It's been a long time since I've written about tools, but today, I'm writing about tools. Tools that I use, or am learning to use. Tools that I think change the conversation when it comes to what we do in classrooms. Tools that make my learning world so different today from what it was even 10 years ago when a blog was still a "thing." And I'll start with a tool that I just heard about yesterday via Don Wettrick: Anchor.fm. I'm not sure that Anchor will become "the Snapchat of radio" in the sense of all that implies. But it's just kinda fascinating to me that anyone with a smartphone (read: any kid with a smartphone) can now create and broadcast their own radio station on the fly. What does Anchor do? It allows you to record your voice. Allows you to record phone calls. Allows you to pull music from your favorite services like Spotify and Apple Music (with an account, of course.) Allows you to take call-in listener questions. And allows you to publish it all, from your phone, to … [Read more...]
ISTE a Wrap!
Last week, one of the premier edtech events in the world took place in San Antonio, and it was our good fortune (Bruce, Missy, and I) to all be in attendance at the ISTE 2017 conference with about 16,000 others. In this podcast, Bruce and I reflect on the love/hate relationship we both have with the conference, and on ISTE's historical context as we reach a half a century of living with the idea of computers for learning with kids. We also entertain our very first SpeakPipe comment and question, one from Cheryl Doig in New Zealand who made us think about the humanity of technology and ISTE and edtech in general. We invite you to add your questions or comments below, and we'll weave them into our discussion next week. Some quick links: Taking IT Global is Michael Furdyk's amazing site for social justice and great projects for students who want to change the world. The ISTE17 conference page. Our conversation at ISTE17 with Michael and Gary Stager. … [Read more...]
Where Have all the Powerful Ideas Gone?
For a few days last week, the world’s biggest edtech event, ISTE in San Antonio, made me confront some harsh realities. Late on the third day, as I sat listening to our colleague Gary Stager’s ISTE session on the 50th anniversary of Logo, I was reminded of just how painfully incremental our adoption of computers in schools has been. I mean, half a century is a long time, far too long a time for us to still be waiting to see what computers can make possible for learners. Nineteen sixty-seven might have been the year of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album, but more significantly, it was also the year educational computing as we know it was born. It was the year that Alan Kay gave birth to the concept of a ‘laptop’ computer for kids, which he sketched on a flight back to the US after working with Jean Piaget, Seymour Papert, and some young students. And, importantly, it was the year that Papert and others released the first version of a computer language for kids, which they called … [Read more...]
AR, VR, AI, and BS: The Modern Learners Podcast, ISTE17 Edition
Greeting from San Antonio, where Bruce, Missy, and I are gathering for our second Change School retreat, our first Change School Social, and, of course, the mammoth #ISTE17 conference where something like 17K educators from around the world are getting the latest about technology and how to (or how not to) use it in the classroom. Full disclosure, ISTE is always a bit of a love hate for Bruce and I, and you'll get that sense in this episode. The conference is always heavy on tech but, in our minds, light on real learning. Rare are the discussions truly about creating agency for the learner and letting them do amazing things that change the world. (Hence the Papert quote below.) We hope you enjoy Episode #17 from ISTE17. … [Read more...]
Commence Learning
I had the great privilege of delivering a commencement speech at a small school in New Jersey last week. It was the first speech I can remember that I wrote and read verbatim. Thought I'd share it here for posterity and, hopefully, to spur some thinking. Please read it as if you were an eighth grader! --- Members of the faculty, parents, honored guests, and most importantly, this year’s graduating class at CHPS, it’s my great honor to have the chance to speak to you today, and I sincerely thank you for extending the invitation. I have to say that I’m a bit nervous. Even though I’ve given speeches in over 20 countries around the world, to audiences as big as 3,000, I’m a bit nervous today for this is my very first address to a graduating class of any type. I did give a speech to one graduate recently as my son Tucker, my “little boy” who grew to be a 6’ 5” basketball star thanks in part to spending countless hours practicing his shooting technique in this very gym where your … [Read more...]
Modern Learners Podcast #16: Helping Students Build a Presence Online
To what extent should we give students the opportunity to create their own presence and, dare we say it, brand online? On the college level, that's being done with the project "Domain of One's Own" which was started at Mary Washington University a few years ago and now has expanded to many other universities. The idea, in a nutshell, is that the school provides every student with a personal space on the web, hosted by the school, and administered by the student. It's a way of teaching both digital literacy and digital citizenship in an age when being online is more and more a requirement for learning, for business, or just about anything else. But what if we moved the idea of a Domain of One's Own down to the high school level? Can we wait until college to provide students with a space online? That's the question that Bruce and Will discuss in this podcast. Specifically, they talk about a must read post by Martha Burtis, one of the originators of DOOO. You'd be well served to … [Read more...]
The Paradox of Success
As the school year comes to an end in the Northern spheres, and many attend graduation ceremonies and start throwing caps high into the air, it may be opportune to consider just how we define success. While no doubt we want everyone to be successful in their own ways, taken to an extreme the school sports can soon start to look more like a ribbon ceremony with every participant getting a ribbon or medal just for taking part. On the other hand, I’m sure we see too many instances of over enthusiastic parents who want their kids in as many competitive sports as possible, sometimes when they’re barely out of nappies, so they can “get used to the way of the world” or something like that. Which brings us to the way the world does function, and for many decades, the corporate sector largely measured its success on profit and share price if they were a public company. However in stark contrast, in the mid-‘90’s John Elkington developed the quite radical notion of “the triple bottom … [Read more...]
Are Your Schools Tracking These “Trends” on the Internet?
What are the "Internet Trends" that educators need to wrap their brains around? That's the question Will and Bruce kick around as they take a deep dive into Mary Meeker's Internet Trends Report released last week. They don't discuss all 355 slides in the report, but they do pick out several top level themes and discuss the impact those trends will likely have on schools. Such as: Continuation of the Move to Mobile Adults spend 5.6 hours a day on devices and 3.1 hours specifically on mobile. To what extent will schools need to support learners in finding balance in life? How will we help students learn how to be physically and mentally healthy in the face of this very connected world? Also, what responsibility do w have to make sure students know about the data their mobile phones are tracking and sending to advertisers? Voice Search Voice recognition software is actually meeting the threshold of human accuracy. More products are being developed that are powered by voice. Twenty … [Read more...]
Small Communities, Tightly Joined
For most people, learning with others as opposed to learning alone is a no brainer. Learning is social by its very nature, and while there are certainly moments where it happens through deep reflection and application in isolation, we ultimately seek to share our learning with others and, in turn, learn with and from them. That’s been the awesome sauce of the Web since its inception, this idea that we can learn with others in ways not restricted by time or geography. We can build tribes of co-learners online that can push our learning much further than the limited networks we have in physical space. And we can share what we’ve learned with larger audiences, to greater effect, archiving all of it in various places using various tools that we choose to use. As I’ve said many times, aside from having children, the Web has been the most transformative event in my life. I’m thinking about this once again because this week I’ll celebrate my 16th blogversary. At this time way back in … [Read more...]
When Leaders Leave Can Change be Sustained?
What needs to be in place for high-bar change initiatives in schools to sustain when the leader of that change initiative retires or moves to another school or district? That's the question Bruce and Will discuss in Episode #14 of the Modern Learners Podcast. Too often, "hero leadership" is the driver of change. Not often enough are their cultures that feel deeply invested in change that can not only survive a change at the top but also drive the process to replace them. This includes building capacity in teachers, students, and especially parents to understand a new narrative of schooling and advocate for consistency and coherence in that vision from one leader to the next. Building that culture takes time and intention, and Bruce and Will discuss some practical ways to make that happen. Because the last thing anyone wants to have happen at the moment leadership leaves is that the people on the bus begin to panic about reaching their destination. Also in this episode, a first … [Read more...]