Why Choice? Why Comfort? Why Student Control?

If you are in North America or Europe school has just begun, and in hundreds of thousands of classrooms things have gotten off on the wrong foot. Teachers and administrators and introduced themselves as "enemies" of students, and students responded in kind.

In those classrooms seating charts have been introduced. Students have been expected to sit for long periods in brutally uncomfortable furniture. Odd rules have been announced - limiting children's ability to use the toilet for example - or to get a drink - or required forms of "paying attention." Punishments have been announced before any rule has been broken. In schools where computers or has limited the functionality, and has screamed to the students, "We don't trust you!"

similar devices have been distributed the set up of those devices

Why?

OK, disclosure. I was one of those students who, faced with a classroom environment like those described above - right up through graduate school, would leave that class and never come back. Most students don't do that, they either shut down or revolt in ways big or small. They do this in third grade. They do this in middle school. They do this in high school. And teachers often sit there and wonder what went wrong, or they grade on a curve, admitting publicly that they cannot help more than a third of their students do well.

"I don't understand this boy," a math teacher said to a librarian at the first high school I worked at. "He'd rather get detention and go to Saturday School than come to my class." "Well," the librarian responded, "I guess you have to think about that."

Learning is all about trust. If a learner doesn't trust the source of information, very little good happens. That's one thing if the learner is at home or in a coffee shop online, and can choose another source. Its something else again if this is "school" and "we," the educators, are being paid to support this knowledge gain.

High School Library Music Studio
Student-created content and context

And trust is always a mutual concept. If Americans don't trust their government - their government doesn't trust them - and spies on everyone while complaining about a lack of trust. If the police in Ferguson, Missouri don't trust their community, and go out into as if dressed for a foray into the Afghani mountains, the people of Ferguson do not trust their police, and presume all of the worst. And if a school won't trust a 16-year-old to use the toilet when they need to, the 16-year-old will behave as if an aggrieved prisoner.

Aggrieved prisoners are learners, but they sure ain't learning what you want them to be learning. They learn how to distract themselves. How to ignore you. How to excape your class. How to annoy you. I'm always amazed be educators who begin a class by listing the things that upset them most... "coming in late, chewing gum, talking in class, leaning back in the chair" ... and are then shocked, shocked, that students do those very things.

'nuff said...

If only we began from the idea that students - that children - are humans. If only we realized that there is only one moral universe and one standard of behavior, not "us" and "them." If only we started with the thought that if something - say, a rule - is "school only" we need to wonder why school cannot operate like the rest of the world...

Imagine if, at your home, you had to ask to go use the toilet and had to first get a pass. Imagine if you were told that you were not allowed to add a program to your computer or an app to your phone, or that you couldn't change a setting. Imagine if someone filled your house with traditional classroom furniture. Imagine if - as a teacher - you were docked pay if every student didn't learn every lesson on time. Imagine if you - as a state legislator - had your pay held back if every third grader didn't read at grade level. Imagine if you, as a principal, were required to sit in your standard student chair all day long.

Becky Fisher - my colleague - challenged schools to loosen up on technology controls recently in a

Every day my email brings me ideas from
profiteers suggesting how I can limit
student opportunities.

brilliant blog post. And her post has inspired me to ask you to treat your students as humans - as you would like to be treated - on everything.

It's not just about what also applies to you, its about - because education is about our future - how you would like to be treated. Because in a free society we must learn to be free, and learn what it means to be free.

Where I work we ask our teachers and administrators to ensure that students have choice, are comfortable, and have control of their environment, their technology, and their learning, every day. We do that because we believe that we are helping our children become happy, healthy, successful adults who can thrive in their future, not just comply in our past.

So today, take the shackles off. If you want students to trust you, to be willing to learn what you feel is important, you must trust them.

It is really that simple.

- Ira Socol

Heroes of the Republic of Ireland

An Open Letter to Uachtarán na hÉireann Michael D. Higgins:

President Higgins:

In May of this year I was privileged to be invited to Ireland to speak to, and work with, the fabulous educators of your nation. At the ICT in Education Conference|Comhdháil ICT san Oideachas
at the Limerick Institute of Technology campus in Thurles, County Tipperary, and in schools from the center of Dublin to the shore at St. Finan's Bay in Baile an Sceilg, we met, conversed with, and worked with many transformational educators who are seeking to create a future full of possibility for their students, for their nation, for their Europe, and for their world.

But what we also saw was a national government, if not a society in general, forgetting that most basic axiom of Irish history... when times are tough we worry first about our children and our future.

And we saw these wondrous educators, among the finest on this planet, struggling to understand how that could axiom could be forgotten.

Children play outside at the An Scoil ag an Ghleanna|Glen National School at St. Finan's Bay

On the edge of the world in County Kerry we found one tiny Gaelscoil leading a small group of rural students both into the future and deep into the collective past. The words were in Irish, the storytelling as ancient as the rocks on which the Atlantic crashed outside the windows, but the children were connected to the world through both technology and their committed, devoted teachers.

At a Shehy Mountains pass in County Cork we found an even tinier school, Cuppabue National School, which has won, in the past year, national awards for everything from maths and sciences to film-making, but whose teachers, students, and parents fear Ruairi Quinn's policies ("Very few young children now would walk to school. Many of the schools in rural Ireland were located because of the fact that people walked to school. The arrival of traffic… makes it virtually impossible, certainly not safe, for people to walk to school. The face of Ireland has changed, not just urban or rural Ireland. We have to reflect that change.") will shutter a school which has educated students brilliantly since the Catholic Emancipation.

St. Mocholomog National School/Cuppabue National School has been a place of learning
for as far back as the stories recall. That students "could go elsewhere" according to the
Minister of Education and Skills should not shutter a fabulous school.
(below) the (pre-K-grade 6) students' award-winning film on the fiscal crisis

In Dublin we found Bridge 21 Learning offering secondary students with few traditional paths to opportunity coming to a "school" on their off-hours just to participate in collaborative community learning, yet euros are short, and the program can only reach a small percentage of the adolescents who desperately need this support.

In Thurles the Presentation Secondary School, a beautiful place filled with higher level thinking, arts, and music struggles with furnishings so old, and classroom spaces so tight, that students are wedged into desks with, yes, inkwells.

St. Martin de Porres N.S. multiage choir says it all.

(below) students at St. Martin de Porres know how to leverage technology to
overcome learning issues.

And in Tallaght we found the remarkably diverse and exciting St. Martin de Porres National School with an incredible technology program powering every learner which needs newer equipment and greater bandwidth if they are going to continue their children's growth.

Before I began the visit I wrote...

"Ireland is wasting time and energy worrying about “efficiency,” “saving money,” “teacher pay,” and battles over the Junior and Leaving Certs, instead of investing in imagining, and moving towards, a lifespan educational structure which will carry Ireland into the future. In this, this nation is hardly alone, but perhaps the stakes are much higher for a small island nation which knows the ability of education to transform a society, which saw the changes of the 1970s and 1980s, in all levels of schooling, lead a societal and socio-economic revolution... we will not focus on “rigour” – the making of things difficult for the sake of difficulty, nor on “efficiency,” an odd concept to embrace as we discuss the raising of our children, nor on “standards,” which involve statistical tests originally designed to ensure the consistency of barrels of Guinness. Instead we will begin with the idea of creating “learning space,” real, virtual, even imagined, where every student, at every age, has the opportunity to not just succeed, but to thrive."

And just last week, Ireland's Secondary Teacher of the Year answered in an impassioned address, which included this:

"Obviously I have a personal agenda here - I want to save my job. But I don't have a political agenda.

My grandfather was a proud Fine Gaeler and I have many friends in the Labour party. I want to believe that Fine Gael and Labour can find a way to be better than the idiots who got us into this mess in the first place.

Some positive things are happening in education: our minister Ruairi Quinn is determined to bring about changes in our in-many-ways antiquated educational system - and for this I admire him.

The proposals for the new Junior Cert have the potential to bring about real and meaningful change (but the department need to listen to the teachers) and this is a change I want to be a part of.

But we need to make sure we're making things better not worse. Destroying the morale of the teachers who will be implementing this change is not the way forward.

Minister Quinn will no doubt throw his hands in the air and say there is no money.

Well I say to Ruairi Quinn and the Department of Education, if this is the limit of your creativity, imagination and passion to protect our children's education - shame on you."

Secondary Teacher of the Year Evelyn O'Connor

President Higgins, much of what I, and Dr. Pamela Moran of Virginia, saw on our visit demonstrated that Irish education - especially Irish primary education - could be the envy of the world. We saw a wondrous commitment to natural child development unhindered by the panic over "grade-level standards" which have threatened to destroy education in the United States and United Kingdom.

We saw a level of humanity, a commitment to arts and the whole child, which should be "the standard" everywhere. We saw local control and local opportunity which allowed teachers to build classrooms around the needs and passions of their children. We saw teachers that anyone, in any nation, would want supporting our next generation of leaders.

We saw a commitment to the concept of "the public space" you so beautifully express in your book . Renewing the Republic. A belief in an unselfish dedication to a shared future that should be the pride of any nation.


Of course we saw problems. We saw secondary education far too bound by test preparation, and tests which, though in some ways excellent, are graded on the wrong parameters, are taken with the wrong (19th century) technologies, and which hold far too great a sway over both individual and national futures. We saw a lack of investment in learning spaces, a lack of investment in this century's communications technology, and a lack of support for a fabulous teaching community.

Grades 2 through 6 at Dualla National School

One afternoon in Dualla in County Tipperary we visited the Dualla National School. There we met brilliant educators working with another small cohort of children, and making the best of limited, old, technology. It was wondrous what Principal Teacher John Manley accomplished with a few old laptops and an old iPhone with a shattered screen, and how that combined with a fully inclusive multiage environment (and a heavy dose of hurling) to offer a broad path to success for every child. But their energy should be poured into their students, not concerns about how to update antiquated communications systems.

On another day we met Hellie Bullock of Limerick, a brilliant young educator who should be working every day with children - and being paid a respectable wage for that. On other days we met some of the world's leading university experts in the future of education, who should be going about their work without panicking about the ability to care for their families.

President Higgins, we must, as you know, measure nations and societies by their commitment to their children, and their commitment to a better future. Ireland, like many nations, has deep problems and little in the way of available funds. But Ireland also has a grand tradition of putting education and children first. From the ancient monasteries to the hedge schools of the worst occupation days, from the re-birth of the education system after entering the European Economic Community to, hopefully, today, Ireland has sought whatever creative solutions were necessary to protect its communal future.

Seeking creative solutions to ensure our future: CoderDojo Thurles

The educators we met, President Higgins, are the heroes of today's Republic of Ireland. They are fighting, working, and struggling every day to ensure the future of this nation, and to protect its children from the ravages caused by the greed of another generation, and they, whether Hellie, or Evelyn O'Connor, or Stephen Howell at the Institute of Technology Tallaght (who has given our children Scratch to Kinect) deserve the support of their nation, in their work and in the security of their positions and ability to live.

So I ask you to join us President Higgins in our conversations, to join us in our search for creative solutions, to join us in our drive for universally designed learning spaces which can carry all of our children into successful futures, in our attempts to bring the Labour and Fine Gael leaders into true conversation about what our children need.

I write this not as a meddlesome outsider, but because I have been welcomed into this conversation warmly by the education community of the Irish nation. I know this community views you as a hero, as a man who has stood for what is right for half a century, and so I ask you to, please, become a part of this essential discussion.

- Ira Socol

Please don't stop us now... the future can be wondrous

"Fried Chicken 'n Watermelon" at The New York Times

"As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites, studies show."

Both The New York Times and "reporter" Matt Richtel are at it again. The Times in their battle against technology in education, Richtel in his war against poor children. [see Class War at The New York Times]

Technology is "not a savior" says The New York Times... except for their own kids

The general idea is that while rich kids will use technology well, poor kids - a dangerous alien population - will not, so rich kids should be connected to the world and this century, while poor kids need to be carefully watched and trained to "be white."

Let us tear apart one key section of Richtel's reporting on this so-called "Digital Divide" crisis:

The study found that children of parents who do not have a college degree spend 11.5 hours each day exposed to media from a variety of sources, including television, computer and other gadgets. That is an increase of 4 hours and 40 minutes per day since 1999.

Children of more educated parents, generally understood as a proxy for higher socioeconomic status, also largely use their devices for entertainment. In families in which a parent has a college education or an advanced degree, Kaiser found, children use 10 hours of multimedia a day, a 3.5-hour jump since 1999. (Kaiser double counts time spent multitasking. If a child spends an hour simultaneously watching TV and surfing the Internet, the researchers counted two hours.) 

It doesn't take an "expert researcher" to see the nonsense in the above. First, the kid with the TV on and the mobile phone in hand is not spending 11 hours a day, but 5.5 hours doing... um, whatever they may be doing because these categories are absurdly broad. At the moment, in this hour, I am spending 3 hours "wasting time on media." The television is on - HGTV, I'm writing on my computer - this post, I'm tracking mail on my mobile. In just a few hours I'll have used up more than my full day, and jump right to tomorrow.

Second, the giant gap? It comes to 1.5 hours a day - which might actually be 45 minutes, or 30 minutes, or - to be honest - who the f--- knows? Richtel has built a career out of misusing third-rate statistical analysis (he has a Pulitzer Prize for "proving" what is provably untrue - that mobile phone use has made driving in America much more dangerous), and here we go again.

Then, using the "anecdote as fact" structure which has defined Richtel's education reporting, the "reporter" finds the most connected poor child in America:

Policy makers and researchers say the challenges are heightened for parents and children with fewer resources — the very people who were supposed to be helped by closing the digital divide.

The concerns are brought to life in families like those of Markiy Cook, a thoughtful 12-year-old in Oakland who loves technology.

At home, where money is tight, his family has two laptops [obviously with broadband - IS], an Xbox 360 and a Nintendo Wii, and he has his own phone. He uses them mostly for Facebook, YouTube, texting and playing games.

He particularly likes playing them on the weekends. 

Ummm, Matt? I've worked with a lot of poor kids, most are almost completely disconnected at home - except for their phone. When New Rochelle, NY began their 4G laptop initiative in their poor neighborhoods, they could barely find anyone with broadband, much less other laptops at home or connected video games. When I ask, whether in Michigan or Virginia, I find the poor with very little access, outside of the (often shared) smartphone. So Markiy is quite the "thoughtful" find for The Times, a find who makes "poor" parents look lazy, and poor kids - even those described as "thoughtful" poor kids - look irresponsible.  This is the - please excuse the racist expression here but I believe the connection is valid - "Lazy Darkie" theory, the idea, still expressed by the Republican Party in the United States, that African-Americans fail to succeed because they are only interested in "lazing around," dancing, and eating "fried chicken 'n watermelon" (which, honestly, has been expressed more, ahhh, bluntly in the circles of American power).

James Gee on how gaming supports learning

You know Markiy is irresponsible because he plays games on weekends and he isn't doing well in school. I could suggest reading James Geeto Matt Richtel, but information on how children develop and what they need in terms of interactive language, is not The Times goal here.

If it was, they might have reached back to their own paper two years ago:

James Paul Gee, a professor of literacy studies at Arizona State University who grew interested in video games when his son began playing them years ago, has written several seminal books on the power of video games to inspire learning. He says that in working through the levels of a complex game, a person is decoding its ‘‘internal design grammar’’ and that this is a form of critical thinking. ‘‘A game is nothing but a set of problems to solve,’’ Gee says. Its design often pushes players to explore, take risks, role-play and strategize — in other words putting a game’s informational content to use. Gee has advocated for years that our definition of ‘‘literacy’’ needs to be widened to better suit the times. Where a book provides knowledge, Gee says, a good game can provide a learner with knowledge and also experience solving problems using that knowledge.

Once again The New York Times could be looking at educational funding equity, or providing technology access in real ways, or about making schools function as relevant learning spaces instead of as worksheet factories... but they choose not too.  Once again they have turned their most anti-poor reporter loose on American schoolchildren and their parents, to degrade them, to attack them, and to help ensure that the legislators The Times influences will not give these "irresponsible" kids what they need.

Shame. Again.

- Ira Socol

foghlama in Éirinn, Éire foghlama

A Dublin 17-year-old discusses the difference between "education," a self-motivating, inspiring, possibility-building activity he is engaging in at Bridge21Learning, and "school," where uninteresting, irrelevant information is "shoved" at him.

A primary school teacher from Cork demonstrates how his youngest students are creating e-books they have written, illustrated, assembled digitally, and narrated (as alternative output), and then notes that the secondary school most will attend insists that students do all work writing with fountain pens - to encourage proper handwriting.

A first-year university-level student explains that after lectures "no one understands," he and his fellow students meet in a comfortable lounge under a high ceiling, go online, and figure it out together.

CoderDojo Thurles

A group of primary students in Tallaght, crossing years four through six, work in a room with "computers" ranging from somewhat elderly laptops to iPod-Touches, and research, investigate, create stories on films, write, while supporting each other.

In Dualla, primary students from year two through six, work together in a classroom and push each other forward, academically, artistically, athletically, while linking themselves to the world through technology. They enthusiastically share their work on all with clear, sophisticated voices.

On the absolute edge of Europe, where County Kerry meets the Atlantic at St. Finan's Bay, the 24 student Gaelscoil An Scoil ag An Ghleanna was a magnificent place of freedom, democracy, familial community, and learning. A huge Titanic sculpture/display graces one corner of the upper students' classroom, demonstrating and students await Skyping with Dublin and America.

And at the Tipperary Institute of the Limerick Institute of Technology, late on a Thursday afternoon, the widest possible range of primary and secondary students gathers voluntarily, to work individually and together, to build computer programming skills at one of the many CoderDojos which have appeared across Ireland, and increasingly, the world - a movement born of Irish invention.

Ireland is a nation which has valued education for all of its history. It is also a nation which has been remarkably creative in importing, adapting, and reinventing ideas, from Christianity and Beer to Literature in English and Contemporary Software.

That ability, crossing fields of knowledge and hundreds of generations, was not created by "vocational education," but by a broad view of the world which was transmitted to anyone in the population who wanted it. When the British made education illegal for Irish Catholics, students met in fields and caves for "formal" education, and kept singing, dancing, quoting poetry, and debating to keep the art of teaching fully in play.

This is a nation who's heroes are authors - not just any authors - but some of the most inventive to ever write in the English language. It is a nation which has led Europe in software development. A nation chosen as a home for multinational corporations every bit as much for a thinking, adaptive, creative workforce as for any "tax haven" reasons.

ICTEDU 2012 Keynote LIT Tipperary Part 1

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I, and American school leader Dr. Pamela Moran, came to LIT - Tipperary to present at the 2012 ICTEDU Conference, to share and compare our experiences in the States with those of Irish educators when it comes to rethinking both education and technology, as well as the point where those things connect. Yet we found a profound disconnect, or a series of profound disconnects - between levels of Irish education, between intentions and policies, between "Dublin" and classrooms, between the future of Irish students and many of their "presents."

That is not to suggest that we were disappointed in Irish education - far from it. In school after school we found wonderful students led by humane and very human teachers, students allowed to find success across the range of human skillsets. We saw beautiful art, heard magnificent music, and found places filled with a passion for learning... but...

ICTEDU 2012 Keynote LIT Tipperary Part 2

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We found an educational system crying out for the need to carry the inventiveness and excitement of primary education forward into lifespan learning. An education system needing to join the present - contemporary technology, global connectedness, universal design for learning - to the uniquely human Irish traditions of humanity, literature, arts, and music. An education system needing - desperately - to free itself from the straight-jacket of compliance to testing norms so that students can find the wide variety of paths to success which will equip a small island with the range of talents it will need in the future.

Irish Primary Education appears brilliantly inventive - if a bit "technology challenged" (for a nation which sees itself as a technology leader) - but the post-primary system, of desks and handwriting, test-driven-curricula and 40-minute time blocks, is constricting the possibilities for teachers and students and "our" collective future.

Our students will live their lives in the mid-to-late 21st Century,
they need to learn to manage the tools of their time - not the mid-19th Century

ICTEDU 2012 Keynote LIT Tipperary Part 3

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This is both about access - offering the best we can possibly offer to the widest variety of students - and economics - the building of a creative society which leads - not a factory society which builds copies of American designs. It is both about the joy of learning and about the purposes of education. In our minds, we measure our success as educators by the range of choices available to our young people in their adulthood - are they able to choose careers, homes, lives, routes, passions? are they not tied to the limits of doing others' work or emigrating.

Education should not be about creating a workforce for corporations - they may train new workers if they must - but even if Irish Education Minister Ruairi Quinn wants schools as only job preparation, we all know that creative workers, able to adapt and adjust, able to utilize the tools of this century, will surely top test-takers with fountain pen skills.

ICTEDU 2012 Keynote LIT Tipperary Part 4

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We did not come to Ireland to show Irish educators how to recreate anything in the American education system. We do not think Ireland should copy Washington's policies or London's policies - both are leading conservative reductionist efforts which seek to strip the humanity from education for all but the children of the wealthy. Rather, we came to Ireland to help push Irish educators toward accomplishing the true goals of the system - an inclusive, creative, supportive, fully-rounded program which helps to develop Irish-European-Global citizens with the skills and learning tools and strategies they will need during their lifespans. We came to connect, to join, to learn from, to share, and to encourage Ireland to pursue its own course toward its own future.

The Accidental Curriculum

View more presentations from Ira David Socol

So, we ask Irish educators to slow down, to look deeply at their schools, their students, and the world of today, and to not be afraid to change Irish schools - despite the inspectors, despite the Leaving Certs, despite whatever the sad commentary is from Dublin's government buildings.

- Ira Socol

The value of Early Adoption

Over 1500 people died when the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912. But it might have been much worse. Had this event occurred just a dozen years earlier, it is likely that the first news of the ship sinking would have come when the Titanic would have failed to arrive in New York. Later, other ships might have come across a few lifeboats floating with the frozen remains of passengers.

When the Titanic stopped transmitting, reporters had to make decisions based
on telegraphic rumors. The New York Sun guessed wrong, The New York Times,
perhaps with future NBC boss David Sarnoff's help, guessed correctly.

But, despite all of its other safety failings, the White Star Line was an aggressive early adopter of new communications technology, the Marconi Wireless. Rare among ships of the era, White Star liners maintained 24 hour radio watches. Most ships maintained radio operations for just 12 hours, with gaps any time the operator needed to be away from his post. A key question of the Titanic tragedy turns on the actions of the Captain and the wireless operator aboard the S.S. Californian. While surely chief Titanic operator Jack Phillips bears blame for the communications break between these two ships, no one on the Californian considered switching on their set to discover what was happening just a few miles away.

Carpathia arrives in New York Harbor on 18 April 1912
The Carpathia had maintained a news blackout from the morning
of April 15th, until it had docked at a Hudson River Pier.

Now, let us consider the Titanic and its Wireless Operations. Most of that transmitted by Phillips and Harold Bride was the kind of nonsense for which, today, Twitter is oft attacked. Wealthy passengers sent expensive (12s. 6d for ten words and 9d. for each additional word - a shilling was 1/20 of a pound sterling, 240 pennies ("d") made up a pound - 480 halfpennies) - yes, almost $60 or £36 in today's money for ten words - messages to friends on land or on other ships. Over 250 private messages in the just 36 hours between leaving Southampton, England and the collision with the iceberg. They ranged from arrangements for a private railway car to the simple, mundane, "wish you were here." There is no doubt that the distractions of these private messages interfered with the safety functions of this new technology.

Chief Wireless Operator Jack Phillips lets the vital ice message fall through
the cracks in this scene from the 1958 film A Night to Remember, based on the
deeply research Walter Lord book of the same name. The Morse Coding is
so good in this film that listening, you can understand it all.

The actual Titanic wireless room,
in a passenger photo

But the critical issue that cold April night was not Jack Phillips distractions, it was that few other ship lines had adopted this new technology fully. Not just the nearby Californian shut off its wireless at night, so did the Cunard liner Carpathia, which only heard the distress call when it did because operator Harold Cottam could not sleep. Ships all around the North Atlantic failed to hear the CQD and then SOS distress calls because the Titanic had the misfortune to founder after 11:00 pm, when the lone Marconi operators on most ships had gone to bed.

Unimportant? A new toy? A new gadget? Useful, but not worth spending enough money for a 24-hour two-man watch? Whatever. The wireless was not seen as valuable enough by most. It was dismissed - despite the almost 70 year history of the telegraph, and that dismissal - for the owners of the Californian especially - cost 1,500 lives.

New technologies can seem odd, strange, somewhat worthless. The operators used quirky codes and phrases, even in crisis, [12.20 a.m.  15 April 1912  R.M.S. Titanic to R.M.S. Carpathia: “Come at once. We have struck a berg. It’s a CQD, old man. Position 41.46 N 50.14 W.” "Old Man" was the greeting of the day, included even here. Many other odd abbreviations were in use, making the signals incomprehensible to many. If this sounds familiar...

Among the Titanic's many fable-like cautionary tales, perhaps this is one more. Sometimes early adoption, commitment to new technologies, can make all the difference in the world.

- Ira Socol

If learning is to be constant, Space, Time, Technology, Pedagogy, Curriculum Must be the Variables

Join us, if you can, for a deep dive into these concepts at ICT in Education Conference (Comhdháil ICT san Oideachas) in Thurles, County Tipperary, in the Republic of Ireland - 18/19May 2012

If we insist on teaching Algebra in our schools, not once but twice, the least we can do is to actually use it when we think about education. And here's the equation: If (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) are constant, x will always be the variable. In order to make x the constant, (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) must be variable. In all circumstances where x = student achievement and (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) represent Time, Space, Technology, Pedagogy, and Curriculum.
 
In simpler terms, if all students are to succeed, everything else in and about the school must be flexible.

This is the easy-to-understand, mathematical way Hamilton, Michigan Superintendent Dave Tebo re-worked my thoughts a couple of nights ago on Twitter.

I have written (and talked) a lot about the history of education, and why it "looks" the way it does, but without repeating all of that, let's just say that the linear, time-constructed, subject-divided, age-organized, one method at a time, system of education does not really match with the way most humans learn. It never has, and it certainly does not in this century.

The Guardian demonstrates how learning can happen in this century

Technologies define "the school" and can either separate it from, or connect it to, education. The first technology of "school" is time. We separate "learning time" from "non-learning time." The second technology of "school" is the division of students and subjects. Boxes are created separating eight-year-olds from ten-year-olds, thirteen-year-olds from fifteen-year-olds, and then separating "language" from "history" from "maths" from "arts." The third technology of "school" is the built environment, the walls, furniture, floors, ceilings, lighting, surfaces, et al, of the place. The fourth technology of "school" lies in the information and communication system options in place, from chalkboard and paper and pencils to mobiles and blogs and cameras.

And if we are going to change "teaching places" into "learning spaces" all of these technologies must be re-imagined in wholly new ways, because the only way to make learning available to all is to re-create "school" as a constantly variable space - physical space, temporal space, virtual space, imagined space - which constantly flexes to the needs of the learners and the learning community.

Time, Space, the pedagogy of "Attention," all flex in this sixth grade language classroom

The physical spaces where students spend their time must be comfortable, adaptable, and offer a world of options. Sit in a chair or on the floor, on a pillow or on the windowsill, touching friends or consciously alone, standing at a table or sprawled across the floor, in bright light or dim, with noise surrounding, or headphones creating one's own aural place, or with the rain splashing your window view. The information and communication technology must offer the same, with information flowing via video or audio, print on paper or print on screens, through tablets and mobiles and laptops and larger touchscreens, via pens or pencils, on paper or whiteboards or washable floors or the glass of windows.

The Boeing 787, reconceiving the airliner meant
missing deadlines.

Time must change as well. We need many fewer deadlines and many more commitments to deep learning. My sister could read - and read well (as in both decoding and comprehension) - at age two. I haven't yet caught up in decoding to where she was then. Turns out, it doesn't matter in terms of what we know, or what we can do. Einstein - famously - struggled in school. Steve Wozniak couldn't handle computer science or math courses. Norman Maclean published his first book when he was 73-years-old. People have their own timelines and schedules, and we can either respect that fact, or we can do a great deal of damage. In addition, here are some projects which have arrived long after their deadlines, aircraft from the B-29 to the 787-Dreamliner, spacecraft from Freedom 7 to Apollo 11, vehicles from the Ford Model T to everything from Tesla, and a whole lot of other groundbreaking efforts. If you want your students to copy from Wikipedia set deadlines, if you want original thinking - well, that's a lot less time-predictable.

We also need many fewer "schedules." Can kids work at their desks or at studio tables with a team like adults do? Can kids work on something even when you want to move on? Can kids take breaks when they need them?

Choice in space, inputs, ICT...

Of course subject division must end. Watching that Guardian video (above) we can see how all of the artificial lines we draw are absurd. In every situation, in every analysis, in every bit of learning, the wider the context the more "entry paths" exist, and the deeper the resultant understanding. Can you read Dickens or Fitzgerald without studying capitalism? History? Can you enter either of those realms without knowledge of maths and sciences? Can you even begin to operate arithmetic without knowing culture? You can only separate these things if your goal is the shallow, "testable," understanding so prized by national educational leaders.

If all students are to succeed, everything else in and about the school must be flexible. And perhaps the place to start is with this question... if it's "only in school" you might need to get rid of it. Forty years ago a German educator said, "Only in school would you find thirty people working on the same thing not allowed to speak to each other," a classic observation. Here are some others: Only in school will you find people sitting in traditional school furniture. Only in school will you find people working on computers without food and drink. Only in schools will you find absolute scheduling which consistently interrupts work... Go on, make your own list...

From gum chewing to seating, lighting to time, eating to work schedule, school is the most regimented place in our societies, training people for something which, if it ever existed, lies deep in our past, and failing to either offer all students a chance, or to help our children learn how to manage their own lives.

So the challenge is to recreate - to turn those 19th Century "Teaching Places" into contemporary "Learning Spaces" which cross the entire realm of the educational experience. Our children, our world, need us to do that.

- Ira Socol

Textbooks and Encyclopedias and Lectures, Oh My

When I first met Dr. Rand Spiro, the man behind Cognitive Flexibility Theory, he launched an attack on Wikipedia. So, my initial reaction was,"not again." But as I listened, I realized that he was not against the crowdsourced authorship, or anonymous authority, and, in fact, he was a bit more positive after I introduced him to the "Talk" pages, what Rand was complaining about was the recreation of the Encyclopedia format.

Why, he wondered, would we reproduce this first century (AD) form in this age? Couldn't we envision anything better? Yes, Wikipedia is crowdsourced, and thus both more accurate, more diverse, and more updated, but it remains a work constructed on the oldest of classification systems.

The machine is us, Michael Wesch

Digital Learning Day 2012, and I found myself back in 1996. "WASHINGTON -- Hardbound textbooks could go the way of slide rules and typewriters in schools. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski on Wednesday challenged schools and companies to get digital textbooks in students' hands within five years. The Obama administration's push comes two weeks after Apple Inc. announced it would start to sell electronic versions of a few standard high-school books for use on its iPad tablet." In 1996 I was working with a high school librarian on developing ways to teach students about search strategies. This was, in historical perspective, at a point just before Larry Page and Sergei Brin would write:

"Some Rough Statistics (from August 29th, 1996)
Total indexable HTML urls: 75.2306 Million
Total content downloaded: 207.022 gigabytes

BackRub is written in Java and Python and runs on several Sun Ultras and Intel Pentiums running Linux. The primary database is kept on an Sun Ultra II with 28GB of disk. Scott Hassan and Alan Steremberg have provided a great deal of very talented implementation help. Sergey Brin has also been very involved and deserves many thanks.
-Larry Page page@cs.stanford.edu"

"You've got mail" The AOL home page

So, early in the process, when Page and Brin's Stanford predecessors were dominating 'web search' with Yahoo! which was, of course, a huge leap from what America On Line was offering. There were actual search engines back then, the dominant one being AltaVista, and we needed to explain to students the difference between a "web directory," Yahoo! and AOL, and a search engine such as AltaVista, Lycos, Excite and even a "metasearch engine" like dogpile. Directories were like physical libraries, we explained, curated collections organized into categories, while search engines represented something entirely new. We asked kids - high school freshmen - to find cars they could buy, finding prices, reliability reports, etc, and we asked them to try both routes.

The search engine was radical in 1996. It opened up a new kind of library, a library without walls, without curation, without limitations. And it was uncomfortable for many, including those who built Yahoo! (and who have never quite recovered). But the search engine is not new now, and I think it is time to embrace what Michael Wesch at K-State has been talking about for years, that the end of the Gutenberg Era gives us dramatic opportunities to re-think.

 

"They put the shelf back" - Michael Wesch in Information R/evolution

The future is not what you think...

And not just the distant future, the near future. I'm always amazed that Sears shut down their catalogue operation the year before Jeff Bezos founded Amazon. One group of corporate whizzes saw home delivery as a thing of the past, and some guy out in Seattle thought it was the future. The F.W. Woolworth (the original "five and dime") chain shut down its US operations just as "Dollar Stores" were exploding. General Motors axed their high gas mileage small Corvair (with the encouragement of Ralph Nader) just before the Arab Oil Embargo made gas mileage the number one issue for car buyers. We needn't even include the legendary Time-Warner/AOL merger...

We probably cannot expect a better track record from education leaders or politicians than we've gotten from our highest paid capitalists, of course, but we do need to challenge the decisions which are made which seem targeted to the past. And right now in education we seem to still be investing in the past in huge ways... in textbooks, in lectures, and in the teaching wall. The only reason we're not investing in encyclopedias is that now, that's free, though we still have those who oppose even that tiny change.

it is time to re-think education and what we can do with technology

The idea that the best use the US government can imagine for a digital device is to reproduce a 15th century format with a couple of 3D animations is sad, though hardly surprising. Apple is just the latest organization to try to rip off schools embracing textbook delivery. "In the early 1900s, textbook purchasing at the local level was notoriously corrupt," many scholars have noted, discussing all who profiteered at the expense of that early 1:1 initiative. That the best way to spread "ideas worth spreading" is by lecture and PowerPoint, seems equally unfortunate. That the best way to re-imagine the classroom is with an incredibly expensive projector system which reinforces the "teaching wall," is, surely, horrifying. But if you don't have a teaching wall, where will all those "sages-on-the-stages" stand? (science of school room re-design?)

Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies - it happens when society adopts new behaviors. - Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, p. 160

I visit many schools that have 'new technologies,' but not enough of them also have 'new behaviors.' It's time for us educators to raise our game (leaders, I'm pointing to you first). - Scott McLeod.

There are better ways to do things like textbooks, free ways for teachers, or better, students, to assemble information. And these should be allowing us to fundamentally consider new ways to assemble information, rather than a pre-cooked, pre-arranged text.

CK12
Flat World Knowledge
California Open Source Textbooks
MIT OpenCourseware
Stanford on iTunes
Michael Thornton's Third Graders build their own Textbook in LiveBinder

And there are better, more interactive ways, to "spread ideas" than putting someone on a stage to talk, uninterrupted, for 20 minutes. And better ways to use projection technology than reinforcing the traditional classroom. When I spoke, two years ago, to Glenn Vos, a Christian school superintendent in Holland, Michigan, "he talked about rebuilding classrooms so there was no "front" anymore. He talked about wide hallways where students could gather. He talked about attendance policies which allowed students to sign into classes from elsewhere in the building if that made them more comfortable. He talked about multiple projection screens in every classroom to break "single focus learning." He talked about dropping text books for authentic materials and the acceptance of multiple - and student chosen - ways of demonstrating knowledge."

PowerPoint, circa 1958

If  we do not alter our expectations for how we expect new technologies to be used, they will be used like old technologies. PowerPoint becomes FilmStrips. Computers become typewriters. IWBs become chalkboards. And the tablet form becomes a way to enrich corporations.

We need to seize the moment, when moments like this come. We need to break the bounds enforced by old technologies, not reinforce them. So, let's forget "the textbook," they were probably wronganyway...

- Ira Socol

Changing Gears 2012: its not about 1:1

(1) ending required sameness     (2) rejecting the flipped classroom     (3) re-thinking rigor     (5) start to dream again    (6) learning to be a society (again)     (7) re-thinking what "literature" means       (8) maths are creative, maths are not arithmetic     (9) changing rooms     (10) undoing academic time     (11) social networks beyond Zuckerbergism     (12) knowing less about students, seeing more     (13) why we fight

When 1:1 keeps school looking like school has 'always' looked. (Vermont)

One-to-One is not a new concept. In the early 1840s William Alcott pressed for adoption of 1:1 slates for students in Common Schools, even the poor, rural farm kids who attended summer school. (There is vast mis-information regarding the root of our American school calendar, but we'll leave that for another time...) Alcott thought 1:1 slates far more important than 1:1 books, which was an idea which came to most public schools much later. But 1:1 books were thought to have great advantages as well.In 1883 Britain adjusted its educational code so that it, "stipulated that schools should have ‘sets’ of readers – a ‘set’ denoting that there should be enough so that each child could have access to the text." (Yeandle) Though Noah Webster introduced the first widely used textbook into America during the early decades of the republic ("The Blue-Backed Speller"), adoption of 1:1 textbooks was very slow. Until World War II it was common - certainly in urban schools - for there to be one textbook per desk, with desks shared by two students. Teachers often arranged seating to match-up reading speeds (related by many former New York City Public School students). Even in 2004 Oakes and Saunders were troubled that in California, "shortages and poor quality of textbooks and instructional materials often exist," shortages, meaning that students could not take textbooks home, and sometimes had to share textbooks in class.

Complete books under student control were seen as especially valuable "universal design" tools, "Previous to January 1, 1898, the students received their textbooks in the form of paper covered pamphlets, averaging about 50 pages each, and these were sent only one at a time to each student as he progressed with his studies. The result was that if a student failed to complete his course, he had on hand not more than two instruction papers in advance of the last one he had studied. This tended to create a dissatisfaction, and, to overcome it, we reprinted the entire text of the course, and sent to every student, at the time of his enrollment, a set of what we term bound volumes. These volumes contained everything that the student would receive in connection with his course of instruction, and if he failed to complete the course he had his bound volumes at any rate, and could continue studying by himself if he so desired."

Game-changing? not necessarily... (Hawaii)

There were problems, of course. Tyack (1974) talks about huge textbook graft scandals between 1890 and 1910 as schools tried to acquire masses of these volumes (p. 95). Another issue was funding this new technology rather than teachers. Textbooks assumed "primacy" in the classroom, Tyack (1974, p. 47) and many others note, because the teachers being hired, usually minimally educated women, lacked the knowledge to teach subjects themselves.

Or...this kind of looks like turning an iPad into a worksheet... (Scotland)

So, 1:1 is basically designed around two things which are, interestingly, contradictory. First, they allow "everyone," all students, to do the same thing at the same time. But second, they also allow control to flow from the room instructor to others - either a remote "teacher" such as a textbook author or publisher, from McGuffey to Pearson, or to the students themselves.

On this anniversary of one of the great 1:1 efforts of all
time, The King James Bible, we pause to consider
the purposes...

To really understand, let's move back one step further, to the real origins of 1:1. The book in every hand comes from Calvinism and Lutheranism. The use of 1:1 in the Reformation was for the very same contradictory reasons above. The distribution of printed Bibles, and then, in the Anglican Communion, the Book of Common Prayer, allowed "control" of the message to shift from a local priesthood - stories shared orally as in the Catholic Church - to a "remote teacher," be he John Calvin, Martin Luther, Henry VIII, or whomever created the translation.


However the flip side, again, was a new level of individual control in time and space. Though the Reformation introduced the idea of "fixed text"1 for the first time (previously every copy of a book had been individually created, and so was different from all previous versions in both fact and in understanding), people who now owned a Bible, or simply had access to the book themselves if they were quiet about it in the back of the church, might - on their own, flip between pages. Our schools, created in both the United States and the British Empire along the model of the dominant church experience, replicated this system. Unlike Catholic Cathedrals focus in the room is singular. Unlike the Catholic Mass, everyone holds a book. Yet, at the same time, it is expected that all in the room are on the same page.

Both of these missions, the "remote control" and the personal control, offer opportunities and create problems. So the question is, step four in Changing Gears 2012 - as we approach "the next 1:1" - how do we do something different?

"It is true we should not allow the pupils to have slates in their hands the whole time. Though it should be our aim to give them constant employment, yet their employment should be varied. Even the slate, if it were at their command continually, would become tiresome." (Alcott, 1841, p. 11) Basic fact, 170 years ago and today, one tool is tiresome, whatever it is. So is one chair, one kind of desk, one kind of light, one kind of book, one noise level. Kids need choice, variety, challenge, and that is what is too often in short supply in classrooms.

No matter how engaging that slate was - and Alcott was a strong believer that kids needed significant free play time with the device if they were going to use it well - no matter how engaging that tablet from your favorite "cool" manufacturer is, one type of device in a 1:1 environment, in any environment, is a huge mistake.

Alternatives to 1:1: Wall newspapers, read by communities.

We have proof of this. Our 1:1 with textbooks clearly has failed. Our 1:1 with the dreaded Middle School Organizer is a nightmare. Our 1:1 with all-the-same classroom furniture, lights, noise has left teachers spending the bulk of their time on discipline.

If 1:1, that is, all-the-same 1:1, has failed "us," or, at the very least has limited the population which can succeed (in that very Calvinist notion of a limited number of places in heaven), then, where do we look for other ideas? And what are the consequences of moving away from "one to one"?

One step is to move backwards conceptually as we move forward technologically. I am not one who really sees "the Gutenberg era" as a real bit of progress, but as an aberration in human communication and tool use created by technological progress.2 Before Gutenberg text was highly flexible, highly personalized, and usually created for a particular community. Tools were, in that pre-industrial era, much the same.

Not 1:1: Brooklyn streetcorner class in English

That system, which we may indeed see if we enter a large urban Catholic Cathedral in most parts of the world, functions in a different way. Everyone is not seated. Everyone is not using the same tools. Multiple representations - and interpretations - of "the stories" are everywhere, in stained glass windows, in sculptures, in candles, in incense, in music. People come to Mass at one time, or they come at another, or they choose to pray by themselves, or in small groups, or they just come to think.

We can also see it wherever people gather "naturally." In city squares, in front of schools, on the lawns of university campuses. I always begin thinking about great learning spaces with my vision of The Long Meadow in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. On a warm day there, in Frederick Law Olmstead's greatest creation, you will see people learning in every way with every conceivable device. Many read print books, many work on their phones, many learn kinesthetically - on one walk I watched three Jamaican guys teaching two Orthodox Jewish guys how to play Cricket. Truly, we can see it anywhere adults gather to work, devices are different, are used differently, people choose different chairs, they work together or alone.

How do we then, in a school, offer "remote teaching" but not insist on it, offer individual control but make collaboration the more normal "norm," allow for choice, for preferences, for differences?

Watch this video again, choice of tools, choice to collaborate, choice of where
and how to work, and choice of time for completion as well.

My argument is for a mix of "BYOD" and the "Tool Crib" within a context of open scheduling, open spaces, and hybrid opportunities within the school itself. With "BYOD" [Bring Your Own Device] meaning we use open networks and allow kids to bring their own tools if they have them, "Tool Crib" meaning we have a range of devices, different types, brands, sizes, for kids to choose to support their learning, "Open Scheduling" meaning we no longer insist that kids stop learning because a bell rings, "Open Spaces" meaning we don't trap kids in places they cannot be comfortable, and "Hybrid Opportunities" means that while on-line learning is great, it is our job as educators and as adults to actually see our students, to hear them, to watch their body language, to be able to intervene - in other words, on-line learning should not mean leaving children "home alone."

Learning via choice and comfort. A high school library on a Friday morning.

If I want to write on the floor of the corridor and you want to write on an iPad and Jimmy over there wants to dictate into the TabletPC, that's all cool... learning intelligent, effective tool use is task number one for humans. If Jenny wants to listen to the teacher explain this equation and I want to use my phone to go on-line and find something else, that's cool... knowing how one learns best is probably task number two for humans. If Kristin wants to sit in the classroom in a chair, and Willy wants to sit in the classroom on the floor, and I want to participate but via Skype from the corner down the hall because I don't want to be around people today, that's cool as well... its the 21st Century, we live and work everywhere.

In the end, I'm asking you to resist to lure of 1:1, which all too often in practice looks exactly like school has "always" looked - a whole bunch of kids, facing one way, doing the same things at the same time. Outfit tool cribs for your students, a whole range of devices which all offer different capabilities, different affordances, and cater to differing preferences and capabilities. Offer tool cribs from the start, so kids learn the power of choice, and encourage kids to choose to work alone or together.

If I hadn't offered kids real choices I would not have heard middle schoolers dismiss iPads as "granny phones," I wouldn't have learned how great Dragon Light on the iPad - iTouch - iPhone is, I wouldn't have learned all you can do editing video on an Android Phone, I wouldn't have seen kids love tablets for sharing and hate them if they had to carry them. But more importantly, the kids would not have learned, not for themselves, and not from each other.

- Ira Socol
next: start to dream again

1. The "fixed text" applies to concepts of interpretation and Calvinist notions of "free will." The Calvinist notion of humans as "so depraved" as to lack even the ability to choose "grace," suggests that authorial intent is in control, as far from "reader response theory" as possible. We can see the impact of this half a  millennium later. Catholic Bibles are traditionally footnoted with references which offer paths to other places of knowledge. This is almost never true of Protestant Bibles.
2. Thanks to Bill Sterrett for including this video (from the 2010 CESI Conference) in his new book, Insights into Action: Successful School Leaders Share What Works. (bit of self promotion)