Pictures that Speak

What if you could attach an audio recording to a picture and then share it with your friends and teacher?  Photobabble lets you do that easily.  Simply upload a picture from your computer, or from Facebook or by inserting the URL.  Choose a theme (or not) and then record a 60 second comment about the picture.  Sharing is a cinch and as you can see below, can easily be embedded on a blog.

I can imagine how much fun this would be to use in a language class or in any learning situation where students would like to add an audio commentary on an image. Download the free app from the App Store and enjoy!

Google Drive for Easy Collaboration

This year many more teachers are using Google docs for creating word documents, presentations and especially for collecting work from students.  Here is a video that I made "on the fly" for one of our teachers who will be organizing her French class with Google folders.  Actually, I was showing her how to use Screen-Cast-O-Matic but it turned into an impromptu session about Google docs and shared folders.

 Sorry it's only in French.  If you would like an English version, leave me a comment and request!

The Art of Fly Teaching

I love metaphors. Some of my favorite metaphors for teaching evoke images of growing, planting and playing but at a recent retirement party for a dear colleague about to leave a 32 year career in education, I added another to my 'favorite' list; teaching is like fly fishing. Thanks to Jamie who shared his text with this blog. See for yourself how this metaphor fits your experience of our noble profession.

The Art of Fly Teaching

The master fly fisherman carefully prepares alone at home. So does the teacher.  In an endless pursuit for excellence, the masterful fly fisherman devotes years to perfecting the art.  He carefully researches and goes to his repertoire of tools to design and tie the perfect hook to reel in the fish – the student.  He practices his casts on the lawn and anxiously waits for the season to open when he can once again go stand alone in a new stream and gracefully cast a line in the wind towards a tranquil pond.  The day finally comes. He waits for the right moment; a light breeze, he gracefully waves the fly rod to extend the line, and casts the perfect arching line right where he wants it.   He allows the hook to float in a tranquil shady bay and tugs a little on the line - back and forth - and waits for the bite.  He gets a bite; snaps the hook, and reels in the cherished prize.  

The masterful fly fisherman always practices catch and release and is privately rewarded with the knowledge that he caught the fish.  Once in awhile, he will take a picture like a school yearbook - but always releases the fish to hopefully come back to be caught again by another fisherman.  He is after all, a learner for life.   

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by dennisbehm

My good friend, Tom, a masterful fly fisherman, always talks fishing.  Fly fishing is his passion.  He explained how he cuts the barbs off his hooks before tying them. This way, it is more difficult to keep a fish on the line, but it allows for an easier catch and release.  You see he cares about the fish and wants to ensure that his children and grandchildren will be able to practice his art.  I see how his passion was similar to the passion of the master teacher.  Put master teachers together and they talk passionately and incessantly about their art.  The masterful teacher teaches without barbs.
Some fishermen fish from boats.  Others trawl a line and hope that something may jump on the line.  Some simply drag a line along the river floor and hope to hook one in.  Some red-necks fish with dynamite!  The masterful fisherman - fly fishes. The master teacher practices his art –catches and releases - one student at a time.

What do I plan to do with my retirement” I plan to ask my retired buddy Tom to teach me how to fly fish.

I am sure that the readers of this blog will join me in wishing my colleague the very best in his retirement years.

The Future Is Here: Ready or Not

There is a biblical saying about no man being a prophet in his own land (Matthew 13:57) that I like.   It would seem that people have been thinking about resistance to change for thousands of years.  Why do we resist change?  This has been one of my central questions, almost obsessional, for a some time.  Popular wisdom would explain fear, threatened egos and a desire to protect the status quo as the reasons for resisting change.  Rob Evans, clinical psychologist and consultant to stakeholders in education told the audience at Building Learning Communities conference in Boston two years ago that teachers experience change as a sort of grief process.  Before change can happen, they have to let go of ‘old’ ways and cope with loss. My own answers to the question of why we resist change currently lay in brain research but the source or veracity of the answer is not as important as hearing the  loud voice of the evolutionary imperative admonishing educators, schools, administrators, governments and those who have the power shape the learning experience of students to “adapt or die”.  

Pedagogy needs to serve the student, not the teacher or the textbook

Read any of the popular books on innovation in business, for example Phil McKinney’s Beyond the Obvious.  As you read, substitute ‘client’ for student and ‘product’ for pedagogy.  If you can endure some internal discomfort created by superimposing a business model onto education, the idea that pedagogy and instructional design needs to fit the needs of our students (clients) becomes a useful metaphor.  Continue reading further to understand that successful businesses pay very close attention to the needs of their customers.  When the customer loses faith in the product, the business is in danger.  “Yes, but school is not a business” you say? “Wait and watch what happens when students understand that they can access learning anywhere, anytime and on demand”, I say.  The digital age has released information and knowledge from the prison of the page (David Weinberger “Too Big to Know”) and that is changing everything.  

I remember the day when I realized that everything had changed.  I was introducing some ideas about sociology to a grade eleven class and referred to a famous study of behaviour in public restrooms when I faltered and was unsure of  the author’s name.  Mason, my ever-eager student said, “Wait Miss.  Let me check that for you!”  At that very instant, as I looked out over the 21 students behind 21 laptops screens, I realized that I had become accountable to the truth and learning in a radical new way.  When fact checking and information recall is one click away, teachers need to rethink how and what they teach.  In the ‘Land of Google’ where students drink from the firehose of information, teachers must ask the ‘killer questions’:  why is this important? how is this relevant? and what will they remember about this in five years hence?  

Will Lion's Flickr Stream

Students in higher education have new choices today in how they learn.  MOOCs and open courseware, online universities and blended classrooms were not on the learning landscape horizon only a few short years ago.  The student (the consumer, the client) can access learning anywhere and personalize it.   This fundamental shift in the availability of information made possible by the digital age is changing education.  Schools, teachers and all stakeholders of the educational process need to see that the ground is shifting.  Just as the music industry and the traditional paper press has had to reinvent themselves, so do schools and teachers.  

Moore’s Law and Education

Intel’s co-founder, Gordon Moore, observed that our energy efficiency for computer processing speed doubles every eighteen to twenty four months.  His 1965 observation has remained true.  In 1971, the Intel processor held 2,300 transistors and today holds approximately 560 million.  This exponential growth of computational capacity has made our time in history unlike any other.  Never before has technological change been so rapid.  Today we speak of interactive technologies (such as Luidia’s e-Beam that turns a white board, a wall or even a floor into an interactive space) but  it is very probable that within two years we will be speaking about immersive technologies, such as the Muse from Interaxon.  This simple headband with sensors reads your brainwaves (EEG technology) and allows the user to actually see into their minds.  It can interact with apps on an iPhone or iPad and even move physical objects using only thoughts.  Imagine this in the hands of a child with ADHD who would benefit from learning cognitive control.   This self-observation of mind states has incredible potential for transformation much like any meditative mindful technique (such as Kiran Bedi’s controversial and successful rehabilitation of Indian prisoners using Vipassana meditation).  

So why would schools not want to harness new technologies in the service of education?  Change is not enough to meet the demands of this rapidly morphing learning environment where classrooms do not have to be physical spaces and teachers are not always adults with degrees.  Innovation needs creativity, courage and vision.  Innovation is disruptive and does not encourage uniformity or compliance. The future has arrived and adaptation might help you survive but innovation will ensure that you thrive.

Annotation is Collaborative with Crocodoc

Live Classroom 2.0 is my Saturday at noon PD time.  Today, they featured Catherine Flippen (@CatFlippen) who presented her favorite online assessment tools.  For many teachers still tethered to paper, correcting online seems impossible but Ms. Flippen presented several great options for easy assessment of student progress that will make the move from paper to digital just a bit easier.  Her favorite tools were Quia (for quizzes) and Edmodo (for a learning management platform).  I have recently been experimenting with Quizstar and Quizlet for formative assessment and digital flashcards with great success.  (The students love using Quizlet on their phones!)

But this post is not about these great online tools; instead about an obscure reference someone left in the chat called Crocodoc.  This is an application that works in the browser that allows commenting, annotation and markups of pdfs, word docs, images and other office applications like power point.  Once the document has been annotated, you can share it quickly by emailing the link or embedding it in on a web page as you see below.

I can imagine how useful this will be with my students and colleagues.  Many of us are using Diigo with students and teaching them how to annotate web pages and share resources with the class.  Google docs is also an important tool for collaboration and a part of my online classroom.  But Crocodoc is going to be another 'instrument in my kitchen'.  I love that I can easily markup pictures and then invite someone else to join me.  When the work is done, you can download both the original and annotated file and compare the two.

Even though this was not mentioned in today's session, Crocodoc ends up being the tool that caught my attention.  Try it out.

Stories, Brains and Human Evolution

Teachers understand the power of the story. When we share personal anecdotes, we capture the students’ full attention. We explain concepts with metaphors and images, sort of snapshots or thumbnails of a possible story. Effective presentations use visuals to create the emotional resonance necessary for the listener who is considering the veracity of your message. Presentation gurus like Nancy Duarte and Gar Reyonolds teach us that the story arc in the presentation is just as important as the slides and visuals that we use.

 Like many others from a liberal arts background, I understand the power of stories from a Jungian perspective: the story’s universal appeal is explained by the archetypal self who seeks to individuate. Essentially, you must be the hero of your own story as you grow to adulthood and psychic maturity. Jungian depth psychology has been how I understand the power of the story. 

But today I considered other explanations after listening to Dr. Ginger Campbell (Books and Ideas Podcast) interview Jonathan Gottschull’s new book, How Storytelling Makes Us Human.

 Gottschull is an literary scholar at Washington and Jefferson College who was struck by the dangerous landscape of the make-believe stories he observed in his two young daughters. He wondered about why children create gore, death and danger in their play and storytelling. Gottschull began to think about the evolutionary forces that would shape the need to tell such stories and explain why we derive such pleasure from danger. In Dr. Campbell’s interview, he notes that fiction and fantasy of children (think of Neverland and Grimm’s fairytales) is a scary and dangerous place fraught with violence, filled with hobgoblins and moral abomination. From an evolutionary perspective, the purpose of this conflict was to provide the brain with vicarious experiences so we could learn possible responses to potential danger. Fiction's purpose is biological. It prepares us for what could be; a kind of ‘training manual for the big dilemmas of life’.

 Gottschull is interested in the neural underpinnings of the imaginary experience. Recent experiments suggests that the brain responds as a participant when reading about the emotions of the protagonist. It is in the ‘this is real and happening to me’ mode. Dr. Campbell talked about her own emotional investment in the character she was role playing in the video game Mass Effect. Video games are a modern version of the ancient story. Dr. Campbell’s interview with Gottschull was well worth one hour of listening time and important enough for me to commit to sharing it on this blog. We intuitively understand why stories are important and now we can look forward to neurological explanations for the power of the story. I encourage you to listen to this interview and the next time you give a presentation or read a great story with your students, remember that fully engaged brain wants to experience the conflict, problems and everything else that comes with the story as a real event.

Interesting Post Script:

I taught in the same school with a teacher for one entire year before we realized that she had been my student in my first year of teaching.  Neither one of us remembered the other's name or face but she remembered my stories.  One day when she was telling me about a teacher she had in high school and sharing the stories this teacher had told, I realized that those were my stories and that teacher was me!  Think of it.  She did not remember the content of the class, my name or my face but she remembered my stories.

Find the Sweet Spot in the Change

I spend a lot of time thinking about change and why people (especially in education) resist change. I wonder about why we experience change as difficult.  I read books about it and gravitate to discussions about how to facilitate change, how to anticipate it and how to manage the new dynamics that it creates.

This is a year of change for me and for my school.  I have moved into a new administrative position and our beloved Director of Studies is preparing for his retirement in January of 2013.  My questions about change feel urgent to me right now.  There is no resistance to the change in this situation.  I am thrilled about my new position and our Director is happy to retire.  He looks forward to spending more time with his granddaughter, has plans to fix up his house and wants to become like one of those old men in the TD bank commercial who refuse to accept advice.  But despite the joy connected to this change, I am aware of my own fears, probably the culprit for recent sleepless nights.  Last night, ruminating about change, this occurred to me.  Allow me to draw you a mental picture.

You are standing with your back to the wall trying to look cool and carefree at the dance.  An attractive person crosses the floor and with irresistible style asks you to dance.  At that moment, for one second, you freeze.  You are a great dancer and everyone knows it.  He (or she) is exactly who you were hoping would ask you to dance.  So why freeze?  Hold this picture in your mind and consider this idea: change is an invitation to show yourself.  Change creates an empty space.  What once filled that space is gone and now, that space demands to be filled.  What will take its place? 

@Photo's Flick stream

Obviously dancing is my metaphor for the art and science of teaching.  We are passionate dancers (teachers) and we know our steps well.  When new dances come along, we learn the steps because dancing is exhilarating, life affirming and we do it so well.  So what to say to the dancer who hesitates, despite her (his) skill?  

Here is what I want to say to all the dancers: your talent and your passion for the craft is all you need to fill the space and accept the invitation.  You will not be perfect the first few times out on the floor but the thrill of the dance and the grace of the movements will renew your desire to become the best dancer you can be.  The sweet spot in the never ending change that is the educator’s life in the 21st century learning spaces is the knowledge that you can do this and you are talented.  Show yourself.  Step into the space that the invitation to change makes and have confidence that in time, you will become the graceful dancer that you know you are.

Our soon-to-retire Director of studies has had 32 years to perfect the art of change.  His ‘sweet spot’ is his dedication to the pursuit of excellence.  He knows that as long as he holds this pursuit as his goal, he will eventually be successful.  Mistakes are inevitable but his commitment to the pursuit of excellence has been his ‘sweet spot’ and the source of his graceful confidence throughout the years.  

Find your sweet spot and accept the invitation to the dance that never ends.  Show yourself.  You never looked so good.