines a task timer with your task list and operates under the principal that you need to switch up your tasks throughout the day to keep your mind fresh and focused.  With this in mind, the creators initially suggested that you utilize 30 minute increments as the max time, and switch between tasks on that conitnuum, allowing yourself to go back to a task multiple times a day, until completed.  New versions of the software have removed the language about splitting tasks into 30 minute increments, and instead use a 50 minutes of work with a 10 minute break as to how to divide up the hour.

This is the tool that I have come to rely on when I want to be my most focuses and productive.  The basic idea works and gets you into a rhythm of work.   We too often allow the minor distractions of life, and they are many, to knock us off our pace and this can help you to stay focused on the task(s) at hand.  The biggest key is staying focused on that task, knowing that later in the day you will have time for those distractions that creep in.  So in my use of 30/30 I schedule in those distractions-though not at a 30 minute block.  I have time for email, eating, reading for fun, checking twitter, etc... Knowing that I will have time to do those activities in a reasonable amount of time helps me focus on what needs to be done in the moment.  It even will block sounds from outside the app, so email and other alerts don't sound to distract you from the task at hand while you wait for the timer to buzz.  The only negative, from an operations point, is that it will not sync across devices.

Additionally, I believe that an app like 30/30 can be a great tool for educators to introduce students to, tell them how they are using it to manage distractions and tasks they are working on, and then allow them to utilize it for that purpose in class.  In many ways it gamifys being focused and it is my hope that this would help students to be less distracted.

The only negative to 30/30 is being slightly OCD I get locked in to switching when the timer goes off, and it sometimes delays finishing a thought while I write.  It can also keep me from good distractions while reading-like connecting multiple articles and thoughts and then writing about them which happened to me this past Sunday and lead to me writing this review instead of my thoughts on two books I was reading and how they connected to a news article I read.  In my focus to stay on my reading tasks, I lost the thoughts that would have begun that post for me.  Sometimes even in focusing, being too rigid can cause loss as well.

The Power of a Network

I have always loved this commercial from Cisco about the Human Network.  So much so that I think I over use it in presentations when I discuss The Weidner School of Inquiry @PHS and our goal to help our students create professional learning networks that will help them to communicate their ideas to a broader audience.  Yesterday, the reason why I relate so well to this commercial became clear in my visit to Niles New Tech Entrepreneurial Academy in Niles, Michigan.  I was there to meet with the Director, Jerry Hotlgren, but since he was ill, I met with Mike Vota to discuss their Trust Card program and how they utilize it in working with student discipline.  

I have spent the last month or so thinking  deeply about student discipline, and how the simple discipline  does not seem to work.  There needs to be something beyond punishment to truly change behavior.  In the course of my searching, I had been reading a lot about the concept of Restorative Justice in particular through reading Howard Zehr and Ali Gohar's Little Book of Restorative Justice.  The idea behind Restorative Justice is that their is not only punishment for one's actions, but a large focus is placed on restitution and restoring community.  This approach fits with a lot of my core beliefs about discipline and has been attractive to me.  In order to learn more, I wanted to have an in depth discussion with a school that is utilizing these concepts.  My discussion with Mike provided this opportunity, gave me a framework to think about and share with my staff, and lead to some great thinking.  

Ultimately, what connects me to the Cisco commercial and appeals to me about Restorative Justice, is not the idea of a network.  Networking is powerful, don't get me wrong, It connects us to other people, places, and ideas.  The ability of the Net to do this has greatly enhanced both my learning as a professional and increased my awareness of the world around me.  The key though is not the network itself.  Rather, it is the relationships that come out of that network.  

As a part of the New Tech Network we have the ability to receive training, to access a data base of PBL lessons, and to attend conferences held throughout the year in which we can grow as leaders and facilitators of learning.  The greatest strength though is in the relationships we develop with the people of the network.  The short and long conversations that we have in the hallways of those conferences, the ability to call up the people we have met and seek their greater wisdom, and in the discussions with other passionate educators that rejuvenate our own passions.  It is those relationships that need to be the foundation of our culture as educators, and it is the restoration of those relationships that needs to be a foundational piece we hope to have school discipline lead to long term change in behaviors.  True change comes when we connect with others, and as Jack Nicholson says in As Good as it Gets, they "make us want to be better humans".

Conversation with a Futurist

Two Thursdays ago our school corporation had the pleasure of conducting a meeting via go to meeting with futurist David Houle in which he discussed with us the future of education and his conception of Flow.  He focused much of his talk about how the decade of 2010-2020 will be the transformation decade, in which all of the change of the last 10,000 years will take place in the next 100, with this 10 year period kicking that massive change off.

His concept of Flow involves three areas, The Flow to Global-in which the only boundaries will be planetary,  the Flow to Individual-the explosion of choice where power will move from institutions to individuals, and finally Accelerated Electronic Connectedness-cell phone ubiquity.

What struck me most from his conversation though was his idea that the concept of place no longer exists.  He explains this by talking about how we can now be anywhere, and connect to someone anywhere in almost no time at all.  This is not a new idea, the telegraph allowed people to quickly send messages from place to place, but you had to go pick them up or have them delivered to you.  The telephone brought both voice and direct connection-as long as you were in your home or office-and the cell phone made that connection mobile.

The scope of this change though hit me in two different ways.  The first was the way that cell phones have mobilized communication.  Freeman Hrabowski, the President of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, told a story at a conference I attended in which he spoke of how when he was growing up, and Star Trek was on, he kept hearing that some day phones would be able to go anywhere-he just couldn't conceive of the idea because he kept wondering how you would keep the cords from being tangled.  The shift that the mobile phone brought changed how we connect with other, where we connect with others, and made the world a smaller place.

But cell phones did not truly change the concept of place.  Yes, they allowed us to communicate with others wherever we were.  The truly radical change though came with the advent of the smartphone.  Now not only could we connect with anyone, anywhere, at anytime.  Now we could share our ideas, pictures, videos, and thoughts with anyone, anywhere, at anytime.

Two examples, one from American history and one from my personal experience, solidified this concept for me.  The example from American history is the letter writing of John and Abigail Adams.  While John was stationed in Europe during the American Revolutionary War, and after until 1789, he and Abigail exchanged 258 of the over 1100 letters that they wrote each other in their lifetimes.  What struck me about these letter exchanges, in light of Mr. Houle's discussion of place no longer existing, is that it took each of these letters three months to travel to it's recipient, and that was when the letters were able to get through and safely cross the ocean during war time.  The strain on the relationship was such that Abigail referred to the time as her "widowhood".

This leads directly to my personal experience.  While I work long hours, I am blessed with having few requirements to travel that take me away from my family overnight.  The week prior to Mr. Houle speaking though, I was in Berkley, CA at the New Tech Network Spring Leadership Summit.  During this time, while I missed my family, they were always no more than a text, email, or instagram photo away.  In fact when I returned the principle of a neighboring elementary school commented that he enjoyed the pictures I was sending with my tweets as I walked around Berkley.

The world has now shrunk to fit in the pocket of our pants, and we are no longer cut off from either those we love or the work we do, unless we choose to unplug ourselves.  This is truly the game changer, as the Digital Generation continues to grow up in a plugged in world, the ways and interfaces for this plugging in will change and further shrink their concepts of time and place.  Google Glass will only be the beginning of an ever more connected life experience for all of us.  How we continue to adapt as educators to a world where all resources are available at the touch of a few keys, will determine how well our institutions survive this decade of disruption.

Leaving the Water, Before it Boils Me Over

Image From Joyce Howard

When I was a boy scout we would go to camp every summer.  One of the myths of camp was that if you put a frog in a bucket of boiling water it would jump out immediately. However, if you put the frog in unheated lake water and then boiled the water, the frog would not jump out and would eventually explode.  We never tried this as we were not intentionally cruel to animals, but the story has stayed with me most of my life.  This past year has had me reflecting on this phenomenon a lot of late and feeling very connected to the frog.

This has been a year of challenges.  Taking on a new role within our school corporation, trying to find time balancing my old job with supporting the facilitators and learners at the Weidner School of Inquiry@PHS, and also stretching myself physically, emotionally, and publicly.

Given that introduction, it may seem that I am relating to the frog being thrown into the hot water, and wanting to jump out, but that has not been were my connection to the frog has been.  My connection has been to the frog who is put in the lake water, and then does not respond to the heating water around him, and thus explodes.

Let me explain.  As we go about our daily business of life, we become familiar and comfortable with our surroundings.  We often become so familiar that we don't notice the changes that are happening, but often we don't notice the changes that need to happen, and this is the greatest risk, this is where the frog gets fried.  It is not that he doesn't recognize the water getting warmer, it is that he doesn't recognize the change that needs to occur-leaving the water.

With this in mind, there are two events from this year that have stretched me personally, that has had carry over benefits to my professional work.  The most recent is flying to California for the New Tech Network's Spring Leadership Summit.  I have not flown for 12.5 years.  It is not that, I have not had opportunities to fly, but rather I simply refuse to do things that would force me to fly.  As I right this though, I am looking out the window of my room at the Claremont Resort in Berkley, CA after having flown from Chicago the day before.  I am enjoying an incredible view of the San Fransisco Bay and the city skyline in the distance.  It is something that I would never have experienced had I not jumped out of the bucket and what was comfortable.  Additionally, I have been able to spend some very focused time thinking about my school, where we started this year, how far we have come, and ways we need to continue to grow in the coming years.  I feel energized and excited to finish the year strong.

The second event happened earlier this month when I participated in Dancing with the Stars Marshall County.  I am not a dancer, I have very little rhythm, but over a three month period I went from novice Salsa dancer to performing this dance in front of several hundred people.

It was way beyond the comfort of the bucket, but it taught be something new, gave my students a new perspective on who I am, and gave me a sense of confidence on the dance floor.  From my initial tentative steps I was able to know the dance so well that in early rehearsal performances I was able to adapt the dance to where the music was when we got slightly off pace.  Later that night, this new confidence allowed me to have a blast dancing with my youngest daughter.

Whether the challenges we take on be personal or professional, physical or emotional, the key is that we venture away from the bucket so that we can notice when our environment begins to change, and we can adapt to those changes rather than be boiled over by them.

An Avalanche of Information

Video Note:  I tried really hard to find a giant snowball that starts small and get ginormous as it rolls down they hill before smashing into a ski resort, but since that search lead me to nothing, I thought this video from the Vin Diesel action movie Triple X was a great representation as well.

Sometime in late October I had breakfast with a former professor of mine, Mark Soto.  Mark is a theology professor at Grace College in Winona Lake, IN and is one of the smartest people I know.  Whenever I am fortunate enough to connect with Dr. Mark I leave with a lot to ponder and think about.

This day was no different.  As our conversation wound from how Jesus handled tough conversations to the current state of education in America, Dr. Mark passed on to me a great explanation of how he thought education had changed.  When Mark began his studies students would choose a field and then spend a great deal of time immersed in learning all of the information that there was to learn in their field.  This mastery of content was the goal of learning.

He then pivoted to what he viewed as the key change.  The amount of information is no longer master-able   The internet and the connectivity that it provides has made this an impossible task.  Rather, the goal of education should now be to give students the tools needed to find, evaluate, and curate this information.  In the back of my brain this was not a new revelation, it was something that I had been thinking about and preaching in many forms for several years now.

What it wasn't was a concrete experience of within my life.  Then Christmas Break came.  My goal for Christmas Break was to read daily, finish several books, and pair down the list of reading in my Pocket app account.  Eventually pairing down, by reading not deleting, my pocket account soon became my over riding endeavor.  Try as I might though, it just continued to grow.  Even after spending hours daily at Starbuck's reading while having my pumpkin spice latte, I was not closer to getting to the end of the list.  In fact it continued to grow, even as I read most of what was coming in on my Feedly account.  Even when I eliminated things that I was not truly interested in, the list would not go down.

Nor should I expect it to.  Even with an infinite amount of time, I could not conquer the list, because never before in time has the amount we know expanded so rapidly and been so accessible.  For our students it will continue to do so.  Thus, while content knowledge is important, Dr. Mark is right.  We need to teach our learners to find outstanding and enlightening things to read, show them how to evaluate the information that they are taking in, help them develop the organizational skill of curating, and then model for them how to reflect and retain the information that they take in.  Education is no longer about memorizing dates, facts, and formulas.  It is about accessing, evaluating, and refining what we want to learn, then contributing our knowledge to the every growing catalog of humanity.