I’ve been working on developing a framework for teaching more effective storytelling. Storytelling is not just for kids books or a fun hobby. It is a method of communicating ideas in a way that is so concise and crystal clear that your audience immerses themselves in the ideas shared and Ken to an extent visualize them. I would say that this is probably one of the most critical skills for the next 50 years.
Read more on my S.T.O.R.Y. Framework on Edsurge.com
Saturday evening after the Jewish Sabbath, I turned on my smartphone to a flurry of notifications. While the volume was a bit more than usual, it was the nature of the conversation that really caught me off guard. You see, for the past 5 years I have been heavily engaged in an online education community that might not always agree, but tends to trend on being positive, supportive, and constructive when engaging with other educators in the space. This weekend, however, was a sobering moment where I said to myself, “well, the honeymoon is over”, as I read educators publicly trashing other educators in the name of [insert noble cause here]. So what is the big deal with brand influence’s infiltration into the education world? Are brands and influencers of limits in education? Read More on Medium.com…
This article is a follow up to “Why Education Needs To Understand That Failure Is A Procccess, Not A Destination“.
Reflection Is A Work In Progress
We leave almost zero time for reflection in education today. Outside of a student sitting and wondering why they didn’t get at least a 90% on the big test, how much time is allotted for reflection? The challenge we face is that reflection is not a “measurable” data set when you compare to data hungry areas of growth like reading and math literacy. So how can you measure reflection? While a student summary on the experience might be a good method to assess understanding, it will do little to evaluate their ability to take this failed experience and do something more significant because of it. Even worse there are schools of thought in education that still view reflection as a soft skill. Something that should be secondary to other areas of learning and development. Meanwhile career sites like Monster.com are publishing articles about how critical those skills are. Adaptablity? When do they teaching that in school? In business, startups, and entrepreneurship in general, failure takes on an nearly tangible form. Is your business failing? What do you do? Do you close shop? Do you weather the storm? Do you pause, review, and strategize how to relaunch? How are these questions fathomed? Are they part of the MBA script? The game of school? Author and Brand Ambassador Guy Kawasaki jokes about his MBA that he’s “come to believe that an MBA is a hinderance to entrepreneurship, but I do have one from UCLA.” The key ingredient found in many successful people, is how they reflect on failure with the expectation that they are going to do something about it. It isn’t enough to just be a bold risk-taking failure embracer. You can risk and fail in the same thing over and over again, and make little process or growth while still “embracing failure”. Failure is not a means to an end, it is part of sitting down and looking at not just what went wrong but how to make it right. It’s uncomfortable, embarrassing, and even scary for many of us, including me. That is because failure isn’t the treasure, it’s the key.
If you value the key and know what it can unlock, it gives you the power to seek out the treasure and empower you to win. Failure is the key that can unlock the treasure of the greatest possible you.
So how do we reflect? First you need to believe that the first or second attempt isn’t your best. If you are ready to do your best the first time every time, get ready to live a pretty mediocre existence. Find me one champion in any field that would disagree with that. Now lets be clear, no one should plan to fail. Nor are we saying that failure is appropriate for all experiences. As a father, I struggle with standing on the side and watching my kids do things that they might fail at or struggle with. Still as much as it hurts, I know they will be strong and better with the struggle then if I do it for them.
On that note, I want to share a personal story of the failure, and how the value I place in short term loss in the spirit of long term success. As a connected educator and a life long learner, I am always striving to hone my educational craft and connect with amazing educators who I can learn from. One amazing space that allows for that is ISTE. I have attended ISTE since 2012 and have gained so much from the personal connections and sessions. I have also been rejected to present multiple times, include this year. I have to admit, this year I was crushed. I have been on a roll, as I try to build up credibility and interest in my work, and was certain that my ISTE session would be selected. So what did I do with the failure? I had to solve the puzzle. While I didn’t understand why or what made my session proposals weak, I knew that it was solvable if I took the time to move past the feeling of failure, and shift to the focus of how to achieve a greater success. So when the Ignite session opened up, a slot that I technically had even LESS chance of being accepted to present, I jumped at it. Because failure challenges me to figure out why my approach didn’t work, and whose approach did, so I could analyze it, and figure out what I need to do next time. Now if my initial session was accepted would I have submitted an Ignite! Talk? I can’t say for sure. What I do know, is that for me this example of how to turn a short term failure into a long term success is why I value failure’s role in my life. This mindset was not something I learned in school, but it is teachable. I learned it from podcasts, blogs, youtube channels, and books from people that get it, succeed, and win constantly. Whether its business, sports, or even the medical field, there is a way to build confidence to not even flinch at the emotional drain of failure and persevere to achieve that win. Because of that I had a chance to share my thoughts on creativity to over 500 educators. That Ignite! Talk was one of the greatest moments of my professional career.
So why is failure missing from the list of foundational literacies in education? Don’t blame the founders of modern education. They were looking to create a mass education method that would run itself similar to a factory assembly line. Risk isn’t safe, secure, or pre-plan(able). You can’t assess risk because it’s something that is part of the soul and the mind of a person, a drive that lets someone make a decision whether its worth it to win, lose it all, or figure out how to win later.
Planning Failure As A Teachable Moment
I understand that in the classroom we need to be realistic. There is curriculum to cover, standards to be taught, and all of this needs to be assessed. We are still evaluated based on the success of these requirements through standardized tests and teacher reviews. Where do these big ideas that require risk and result in meaningful failure happen? First of all, lets be clear. In school, where time is limited, the risk needs to be framed in open ended learning experience that might fail, need to be redone and relaunched. Risk cannot be involved in whether or not students will learn how to read, or master their multiplication table
Students need to learn how to manage failure too. When we speak of embracing failure, we are not and should not refer to failure because of lack of planning, effort, or call for support. Failure is part of big ideas. It means that you need to embrace the unknown and understand that risk is required. We aren’t talking about learning 2+2. We are talking about understanding how to face challenges where x+y=z and all three are truly unknown.
If At First You Don’t Succeed, Figure Out What’s Wrong!
As someone who entered into education from the business space, I have a certain sensitivity to how education is currently glorifying startup and business culture. So much so that I am writing a sort of investigative report on startup culture to give education a different lens to look through. With that said, I think there is much that we can learn from the startup space. Take AirBnb for example. They launched three times before they became the household name of home sharing and travel accommodations. Imagine if the second time they closed shop? What if they shifted the direction of their company? So how did they do it? An article from GrowthHackers put it bluntly as “pure unadulterated hustle in the face of initial resistance”. Failure is only as good as your confidence in yourself, your team, your work, and your mission. I can’t be anymore clear that the failure I am talking about is not on linear problems with defined answers. It’s the complex and nonlinear challenges that our student will without question face the day after graduating college. Whether its founding a startup or learning how to manage monthly expenses, the intention and reflect that is involved with learning from failure, can serve all our students.
Call To Action!
In education, embracing failure needs to be rooted in the drive to teach others how to overcome their encounter(s) with failure. Remember, we are not talking about a problem with a clear answer! Failure in that respect might just be poor planning, lack of effort, or carelessness. While those are also great learning experiences, the failure is something that might happen two, three, or even eight times in different capacities because the big idea is there and you and those around you are hungry to achieve success beyond a fill in the blank bubbled letter learning outcome.
There is a movement in education that promotes and even glorifies failure. Graphics proclaiming that we should fail forward, fail ofen, and of course view F.A.I.L as a First Attempt In Learning. I too am I proponent of failure, and believe that is has been a key ingredient not just in my own success, but for so many successful people I look to for inspiration and guidance. Recently Tim Ferris, a famous entreprenuer and author of “The 4 hour work week”, reflected on 200 episodes of his podcast. He shared that upon reflecting on those episodes he realized that the ability to not just embrace failure, but learn from it was the common thread with so many of his guests. Check out that episode here. This episode, and a number of podcast episodes produced by Gary Vaynerchuk talk about more than just embracing failure, but what you do the moments after you fail. In education, we have introduced failure to the learning process, and even in small circles began to present failure as a positive experience. The question is what are we doing after that?
How are we teaching kids to be reflective on their actions, decisions, and behaviors? How are we giving them the tools to do something with failure?
Failure isn’t a destination, it’s a process. No one actually wants to fail. Yet failure is inevitable if you are doing something worth doing, something outside of your comfort zone, something amazing. It will happen if you are pushing yourself, and if you have the right mindset, you can learn wonders from experiences that have been deemed a “total fail”. What is required is reflection, and without it, I find it to be potentially devastating to promote failure in a learning environment that is still dominated by standardization and predetermined outcomes.
A friend of mine, a graduate of a top 10 university told me that the first time out of college that he failed completely shattered him. He had mastered school, sailing through with nothing short of a 3.8 GPA, high SAT score, and a truck load of extra curricular activities. Yet in the real world where life is not pre defined with a four letter choices, it can be an absolute shock to not get an “A”.
Our educational system has become so hyper obsessed with proficiency as the gold standard, that no matter how experimental the learning becomes, or how valuable failure is seen, it is still an isolated experience. Even those experiences, where failure is “built in”, it sometimes feel so planned out that it is as if we are looking for students to become proficient in failure. When you shift the discussion and analysis of failure to outside of education, failure is not an experience, a first attempt, it is part of the process of reaching long term success. In the short term it is easy to create safe experiences with clearly defined outcomes, such as fill in the blank or the answer as D, but challenges that require non linear thinking and complex problem solving cannot be nurtured and developed in the land of multiple choice.
In the world of business, especially in Startup culture, failing is not an intended outcome, it’s almost a way of life. It is the result of taking risks and going beyond what is viewed as possible and achievable, but it must be do No worksheet, quiz, or cookie cutter group project is possible here because the end goal is something bigger than that, its inception complex, multi faceted, and difficult to define. As a result of this level of challenge it is not just failing, it is F.A.I.L.U.R.E. because that first attempt will lead to subsequent attempts Unless Reflection Exists.
Now I assume that if you have read thus far, you are open to embracing failure. It is another thing altogether to act on it and risk providing such learning experience. Especially when at the end of the day school is still is dominated by a letter grade, and anything below a C (aka average) is considered as if it is an F. School has defined average, but has created a culture where the standard is above average and excellent, levels achieved by mastering the art of memorization and test taking. This proficiency based approach does not assess mastery, growth, or anything big picture. It is a simple snapshot of what can be regurgitated right now through memorization, and what to say and when to say it. In the real world, this level of performance will get you very little, and at the advancement rate of technology, the jobs that do require such skills may just be obsolete by 2020.
When I ask friends and collages, like the one earlier who went through the system, gamed it, and finished on top, they feel uncomfortable with failure. Has our education system created a false reality? Has it made us unable to fail in a world where failure is inevitable? My own school experience conditioned me to believe that my failures represented who I was. My lack of success in engaging with the standardized method of learning defined me. Einstein famously said that,
Where was this quote when I was 8, 15, or 19?
For education to truly understand failure, its role in greater gains and success, we must look outside of education. We need to look at businesses, tech companies, and entrepreneurs that don’t take the uncharted road, but the road that didnt exist yet. Through that lens, we can equip students with the confidence and awareness to anaylize and achieve more through failure. It allows a conversation to develop around the idea that challenge and complex experiences can and may result in failure, because a more significant outcome is possible. This is what makes failure an ingredient for success. Like most things in life, nothing significant is achieved on the first try. True innovation, and the creative capacities required to achieve it require failure to be part of an effective and thoughtful process, a stepping stone towards success. It is in this realm that failure can give support space that allows your inspiration and imagination to thrive and result in creative ways to solve problems. What failure is not in any capacity is an excuse for poor time management, disorganization, or lack of effort and determination. That is why embracing failure can be a danger zone and it is up to us as educators and mentors to help our students learn the difference.
Nothing of true value is accomplished on the first try. This holds true to most of life’s experiences from learning to walk, tying your own shoe, riding a bicycle, to launching a startup, rising the ranks of corporate America, or inventing the next life changing product. The problem lies in between these two phases of life where we are expected to spend 12-14 years getting it right on the first try. And if you don’t? You fail, and not the good kind we are talking about here. The problem is that it is a performance failure, not a growth failure. There is no space to reflect, redo, and revolutionize the failed process. Then we leave the fantasy world of perfect scores and extra credit. It is here that students fear failure, and avoid it at all costs, unless its a video game of course, then failing is great because you can always save the game, die 300 times, and keep at it. Even as an artist and designer this first try perfection mentality was been ingrained in me. It has taken years to purge myself of this falacy, and I believe I am better off for it. So what is it about this first try mentality, and why is it nearly impossible to innovative on the first try? For school to truly embrace failure it needs to instill in students to never give up, but learn from their mistakes. Challenges that requires risk and multiple attempts can be proud experiences for learners, but they need to be thoughtful. We can’t be like the coyote who foolishly chases the roadrunner without reflecting and analyzing the flaw in his plans.
Remember, the reason innovation cannot happen on the first try is because innovation is not an act it is a process. True innovation requires you to develop a solution or product that creates value for others. The best solutions need to be reviewed, revised, and reflected upon with the expectation that the first iteration may fail, and most certainly not be the best. Now try to fit that approach into our current educational system. Imagine if learning in our schools started with a teacher saying “I don’t know…” or “I wonder…”. Instead teachers are forced to engage in scripted out indoctrinated experiences where the biggest fear for a teacher is being exposed as anything but a master expert of classroom content. While a complete overhaul of our educational system might not be possible via your classroom, there is room for you to introduce and nurture the concept of failure as a form of the ideation, implement, reflection, relaunching of learning. Whether or not you consider Edison as the sole inventor of the lightbulb, to understand what true innovation looks like you must understand that
It is that end goal of positively impacting those around us that fueled him to fail thousands times as he worked towards creating a safe and sustainable light source. The failure, the understanding that first does not mean best, and the willingness to review, redo, and even throw it out to start a new, will not just result in better production from students, it will embolden and empower them. Sort of like that game they are willing to play a level 300 times just to prove they can win.
In education, the embracing of failure has a long way to go. For it to really become part of school culture and influence change, educators, and more importantly administrators need to see the value of failure. If failure is still overshadowed by test scores, then education will continue on with its 20th century model. One where failure is a novelty, a classroom light in a sea of educational darkness. It doesn’t have to be that way. For now we need to keep on pushing the boundaries of what education should really look like to help today’s kids. We need to keep on fighting the good fight.
This is the second post in a series known as “Educated By Design”. It focuses on my journey as a designer and technologist turned educator.
In my last post I discussed creativity as a mindset, not a talent.
Excerpt from previous post:
“When we understand that creativity is a way of thinking that blends our imagination with the world around us, then true innovation can exist. It doesn’t need to be at the level where light bulbs are invented. Innovation can be scaled for a 1st grader. That scale might not be groundbreaking or revolutionary for a 9th grader, but it is important for us to know that value is subjective when analyzing the creative process for different ages.”
So if we are open to shifting our thinking, what is the next step? It lies in a famous quote from Steve Jobs who said “creativity is connecting things”. The ability to connect things lies in how we look at the relationship between people, places, and ideas. It’s in how we overcome one of the greatest obstacles to creativity – Functional Fixedness.
What is Functional Fixedness? I learned about Functional Fixedness at the crossroads of my Masters program and reading Daniel Pink’s drive. It was a pretty powerful moment to see two different takes on some good ‘ol Gestalt Psychology. In 1945, Dr. Karl Duncker defined functional fixedness as being a “mental block against using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem.”[1] It is with this definition that he created a rather interesting problem demonstrating Functional Fixedness. It also happens to be an all time favorite for those that attend some of my creative workshops. Sorry, spoiler alert.
So what is it about the problem that is so powerful? I have seen this problem solved in less than 5 minutes, while others still struggle well after half an hour. What the problem helps us understand is the mental barrier preventing us for looking for novel and unconventional solutions to the problems we face using the resources we have at our disposal. Resources that might not seem valuable or useful in a traditional sense. How we overcome this functional fixedness is by engaging in diverse experiences and with individuals with diverse backgrounds.
Before becoming a professional educator (I have always consider myself a teacher), I was by trade a designer, artist, marketer, and businessman. It was those experiences that I believe shaped my thinking and approaches to education. Now, I am not telling teachers to get a second job. I do however wonder why teaching programs do not give students experiences outside of teacher colleges to learn from and consume from a diverse group of experts, fields, and methods. (It was one of the things I wish my Masters in Education contained. A seminar on entrepreneurship or project management. My experiences outside of education, have shown me how valuable it is to diversify who and where you learn from. Everyone reading this should consider diversifying their resources and connections when looking to hone their educational craft. The true first step of developing a creative mindset is to find “creative” people in various industries to learn from. Not creativity as an idea, but creativity as a manifestation of success via non traditional or unexpected means. Creativity requires diversity to thrive. By tapping into talented and creative people in other industries, we can use those outlooks and abilities to impact our classrooms.
Here is one of my shortlists of those that have influenced me, inspired me to shift my thinking, and helped me succeed. They are all talented, creative, resilient, and most importantly, patient. These individuals are leaders in core areas that I feel are critical for learning about what a creative mindset looks like and how to think in new ways. They have books, podcasts, recorded keynotes, and other mediums to consume their awesome inspiration.
Gary Vaynerchuk – is a serial entrepreneur, media marketing master, author, and social media extraordinar. He also curses like a sailor which makes it slightly awkward for a Rabbi to endorse him. At the end of the day his message of “anyone can make it if they are patient, stick with it, and put in SERIOUS work.
John Maeda – is a designer, technologist, and influencers in the education and business spaces. He is the former president of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), professor at the MIT Media Lab, and consultant of Start Ups. He has mastered the way in which design and creative thinking can influence those looking to grow and to succeed.
Dr. Tina Seelig – is the head of Stanford’s Technology Ventures Program, and an author of many titles including “What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20”. This book changed my life forever and I looked to her many times for advice as I question why I am writing this book and who would ever want to read it.
Sir Ken Robinson – is an author and international speaker on education in the arts to government, institutions, and beyond. His 2006 TED talk on how schools kill creativity has been the single biggest influence on me as an educator and my work on helping schools create a culture of creativity.
So were open to shifting our thinking. We have resources to not just inspires us but to learn from. Now, we have to overcome the second hardest part to becoming more creative and that’s that it is not going to work the first time, or the second, or the tenth. We must be patient, reflective, and go all in on the long term and not let the short term tell us that it isn’t worth it and that we are fine with the way it is. Its about failing not due to lack of effort, but failing because its worth it, and we believe in ourselves and the process at hand. Its about being reflective and learning why we are failing by reflecting on it.
In education today if something does not work perfectly, or perform the first time we attribute it to some failure, assign it a letter grade and move on. To develop a creative mindset, that kaleidoscope of creativity, we need to be prepared to take risks and know that failure is the springboard for even greater success. Developing the capacity to be creative will require you to embrace the unknown as well and seek out others so journey with you. Whether your students, your colleagues, or a courageous leader at your school, we need to embrace risk and failure to achieve beyond but not in lieu of academic excellence. That is where innovation that promotes love and meaning in learning lies.
Summary
When asked what creativity is, we inevitably associate it with an actionable process, a talent, such as art, music, cooking, rather than the mindset that can actualize those talents and so much more. It’s not even our own fault. Look up creativity in the dictionary, and you will find a definition focused on original ideas, and artistic work. Who am I to argue with Webster, but this is my book, so I can tell you that they have it all wrong. Creativity is a mindset, a thought process, a method of analyzing the world around you. Its an experience that goes beyond making something from nothing, and instead about making something into something more.
[1] Duncker, K. (1945). “On problem solving”. Psychological Monographs, 58:5 (Whole No. 270).
When I was eight years old living in Southern California, my parents bought a video conferencing system to talk with my grandparents in Philadelphia. To this day I could never figure out how my grandfather, set it up on his end. The mammoth devices used a combination of wires to connect to our house phone and television delivering a blurry 200×100 image of my grandparents whose movement was delayed by 45 seconds as they their voices echoed through the telephone. It was at that moment through a mixture of “Hi Michael” , long pause, and a 45 second delayed handwave, that I realized technology was what I was going to use to change the world. That is because for me, having the latest and greatest tech was less about staying on the cutting edge, but more about trying to figure out ways in which technology could make people’s lives awesome.
So whether it was in the world of design, marketing, event planning, or education, I am constantly looking at how I can help others do amazing things because of not what technology an do, but because of what they can do with it.
So how do we help others master technology, and believe that it is a tool to help others do great things?
When I was a Director of Educational Technology, I thought stumbled on something amazing. It was 2011 and I was sitting in a packed conference room with 400 plus educators, learning about “100 apps for the English classroom”. As I sat there, I tried to discover the purpose, the magical essence of why anyone would need that many apps, methods, or approaches to anything in life, especially something so specific. That’s when it dawn on me, that in life, and in education we cannot use technology because of what it does, but because of what we can do with it. It’s about purpose and value. That’s how you master anything.
This catchphrase represented something pretty amazing in 2011. The idea that technology could allow us to engage, share, or create digitized experiences on just about any topic was amazing. As the years progressed and technology advanced, the question that I started asking is “why”? “Why do you need an app for that?” WHHHY!!!!??? Why do you need to digitize EVERYTHING?!?! Technology is a tool of productivity and efficiency. Digitizing our lives can actually make them more complicated, confusing, and delayed. The truth is that for real technology integration to occur, you must understand why to use a tool in the first place and what can be achieved through its use. One way I have found to be extremely successful when discussing the idea of integrating technology in a classroom is to challenge educators to think about familiar and so to speak “safe” technologies that we know and love. Think about a typewriter, a calculator, and yes even a pencil. They are familiar, timeless, and their singular functionality leads to expected results. What makes these devices so trusted? Is it the device or what we do with it? Remember when you learned how to drive? What excited you the most? The appreciation for how the gasoline powered the engine? How the differential properly distributes power to the wheels? Like most of us, our focus was not so much on the inner workings of our automobiles, but all of the awesome places we can get to.
You want to master cutting edge technology? What’s the purpose? What’s the value? I do not mean knowing how to use technology. I mean literally mastering the ability to output high quality content through technological means.
Now I don’t write about technology because I have all the answers, or because I found some magical (and easy) solution to classroom management woes. I also don’t write because I believe technology is THE answer. I do however believe that technology is like a garment. No matter how classy you look in that garment, it won’t change who the person wearing it truly is. That’s why it is a bit of a paradox. On one hand, technology clearly can make things awesome, yet at the same time it can’t be about technology. In the end, I believe that when any technology is harnessed properly, it has the ability to engage, enrich, and enliven our learning and our life. In education, we view technology as an external process that is added to teaching and learning. If we take the 20th century education practice, and simply slap on 21st century technology to be “cutting edge” what do we get? We get a horse and carriage that’s equipped with rockets and roller-skates.
Check out Seymour Papart’s book Mindstorms that uses a similar horse/carriage and jet engine analogy to technology.
So when looking at technology’s role in your classroom, the first question you must ask yourself is – Why? Why should I use technology in my classroom, and what will it do for me and my students? It is a hard question, because it might result in a realization that technology might prevent learning from being successful. So before we figure out how technology might magically solve a problem or make an experience amazing, let’s look at areas in which technology can help us. Remember that car? Well it won’t do much for you if you are trying to get from New York to London.
In education today, there at times can be an overemphasis on the value of specific skills. It is these skills that then define the success of our students. We then expect students to automatically appreciate and value these skill sets to the same degree as we do. Just last night I was discussing the value of memorization with a new colleague. He was adamant that memorization helps build capacity and allows for great problem solving skills later. While I agreed with him, I questioned memorization as a skills and ability rather than a rote process. I can recite to you the preamble, tell you where just about any country in the world is located, and even name drop a couple elements from the periodic table. For what?!? Why do I need any of that? Is it to be considered well rounded? Intellectual? Please. If my entire learning experience 4th-12th can be googled then what do I need school and learning for? This is NOT what we want our students to be able to say.
The struggle in education is that our reference point worked for us, but it simply does not work anymore. Technology has developed a tool for knowledge access and that is a threat. It’s the same level of threat as the pencil was to Socrates and the Greek methods of learning. What we need to do is step back and look at the essence of these skills that we are programing, I mean preparing our students succeed with are similar to mini Google search engines. The problem is that Google is way better than any student could ever become. Remember, a good robot stores and recalls information efficiently, executes commands within a hair’s breadth, and does not deviate from its pre-programmed parameters. Sound like the “ideal student” right? In the end, we are teaching students from a very young age not to think for themselves, discover on their own, and more importantly take risks knowing that those risks could help them reach a higher level in their learning. That is why it is critical to help students develop a mindset that focuses not just on skill and ability but on how they output and manage their learning experiences. As an educator we need to aid students in rising above these standardized skills as the sole method of success. This will also allow them to better understand technology’s role in helping them reach greater heights.
Now there are dozens of ways that technology can help us in teaching and learning. I have found the following four to be impactful but most importantly scalable. Yes even creativity is scalable.
This is one of the most critical areas of learning. Where is the evidence? How is success measured? How do I know you learned something, or better yet how do you know you learned something? In general this area is addressed via worksheets, quizzes, and cumulative tests. It’s all about the sumative. While there is nothing wrong with these assessment tools, they tend to rank low on the engagement scale, high on the anxiety scale, and give you a very standardized and even limited glimpse into the minds of students, only to the point of knowing they can regurgitate pieces of information and forget it after the test successfully. There are many ways in which technology is able to completely redefine how learning can been showcased as an artifact. These articles of learning can not only demonstrate students understanding but can also be used to support the learning of other students. The reason why I tend to describe student work as artifacts, is because I want student work to have life to it, and have substance. I want their work to tell a story. I want student work to be something someone can look at, learn from, and appreciate. I have never seen a worksheet achieve that, but you never know.
Artifacts of Learning in Theory
Traditional evidence of learning is found through essays, worksheets, and tests. Consider how technology can empower students to development artifacts that can provide evidence of understanding.
Artifacts of Learning in Practice
Using social engagement as a reference point, consider what excites students in today’s world. Look at how visual, audial, and interactive media outranks almost all other experiences. Look at how students could create a video, graphic poster, or interactive publication or game that provides the same or even greater level of understanding than traditional work. How can we design learning so that student output is used to facilitate the learning of other students? I share some lessons in depth in one of my iBooks here.
The creativite process seems to be purged right around the 3rd grade when students then become inundated with standardized and constraining learning experiences. We define creativity as a talent rather than a way of thinking and approaching problems to solve. These problems could be your own inter struggle of expression, or those affecting others. So how is creativity manifesting outside of our schools? Think for a moment about the massive success of social media. What is it that makes it so contagious? Two words, Creativity and Shareablity. At one point social media was about “what you ate for breakfast today” or “that awesome vacations to Tahiti”. The main players in the social media game Snapchat and Instagram have shifted their strategy to that of telling stories, and storytelling is ALL about creative expression. Creativity is about promoting ownership, choice, and knowing that others will benefit from or enjoy your work. Creativity pushes us to go the extra mile and challenges us to create a product or solution that makes an impact. While it’s ok to set limits and create guidelines, it is beyond vital to bring creativity back into the classroom. When I was in 9th grade I taught myself how to use Photoshop 6.0. While 1998 might not seem that long ago, it was still years before Youtube or Google, so my skill development was limited to experimentation, asking a friend, or Photoshop 6 for Dummies to master this complex software. Still, I was driven by a thirst for creativity and control, and drove me it did. Nearly 20 years later, I have taught Graphic Design courses to 5th graders, High Schoolers, and even at the College level through the lens of creative freedom, opportunity, and experience.
Creativity in Theory
Creativity is about challenging ourselves to thinking in a non linear way to solve problems, communicate ideas, and help others. It give a person pride and ownership that can be shared and seen by others. This is a powerful ingredient for the classroom.
Creativity in Practice
There are so many ways to engage creativity in the classroom. Students can use photograph, film, animation, and design to create projects that are unique. Further they can use strategies like Design Thinking to understand how 50 ideas synthesized together will solve a challenge to a greater degree than one or two ideas. Take a short movie or graphic poster for example. Such a project not only shows student learning but it can be used as a resource for others to learn from unlike a student’s filled in worksheet.
It all started with someone drawing in a cave. It might have just been some scratch paper, or maybe a manifesto for generations, but one thing is for certain. Humans are designed to connecting and communicate. Two of my favorite communication quotes are “Communication is key” and “Communication is a two way street”. It’s not enough for our students to simply understand their teacher They need the space and the ability for their teacher to understand them as well. This is one of areas in a classroom that is critical to foster a potentially positive and successful learning environment. Verbal, written, and even visual communication all play a role in how we connect and share information with each other. Our ability to communicate with students effectively and give them a voice as well will directly enhance the other areas of life and lead to an increase in student’s academic success.
Communication in Theory
Communication is one of those differentiation challenges every teacher faces. How, when, and to whom we communicate with is very complex. The question that should be asked is how can technology or other methods of instruction besides frontal teaching allow for communication to change or be enhanced.
Communication in Practice
Two amazing examples of how communication is redefined in the classroom is through the use of technology and student leadership. Technology can allow for discussions to take place in a way that students who are introverts can feel empowered to contribute to a conversation, or be used as an archive for reference later. Remember, you can’t be paused yourself, and while recording a lecture is one way of using technology, it does not produce a very engaging artifact. The second is student leadership which beyond clubs and the extra curricular, should be about identifying students who can be lead learning in the classroom. Instead of enriching advanced students with “extra work”, challenge them to help their peers. This is a nature always demonstrate their level of understanding of the material.
There is a double edge sword with efficiency. Efficiency doesn’t mean getting done quick or being first. At times, it might mean extending an experience to ensure that later down the road things will run quickly and smoothly. It’s where their short long road and the long short road meet up. In education, we are so focused on the short long road because of our ability to measure success more often. Many times in fear of not covering all the curriculum we rush through areas of learning, or feel that technology and other tools, methods, and process can not be incorporated for fear that we won’t meet curricular objectives. That is because efficiency is about quality AND quantity. Therefore it is critical as educators to ensure that we are making the best use of time, being properly organized, and clear in our expectations.
Efficiency in Theory
Efficiency allows for us to not just get work done, but complete it in an organized and effective way. This has two benefits. One is that it allows for work to be completed at a faster pace allowing for more learning to occur and second it allows for students to learn at a self paced rate allowing for enrichment for strong learners and support for struggling learners.
Efficiency in Practice
Mapping out learning is critical for success in the classroom. It isn’t enough for you to have a carefully planned lesson or unit outline. Students need to have this as well to allow for them to best organize and plan out their learning. Consider creating a week long list of objectives that promote student choice in how they are completed rather then you being the exclusive guide of the learning process.
These four areas should focus on complementing or enhancing your teaching practice and student learning. We sometimes compartmentalize teaching and learning. The crossover between the two is where meaningful learning occurs. These teas are meant to enhance the learning culture of the classroom to allow successful learning to occur. It also gives a foundation when considering how other models such as SAMR, TPACK, RAT, Design Thinking, and PBL can be used in the classroom to avoid extremes or overstauration of progressive models that can support learning. These are some of the fundamental skills to prepare students to succeed. In the end no model will achieve success without a high quality, passionate, and self-sacrificing educator in the room aka you.
There are so many places to start when trying to shift the culture of leadership in a school. Before I share where we should start, let’s get where we shouldn’t start out of the way.
So where should you start? Should you focus on grassroots bottom up passion, or a veteran top down approach? To truly innovate education, I see both are required. That also means looking at what and who is a leader a bit differently. In my experience in education, I have been a teacher, director, and even for a second was a final candidate for a principalship. What my experience in and out of education has shown me is that there are two ways to approach leadership. A leader can lead through their own strength, or lead through nurturing and empowering the strengths of others. At the end of the day, people only want to invest in something when they feel they are part of the process. Especially when the process directly affects them. You want all individuals to feel invested and inspired to contribute to the success of the venture. When people are involved at that level, they tend to be more passionate, driven, and willing to go the extra mile. While leadership that is about control and hierarchy can work, it only succeeds in the short term. I am not talking about toxic environments where power and submission are the goals of leadership, where schools have high turn over rate and a culture that is full of negativity. My only recommendation is that you either figure out how to fix it or get out. I feel most for those students who can “find a new school”. So back to the positive. Successful organizations without a doubt have clear leadership who ensure the vision and mission are inline with progress, but they understand that they cannot be successful without the unique skills of others. It is time that education looks outside of education to find progressive and successful models on leadership, development, and implementation.
Imagine a construction site with one of those 300 ft. cranes. They are set up and ready to go, but the foreman isn’t talking to the crane operator and the material isn’t ready because the architect and the contractor are busy fighting over the ratio of steel and concrete. What happens if the surveyor thinks he should be the lift operator, or one of the construction techs feels the foremen doesn’t support him? Is this building going to get built? The cost, time, and quality will all be in jeopardy if they cannot act as a true team. The challenge in education is that we are not building something. Rather, we are nurturing and preparing someone, and the final results are only seen long after they have left the four walls of our school. If the school leadership isn’t on the same page as the faculty, or giving a clear message of support. When teachers are not empowered take a risk to do something that would impact student learning in an amazing way, then how can success be met? How can we value test scores without losing focus of other ways to assess value and quality? Are we looking at students as people or as processes?
So how do we build out an awesome leadership approach? It goes like this:
One action item is discovering how to support risk. The lightbulb wasn’t perfected, the computer wasn’t developed and we sure didn’t land on the moon by playing it safe. There was a plan, but it was open to change based on how the process unfolded, and it is absolutely critical that you help guide and mentor your teachers to balance risk with planning that can lead to awesome learning experiences.
Educational Leaders are like…
You are the captain of the ship, just remember, the most majestic ship you can sail on your own is a row boat. Hashtag #LeadLAP
To reside here you must think outside of the box. You must believe that there might not even be a box to begin with. The question is why aren’t you sharing the wealth? Doing awesome work in your classroom is not enough, you must get the word out and share! Faculty leadership is a role that focuses on helping your colleagues who do not understand the purpose behind things like technology use. Faculty leadership is about helping colleagues that are intimidated by the “consequences” (It’s honestly sickening to imagine a school where teachers get consequences for trying to do something awesome for students) if they risk shifting their instructional practice. There are so many places to start lets say when considering technology’s role in a school. Where should you start? If you are reading this post, I assume you are on Twitter. It is the dominant medium in which my thoughts are blasted out. How many of your colleagues are NOT on Twitter, or social media beyond Facebook, because they don’t see how it ties into their professional toolbox? Get them on Twitter! A friend of mine who is a huge force in Education on social media shared the following thought with me. “People think I am big in Education because I have X thousand of followers. That is .01% of global educators. How are we connecting with the 99.99% of educators that are NOT on social media?” Social Media is a goldmine for educational resources and professional friendships with other passionate educators. Education programs in Higher Education MUST engage future teachers in how social media can support their development. Thankfully some forward thinking professors like Dr. Terri Cullin at University Oklahoma are incorporating this into their teacher programs.
We should strive to help our colleagues reach breakthroughs and have their minds blown by how epic student learning can be with technology and student empowering strategies. When I succeed in this area, I get something called “nachas” which when translated means a totally epic rush of sheer enjoyment and happiness. The reason your colleagues aren’t pioneering isn’t because their lack skills, or creativity. They are teachers and that means they are awesome, passionate, selfless, and thrive on helping others be successful. So lets support them and help them grow.
Faculty Leaders Are Like…
Your role is not just an innovator for yourself and your students, but a mentor to your colleagues in a way that an administrator simply cannot support.
Strong educational and faculty leadership are crucial but we tend to forget the most important member of the team – the students! As someone with years of experience in design and marketing (they call it storytelling now), I was shocked to discover that education the role of the student is almost identical to when I was in school. I thought as the world progressed, the role, responsibility, and input of students would have shifted as well. I am not sure how many students will read this but as their teacher you must understand the loss occurring in education today. No other industry on the planet engages with their “customers” the way schools do with students. A company that informed their clientele how things are and that they must conform would be bankrupt before year one was even done. Yet in education we dictate to students as if they are completely incapable of anything without our direct instruction. Yes, students need to learn to read, write, research, and learn to solve problems, but why does it have to be done via a worksheet??!? Why does it have to be done through passive experiences of lectures and transcription? Students need to be heard, take part, and help create their learning experiences. Even in 1st grade this can materialize, and students should be encouraged to take an active role in their learning. Anytime someone voices concern of the ability for a faculty member to master iMovie, I always look back to a video I saw years ago produced by year two kindergartens. We do not give our students enough credit when considering who is capability of being responsible to take charge of their education.
In design, the motto is client is king. If you want to keep your sanity, and be a successful designer, you must be empathetic and design to help your clients succeed through your designs, rather than you succeed through your good design. Students are the forgotten stakeholders. If they are part of an educational process, program, or new venture, they must be consulted via a panel, student council, or some sort of voice. They must be given a say to charge them with accountability, since in the end their follow through is the measure of success.
We must change this to truly innovative to scale in education.
Student leadership is like…
It doesn’t matter if your team has the best coaches, at the end of the day the players are who make the runs, scores the goals, and make the wins.
So where do we go from here? I would hope that schools would be open to develop a culture of multitiered leardership that involve students as a significant stakeholder in their education process. This isn’t a quick fix, or a semester project. This is a 24 month process that will have ups and downs, wins and fails, and might even shift along the way. We need to look at that long term when the short term is overwhelming us. We want change now but that’s not how the world works. We need more patience in education, that’s for sure.
When I was eight years old living in Southern California, my parents bought a video conferencing system to talk with my grandparents in Philadelphia. To this day I could never figure out how my grandfather, set it up on his end. The mammoth devices used a combination of wires to connect to our phone line and television, delivering a blurry 200×100 image of my grandparents. It was quite a scene. With a mixture of movement delayed by 45 seconds and their voices echoing through the telephone, I felt as if I was in a 14.4K internet induction program. It was at that moment though, through a mixture of “Hi Michael” , long pause, and a severely delayed handwave, that I realized technology was the tool I was going to use to change the world.
For me, having the latest and greatest technology was and is less about staying on the cutting edge, and instead about trying to figure out ways in which technology can make people’s lives awesome. Plain and simple. When I was 12 and sent my first email, to my father (It was 1997 and none of my friends had email), it was awesome. When I was 15 and I learned how to use Photoshop 6.0 on my own without YouTube to create graphic and media content, it was awesome. When I video conferenced with my grandmother at my wedding when she couldn’t be there due to health reasons, it was awesome. So what do these three stories have in common? Meaning. Each experience was life changing, meaningful, and allowed me to help make the lives of others better.
It’s easy to judge someone not embracing technology. It is 2017 after all. Have you wondered why? Have you tried to empathize with them and see from their perspective why technology isn’t viewed as something useful? There isn’t a dedicated teacher on the face of the planet who would pass up creating an engaging and thriving community of learning in their classroom. So why is an iPad, Chromebook, or laptop viewed as a barrier to achieving such an impactful reality? Once I understood that purpose and value must be viewed through an empathic lens, I was ready to impact education and support all faculty in adopting technology in their classrooms. Without empathy, I could not take credit for aiding in the successful launch of a 1:1 technology initiative. I couldn’t take credit for our school becoming an Apple Distinguished School 3 years after we went 1:1 and ditched that computer lab. Mind you that owning Apple products does not qualify you as a distinguished school, but rather, visionary leadership, innovative teaching and learning, evidence of success, use of learning spaces, and continued professional development. Many congratulated me, but at the ceremony in front of 800 members of our schools community I reminded them, this award was to the students who took charge of their learning with technology, and the teachers that helped them get there.
The students at my former school used technology to aid themselves in loving to learn. I must confess though that I haven’t always loved learning. It wasn’t the act of learning, rather it was the rigid and limiting way in which I was told how and what to learn but not why to learn. It’s ironic then, (like so many amazing educators) that I became the very thing that I didn’t appreciate. I became a teacher. In the beginning before any formal classroom roles, I didn’t even realize I was “teaching”. Soon enough, it was clear to me that I had a special ability to help people learn new things, and even more to learn new things on their own. After 3 years of teaching I then became a Director of Educational Technology, and it was in this role that I stumbled on something amazing. It was 2011 and I was sitting in a packed conference room with 400 plus educators, learning about “10,000 apps for the English classroom”. As I sat there, I tried to discover the purpose, the magical essence of why anyone would need that many apps, methods, or approaches to anything in life, especially something so specific. That’s when it dawn on me, that in life, and in education we cannot use technology because of what it does, but because of what we can do with it.
Now I am not writing about technology use because I have all the answers, or because I found some magical (and easy) solution to classroom management woes. I also didn’t write this because I believe technology is THE answer. I do however believe, or even bolder know that technology is a garment, and no matter how classy you look, it won’t change who the person wearing it truly is. That’s why this is a bit of a paradox. It’s about how technology can make things awesome, and at the same time isn’t about technology at all. In the end, I am writing this because I believe that when any technology is harnessed properly, it has the ability to engage, enrich, and enliven our learning and our life.
This catchphrase represented something pretty amazing in 2011. The question is how far have we come writing this in the middle of 2017? The idea that technology could allow us to view, share, or make digitized experiences on just about any topic is amazing. As the years progressed and technology advanced, the question that I started asking is “Why do you need an app for that?” WHHHY!!!!??? OR worse, “Why do you need to digitize EVERYTHING?!?!” Technology is a tool that provides ability, productivity, and efficiency. Digitizing our lives can actually make them more complicated, confusing, and delayed. The truth is that for real technology integration to occur, you must understand why to use a tool in the first place and what can be achieved through its use. One way I have found to be extremely successful when discussing the idea of integrating technology in a classroom is to challenge educators to think about familiar and so to speak “safe” technologies that they know and love. Think about a typewriter, a calculator, and yes even a pencil. They are familiar, timeless, and their singular functionality leads to expected results. What makes these devices so trusted? Is it the device or what we do with it?
Remember when you learned how to drive? What excited you the most? The appreciation for how the gasoline powered the engine? How the differential properly distributed power to the wheels? Like most of us, our focus was not so much on the inner workings of our automobiles, but all of the awesome places we would get to go.
So when looking to shift the mindset of a skeptical teacher, maybe this teacher is you, and their view of technology’s role in their classroom, the first question we must help them answer is – Why? Why should we use technology in our classroom, and what will it do for us and our students? It is a hard question, because it might result in a realization that one possible outcome is that technology may prevent learning from being successful. So before we figure out how technology might magically solve a problem or make an experience awesome, let’s look at areas in which technology can help us. Remember that car? Well it won’t do much for you if you are trying to get from New York to London.
It’s with this shift in mindset for both the techno-addicts and technophobics that together we can ensure that students are given the chance to not just redefine their learning, but prepare them for a way of thinking and processing to thrive in the world of tomorrow.
In 2012, while attending my first ISTE conference, I was both overwhelmed and inspired by the literary thousands of ways that technology could be used in the classroom. Sessions like “60 Apps in 60 minutes” and “100 Apps for the English Classroom” seemed to be staple session titles. These sessions seemed like standard protocol and “best practice” when looking at technology’s role in the classroom.
I have always had technology in my life, from America Online, to building my own computers, to early 90’s video conferencing. The unique experience, I feel, especially when hearing people reminisce of real old-school tech, is that my technology did things, and it did them with simplicity and ease. This critical point should be acknowledged, that in the 90’s technology truly became a consumer product that could get things done.
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