Right here, right now, there is no other place I want to be
Right here, right now, watching the world wake up from history

I sat in my eighth grade History class listening to Jesus Jones’ “Right Here, Right Now” blasting out of the teacher’s boombox. It was 1991 and the topic de jour was centered around how much the world had changed in the past 50 years. Pretty much everything has been invented already, I remember thinking as I sat there and listened to him drone on and on about “when he was a kid…” We were at the end of the age of newness, and I’d live the rest of my life with everything that we had right then.

I wonder if kids still think that? Sometimes I wonder if adults do?

So as I was teaching my eighth-grade class a little History of Technology last week, I cranked up the speakers and played them the same song. Other than enduring some harassment for choosing an “old” song, I think I was able to successfully facilitate the same discussion that I’d been a part of two decades earlier. Surprisingly, however, the students were probably more interested in the topic than I was – which completely caught me off guard. Most of the conversation that followed, however, was based around something that happened by coincidence while we were talking…

My TweetDeck popped up an #EdChat notification on my projection screen.

“What’s that”, one student asked. “It’s his Twitter account and he shouldn’t be using it in school”, replied another. The the barrage of comments started flowing; “I don’t use Twitter – it’s stupid. I use Yahoo! Messenger and send text messages”; “I use AIM”; “I use Facebook” “Facebook is stupid”; “All of my friends use MSN”; “MySpace is so much better than everything else”… I live for teachable moments, so this was almost too good to be true.

I could discuss every detail of the rest of that class, but it’s the epiphany I had afterward that I want to discuss here. Why, with all of the highly-developed communication programs that are (and have been) available, has Twitter taken off? Why does it seem like it’s the impetus for an educational revolution that’s gaining momentum every day? Why didn’t educators flock to an AOL Chatroom when it first came out? What was wrong with Yahoo! Chatrooms? MS NetMeeting? ICQ Chat? Orkut? Yuku? Freetel? (and the list goes on and on…) So why Twitter? Why here, why now?

In all honesty I haven’t got an answer to that question. I’m hoping some of you will be able to comment and help me out! Is this educational revolution relatively new? Has it been going on in certain private circles for decades? Am I part of something big, or is this all going to be a passing “fad” by mainstream educators? Will the education books look back at 2008-2009 and say “this is where the tide turned” – or will we simply be a blip on one of the waves? (no pun intended – although it was pretty good, eh?)

Why here, why now? Why Twitter, why #edchat? Why me and you?

#edchat is an event that happens twice every Tuesday – 12:00PM and 7:00PM Eastern Time. Topics for the chat are submitted and voted on by anybody, whether they are wallflowers or verbose speed-tweeters. Tonight’s topic happens to be Does Homework Improve Learning?. Anybody on Twitter can join the conversation by simply searching for #edchat (so you can see what’s being said) and include the hastag #edchat in your tweets. Your messages will show up with all of the others. Yes, it’s really that easy. The most amazing aspect of #edchat is the wide variety of people, experiences, and opinions you get in a very short amount of time. Often these conversations will last for 2-3 days afterwards in the forms of replies and/or direct messages.

Back on topic now… One of the thoughts that was brought up over and over again last week during the 7PM (EDT) #edchat was essentially “we’re preaching to the choir – how do we get others (classroom teachers who aren’t already knee-deep in technology implementation) into the discussion?” And I figured out today how I’m going to do it.

I teach in a middle school technology classroom with a lab area and 19 computers. I’ve got a mounted projector and a big white screen (nothing interactive yet – my Wiimote project never worked as planned.) What I plan to try this year is to open my lab up for district teachers on Tuesday nights. I’d leave at 3:30, grab some dinner and run errands, whatever – and head back to the building by 5:00. Open the lab up from 5:00-9:00 for any teacher in the district who might need help or wants to talk technology. At 6:30, however, the lights would dim, the projector would come on, and I’d give a demo about #edchat and how Twitter can be used for uPD. By 7:00 we’d be able to have user accounts set up for any newbies (unlike @oswego98) and anyone in the room could participate in the chat. Standing in front of a large group of people and trying to explain what to do with Twitter can be challenging – but giving them a real demo that is relevant to their career and interests and then allowing them full control to participate themselves… sounds like a plan!

I’m actually thinking that I might get 4-5 teachers from my own building the first week… wishful thinking, maybe? But if the following week I could double that (by offering it to anyone in the district) I’d have a significant number of people in my district exposed to both Twitter and #edchat. How many will use it on a weekly basis? I don’t know – maybe 3 or 4? Hopefully more? But it would be amazing to see and hear people’s reactions when they finally realize what Twitter can do. I certainly wish I would’ve had a “Twitter-tutor” when I began. It will also give me a dedicated night to organize my lab, try any software/hardware experiments, discuss technology with other teachers, and write blog posts or work on other online projects.

Has anyone else ever experimented with opening up labs after school for other teachers? Or offering “free, unofficial professional development” for fun? My hopes are that I’ll meet some other people like myself, have some fun, and learn a ton. What does everyone think? Will I need to order pizzas and wings to get people there?

For more information on #edchat, check out Mary Beth’s blog post. I hope to speak to all of you on Tuesday!

Anyhow, having been only to a handful of conferences before – all of them being technology-related – I wasn’t sure how I’d enjoy being somewhere with a bunch of math people.  Would I be a fish out of water?  Or would I put aside the content differences and see these pocket-protector-wielding pi enthusiasts as my equals?   (JOKE!)  It turned out that I felt very comfortable with everyone, but… definitely noticed a huge number of things that differentiated the overall crowd from my typical ed tech crowd:

First of all, it amazed me at how little teaching or pedagogical training these young math professors had.  I guess now is a good time to note that the majority of attendees were recent doctoral graduates who were now either looking for jobs or had been teaching at the college level for only a short time.  So back on topic…  Everyone seemed to know a ton about their subject (mathematics), but when it came to teaching strategies…  not so much.  How many of these college professors have taken a teaching methods course?  Or a educational psychology?  I’m going to guess less than 30% of them – and most of those courses would have taken as general ed requirements in undergrad school.  Teaching = simply Presenting Information?  Perhaps.

Eye opener number 2: Many of the profs that I talked to mentioned their “discipline problems” or “multiple preps” as if they were actually unexpected downsides to their current positions; a common belief seemed to be that better colleges wouldn’t have such problems, and it sure felt as if everyone was looking for someplace “better”.  I mentioned that many middle or high school teachers had upwards of 4-5 different preps in a semester AND had to deal with unruly kids (and parents) daily – I was then reminded by one young lady that “that’s why we got our doctorates, so we wouldn’t need to deal with that stuff”.  Hmmm…  not sure that was the general consensus, but certainly made me chuckle a bit.  Perhaps I need to go back to school!

Surprise number 3: there was a session based on “teaching with technology”, and it was not getting very good reviews.  Not because the presenter was bad, mind you, but because it was seen as “impractical”.  People were asking why they’d want to use technology in math class; a lot were saying that their IT departments were in charge (and the professors themselves had no control over it), some laughed because their departments don’t even allow calculators, and others shunned the session because “I teach math, not computers”.  I asked around if anyone knew about cramster.com, the Math Markup Language (mathML), or even twitter… I got a bunch of confused looks.  In fact the last thing that I was told was “if it isn’t laTeX, we don’t need it”.  A great way to end our conversation for sure

My sister, Bronlyn

The year was 1999 and I was a junior in the Technology Education program at SUNY Oswego. I was in my second semester at that college and was one of the last students to register for classes. My options were slim. Although it really didn’t matter – by the time registration opened up I really didn’t know anyone at the school and had no clue what professors were good or bad – so I was taking whatever I could get into.

John Belt*

There were empty spots in a class simply called “Design”. It was taught by Professor John Belt who, until that moment in my life, I had never heard of before. He was located in the building adjacent to most of the technology classes – tucked away in the uppermost corner of an almost-deserted building. Design. Couldn’t be that bad, right? I mean heck, I’d always wanted to be an architect or mechanical engineer… design was my thing!

Yeah. First day of class we walked into a dark room. Lights were off, either candles or very dim bulbs were placed around the room… just enough for everyone to come in and find a seat. I was thinking “good grief, I hope he doesn’t pull out any drugs or anything”… it was an uncomfortable feeling to say the least. And he spoke to us – in the dark – for an hour. He didn’t give us a course description, a syllabus, or anything like that. He didn’t tell us the rules or where the fire escapes were. But he talked to us… about who we were, what we wanted, and what we were passionate about. Passionate? I wanted to simply say the name of a girl or something to be a wiseguy (which a few of the guys did try) – but by passionate he meant something different. What did we care about? What was it that made us tick?

Bamboo. That’s what he said he was passionate about. We all got a laugh out of that – but he was dead serious. He loves bamboo, builds things out of it, loves how it looks, etc. The guy is passionate about a dead piece of wood – that’s all I took out of there on the first day. And as we were walking out he said “Since this is a college course, I expect you to bring a copy of the Design Process with you on Thursday for homework”.

Walked in on Thursday and, true to my nature, had no design process with me. I’d never heard of it before and figured that I’d wait for someone else to answer the question. I’d then write it in my notebook and call it my learning for the day. Ha! Yeah right! He called us all out and asked us to take our design process and hold it up in the air. There were six of us who didn’t have anything and we were promptly thrown out of class… we could come back on Monday so long as we didn’t ever come unprepared again.

Now you’re wondering where this story is going, right? Don’t worry… I do have a plan

Anyhow, I hated the class – he didn’t teach! All that he did was talk to us. Showed us videos and pictures and objects made by others – but he never once stood in front of the class and lectured. I remember feeling helpless sitting there. Was I passing? Failing? I didn’t dare ask! So I sat directly next to him (where he had a harder time making eye contact) and figured I’d do what I could, but was resigned to probably repeating the course later. It was going to kill my GPA, and that’s all I kept thinking about.

But then one day he introduced the final project. And to be honest, I’m not sure what the final project even was… except for everyone in the class had to design, draw, and make a model of something. I decided to choose a triangular stainless steel sterno food heater. It was to be a huge project taking weeks to complete – and there were no formal formative assessments. We just needed to have it all done by the end of the semester.

To this point in the story I hadn’t learned anything. Design was stupid and I couldn’t stand the teacher; that’s all I knew. In fact as I designed this sterno heater I was still pretty confused as to what the point was. Why was this a required class again?

Maybe two weeks into my final project, though, I had the most satisfying “aha” moment – the whole class was about thinking and problem solving. Not about “design”, not about “doing things right” – but about figuring things out for ourselves. He wanted us to ask questions and present opposing views. He wanted us to be unconventional. He had turned the lights off during class not because his eyes were sensitive or he was hungover, but because it allowed us to relax and let our minds wander. Maybe the guy wasn’t crazy after all…

I ended up with an amazing final project from that class. Not because I was a genius, but because I started asking questions. I began asking other people for their opinions – which, until that point in my life, I had never done. I asked for help when I had to do something I wasn’t sure of. I redesigned my original idea multiple times. I started hanging out in his lab at random times – thus dubbing me a “Beltoid” – so that I could be around other people who enjoyed design. Once I understood the course, it quickly became the most influential class I’d ever taken.  I was able to see things from a different perspective – and yes, it really did happen “all of a sudden”.

I learned to think. I learned to teach. I started realizing that learning isn’t something you can always script out, and results could vary from person to person. That particular class also taught me that you can never judge a book by its cover; unconventional doesn’t always equal crazy.

The people who never understood JB? They still make fun of me and ask how I could like a man who taught the stupidest class at Oswego.  I still talk about the class with quite a few of my friends (my first PLN!) who used to hang out in the design lab. I haven’t talked to John very much since I graduated, but the things I learned in his class pretty much single-handedly wrote my Educational Philosophy statement.

*Photo of John used with written permission of the owner via Flickr
*Photo of bamboo taken by Joi Ito

One of my aspirations is to someday open my own brick-and-mortar boarding school. (I guess all boarding schools would need to be b&m, right?)  I have been rethinking it a little lately, but I still think it would be neat to have my own Hogwarts here in western NY.  Anyhow, I’ve already got my School District Administrator certificate, so I wrote this article from the point of view that I’m in charge of a new school and I’m trying to figure out what I want to do to promote technology in it without scaring everyone in the northeast away.  I could have written 20 pages on the subject, so tried to whittle it down.  But I’m good at talking…

So, the quickly-thrown together list of the 8 things that I will do as an administrator to encourage and promote educational technology in my school:

1. Be open-minded.

So often I see administrators who discourage their staff members to think outside the box. How does a standard, union-approved teacher observation work when the lesson isn’t traditional in style? How will we explain to the parent(s) that yes, we are using social networking in schools (even though Dateline NBC constantly reminds us how “dangerous” these sorts of places are)? These aren’t really valid questions in this day and age.

2. Allow the teachers to fail every once in a while.

As part of the keynote address at NECC 2009 by Malcolm Gladwell, the idea of student “failure” was brought to the forefront. Ever since the conference teachers in my PLN have been talking about the positive effects of this in education. But what few people have mentioned is the idea that teachers need to fail, too. Teachers need to try a new technology and have it blow up in their faces. They need the opportunity to change the structure of an entire class without *knowing* up front what the outcome will be or without having to prove that the change is based on “best practice” (although obviously there are limitations to this statement). Teachers need to learn every day – so why are their expectations any different than those of students?

3. Be visible, both in person and online.

There’s little more frustrating than an administrator who isn’t visible in the building. Not that I’d want one in my classroom constantly, but it’s always nice to know that the people in charge of the school are aware of whats going on throughout. Being an administrator I’d be sure to not only make myself seen in person, but also to log on and contribute to any site/wiki/blog that the students are using. What a great way to build relationships with all students – administrators often never meet the “good kids”.

4. Data!

Here in western New York (and maybe everywhere?) we’ve got a ton of data on every student. Not only do we know what their scores were on every state assessment they’ve ever taken, but we know what questions they missed, what sorts of questions were missed, how many other students scored similarly, what the scores from each teacher are, etc. I’d guess for the eighth grade English test alone we could print close to 5 pages of data for each student who took the test, if not more.

The problem is, however, that most teachers never see that data. Sure, you could say that “education 2.0″ is going to eliminate state tests and will go to some arbitrary scoring system… but in the meantime that data is uber-important. Administrators need to take the time to sift through the data and give the teachers what they need for the year. Although “tracking” isn’t used widely anymore, I’ve often felt that in some of today’s classes it would help. Any kid, for example, who scored real low on reading comprehension could be placed in a class that focused on that topic versus the kids who scored lowest on antonyms or similes.

5. All students, teachers, non-teaching staff, and administrators will develop and maintain ePortfolios.

At first I was going to say that all teachers and administrators need to have a website – but my idea of an ePortfolio sort of takes care of both pieces. An ePortfolio would be essentially a digital storage area for all documents and data for each student / teacher / administrator. The user interface would allow for any document to be shared with the world, the school, or selected family or friends. It would also allow for customization of a small website that would operate very much like a blog, with widgets and links to different areas. Basically it would be a point-and-click portfolio system that was completely web-based. Every student would leave the school with a online record of what they did including expectations, course outlines, grades, peer assessments, and anything else noteworthy.  Parents, teachers, and perhaps even employers could get all the information they needed about a student’s work from one place online.

6. Encourage teachers to spend time working on personal projects.

I’m taking a page out of the Google philosophy here, but I think teachers would be better prepared to teach if they had more free time in a day.  I can’t really quote anyone specific on this one, but I know that by encouraging a person to work on something that’s important to them is better for morale than expecting that same person to be working solely on school work for 8 hours a day.  I somehow lucked out last year and was given a lighter load for a semester and in that time I planned the upgrade for our auditorium sound and light system, I made a Interactive Wii Whiteboard, I worked with the music department on a few music/technology ideas, and I was able to plan some really fun video projects for my eighth graders.  Without that extra time I would’ve done the same projects I did the year before… and over time that leads to burnout and boredom.

7. I will model good teaching by using a variety of technologies whenever possible.

I had to give a presentation to a group of administrators about technology a while back and I chose to do it with an overhead projector and some dry-erase markers along with some large Post-It notes.  I did it to make my point even stronger – technology isn’t just “wanted”, it’s practically “needed”.  I was hardly taken seriously by some, but the ones who understood my message will remember it.  I learned, however, that I may have made just as large an impact had I dazzled them with a Voicethread, some interactive Wiimote games, and an old fashion Web Quest.  Oops!

8. Encourage Online courses for students and faculty.

Last but not least, I will encourage the use of online courses for both supplementing and replacing of local instruction.  Perhaps a schedule conflict or a long-term illness creates a situation where a student is unable to get into a class – let’s see if that same class can be found online.  As someone who’s both taken and taught online classes I can attest to the fact that they are no lower-quality than brick-and-mortar education.  I’m not sure how online education got such a bad reputation, but I tend to see it as an amazing opportunity.  I am presently teaching online programming courses in schools that are too small to hire a separate teacher for that task; last year I had students from half a dozen schools at any given time and this year I expect many more. And it’s not just technology classes – my online school also teaches a ton of AP and state-required classes.  A great way to supplement any school catalog is with online classes, and I’d certainly promote them.

Google Spreadsheet of many posts
Diigo Slideshow

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