One of the most interesting online debates I've come across lately is this one from the NAIS blog about the Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC) which is trying to "reimagine the high school transcript." (If this is your first introduction to the Mastery.org folks, you may want to spend some time digging into their site and listening to the great podcast we did with organizer Scott Looney a couple of months ago.) While I think the idea of getting rid of grades is a much needed one, I also understand that the process is fraught with all sorts of disruptions, not just to the transcript but to narratives of education and schooling, our value as educators, the importance of higher ed, and much more. The conversation between John Gulla and Rand Harrington is important and interesting, and the whole thing is worth the read. But I want to pick out (or maybe pick "on") one particular response from Harrington as he attempts to discredit the efforts that Gulla and the Mastery group are making. … [Read more...]
Modern Learners Podcast #37 – Revolutionizing Education Through Student Empowerment
Templestowe College, or TC as we call it in Victoria, Australia, was built to accommodate 1,000 students. At the start of 2010, those numbers had dwindled down to just over 200. Peter Hutton took on the challenge of rebuilding the school, despite severe challenges. Today, you will get to hear the story of the past 7 years, and how Peter revolutionized one school by testing assumptions and changing the way they thought about education. TC desperately needed a new brand and a new vision. Peter was longing to see how a school could actually nurture their students while also instilling in them the skills and knowledge they will need to succeed in life. Peter will describe for you today how those logistics play out for TC students today. We will also discuss how the students, parents, and staff have all responded to the changes over the past 7 years. TC is producing committed, happy students with impressive work ethic and a thirst for learning. Peter claims that culture was built from … [Read more...]
Modern Learners Podcast #36 – Changing Educational Norms That No Longer Serve Us
It’s time to get a little existential. In this episode, my friend an colleague Bruce Dickson and I are discussing the profound artistry of teaching. Fueled by our mutual love of the works of Seymour Sarason, Bruce and I are going to weigh in on some of the topics mentioned in our last Shifting Conversations blog post. Namely, we want to discuss how the line we’ve been fed about learning is damaging our students and no longer serving them. We also want to discuss why it is so difficult for schools to change, and the kinds of cultural and societal biases we will face when changes happen. Above all else, educators want to create conditions that will make kids want to learn. Currently, educators spend a lot of their time engaging their pupils around content they have no interest in and no context for. Sarason and other thought leaders like him know that productive learning happens when they are taught prescriptively. We need to be on the frontlines encouraging schools to shift their … [Read more...]
Modern Learners Podcast #29: The Value of Teaching
If you've enjoyed being pushed by the conversations between me and Bruce in the past, you'll definitely enjoy our latest podcast that digs into the value of teaching, not just in the modern world, but in general. After a couple of weeks of scintillating interviews with Joel Pelcyger and Conrad Wolfram, this week we spend about 40 minutes this week discussing Bruce's latest Shifting Conversations column and the tension between teachers being learners as much as they are teachers. And I read a quote from Carl Rogers' book Freedom to Learn (from which I stole the title of my latest book) where he grapples with the role of the teacher and, to get really heady, whether anything can actually be taught. It's a sentiment that I've been mulling over for quite some time. (Bruce is already there.) If agency for learning resides with the learner, what can the teacher actually "teach" if anything? It's more about the adults in the room creating the conditions under which kids can learn most … [Read more...]
Modern Learners Podcast #28: Rethinking Math Class With Conrad Wolfram
Why is the current state of math education not suited for the modern world of computers and phones and other devices? That's the bigger question that Conrad Wolfram answers in our 28th Modern Learners podcast. Bruce and the founder of the amazing Wolfram Alpha have a wide ranging conversation around the state of current math instruction, the impact of technology on learning, and what we need to do to move in a more relevant, engaging direction for our students. Some of the highlights from the conversation: Wolfram talks about the four parts of using math in real life: Define the problem Can we turn it into a symbolic representation? Take the question to an answer What does it mean? Is that right? He points out that Step 3 is where technology can be most useful, yet we spend 80% of our math time in schools on that step by teaching hand calculating. Instead, he says, we should be focused on steps 1, 2, and 4 which are what people really need to be good at … [Read more...]
Modern Learners Podcast #25: Students Saving the World
In this podcast Bruce has a conversation with Michael Furdyk, Director of Innovation at Taking It Global which he co-founded with his wife Jennifer Corriero seventeen years ago. TiG is a truly global organization, representing the exceptional work of young people across more than 150 countries focused around global awareness, environment stewardship and student voice. In this conversation, Michael discusses some of TiG’s work and talks about the opportunity for students to engage in authentic projects of passion ranging from the truly global to those that are more locally focused. He discusses the various programs that TiG has put in place to not only support young people, but also schools and school systems in building teacher capacity (TiGed.org) to provide resources and professional learning around inquiry within and beyond schools. Links referenced in the podcast: TakingITGlobal + TDSB: Education for Social Innovation 2016 World's Largest Lesson Decarbonize … [Read more...]
Of Hurricanes and Agency – Modern Learners Podcast #23
It's been a while since our last podcast, partly by design and partly due to travels to islands during hurricane season. (Smart move.) But regardless, we're back with our 23rd episode! If you haven't noticed, we want to push the conversations that we're having about education to a higher level, and so much of that revolves around the language that we use to talk about our work. Way, way, way too often, we use key words and phrases without testing their inherent assumptions against the realities of the modern world or the beliefs we hold about learning. So Bruce and Will are back at it in this episode where the explore the irony of a number of comments made in recent posts online, including this one: "We need to design student-centered learning experiences." Um, really? It's a great example (and there are literally millions of others) of how our language gives us away when we talk about change. At it's core, most conversations are about how we (the teachers) can make learning … [Read more...]
Modern Learners Podcast #17 – Your Cheatin’ Tech
First, some context for the 19th episode of the Modern Learners Podcast: Kids cheat in school. In high school. In college. Do a quick Google search and you'll find all sorts of research that bears this out. Ask a kid, and even if he doesn't admit to it himself, he'll most likely roll his eyes at the suggestion that it doesn't happen in almost every class at some point. Cheating, writ large, is a "problem," no doubt, though the problem takes on different guises depending on who you talk to. There is the ethical problem, which says, rightly, that we shouldn't cheat out of respect to our teachers or fellow students. But there's also the dis-engagement problem, which argues, rightly, that many students don't see the relevance or importance in "learning" much of what they are delivered in school which leads them not to take the work or the assessments very seriously at all. But the third problem is the "real life" problem, as in why shouldn't students be able answer questions on tests in … [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...]
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...]