Friday, July 29, 2011

SOLEs for Adults

It seems pretty clear that what kids need for learning and what schools can provide are often at odds with each other. Ted Sizer calls this Horace's Compromise. It is at the heart of the difference between what we call learning and what we call schooling. It is the source of frustration behind much of what is driving this weekend's #SOSmarch in Washington DC. It is also why I believe many good teachers leave the classroom. This compromise creates a barrier between the educator and the child development psychologist. It is also why I believe the work of Dr. Sugata Mitra is so captivating right now. What he is doing in Gateshead ought to be a wakeup call to all sleeping constructivists that we can still fight this fight. Perhaps we can reject this compromise.



The video above is a longer version of the talk Dr. Mitra gave at TED. In this video there is a Q&A after Mitra's talk where the question is asked, "Can this method (SOLEs) be used with adults?" to which Mitra replies that he thinks it can but it will be difficult because adults have the "problem of the ego." Being a technology integration specialist tasked with teacher professional development this dilemma is incredibly interesting to me. First, Mitra's methods are ones I want to promote with teachers. Teachers, who according to this "Ego" problem can't experience learning the way the children in the SOLEs are nor did they experience it in their own schooling, Horace's Compromise prevented that. Second, I want to find the same kinds of results with adults I work with that Mitra finds with the children he works with. Kind of a dilemma on two fronts.

Then today I read this article in the Huffington Post that Stephen Downes wrote last December that got me rethinking some things. Downes describes 23+ roles of the teacher and reflects upon what he has observed through all of his involvement participating in, designing, and studying online learning in various forms over the years. He proposes an interesting theory about what a student needs with regard to the role of the teacher(s). Rather than classify teachers according to subject areas, he classifies them according to the nature of their teacher-student interactions. He says that right now we are expecting all teachers to perform all of these roles but when you study learning environments that are essentially self-organized teachers tend to specialize in only one area.

When I read this article I started to think about Mitra's self-organizing learning environments. A Personal Learning Network (PLN) is a self-organizing learning environment and a PLN (or PLE) is the primary source of Downes' observation about role selection in the learning environment. This completely overlaps with Mitra's work on SOLEs. Mitra's method in many ways relieves the teacher from needing to play all of these roles by sourcing some to the Granny Cloud and others to the students through their peer-teaching. Then it struck me: Edcamp, Edubloggercon, and other unconference formats as well as organized online PD events that utilize the networks people have created for professional learning to add value such as #edchat, the Reform Symposium, or the K12 Online Conference act as SOLEs for adults. This works only when we apply Downes' roles theory to Mitra's SOLEs.

Downes proposes that we need to start thinking about education along these lines of redefined roles for educators. Mitra has defined one possible redefinition for the future education of children as SOLEs and SOMEs. Maybe we should call the future education of adults ROLEs and SOLEs.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Overcoming attitudinal, organizational, and knowledge barriers. #edcampmn

Earlier this month I had the great pleasure of hosting #edcampmn Minnesota at Hamline University. I felt the day went very well. People were engaged and eager to participate. In fact, we had a total of 41 session proposals for people to vote on. Unfortunately, we only had room for fourteen of them. Also, unfortunately, my hosting duties kept me from attending all the sessions I wanted to go to.

One session I wish I had been able to attend at but couldn't was, "Overcoming attitudinal, organizational, and knowledge barriers." Unfortunately it is also one session that doesn't have any notes. I hear this topic come up a lot when I attend conferences, read blogs, read my Twitter stream, listen to educational podcasts, etc. but something always seems missing. It seems there is great momentum to change education and these barriers are easily defined. In fact, it seems like when this topic comes up, 95% of what gets discussed involves identifying the barriers. But, what is less clear is what they are barriers to. I am really curious how people in my PLN and readers of this blog define this. What do you see as the end goal? When we talk about barriers to change, what are they barriers to?

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Twitter Book Club: Deborah Meier (2002) In Schools We Trust - Part Three Chapter 10

10. Democracy and Public Education

"The teacherly instinct is also at times the dictator's instinct—to make everyone be like me." Meierless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply



"We need to accept the public responsibility of seeing all our children as our common responsibility, while at the ... http://tl.gd/bl35idless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply



"It is in schools that we learn the art of living together as citizens, and it is in public schools that we are obl... http://tl.gd/bl35kcless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply

Twitter Book Club: Deborah Meier (2002) In Schools We Trust - Part Three Chapter 9

Part Three: A Broader Vision

9. Scaling Up: Stacking the Odds in Favor of the Best

"The current bureaucratic ideal is a machine, not a messy human invention—the bigger, more centralized and more rul... http://tl.gd/bkdru1less than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply



"In fact, there is remarkable consensus about what the major features of good schools are, and they clearly don't m... http://tl.gd/bkdt4cless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply



"The schools that work best are small...think of themselves as self-governing...[and] are places of choice. They fe... http://tl.gd/bkduk8less than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply



"the very idea that people can take a large existing traditional high school and successfully refashion it into sma... http://tl.gd/bke3orless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply



"Smallness creates self-knowledge, self-governance allows for a range of voices now often missing, and choice permi... http://tl.gd/bke6b5less than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply

Twitter Book Club: Deborah Meier (2002) In Schools We Trust - Part Two Chapter 8

8. The Achievement Gap

"The gap between social classes is today somehow a somewhat more comfortable one for many Americans to accept than ... http://tl.gd/bjp3rvless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply



"the economic gap is rarely regarded as a serious concern for reformers and politicians." Meierless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply



"Until the experiences of home and school were made more continuous and natural, and parents had reason to trust th... http://tl.gd/bjpatqless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply



"There are children who arrive in school unsure of what the routines are for being good and bad, and thus they retr... http://tl.gd/bjpdoiless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply



"Schools tell kids what they value and treasure, and what it is they don't, in ways they do and don't intend." Meierless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply



"(1) the tests aren't measuring what we think they are, and (2) as long as we focus our attention on that one gap, ... http://tl.gd/bjpmqqless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply



"the test score gap is one we've invented, and could uninvent." Meierless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply



"As long as tests must rank students, it is naive to imagine they are going to rank on criteria that won't give the... http://tl.gd/bjpp7tless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply


"As long as tests must rank students, it is naive to imagine they are going to rank on criteria that won't give the current 'haves' advantages over 'have nots'" Meier

"Kids who score poorly, whole communities of them, are given a less demanding education. They spend more tine on re... http://tl.gd/bjps1jless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply


"Kids who score poorly, whole communities of them, are given a less demanding education. They spend more tine on remedial tasks, are taught in a more rote fashion, and are far more likely to be held over in grade, an experience that itself depresses their academic achievement and increases the gap in white and black graduation rates." Meier

"High test scores, whatever they might predict, are unable to predict teamwork abilities, perseverance, risk taking... http://tl.gd/bjptnnless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply



"I'll believe money doesn't count the day that the rich stop spending so much money on their own children." Meierless than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply


I'm waiting to see that day too.