An Invitation Letter to Parents

If there is one force today that I believe can break our cycles of status quo hereditary practices in education and bring us to someplace better a key to it lies in our ability to communicate and share ideas in real-time between educators and education stakeholders. The networks of individuals using tools like Twitter, Blogs, Wikis, YouTube and other social video, Skype, and countless other online communication tools that have come to be commonly known as Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) carry with them a method to let good ideas spread and take seed in even the most draconian of learning environments. Teachers who have plugged themselves into these networks and become actively involved in their own learning have felt this power for transformation. This is truly a grass-roots mobilization machine. However, for school systems to change it requires more than just enlightened educators, it requires enlightened students and parents who will support the change.

Time and again we see true reform efforts fail because the new model doesn't look enough like the common conception of school in the public eye. No matter how rooted in sound theory and philosophy the school will fail if reform efforts do not bring parents and community members with us. So, what we end up with are perestroika efforts at reform like we saw today in President Obama's speech on Education Reform. Changes that are not real change. More testing of students or more rigorous testing of students is not real change. A focus on teaching and instruction is not real change. The spread of a back to basics drill and kill model of schooling like Mastery Charter or KIPP is not real change. The spread of a "put the rich privileged (mostly white) Ivy League graduate who was successful in school in front of the classroom for students to emulate" model that is Teach For America is not real change. These are bureaucratic changes that in the end will only further to strengthen the definitions and delineations between groups of the emerging American Caste System complete with high school dropouts at the bottom "untouchable" level. Schools like Mastery, KIPP, and TFA, by the way, don't have to count their dropouts among their students and therefore can claim higher levels of success since by nature they self-select students. We all know there is a better solution, a real change that is possible. We have examples of it in schools like Minnesota New Country School and the Science and Leadership Academy in Philadelphia.

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Educators, perhaps Obama and Duncan are right to beat up on us. This situation may be our own doing. By focusing so much on ourselves and our students we have neglected to invite a very important stakeholder into the fold, parents & community members. So, what follows is what I propose every Teacher Tweeter, EduPlurker, and Edublogger come this school year send home with their students, an invitation letter to parents (altered to include your information) to join in the discussion:

Dear Parent or Guardian,

I am excited to begin a new school year learning with your son or daughter. I say learning with because I have found to be a teacher today requires one to also be a learner both in and outside the classroom. It is undeniable that the world your child is growing up in is in many ways different than the world you or I grew up in. Much of these changes mean necessary changes in school. For one, we did not have the Internet and fingertip access to the wealth of human information when we went to school. Having such a device in my classroom has meant my role there has been altered. It has removed the necessity for me to always have the right answers for the students and has created a greater need for me to help them develop strategies for finding the right answers on their own.

Things in school are different now than they even were when I went to college. Nothing in my teacher training addressed some of these issues we face in education today. Therefore, I have found a community of other people interested in helping each other find their role in this new world through tools like Twitter, blogs, and YouTube. This community consists of not only teachers but also school administrators, education researchers, graduate students, and other parents. In this space I make my learning about education transparent and you are welcome to follow me in my exploration of new technologies and new ways of thinking. I also invite you to join the conversation. The real education reform happens because of what happens in the classroom and for your son or daughter's classroom what happens will be greatly influenced by the shared dialog happening in this digital space.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter, read my blog, or watch my YouTube videos and join the global conversation influencing your child's education. There are a few things you should know first. This digital space is my learning environment and as such community building activities both serious and lighthearted occur. We have fun in this space and we are serious. The fun elements hold us together and maintain our community and the serious elements help us to progress our learning. Both are necessary for learning both online and in the classroom.

I am @anderscj on Twitter and my blog is http://carlanderson.blogspot.com. Please join me in trying to make your child's education great.

Sincerely,
Carl Anderson

Off the Grid

I have always been fascinated by people who make radically different life decisions than most of us. I think often about people who choose to live "off the grid" for whatever reason. Having grown up with technology playing such a huge part in my life and having been indoctrinated into a western world of consumerist values both through my upbringing and my own psudo-enslavement by consumer credit I simultaneously struggle to understand the choices some people make while also envy them on some level for making such choices. There is a freedom in going off the grid that is hard to deny and there is always a little part of me that thinks I myself am only a thread away from shedding my obligation to uphold cultural values and participate in society in conventional ways.

Our world is full of people who choose to shed conformity to mainstream culture. There are people who are intentionally homeless, there are those who choose to move to the Mesa in New Mexico and live hard but free lives, there are those who leave mainstream culture for religious asceticism such as the Sadus in India, there are the Amish people in the U.S. While the decision to make these life choices for many are influenced by problems such as substance abuse, mental illness, or refuge from the law this is not the case for all people. This leaves me always returning to the same question which I don't have a definitive answer to yet but I know must exist: What is it about our society that produces these counter cultures and why might a person of sound mind and body choose to disconnect?

This also brings up some questions about our education system. If these counter cultures are legitimate and acceptable ways of life in our country do our school systems serve the education needs of these communities? The answer to that question is obviously no. When was the last time you saw an Amish student in a public school? But, our public schools are charged with meeting the needs of all citizens under the age of 21. There is a fundamental problem here. How can this be resolved? What does this mean for No Child Left Behind? Are students who drop out of school because of a clash between the culture our schools are educating students for and the culture they themselves belong to to be considered "Left Behind?" Do we change the definition of "Left Behind," do we change the policy that public schools should serve the needs of all, do we adopt different curriculum and pedagogy that is somehow all inclusive at the expense of calling into question the value of mainstream culture, or do we open separate schools for all? How do I reconcile that what I teach students is inherently charged with both my own biases and the biases native to the system?

Tuesday, Arne Duncan introduced President Obama to our nation's school children by first telling the students to be quiet. Then, Obama began his speech by telling everyone to sit down. (Sit down and shut up). While I enjoyed his speech and felt is was far better than the addresses given by George H. W. Bush or Ronald Regan his message to stay in school and work hard still does scream indoctrination. It was not an indoctrination into the left wing ideology that far right-wingers had worried about preceding this talk. Those fears were quickly placated. Instead, his call to sit down, be quiet, work hard, and stay in school was a call to stay "on the grid." It was an indoctrination into the grid that encompasses both sides of the political debate. A debate that ignores and leaves behind countless people who choose to live "off the grid."

For now I think I will stay "on the grid" but who knows, maybe one day like Obi-Wan Kenobi, Bobby Fisher, William Burroughs, or Henry David Thoreau, I will decide to check out and move to the Mesa.

How is Education a Civil Rights Issue?

"Education is also the civil rights issue of our generation." -Sec. Education Arne Duncan

I have been thinking lately about this statement and how it might be applied. Traditional schools greatly favor a concrete-sequential learning modality. Most teachers are concrete-sequentialists. Most of our kids who do not do well in school are not concrete-sequential learners. Knowing about the kind of school Ariel is (the school in Chicago that Duncan founded), could this statement signal a new view of students with non concrete-sequential learning modalities as being repressed or underprivileged under traditional school systems?

There has been a lot of ire lately in the edublogosphere about the appointment of Duncan. Gary Stager and others, who I respect greatly, view Duncan's appointment as another four years of the Bush education policy. The argument centers around the support for charter schools like KIPP, the support for performance based pay, union busting, and standards based testing. I have to respectfully disagree.

Yes, the Obama administration supports charter schools. No, not all charter schools are KIPP. KIPP schools have come under the microscope lately and have been recognized as a scale ready solution for kids in poor neighborhoods. However, the attempt by KIPP teachers, who have reportedly been overworked, to unionize has met much Resistance and has gotten messy. The problem is the administration's support for these schools has to some been seen as the only type of charter school they support. There are three things that keep me cautiously optimistic and unconvinced that the writing on the wall spells "KIPP":

1. Earlier this month the Obama's visited Capital City Public Charter School, a progressive charter school in the DC area. There the president said, "This kind of innovative school...is an example of how all our schools should be."
2. The Obamas send their girls to a private school that operates under a progressive philosophy.
3. Ariel Community Academy, the school Arne Duncan founded in Chicago, follows the same progressive philosophy. The following are excerpts from the Principal's message on the school's website:
   

"The role of the teacher is to assist and advise the student, actively participating and contributing to their learning in order to expand and discover the society they live in and share experiences together."

"[S]tudents should be aware of their own multiple intelligences and utilize a wide variety of abilities to demonstrate what they have learned."

"The design of the curriculum is purposefully broad in order to provide the teacher with many options for planning and implementing individualized, small group, and whole group instruction."

So, could this kind of stated support for progressive education coupled with Duncan's statement about civil rights mean that students who learn differently will now be seen as being unnecessarily repressed? I surely hope so. This is a silent epidemic in our country and one that is being exposed by the largely unpopular No Child Left Behind and the increased spotlight on our nation's dropout rate (National Average is 33%).

This is a difficult problem to draw light to because most educators (most educators are concrete-sequential learners) don't see the problem as a civil rights issue. They can't from their current perspective. "The Color of Fear" is a documentary that brilliantly and effectively explains the problems of privilege and prejudice as they relate to race. Watch this excerpt of the film and every time you hear the word "White" replace it with the word "Concrete-Sequential."



What do you think? Is learning modality a civil rights issue?

Could it be that the writing on the wall is not "KIPP" but rather "Choice"?

Do you think I am way off base and Duncan's is viewing civil rights as it has historically been defined (that of Race, Gender, Ethnicity, Religion, etc)?

Big Ideas For Education - Phase 3

I have been following David Warlick's "Big Ideas For Education" project over at 2 Cents Worth and have found it quite engaging so far. If you have not seen this project or participated I encourage you to visit the project website and take a look. There are still two days left in Phase 3 where he asks bloggers to blog about the ideas participants from phase 1 and 2 came up with for recommendations to the President-Elect's Department of Education. The following is my reply:


Schools have pretty much been the same for 100+ years. Why have they not significantly changed when our world has? I believe we are nearing the dawn of an awakening and revolution in education. Some might argue it has already started to happen. Our public schools, and the compulsory education curriculum, were originally founded upon two main overt purposes: to produce an informed citizenry, and produce a productive workforce. One aim is chiefly Jeffersonian and the other Hamiltonian. Underlying both of these aims is a hidden goal to produce an obedient population. While all three of these goals have their merits, certainly it is better to be informed, productive, and lawful than ignorant, lazy, and criminal, there lies in these aims a basic flaw.

In an attempt to create an informed electorate a curriculum or group of standards must be developed. The people who write this curriculum have a lot of power to influence the thoughts and opinions of others. By choosing to show someone one thing or not show another our thoughts on a topic can be changed dramatically. Just look at the role of evidence in court cases. So, in an attempt to create an informed electorate our schools result in stifling free thought. Curriculum, even with it's best intentions, can be nothing more than state sponsored propaganda.

During both the industrial revolution and the ag-based economy that preceded it we needed workers who were productive and could follow instructions. Many of the mainstays of traditional education were very good at training students to become obedient, non-questioning, producers. Chief among these are our traditional notions of homework. Much of this homework was, and still is, simply busywork and does not effectively reinforce stated learning objectives. What it did and still does teach is the endurance to work through mindless tasks. This is a valuable skill if you work on an assembly line and have to spend all day following instructions from your boss or carrying out repetitive mindless tasks. However, most of those jobs are gone today. Writers like Daniel Pink, Thomas Friedman, and Clay Shirky all agree that what is needed in our workforce are creative thinkers. Any job that can be reduced to automation is either going to be replaced by software or it is going to be outsourced. This aim of producing a productive workforce has squashed the new need for a creative workforce.

This third aim of compulsory education of creating an obedient population is also problematic. While this aim has never been stated overtly, it is overwhelmingly apparent in how we structure our schools. Sit Down! Be Quite! Do Your Work! Our high school students follow a bell schedule, often sit in neatly ordered rows, and are forced to follow a set of rules meant to maintain an authoritative structure. These rules often are impediments to inquiry, free thought, and creativity. We do things like ban cell phones rather than use them to engage students in learning. We impose penalties for trite infringements like wearing a hat in class. And we stifle reflection and dialogue by maintaining that our classrooms need to be quiet. And what happens when a teacher, the pedagog, decides to bunk this system and promote inquiry, reflection, creativity, and free thought? The school removes the pedagog.

I believe we are on the cusp of a great awakening in education. School choice, differentiated instruction, homeschooling, online learning, alternative education, and the charter movement are all addressing the questions underlying what has been wrong with our traditional school system. Each addresses something different but all are important in the public discourse about what schools are for. All are disruptive innovations, as Clayton Christensen describes, that will cause the ultimate demise of our traditional public school system.

When the camera was invented the visual arts went through an identity crisis known to the art world as Modernism. Modernism was all about defining what art was. With the camera art was no longer necessary for simply creating images, the camera was much more efficient at that. The artist was not needed for the same reasons they were needed before. This identity crisis produced as many theories of art or art genres as there are theories of education. The information economy and flattened world, brought on by advances in both information technology and automation, is to public schooling what the camera was to art. Without having the same workforce needs we did in the past and with unlimited information at our fingertips we no longer really have any need for schooling as we have always known it.

Now, we are at a point where we need to do some serious reflection about what our education needs are in our country. What are schools for? What is the end product of schooling? What do we value? What do we need? It seems these last two questions are pivotal. Before, we needed schooling to produce workers for a production economy based entirely on infinite growth and citizens to support that economy. It seems that two issues facing our country are colliding here. One is public schooling but the other is the economy. Our economy is a mess right now. I believe this mess has been a direct result of the systems need to continually grow. How much do we really need? At what point do our needs erode our environment? Has our culture grown to value profit above happiness? As we work to address all of these issues we all need to take a deep look at ourselves and decide what is important. If we continue on the industrial economic paradigm projections show we will not be able to compete with other emerging superpowers like China and India. If we continue down this path we have been on we will ultimately loose that game but also pollute the Earth to the extent that quality of life issues will be physiological, not just psychological. Since we will be destroying our earth in the process, the economic game we have been playing is a zero sum end game.

How do you get out of a zero sum end game? Change the rules of the game. Change the reason for playing. Another product of the flat world is the assimilation of different cultural ideas. This might be our saving grace. There are cultures on this planet that have fundamentally different values. Bhutan, for instance, measures their national level of happiness and that is used to measure their success or failure, not monetary or material gains. Material possessions, levels of happiness, as well as the environment are aspects of our quality of life. Rather than focus on GDP (Gross Domestic Product) the change we need is a shift in our focus to GQL (Gross Quality of Life). Any education policy must address this. Education ought to enrich students, grow their curiosity, expand their minds, and foster their creativity. Support of charter schools, online education, alternative education, and homeschooling are all a step in the right direction.

People are waking up. The awakening is happening. Dropout rates are on the rise. Homeschooling is on the rise. Online schools have seen a 30% annual increase in enrollment for the past seven years. Charter schools are springing up everywhere. Teachers like Clay Burell are leaving school and pursuing an unschooly attitude toward education. All the while, our public schools are cutting programs that arguably contribute more toward GQL than what they are keeping in reaction declining enrollment.

Our national curriculum should not be a list of things we have to learn but rather an open curriculum that promotes inquiry. The arts, physical education, vocational programs, and extra curricular activities need more emphasis. Our schools must promote inquiry, honor free thought, foster creativity, and honor independence. Wake up! The awakening has begun. This revolution will not be televised, but it will be available on YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, Delicous, Twitter, Plurk, Myspace, Blogger, Wordpress, Vimeo, Blip.tv, Ustream.tv, and Google.

Technology Integrationist In Chief

Yesterday afternoon I read this article from the Associated Press that gave me goosebumps. I can't begin to articulate how exciting this prospect is. It seems that just as Obama utilized the power of social media to build a fantastic campaign his administration is going to continue the use of similar technologies to communicate with the public and give citizens a voice to affect policy. Imagine, a White House blog where people can comment on proposed legislation bypassing old channels to get their message to the president. Imagine a weekly YouTube message from the president (the new fireside chat?). Imagine a govergnment social network that allows people to be grouped by geographic location or interest group that could be called upon to effect change locally. If nothing else this is likely to lead to a much more informed electorate.

We still have 67 days before Obama takes office though. In the meantime they have set up a site where you can submit your vision for the country and send letters to the president-elect. The policy window is open and now is the time to voice your ideas. Go to http://www.change.gov.

9 Year Old Uses Halloween Costume To Poll His Neighbors on the Presidential Election

I came across this clip on CNN today of a 9 year old with a clever election related costume.



I wonder if he encountered any election fraud or hanging chads.

How Technology Has Shaped This Election

Consequences of Digital Illiteracy

Disclaimer: This post is not about politics, nor is my intent that it be political. It is about technology and digital literacy (or digital fluency).

How is Technology Affecting This Election?

Like many people, I have been following this US presidential election and noticing how much technology has changed things this time around. The essential question that emerges for me from this spectacle is, "What are the consequences of digital illiteracy?"

When looking at the role of technology in this election it is easy to see some of the triumphs. First there were the YouTube debates last winter that at least gave the impression that regular everyday citizens could have a greater voice. Then there was the promise by Obama to announce his running mate first via text message. Even though his pick was leaked and reported first on the cable news the stunt gathered for the Obama camp an impressive bank of emails and cell phone numbers. It will be interesting to see how these are used as we draw closer to the election.

The third thing I have noticed was how much social networks have played a role in this election. Obama is the first US Presidential candidate to use one as his campaign website. While members of this social networking site can't do much more than donate money and get their friends to donate money it is the start of what could be a new model of how to tap into the power of the social web to aide in the running of a campaign.

What the Obama campaign has done with technology seems to contrast strongly with what I see coming from the McCain camp and I can't help but think their lack of fluency with digital media is going to hurt or has already hurt his campaign.

Back in July the New York Times published an interview with McCain where he said he was learning how to get on the internet himself and relied on those around him to help him do things on the web. Here is an excerpt from that article:

McCain’s Conservative Model? Roosevelt (Theodore, That Is) - NYTimes.com via kwout

This brings us to what I find a striking contrast in how social networking has affected this campaign season. Since McCain has picked Sarah Palin as his running mate there has been a firestorm of controversial debate online about Palin's values and her ability to effectively mother her own children. Most of this debate stems from the circumstances surrounding her 17 year old daughter's pregnancy. However, things get worse when you look at the boyfriend's MySpace page or even the boyfriend's sister's Myspace page (which have both now become private but the damage I am afraid has already been done). Nevermind the whole teenage pregnancy issue or the vulgar self description that reportedly appeared on Levi Johnston's (the daughter's boyfriend) MySpace page. On Levi's sister's page there appeared this photo:


The girl sitting in the chair is Levi's sister and the baby she is holding is Trig. This image is most likely the image that set in motion the rumor online that Trig is not really Sarah Palin's son but is her Grandson. Whether that is true or not, the political damage has probably already been done. I can't help but think that if McCain were more technically literate he might have had the foresight to investigate his running mate's own web presence before tapping her as his #2. I guess in November we will see if his own inability to use the internet will hurt McCain or not. One thing I think is a pretty safe bet is if McCain-Palin win in November we probably won't see any love for MySpace or other social networking sites from that administration.

What skeletons do you have in your online closets? Couple suggestions:

1. Google yourself regularly (or sign up for Google Alerts and let them push new sites with your name, company name, or username as they are posted)

2. Watch what other people around you post

3. If your kids have an account on a site like MySpace or Facebook create one for yourself and insist that they make you one of their "friends." See what they are posting and follow what their friends are posting.

4. If you are hiring a new employee, do a search for their name.

Twitter Political Widget

This election season I have mostly been following news using Twitter Search. Unfortunately, our school district currently blocks twitter and we are still not sure it is appropriate for student use. However, I do see huge advantages to having the ability to view tweets as they flow in, especially regarding current events. Therefore, I created widget using Feedburner that pipes tweets related to the election to this rss reader widget:

Get this widget!

Visit the Widget Gallery