Catalytic Conversations

Success Strategies for Working Students: The 'Learn and Earn' Baker's Dozen

2011-11-05T09:34:00.001-05:00

Coming soon will be the newest book from the Workforce Institute at Kronos, "Elements of Successful Organizations." Joyce Maroney, their ever-energetic leader, has been the driver of a host of interesting dialogs on the state of workforce development and effective engagement of employees. Check out their website at http://www.workforceinstitute.org/ for more their continuing good work.

I had the pleasure of writing the concluding chapter in this book, entitled "Success Strategies for Working Students: The 'Learn and Earn' Bakers Dozen." Joyce gave me licence not to write the chapter for people managers, but for the people themselves--working students in particular. It's a quick review of 13 key success strategies drawn from research and practice aimed at helping students learning and earning--progressing through higher education while working--move faster down their pathways to possibility. From getting clear to getting tenacious to getting smart about choosing the colleges or universities they attend, the strategies outlined in this short chapter are intended to help working learners begin to ask hard questions early and often. Joyce has the chapter up on the WFI blog here, and the printable version is available here.

I hope the piece helps start good conversations in your company or educational institution. More important, however, the intent is to help working learners start well and finish strong on their learning journeys. Enjoy!

Pathways to Possibility

2011-07-02T10:23:00.001-05:00

I’ve taken a bit of a break on the blog for the last year or so. I’ve been diving into some fascinating learning experiences in philanthropy and beyond—and focusing more on other social media outlets. However, some reading this morning compelled me to engage this conversation form again.

What struck me was the increasing cacophony around college completion and whether “going to college” is for everyone. Some question the investment in a college education given the cost in time, money, and effort. Others have an outdated view of what “college” is and confound the argument by scoping it to four-year degrees. A couple of articles in the last week tackle many of these issues head on and are worth the read:

In Even for Cashiers, College Pays Off, David Leonhardt quotes MIT labor economist David Autor as saying, “sending more young Americans to college is not a panacea…not sending them to college would be a disaster.”

Derek Thompson’s What's the Best Investment: Stocks, Bonds, Homes ... or College? reminds us of the importance of time in a college investment – “if you don't feel like college is paying off ... maybe just wait a little. School is an appreciating asset whose value accelerates in growth until you reach middle age.”

But there’s more to this discussions than making the case for college—because it’s not really about college. It’s about pathways to possibility. It’s about enabling strivers—people hell bent on improving their lives—to get on positive paths that lead to better futures. In short, helping those with the will, find the way to live well and free.

For more and more Americans that future will involve education and training beyond high school. Economist Anothony Carnevale’s work makes the case that we need to help more young people realize this fact if our economy is going to hum in the years to come. Education reformer Geoffrey Canada pushes this issue further, arguing there is no future for business if we don’t get more of our low-income students in particular to and through college. Moreover, he argues that lowering the education expectations for the poor runs counter to what rich people do for their own children. Still, we can’t slip into more is better for everyone. The challenge is to prepare people for the paths that are “on purpose” for them. Check out Shop Class as Soul Craft for an articulate argument about the value of different paths to better futures and lives with deeper meaning that might not fit the norm.

What I hope we keep in mind as we continue the conversation about the increasing need for education is that while we do care about keeping our economy strong, our efforts should be rooted in a deep conviction that we want students willing to do the work to succeed on paths that are right for them. We should work to shine a bright light on the value of deeper learning and careers with both economic opportunity and personal meaning; but equally important, we should aggressively clear the brush of bureaucracy and eliminate nonsensical busy work that wipe too many strivers out. If you want to get motivated to take on this work, check out the Degrees of Difficulty site and watch videos submitted from today’s “traditional” students to get a sense of the effort they are putting in to these journeys.

Education experiences should add value and map to desired future opportunity. We cannot afford to dead-end folks on single-track credential or career pathways of no return. Indeed, we should do the hard work of stacking and syncing credential pathways to enable educational experiences less encumbered for the long run—enabling real lifelong learning. Most of all, we should not be taken hostage by the tyranny of “the one best way.” Our students may need to take more time, achieve smaller credential wins to pay for life along the way to bigger career goals. Particularly for low-income students, their support systems are rarely strong and their lives are far from simple. A certification along the way to an AA, or an AA on the way to a BA, can mean the difference between a living-wage job or welfare when “life happens”—e.g., kids get sick, plant closes, car breaks down—and the college journey has to stop for a time

My wife Julia and I have large and diverse extended families. We have relatives who work in the military, home construction, heavy equipment, retail, small business, education, software development, insurance, banking, and more. And we have relatives that have earned industry certifications, AAs, BAs, BSs, PhDs, EdDs—and soon an MBA & JD—from public, private, for-profit, and not-for-profit providers. They’ve worked hard to achieve the credentials they needed—some are still working—and are in careers that make sense for them. They are on their pathway to possibility. I’m sure many of you see the same diversity in your own families.

It’s not about college for all. It’s about an America where diverse pathways to possibility are clear and compelling; and where those willing to do the work of the journey can succeed.

Proceed Until Apprehended: Reflections on the Big Ideas Fest

2009-12-15T18:56:00.003-05:00

Now that was interesting--the Big Ideas Fest 2009. I came away from this confluence of conversations more convinced than ever that the work of education is ripe for change.

Brewster Kahle set a bold tone from the beginning by calling for “universal access to all knowledge.” Using the work of the Internet Archive as a frame for the discussion, he challenged the preconceptions that we technically or logistically can’t make this vision real. His dream of a digitally fueled, open, and mobile-device-accessible version of the Library of Alexandria was a grand stretch of the mind. Why not? Seeing the progress of the Open Library project in particular gives us hope.

Alan Kay pushed forward, challenging participants—all of whom were working through an education innovation design process made up of identifying, designing, prototyping, and scaling action collabs—to move beyond just big ideas. He argued that all big ideas challenge common sense, but they are only meaningful when they transform into powerful ideas. He used the example of the common sense notion of not too long ago that “kings are natural and normal.” The big idea that challenged this conventional wisdom came from folks like Thomas Paine, who maintained it is not the King that is the law, it is the law that is king. But such a big idea in and of itself is impotent until it is put into action. It became a powerful idea in practice through documents like the United States Constitution.

He argued that while most would point to technology as a big idea with powerful potential, unfortunately, it was mostly used to dress up conventional approaches. Most uses of technology in education have been to imitate or animate paper, or to automate or expedite existing processes and techniques. Can we leverage technology tools in a way that is really supporting a big idea and leading toward a powerful idea?

The rapid-fire, TED-like, action collab-framing discussions pushed the boundaries further, exploring extra-institutional learning, connecting gangster rap to ancient literature, dynamic digital learning communities driven by students, student perceptions of our change initiatives, hands-on experiential learning models, gaming, global competencies, interdisciplinary interaction, entrepreneurial learning outreach, making teachers rock stars, and more. These 15-minute bursts of energy kept the momentum and stirred the conversation among a broad set of education professionals, advocates, and change agents.

But wrapping the four days into a bow for me was the thread of conversation from the fabric of student experience. For example, students from Road Trip Nation participated in the fest, sharing their stories and interviewing the on-site educators. They wove in an important personal connection to this convocation: “I didn’t drop out, I was pushed out---and no one came looking.”

Adding to this chorus was Sandy Shugart’s poetry and song-filled, after-dinner dialogue on our ability to truly connect with the rising post-modern student. Are we ready to hear their stories, accept their voices, and truly care about their condition? Or will they simply be reduced to data points in a customized, technology-infused, newly-minted learning infrastructure? Can we create authentic and meaningful connections with students? If so, could it be that these connections will count most in a post-industrial creative economy? Could both of these be true: All high touch with no high tech is unnecessarily restrictive and regressive while all high tech with no high touch is necessarily impersonal and impotent?

Of course, as with any stimulating event, more questions were raised than were answered. But that’s what made it satisfying. And working to answer these questions using tools like the innovation design process with the passion proposed by Yvonne Chan—“proceed until apprehended!”—seems like a great idea.

A Time for Big Ideas

2009-10-23T09:43:00.003-05:00

On December 6-9, 2009, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME)—the research institute that champions the open education movement and developed the award-winning treasure trove of teaching resources, Open Education Resource Commons—will be hosting the first annual Big Ideas Fest. This small, interactive, and innovative event will be held just outside of San Francisco and the Silicon Valley, in Half Moon Bay, CA.

With support from a broad base of foundations, corporations, and non-profit organizations, Big Ideas Fest intends to bring innovative doers and thinkers from all levels of education together to explore “big ideas in education” that will better position us for a post-industrial world. From small moves to big systemic change, everything is on the table.

It is a time for these big ideas. We’ve talked about why on this blog for some time. From economic viability to international competitiveness to personal efficacy, education is seen as a lynchpin. Indeed, it’s seen as the key to national, local, and personal readiness and transcendence.

The Obama administration’s US Department of Education, under the leadership of Arne Duncan, is being praised for their approach to this challenge, which includes a push for new, novel, and data-informed change models. From its Race to the Top initiative for K-12—see David Brooks outlook on this program in today’s NY Times—to the $12 Billion community college initiative, they are clearly hoping to push the envelope. And they are not alone. I just spent three days in Alberta, Canada, attending their Inspiring Education event. Under the leadership of their Minister of Education, Dave Hancock, they have engaged a deep, thoughtful, and long-term process to explore how they bring new, innovative, and inspiring strategies to their education system on the road ahead.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation leaders are also in search of big ideas in education for the United States. From their early college high school efforts to their post-secondary double the numbers drive, they are exploring a range of programs to change the game in education. They are joined by—and often partner with—other leading foundations such as the Lumina Foundation for Education. With their Achieving the Dream, Knowhow2go.org, and Making Opportunity Affordable efforts, Lumina is hard at work as well. And both Gates and Lumina have something in common—neither seems to believe the answer to our education challenges involves simply working harder at our current system.

It is indeed a time for big ideas. It’s why I’m excited to join conversations like the Big Ideas Fest. It’s why I continue to be impressed by not only the large-scale initiatives outlined above, but by the day-to-day innovations, insights, and inspirations that come from the classroom teachers, caring administrators, and hard-working staff that I meet across the country and around the world. Somewhere in this mix are the game changing strategies that can help us better connect with students, and help them move more purposely down the pathway to possibility that is education.

Belting Technology Users

2009-09-16T15:14:00.003-05:00

I’ve been uncomfortable with the metaphor of digital natives and digital immigrants for some time. The idea behind it is that some are “born into” the world of technology; they’ve grown up with it—like Don Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital—and have an almost intuitive sense of what it can and should do. Others who are older, or on the wrong side of the digital divide, are cast as immigrants busily trying their best to assimilate—or aggressively not (think Luddite).

While a compelling concept that is certainly useful at some level, the digital native metaphor makes it sound like the digital immigrant will always be on the outside looking in. It feels too much like a fixed wall between haves and have nots. Most important, I know too many incredibly tech-savvy “seasoned” professionals for whom this metaphor doesn’t hold at all. They intuit circles around their supposedly “native” students when it comes to technology use. There has to be a better way of thinking about these differences.

The model I’ve been using for some time in workshops and speeches is less based on what you’re born into and more focused on mastery. It emerged from an article I wrote about seven years ago called Getting a Kick Out of Technology, which was based on my own technology-based learning and martial-arts experience. This article got me thinking about another way to conceive of differences in skills sets and approaches to technology: Belts. And just as the Six Sigma world has taken to the belt metaphor because of its emphasis on growth and development, we too can leverage it.

We all know technology white belts—beginners who either want to or have to begin their instruction and are taking their first steps. They’re awkward, they make mistakes regularly, and they can be quite dangerous. Black belt martial artists will quickly tell you it’s far more dangerous to spar an untested white belt than a trained fighter with control. White belts often swing wildly and are less aware of the power of their strikes. The world is full of white belt technology users. From the hasty forwarding of obvious scam emails to posting strange comments on your Facebook wall to excitedly responding to requests for bank information from Nigerian royalty, they’re not hard to spot.

Up the belt levels we go. Green belt technology users have learned the basics, are more in control, and are beginning to see how they can use technology without being used by it. Brown belt users have significant skill sets using a wide array of technology tools, but still have much to master—particularly the issue of balancing technology use with the art of mindfully relating with others.

Black belt users have mastered the core skills. They have control of why, how, and when they use technology. Most important, as in the martial arts, they have a sense of responsibility to help others learn their art. Also, black belts know there is much more to learn—it’s the beginning of their journey. As they move up the degrees of their black belts, they master more and more but realize how much they still don’t know.

I especially like the belt metaphor because it focuses on growth, development, and mastery—not existing states that aren’t likely to change. Much like Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success, it doesn’t glorify innate gifts as much as it recognizes effort, experience, and insight—not to mention the good fortune to have access to the tools and teaching. For example, faculty members and students at colleges that have focused Centers for Teaching and Learning that provide technology use and instructional design support systems are simply much more fortunate and likely to better leverage technology. They have a much stronger techno-edu-dojo, if you will.

The metaphor also works because black belts in both martial arts and technology often intimidate us. There’s an air of mystery to their mastery. But as black belts in both arenas will confess, their mastery is less about mystery and more about a continually focused effort, the willingness to try, and an openness to learning.

Explosive Introspection

2009-06-18T10:02:00.003-05:00

It was the ocean’s fault. Having grown up on the west coast, I’ve always been struck by the ability of an ocean view to give me pause. It’s like nature grabs me by the shoulders and commands me to pay attention, telling me, “You need to take a moment.” This time it was an east coast moment in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on vacation with my family. Even while swirling in the glorious maelstrom that is a family vacation with four kids, an ocean view-induced bout of introspection—about introspection—grabbed me by the shoulders.

Over the last year, I’ve been leading focus groups and holding dialogs with educators nationally and internationally exploring the question of readiness. Will our students be ready for the dramatic changes on the road ahead? Will we be ready to help them get ready? Is our education system up to the task? Given the dramatic changes at hand, what are the essential skills our students need to possess?

Out of these conversations, teachers, employers, government leaders, and parents have consistently highlighted the value of introspection as a transcendent learning skill—a skill that can prepare students to rise above their current state and achieve more. However, outside of the laudable efforts of the writing across the curriculum movement over the last few decades, introspection is a practice that many are not comfortable weaving into their instruction. At minimum, the students in our focus groups comment that the ubiquitous multiple choice tests they slog through don’t lend themselves to deep reflection. For some educators, introspection is too closely linked to religious practice. For others, it’s simply too “soft.” Still, echoing up through the passages of time, Socrates exhorts, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Introspection matters. Indeed, one of the key leadership lessons we review in our work with teams and individuals is the importance of going slowly—reflecting on ideas, issues, innovations, and connecting with people—so you can move quickly. Hardly the sexy, fast-paced technology tool, introspection remains a timeless skill our students need to develop and master for their learning today and their lives tomorrow.

To spark your own conversations about introspection, here’s a framework that materialized out of a couple of our dialogs. I call it “explosive introspection,” because it involves TNT: Triggers, Noise and Tools.

Triggers
Most people are forced into introspection when emotional events trigger such a reaction—the death of someone close, a relationship ending, or a major accident of some kind. When unexpected events or powerful external forces disrupt the rhythms of our lives, introspection is almost guaranteed. I’ve argued that it is the courage to act on triggered introspection that has driven many adults back into learning. Many will relate their current bearing to triggers that led to introspection, which led to action.

Also, internal triggers can lead to introspection—the sinking feeling that you’re not on the right path, something is wrong, this is not your purpose. It’s that still, small voice speaking to us in stolen moments through an intuition or insight. Listen to the lyrics of Ask for More by David Wilcox to hear the voice of these moments. While these internal triggers are often less explicit, they wield the same power as external ones.

Noise
External triggers seize our attention because they brandish the power to slash through the noise of our everyday lives. In our forums, people ranging from business leaders to busy parents discussed the challenge of noise. For a corporate team, noise from messy meetings and poor communication blocks them from quality reflection on major issues. For college students, the noise accompanying their newfound freedom and friends often misleads them to take dangerous, unthinking turns in their first semesters on campus. For older and returning students, the noise of list-heavy lives—caring for kids, parents, and an outside job—make contemplation difficult, reflection frustrating.

Noise plagues us all. Cell phones ring, emails ping, and kids scream in the background—the incessantly distracting world of the typical home worker. Ed Hallowell’s Crazy Busy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap is a great read on the topic. Hallowell tackles the noise of multitasking in particular—how we go juggling through our world with persistent partial attention. We have a hard enough time listening to the person standing right in front of us, much less the still, small voice from within.

Tools
External and internal triggers have an inevitable and irreplaceable role in our lives. At the same time, the distracting noise of modern living is a diversion to looking within. As a result, we must expose our students to beneficial, proactive tools that lead to introspection, so they are not simply at the mercy of external events. In the realm of Continuous Quality Improvement, reflection tools like plus/delta and affinity diagramming allow teams and individuals to achieve this. For larger and more personally reflective models, see the work of the Center for Renewal and Wholeness in Higher Education. On the individual level, teachers in our groups offered tools like training students to keep a journal or simply writing one-page reflection papers. Other students and teachers noted how blogging can trigger introspection. Again, the goal is not to rely on reactive, externally triggered introspection, but to initiate proactive, internally disciplined reflection.

These triggering tools, however, must be accompanied by habits that dial down the noise—both the noise of our personal lives and the cacophony of “a world gone A.D.D.,” as Hallowell describes it. An executive in one group suggested, “Do less to do more.” I’ve always talked about reducing variables in a situation—a principle drawn from research design. Hallowell suggests challenging ourselves to reduce the multitasking and move toward a more mindful approach to situations, particularly with people. The Buddhist philosophy on the topic is simple: one. In one moment, focus on one thing, and do that one thing well.

Then there is earth, wind, and fire (no, not the band). Participants loved the arresting power of the outdoors. Absorbing a stunning view, sitting by a camp fire, and strolling down a quiet path were all mentioned as tools to help learning and reflection. Moreover, several people talked about the importance of play and fun in activating introspection. In the playful book Work Like Your Dog, Barber and Weinstein suggest 50 ways to work less, play more and earn more. How often are we encouraging our students in this direction? Not enough. Even with studies extolling the virtues of exercise and aesthetics in learning, many of our public schools are busy cutting recess and stomping out artistic reflection.

Finally, when groups examine this issue, they always arrive at the idea of ensuring that technology moves from being a problem—raging ring tones, tempting texts, seductive social networking, PowerPoint presentations with neither power nor point—to a tool of introspection. From the ability to instantly search for information that can serve as the grist of introspection to the capability of the DVR to stop live TV so a couple can take a moment to talk, this fact remains: We can harness the beast. I’ve long said we need to make sure we are using technology, not being used by it. See The Road to DotCalm in Education and Pavlovian Problems for a couple of takes on this topic. The key to remember is that, however advanced, all of our tech toys have off buttons. We just need to use them more.

Playing with TNT
Tomes upon tomes have been written on the topic of introspection. From religion to cognitive sciences, we have labored to harness its incredible power. And it continues to emerge as a necessary and transcendent learning skill for our students. Indeed, Harvard Professor Howard Gardner argues that introspection is an essential element of one of Five Minds for the Future – the ethical mind. As people engaged in personal development, economic development, and societal advancement, we neglect it to our peril. We need to stop and pay attention. The explosive introspection frame that has developed in these conversations is at least one way to take a breath, bring the conversation up, and reflect on the need for reflection. And if we listen closely, we just might hear the explosion of possibilities introspection can ignite.

We Want YOU . . . to Learn: The Education Imperatives

2009-03-23T11:29:00.012-05:00

If you’ve been working in the education field for some time, you’re used to hearing the imperatives. They are supported by compelling arguments about why education matters, why investing in education makes sense, why ignoring our education systems’ performance seems individually and collectively misguided. Still, we are challenged to make the case again and again—to ensure that education is a productive part of the national and international dialogue. Today there are at least three key imperative arguments in play.

The Individual Imperative
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Because of Socrates’ dogged commitment to seeking truth, he was being tried for corrupting young minds; yet he still challenges us with these words to question, critically evaluate, and approach the world with wonder. Critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, and the related habits of mind are at the heart of why education matters to each of us. Quality education frees us; it enables us to break the silence of status quo and look at life as our chance to add to the conversation, not just shut up and listen. Moreover, it engages us in artistic and creative pursuits that elevate and illuminate our human condition.

Of course individual economic returns count as well. Particularly today, if you want to participate in a globally connected, knowledge-fueled economy, education is the pathway to possibilities. Those without education have fewer and fewer options. While the relationship is not absolute, all you have to do is visit a prison and examine the background of those held to see that there is some relationship between education attainment and options. Whether through degree programs or quality technical training, the argument is simple: If you want to live well, learn well.

It’s the interplay of living free and well that is at the heart of the individual imperative. The education arguments aimed at you personally will almost always emphasize either the enlightenment or enlightened self-interest appeal.

The Community Imperative
If we advance the argument to the next level—our communities—you see a natural extension. For example, if we want a true participatory democracy, we need well educated and thoughtful citizens. Emerging advanced analytics and political micro-trend analysis create new opportunities to manipulate and strategically persuade a poorly educated public. Thomas Jefferson said it best, “if we want a nation that is ignorant and free, we want what never was and what never will be.” Additionally, if we want communities with vibrant arts and related creative enterprises, a quality education system is essential.

However, the citizenship and artistic elements of the community imperative cannot compete these days with the frenetic embrace of the economy-related community argument. From Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded to Florida’s Who’s in Your City, pundits, politicians, writers, and researchers are making the case that our economic future is inextricably connected to our ability to educate our citizens.

Sadly, the data for the US are not good. Of the top thirty developed economies, ours is the only country whose 25-34 year-old cohort is actually less educated than its 45-54 year-old cohort. We used to lead the world in education attainment, but now we are falling behind. In a knowledge economy—or a creative conceptual economy as Pink likes to call it—we need brain power. The other players on the field are investing in education—China, India, Brazil, Korea, and the European Union. And while many of them have a long way to go to educate most of their citizens, they have sheer size on their side. The ubiquitous Did You Know presentations make the surprising claim that China actually has more honors students than we have students. While many of the competitive claims are a bit hyperbolic, we still must take pause and realize that, as Friedman shares, “if we want things to stay as they are [i.e., the US a leading player in the world economy], things will have to change.” For us to keep up, education must change so our economic outlook can change.

Patriotic Imperative
Not since Sputnik spurred on a massive investment in math, science, and engineering has the call been as clear: getting an education is patriotic. From Sputnik’s launch in 1957 through the 1960’s, we worried about the national defense implications of other countries advancing technologically. We invested heavily in programs and policies to enable us to jump back into the lead in science and technology.

Today, in addition to national defense, we worry about our economic competitiveness and sustainability in a world increasingly fueled by insight, innovation, and creativity. And when creativity is a commodity, we have to ask hard questions about why we’re stripping out the heart of that infrastructure in our public education system. Of course we need strong reading, writing, math, and science programs. Yet art, music, and theatre—as well as career and technical education—provide the context in which these skills are applied. Focusing on one over the other makes as much sense as going fishing only knowing how to cast.

Moreover, it is clear that we are facing increasingly complex, systemically intertwined issues: for example, medical advances and their ethical implications, the balance between access to information and privacy, and the interplay between economic expansion and environmental sustainability. There are no easy answers here; and sound-bite policy and limited thinking likely will cripple us in the long run.

President Obama made the strongest case for the patriotic imperative in his February speech to Congress. His message to kids considering leaving high school: “dropping out is not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country.” His challenge to adult learners: use our community colleges and public universities to get at least one year of higher education. He sees clearly the connection between his larger agenda and the ability of this nation to raise the bar on learning to a new level.

We Need YOU to Learn
Yes, education is good for us individually. It opens our eyes and—in today’s economy—it helps us feed our families. It follows that our communities are better off politically, aesthetically, and economically when more of us are educated well. However, we again find ourselves at a time when we must elevate the patriotic imperative. We need to truly become, and actively foster, a nation of learners ready and willing to embrace rookie courage, attend the latest seminar, take the extra training, and question even the most compelling claims. Indeed, our country is turning to us to say, “we need YOU to learn!”

The Change We Need in Education

2009-02-02T16:04:00.005-05:00

*Dear President Obama,

Congratulations on running a stellar campaign and bringing such energy and enthusiasm to the electoral process. A special thank you for demonstrating what a “new generation” campaign should look like: inclusive, engaging, informative, and exciting. Your use of social networking, web resources, and advanced data analytics combined with the best of traditional campaigns—on-ground volunteers, phone banks, and community organizing—was stunning.

By the way, this is exactly what we’re looking for on the road ahead in education. We’re looking to leverage new generation technologies combined with the best of education tradition to engage, excite, and educate students in powerfully positive ways. As you noted in your campaign, education is going to be essential to prepare America to compete in tomorrow’s economy. As you well know, your administration’s aggressive environmental, health, and economic transformations will be short lived—if not abject failures—if we don’t ready our educators and educational systems to prepare our students for the change to come.

As a first step, educators need to be ready to champion digital and information literacy as a basic skill—for themselves and their students. With our students, we can’t assume that because they play video games or text endlessly that they are ready to leverage technology in the workplace or as citizens. To build digital muscle for both students and teachers, we should exercise more options to learn with new technologies. At a minimum we should expand our use of blended and online resources. This means ensuring a national broadband infrastructure for our schools, Smart Boards and projectors in our classrooms, and virtual school resources beyond the buildings. We should also explore how we bring mobile devices into learning, gaming into instruction, social networking into academic communities, and advanced analytics into assessment, counseling, and teaching.

Regarding advanced analytics, in our everyday lives, we see Amazon use these tools to give us instantaneous book recommendations, iTunes uses them to customize its “Just for You” section, and credit card companies leverage them to catch fraudulent charges. But imagine if we could use these tools to give our learners instant access to learning resources based on their assessed needs—e.g., “students like you who had these difficulties in algebra have found these web-lessons useful.” Or imagine if our counselors had analytic systems to help them identify and intervene with the most at-risk students before they dropped out. Given our dropout rates in high schools and underprepared-student challenges in higher education, the imperative to leverage these advanced analytics for more than shopping or TV watching should be an imperative.

However, as your campaign modeled, we can’t just throw out the tried and true because of tantalizing technology. We need the best of both worlds. We need to recommit ourselves to the traditions of emphasizing the human touch, fostering mindfulness in educators and students, and inspiring the best of critical thinking as we all wrestle with technology’s problems of persistent partial attention. Indeed, the longstanding tradition of educators working together to imbue our students with strong habits of mind is more important than ever before. The potential of marketers and Machiavellian special interests to manipulate this generation of kids is staggering. We must remember Thomas Jefferson’s admonition: “if a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it wants what never was and what never will be.” In today’s digital democracy, this has never been truer.

As they take on this change, our educators will need our state and federal education systems to incent and reward their efforts. As a result, our systems have to become more nimble and responsive. Our students will be learning for a lifetime, so building strong institutional partnerships between early-childhood, primary, secondary, post-secondary, and continuing workforce education (public and private) is a must. The expansion of early college high-schools, dual-enrollment programs, and institutional articulation agreements is essential.

In addition, the traditional “education pipeline” metaphor needs to be retired. Instead, we are better served as policy makers to think of our diverse students as swimming in a lifetime learning swirl—flowing in to and out of our education systems at all ages and stages. Correspondingly, policy that rewards partnerships, powers technological innovation, and recognizes and rewards student progress (e.g., laddered credentials) is vital. Moreover, we can’t just measure our success in these endeavors against static, 20th-century benchmarks. We need to embrace more complex growth models for students and diverse goal sets for institutions.

There are of course key tactical steps we have to take—continue to aggressively expand science, technology, engineering, and math education, and integrate globalization more fully into our curricula. However, it is the larger strategy of taking the best of our education traditions with the transformational tools and progressive policies at hand that will truly outfit us for the road ahead. That is the powerful lesson we can learn from your successful run for the presidency. And, like your campaign, we’ll need your leadership to take on a big-picture, 50-state strategy to drive this positive transformation.

Again, congratulations on the inspiring embrace of change in your campaign—and the happy result! Here’s hoping that we can embrace this model in our world and bring the change we need to education.

Sincerely,

Mark David Milliron, Ph.D.
President and CEO
Catalyze Learning International

*this open letter to President Obama was first published by Scholastic Administrator

A 2009 State of Mind

2009-01-02T10:57:00.007-05:00

Buckle your seatbelts. 2009 is looking like a difficult year. From all reports, more homes will fall into foreclosure and retirement accounts will shrink. More businesses will close and jobs will be lost.

Our schools will be called upon to raise standards higher, even as their budget allocations sink. Public universities and colleges will have the best of times and the worst of times. Enrollments will burgeon as displaced workers go back to school, in-place students stay longer to wait out the economy, and a changing job market demands more educational attainment. But the money needed to expand services will not follow. More accountability with less funding for the colleges and an affordability crisis for the students will be the standard fare.

These challenges notwithstanding, opportunity beckons. A new administration is about to take over in Washington, bringing hope that brighter days are ahead. We’ve been promised that we’re finally going to tackle the perennial problems of healthcare, infrastructure, energy, and the environment—issues that often need a crisis to create the collective will to act.

While the prospects for some businesses stink, some entrepreneurs smell opportunity—a once-in-a-lifetime chance to displace the “big players” that have fallen on hard times. In the world of education, the need for quality learning has never been greater. In addition, we have more exciting techniques and technologies maturing and emerging to teach and reach students than at any time in history. The promise of dynamic, engaging, lifelong learning seems within reach.

So pick your poison. Desperation and desire are driving human motivators; and in 2009 we seem to have both in abundance. Motivation isn’t the problem. The problem we must face is getting our mind around this moment and readying ourselves to take on these challenges and opportunities in the best way possible. Put another way, our charge is to approach this coming time with the right state of mind to make the most of the moment. Here are seven ways I propose for the 2009 state of mind—a mindset that will position us for a more promising road ahead.

Tough Minded
These are not times for the faint of heart. We’ll need individuals and organizations ready and willing to face the brutal facts about what is happening in our world, work, and learning. Our challenges require good-intentioned, well-informed critical thinkers to help us move beyond angry screeds against the status quo to engaging explorations that include everything from the analyses of hard data to the work of soft reflections.

Moreover, in the face of often-harsh realities, we must not be frightened by the new and novel. From the auto industry to the banking world to failing schools to under-performing colleges, we have plenty of examples of environments ready for a thoughtful, critical look.

Beyond inspection and reflection, we need critical projection as well—hard thinking about what could happen by leveraging our best visioning and analytics. Even schools and colleges are beginning these progressive, prospective analyses. 2009 will be a time for thorough, tough-minded, thinking, planning, and execution.

Action Oriented
Facing hard truths can make us lose heart. Whether we’re talking about our bottom lines or drop-out rates, we may ask, “how did we ever let it get this bad?” But now is not the time for pensive pity; nor is it the time for analysis paralysis—locking ourselves in to endless loops of study and reflection and never getting on the move. 2009 is a time for action.

From the single mother who heads back to school to the business that adopts social media marketing to the college that more broadly embraces blended learning, today’s trends favor those willing to step into the mix. Combining tough-minded analysis before beginning and as you continue will be a must—but movement is the key variable in this mix.

The disheartened lead character in the Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne, said it best, “we have to get busy living, or get busy dying.” I spoke at a college convocation last year where a faculty member paraphrased this same quote when talking about a key decision point in his own career: he said, “I finally decided I had to get busy trying new things, or get busy retiring.” Let’s get busy bringing good ideas and insights to life in 2009!

Next Level
The tough-mindedness needed for exploration and action, however, should not result in the far-too-common eager embrace of all things new. Neither should it lead to settling for small steps that make the least amount of people upset. Tepid incrementalism is not a recipe for success in 2009. We need to strive to have our actions take us and our organizations to the next level.

The Obama presidential campaign provided a great example of such an approach (see my contribution to this Scholastic feature). Their strategic combination of more traditional political strategies—on-ground organizing, phone banks, and volunteers—and new generation tools and techniques—online resources, social networking, and analytics—took political campaigning to the next level. It’s not surprising that this new strategy is already be modeled nationally and internationally.

Sometimes going to the next level is about changing strategy and technique. Other times, it hinges on embracing the right tools and technologies. Sometimes it’s about taking the time to invest in the research and development necessary to do all of the above. It’s rarely about working harder at what we’re already doing. Expecting that to take you to the next level is the classic definition of insanity.

By honoring and learning from the past as we move boldly toward the future with an improved approach, businesses, schools, colleges, universities, government agencies, and non-profits will all be better positioned to come together and move to the next level in 2009.

Broadly Connected
This is no time for Bowling Alone! We need to work on connecting with our kids, parents, extended families, friends, community members, as well as our deepest sources of inspiration and sustenance. Moreover, as Goleman demonstrates in the book Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, we need to be intentional about forming and maintaining positive social connections in the process. Indeed, in difficult times, these relationships make all the difference.

We can use both on-ground and online tools and techniques to connect as well. Social networks like Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, and Twitter can help build communities of colleagues and communities of practice like never before. Indeed, record numbers of people from all demographic categories are leveraging these tools. I come from a diverse family of nine children, and we probably know more about each other today than when we were growing up in the same house. And it’s mostly because of these social networks.

Beyond social support, these broad connections help people find jobs, solve problems, and locate learning. See Sue Waters’ conversation on Personal Learning Networks (PLN) to explore how people are using PLNs to broaden perspectives, enrich understanding, and solve practical problems. If we can broadly connect to people near and far, in-person and online, we are better positioned to take on the challenges that come our way today and tomorrow.

Government agencies, corporations, colleges, and schools can leverage these broad connection strategies as well. These expanded connection strategies can help them recruit more effectively, retain more successfully, and serve more meaningfully; in addition, they can increase reach, build loyalty, improve learning, and survive the most trying of times. In short, 2009 is no time to be an island—take the time to connect!

Well Balanced
Our 24 hour access to tempting communication technologies and multimedia entertainment offerings presents a challenge. In difficult times, many people want escape. They want to find some way out of the mess we seem to be in. While getting away from it all is useful at times, this escapism taken too far can lead to problem avoidance—and even people avoidance.

Ed Hallowell’s Crazy Busy: Overstretch, Overbooked, and About to Snap is a sometimes painful look at this problem with kids, parents, schools, and communities. At times, we seem like a society on the brink of a collective attention deficit disorder—running by each other in airports and shopping centers talking and talking, but never to one another. As I noted in On the Road to DotCalm, as we fall prey to persistent partial attention (i.e., the divided mind) we need to slow down, stop the metaphorical car, and clean the windshield or else dangerous crashes can result. In Coffee Talk with Dad, I explore how the death of my father brought the need for this kind of balance into clear relief. Even though my sales numbers and article production might have been lower than normal that year, I’ll never regret the time I took to slow down and soak in those moments with my Dad.

Organizations will need to bring this mindful perspective to bear as well. While many will be tempted to move quickly, automate at all cost, drive all traffic to the web site, or rely solely on technical solutions, we need to remember that people count, relationships matter, and balance is essential in keeping us individually and collectively on a good path.

Service Oriented
One positive side effect of our major economic downturn is that many businesses suddenly care about customers again! We matter once more. Because there aren’t 100 people just like us coming through their doors or clicking on their links, our stock has risen. The survivors and thrivers in 2009 will be the people and organizations who have either had this kind of service orientation all along and have a loyal base as a result, or those who quickly learn that service matters and get their service acts in order.

In schools, colleges, and universities, embracing a service orientation means strong student services and careful attention to learning and engagement strategies. In corporations, we’ll see a renewed sense of urgency to get to know and better customize relationships and interactions. Regardless of the arena, expectations are higher than ever. Those we serve expect us to have better insight into their needs and higher standards of delivery.

Working, leading, and living with each other will have a service component as well. For many, the first instinct as the maelstrom rages will be “every person for themselves!” As Kent Keith, CEO of the Greenleaf Center, argues in The Case for Servant Leadership, we take on this selfish mantra at our peril. No matter how tough things get, we’ll be much better off if we lift our narcissistic, selfish veil and look to see how we can best serve those with whom we live and for whom we work in 2009.

Courageously Humble
My favorite Eric Hoffer quote is:

“In times of drastic change, it is the learner who inherits the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”

Continuing to learn is an expression of humility. It shows that we are willing to empty our cup a bit and open ourselves to something new. It is also an expression of courage—what I’ve called rookie courage. You have to once again step into a moment, or an environment, where you’re uncertain, not in control, and vulnerable. You have to admit you are not the expert.

But the results of these courageous and humble acts of learning are renewing, energizing, and almost always open new doorways. And it’s good for our health! I once had a neuroscientist tell me that given how the brain works, if you want to stave off Alzheimer’s and dementia, you should strive to “be a rookie every year.” It is in these learning moments that our brain is at its best.

It is the courage and humility to learn that we are seeing today in displaced workers going back to school, smart professionals retooling for the road ahead, and learning organizations investing in R&D that will enable us to take on the challenges of the coming year—not to mention the years to come. The individuals and organizations courageous and humble enough to reach out, ask for help, and open themselves to new learning will be able to take on the turbulent times ahead in 2009; even as their learned colleagues curse the coming of the year.

Bringing Together our 2009 State of Mind
We can’t sugar coat the challenges that are in our face and on the horizon. Indeed, it could get much worse before it gets better. However, it seems to me, that if we take on the year with a tough-minded, action-oriented, next-level, broadly connected, well-balanced, service-oriented, and courageously humble state of mind, we will be best positioned to make the most of what comes our way in 2009.

Learning and Humility

2008-12-21T08:50:00.001-05:00

I’m taken with this notion: as we get older, continuing to learn is an expression of humility. There are many implications of this perspective for our personal and professional lives. Moreover, there’s a real challenge here—similar to what we discussed regarding transcendence.

I’m writing a longer article on this notion this week and would love to get your thoughts on the idea in particular and any implications you see. You can either post here or email me directly at mark@catalyzelearning.com.

Thanks!

Memorable Messages

2008-12-11T09:35:00.006-05:00

Some of my own memorable messages came flooding back last night, loosed by a drive-time conversation. I was taking Alexandra, our 10-year old daughter, and her friend to swim at the YMCA. En route, the subject of science came up because they had just visited a health clinic on a field trip. Then Alex’s friend said it, the classic: “science is hard.” As an educator, all the alarm bells and warning whistles went off – particularly given my sensitivity to the importance of gender issues in teaching math and science. So I probed a bit more.

“Why do you think that?” I asked.

She went in to a long explanation about how a series of other people had told her about how hard science was, giving me at times exact quotes. At 11, she was already convinced that science was not for her.

We kept the conversation going for a bit and I tried with all my might to convey some counter communication. We talked about how science could be incredibly fun, full of discovery and adventure. We talked about how easy the basic process of science was (we even used kid-speak to talk through the observation, hypothesis, testing, reporting, conclusions, and sharing cycle of science) and how neat it would be to be a part of making discoveries that made life better—or better yet, saved lives! Alex and her friend perked up and began talking about things they wanted to discover or make. I’m sure they were humoring me until we got to the pool; but, it was still fun to hear them talk about science without fear in their voice for a little while.

Daniel Goleman’s Social Intelligence is a must read to really get the power of these memorable messages. Seemingly off hand comments and throw away lines can turn into mind wiring realities—particularly for those following every word of a parent, teacher, coach, or pastor. Positive and negative comments that we might see as trite or silly end up shaping the way people think for years at a time—for a lifetime for some. Indeed, in student focus groups, I’ve heard so many students talk about how they were told early and often that “math is hard,” “girls aren’t good at science,” or “you’re not college material” that I think we should have laws against these phrases ever being used again!

I’m struck by how careful we have to be in our many roles—particularly leadership roles—about the messages we send. Whether we want to accept the responsibility or not, many of these comments stick. The good news, however, is that the positive ones can stick as well. To this day, I hear the voice of a little Filipino pastor—Pastor Cruz—from my childhood church who always took the time to send the most positive and affirming messages my way. His messages were reinforced by a series of inspirational teachers and coaches, most notably a faculty member at Mesa Community College, Jim Mancuso. His message—“it’s amazing how luck seems to follow people who work really hard and care about what they do”—has stuck with me to this day.

What are the messages those you teach and reach will take away? Not the big theoretical treatises, but the little life theories that emerge in conversations off to the side, throw away lines, and jokes. Are we as intentional as we should be about these messages? Or, are we content to let these life changing communiqués happen by accident?

Treasuring the Work: Portraits of our Students

2008-12-03T10:55:00.002-05:00

Battles with educational bureaucracies can be brutal. Seemingly simple requests require forms, signatures, and endless steps in an archaic process journey. Tangling with temperamental technology can tempt the most dedicated educator to throw their hands up in disgust. The bits and bytes seem to conspire to make the task of engaging digital-age students a daunting one. And clashing with colleagues that seem dead set on demonizing the best-intentioned innovations you champion can cause you to ask the question, “Why do I put myself through all this?”

Here’s why. *Portraits of Life: Student Experiences is an exhibit showcased at Montgomery College in Maryland. It’s a tribute in words and photographs to diverse students that chose education as their pathway to possibilities. It’s a powerful look at the faces and places of these students, their stories, and the futures to which they aspire. Moreover, it’s a useful reminder of the reasons most of us champion education—to change lives for the better and, by extension, make our world a better place.

During one of the focus groups we did for the book Practical Magic: On the Front Lines of Teaching Excellence, a seasoned instructor told us one of her secrets. She said that she kept a “treasure chest” of student evaluation comments, personal notes, stories from her journal, and clippings of her students successes packed away in a special box. When we asked her why, she said the reasoning was simple. “There are many times in your career that you question your worth, your sanity, or your ability to really make a difference. There are times you feel like, despite your best intentions, you’ve just been punched in the gut. These are the times you need to cook your favorite meal, pour a glass of good wine, and open your treasure chest. You need to remember your whys for all this work.”

The Portraits of Life showcase is a moving visual treasure chest of student stories. These are powerful whys. None of these stories excuse the sloppy systems, troubling technology, or cultural challenges we sometimes face in education. However, they do give us good reasons to do the important work of improving our schools, colleges, and universities so that we can teach and reach well the students who come our way—students working for brighter tomorrows after often-challenging yesterdays.

*This effort showcasing students followed an earlier project that profiled Holocaust Survivors (absolutely worth a look as well).

Worried, Innovative, and Changing

2008-11-13T08:20:00.008-05:00

The stakes for education are high, and the pressure is on. Thomas Friedman’s new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, is a stark admonition to educators to ready our students for a time where science, politics, and demographics converge as never before. The metamessage is not difficult to divine. It’s summed up in one of the book’s best quotes: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” However, change is not easily accomplished in the hallowed halls of education tradition. It is because of this standard resistance to change that some authors are asking if higher education may be the next bloated industry to go—much like the housing and banking industries. The link to Arthur Levine’s Higher Education in the Age of Obama in particular is a must read.

These worries notwithstanding, it is still an amazing time to be in education. Education has never been as central to economic prosperity as it is today, which means it is viewed less and less as a luxury and more and more as a necessity. Moreover, just think of the tools we have today! We’ve talked about many of these here, from YouTube to Gaming to Social Networking to Open Courseware to Mobile Devices and a ready army of student assistants in Generation We ready to take it to the next level.

While I take pause because of the challenges, I remain excited and heartened by the innovation, inspiration, and insight drawn from the field. And here’s some more. Check out this virtual resource from Google on ancient Rome:

The teacher who sent this my way was almost giddy when talking about how she planned to use this with her class.

Now check out this gaming simulation for medical education put together by George Washington University:

http://inside.gwumc.edu/nemspi/zero_hour.swf

There is so much excitement about their effort they have been hard-pressed to handle the flood of requests to either leverage or model their work.

In short, while there are great concerns about the road ahead in education, there is great excitement as well. The challenge will be to catalyze positive change in educational institutions and systems in thoughtful and substantive ways. If we’ve learned anything from the banking and housing failures, it’s that advocating sloppy deregulation and taking dangerous risks with our nation's mission critical systems might not make the most sense going forward. However, I fully agree that “if we want things to stay as they are” (America serving as a model of high-quality, dynamic education), “things will have to change.”

YES IT DOES!

2008-11-05T09:27:00.002-05:00

If you don’t think our dynamic American education system of public and private schools, colleges, and universities matters,
If you don’t think that parents and grandparents reading to their children and grandchildren and pushing them to excel in learning matters,
If you don’t think inspirational teachers, counselors, and mentors matter,
If you don’t think Pell Grants and Student Loans matter,
You’re not paying attention:

Love or hate his politics, Barack Obama’s story is not possible in any other country. Moreover, his path to the presidency shows clearly that even with all of our challenges, in America, education remains one of the most powerful pathways to possibilities. We have a lot of work to do to make it more effective, more open, more dynamic, more modern, and more responsive. However, we have to keep in mind how important it really is. President-Elect Obama puts that fact in clear relief.

So if the question about American education is: “does it matter?” The resounding response must be:

YES IT DOES!

Generation We

2008-10-29T17:58:00.002-05:00

In our New Generation of Learning work, we’ve been talking about the rise of “Generation We.” And now comes an interesting manifesto—on YouTube of course—from a group of these folks. Notice the dialogue about education here and the aggressive connection they make between education and opportunity. Interesting!

Joe the Governor

2008-10-24T18:48:00.004-05:00

For all the talk about Joe the Plummer in the last few weeks, it was the commentary of another Joe—Joe the Governor—that impressed me.

As Governor Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and I talked over lunch on Thursday, he made one thing clear – he needs the education leaders and teachers in his state to take their efforts to a new level, to educate more citizens at higher levels than ever before. Even more impressive, was the fact that he got up after lunch and issued the same challenge to a room full of college presidents, faculty, and staff.

“I hate to put this pressure on you,” he said, “but let me say it straight: you hold the future of this state in your hands. I can bring the best companies in the world in, but if we can’t produce a world-class work force, there is no way we can compete. Tax breaks and give aways aren’t what it’s about anymore. These folks want an educated, motivated, and ready workforce. Whatever we need to do to change and help more of our children and adults be successful, let’s get to it. I’ll support you in any way I can. But you have to be willing to try new things, to step up to this challenge. I’m talking about flexible schedules that aren’t tied to an agrarian calendar—six-week, six-month, nine-month training programs, different kinds of credentials, and new technologies. Everything needs to be on the table.”

This Joe said it as plainly as he could—for West Virginia to continue its positive growth, the education system needs to transform. Coal and natural gas resources will not be enough to ensure a positive future.

My job was to follow Joe the Governor and catalyze the conversation on what’s possible in education transformation. But he was a hard act to follow. However, his closing statement provided the needed impetus to drive our dialogue. Pointing at the audience, he said, “I have more faith in you than you do. I know we can do this. We must do this. Let’s all do this for West Virginia.”

While Joe the Plummer’s getting some major media right now—and probably a book deal as a result—I liked Joe the Governor’s message better. He’s the kind of Joe we should be listening to!

Debating Reflections on Education

2008-10-16T10:18:00.002-05:00

As I reflect on last night’s Presidential Debate between Senator Obama and Senator McCain and the conversations about education and America’s future, I am debating the value of the debate. It’s always encouraging to hear education being placed front and center in these debates. Education is indeed a lynchpin in today’s economy, and as such has both economic and national security implications—i.e., no country has retained prominence when their economy falters. However, education is so much more than a utilitarian tool to power local, state, and national economies. Education is also about personal transcendence – giving people a pathway to possibility. A progressive society has to embrace this role as aggressively as it does the others. I’m not sure we marry both roles in our education debates as we should.

Moreover, we continue to discuss education in terms of discrete silos and systems – reifying a model of education that no longer exists. We predominantly talk about K-12 and “educating our kids” and higher education as “going to college.” Today’s education world in the US is so much more dynamic. We have dual enrollment programs and early college high schools helping high school students earn two or more years of college before they graduate from 12th grade. We have incumbent worker programs in community colleges that provide credit courses for workers during their breaks. They aren’t “going” anywhere when they go to college. Moreover, the static conversations about college as a one-time event cause even more challenges. Sure we still have a segment of higher education that attends college in a traditional way—4 years, on campus. However, an increasing number (if not the majority) of students in higher education are swirling in to and out of the system at different ages and stages. Students transfer between institutions in ever-greater numbers and they return on a regular basis to upgrade skills or change career directions. (Often not by choice!)

Today’s debates about education need to move beyond the static “improve K-12” and “increase access to higher education” arguments. We need to talk about supporting policy and practice that enables a dynamic system of learning that spans early childhood programs, K-12, early-college high schools, dual-enrollment offerings, AP courses, adult literacy programs, community colleges, universities, workforce development, and contract training in on-campus, online, and blended formats – at the very least.

Education debates need to be about more than just improving our economy and protecting our national status—they need also to be about helping individuals move to the next level. Education debates need to be about more than advocating new models for K-12 and better financial aid for universities—they need to be about fostering a dynamic system of multiple providers using a myriad of tools to reach individual, local, and national learning goals.

It’s time to change the debate and possibly change our education system for the better!

Open Courseware in the Mainstream: The Big Blend Continues

2008-09-16T06:05:00.002-05:00

We’ve talked here about the need to leverage open resources and educator social networks for some time. Moreover, the build out of the blended learning infrastructure—in terms of facilities and online environments—has been a continuing theme. These dialogues are hitting the mainstream more regularly. Check out this article in the NY Times on the rise of free digital textbooks as a counterbalance to the publishing industry. And the big blend continues!

The Power of One and Many

2008-09-12T14:43:00.000-05:00

Today’s blog is a reflection on the power of one and the power of many in education institutions. It’s something I see in my work all the time. However, it’s not a topic that is often directly discussed.

When I talk about one, I’m not referring to the “all-powerful” senior leaders with the many being everybody else. Yes, formal leaders make a huge difference in shaping the culture, systems, processes, and outcomes of an educational institution. Quality presidents, chancellors, deans, superintendents, and principals are essential ingredients in the educational excellence mix. I’ve written about educational leaders at length here and elsewhere—see the Catalyzing Positive Change in Education post for just one example. However, there are many others beyond formal leaders that have a powerful impact in our education institutions. Indeed, sometimes individuals completely outside of the formal leadership structure can empower or destroy an institution. These individuals have embraced the power of one.

While any institution’s organizational culture has a unique flavor and form, it is often these key individuals in the cultural community that spice and shape it. Sometimes it’s a longstanding patriarch or matriarch who is asked to bless or berate change initiatives. Sometimes it’s a newcomer, whose voice and verve compel the community in new directions. Other times, previously quiet members are inspired to step forward and take leadership in driving a dialogue. New purpose or passion ignites their efforts, and the fire soon catches.

Most institutions have several of these archetypes in play at any given time—a number of “ones,” if you will—wielding different levels of power. Some use their influence to move the institution in positive and progressive directions. To them, any innovation that might improve the institution is worth a good look and thoughtful exploration. However, there are also times when proposed changes could be harmful. Most of us have seen educational institutions pushed by authoritarians or over-the-top advocates to accept extreme action and large-scale initiatives without involvement or understanding. During these times, the positive power-of-one player is willing to civilly confront the change agents and call for dialogue and more careful consideration. The authoritarian or extremist will quickly label this person a trouble maker. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Whether playing the advocate or protector role, these positive and progressive folks are usually motivated by service—service to students, learning, the institution, the community, or all of the above. Most important, almost everyone in the culture knows that these individuals make the school, college, or university a better place.

Other times, however, there are powerful players determined to protect turf, settle personal scores, and stop anything that might make them have to learn something new. A friend of mine calls these folks CAVE people—Colleagues Against Virtually Everything. Their mere presence in conversations gives rise to bullying tactics and uncivil discourse. Everything and everyone is fair game in their quest to maintain the status quo. They play out their personal issues—fear, insecurity, or ego—on the institution like it’s a bad episode of Dr. Phil. Unlike the positive and progressive voices, their core motivation is most often service to self. Their root question is: How will this change impact me? They convincingly cloak their self interest in compelling arguments. But those who can see through their often-impressive rhetoric understand the real intention. Deep down, almost everyone in the organization knows that these negative players make the institution a worse place to be—except, ironically, for the negative player themselves. They revel in the attention and influence.

You truly see the impact of these individuals when a culture turns—usually in times of stress, transition, or opportunity. In some cases, a previously positive culture allows negative, cynical, caustic, self-interested and influential voices to take the stage and drive the conversation. With these voices left unchallenged and given focus—often for fear of confrontation—a once dynamic school or college is soon mired in mediocrity and wrapped in conversations that are full of sound and fury, but lead to nothing.

Other times, however, either through luck (a person leaves) or choice (a negative person is marginalized or a positive person embraced), you see a move in a positive direction. You watch a culture literally cleanse itself of the influence of negative players; or, you see the culture begin to embrace the opportunity offered by another voice. They are inspired, however slightly, to move and take positive action. Sometimes a negative voice, once marginalized, finds their way out of the organization. They just don’t fit anymore. Other times, they realize the energy is going in the other direction, and respond in surprising ways. Indeed, the best outcome is when a previous problem person becomes a cultural symbol of positive change.

Regardless of the outcome—progressive or regressive—the impact of these key individuals is undeniable. However, don’t give these “ones” the keys to the kingdom just yet. In my experience, it is the power of the many that really holds the key. It is the many that either give or deny power. As the Buddhist saying goes, “it is what we pay attention to that grows.” An academic community can literally change the channel. It can finally decide it wants to watch a different program, hear a different voice, one that is more likely to make the school, college, or university a better place for everyone. The focus of the many—or the lack thereof—is the secret behind the power of one.

Given this relationship, the best question for the many of our educational institutions might be “which ones?” Who are the informal leaders that bring a positive and productive voice to the community? Who are the power players we should unplug? When one of these individuals gets attention, does it feel like this place is getting better, or worse? More important, do we feel enough resonance to add our own voice, so we feel like together we are making this a better place for ourselves and our students? And, for some in the many group, the most important question might be: “is it time for me to lead, to add my voice to the mix?”

You’ll have to be the one to answer that question.

Ready?

2008-08-27T13:53:00.002-05:00

I’ve been on the road the last few weeks, mostly speaking at fall-semester convocations. I just love these kick-off events for colleges, universities, and school districts. It’s a great time to hear about their successes, challenges, and innovations.

One of the conversations we explored on these campuses surrounded the speech series Ready?: Dramatic Change and Transcendent Learning. Check out the sample presentations here to see a more full description. You can also download my white paper from SAS Press to explore this transcendent learning framework—critical, creative, social, and courageous learning—in more detail.

What was fascinating about these dialogues was the near unanimous contention that our students will have to learn more, more quickly, and more often than previous generations—and that we’re not sure they’re ready for it. Moreover, they’ll need the courage to learn, to break out of comfortable patterns, if they truly want to transcend—go to the next level—throughout their careers. Remember, we talked about this here a few months ago. Most important, however, was the also near unanimous sentiment that one of the best ways for them to develop the courage and capacity to learn more effectively is for us to model it as we work through the change issues in our institutions. In short, we need to bring critical reflection, creative solutions, civil dialogue, and courageous learning to our efforts or we seriously undercut our lofty learning lessons.

Are we ready? Are they ready? These folks argued that we’re best served by getting ready together!

Learn to Earn World

2008-07-29T07:34:00.004-05:00

Check out today's David Brooks column in the NY Times on education called The Biggest Issue. He points to studies that show historically education is vital not only for personal success, but community and national success as well. Indeed, it may well be our national commitment to increasing educational attainment that made the US the radical success story of the 20th century. So as our state and national budgets begin to be slashed after the November election --as most government watchers agree will happen, given our economy--we should not look to education as an easy target. It's penny wise and dollar dumb. The 21st Century demographic, economic, and technological trends with which we now wrestle demand a redoubled commitment to create a dynamic P-20 education system that serves increasingly diverse individual, community, and national learning needs. While I firmly believe it's a learn to live world, it is certainly a learn to earn world as well.

Catalyzing Positive Change in Education: The Four Pillars

2008-07-25T16:28:00.007-05:00

If you’re looking for a copy of my white paper, Catalyzing Positive Change in Education: The Four Pillars, it's now available on the SAS Press website for free—I think you just have to fill out a registration form. Here’s the direct link. For those not familiar with the four pillars framework, I’ve been using it in speeches and workshops for the last few months.

The framework is based on the idea that to work toward positive change in education, these four support pillars all have to be present:

Catalyze Conversations: Involve the community in key dialogues on important issues to ready and engage them. In the paper, I use four key conversations as examples of these efforts: students swirling into and out of our education systems throughout their lives, the impact of globalization, the changing face of institutional advancement, and the build out of the big blend—technology and human intensive—learning infrastructures.

Inspire Innovations: Spark action from the community and support key innovations. Put simply, we need both a readiness and willingness not just to talk about, but try new things. In the paper, I suggest four major innovations impacting education as examples: K-20 partnerships, strategic enrollment management/customer relationship management, gaming and social networking, and educational and civic engagement.

Champion Insight: Create the systems and cultures necessary to ask and answer the hard questions about the impact of our conversations and innovations. Topics range from analytics to learning outcomes to evidence-based (or inquiry-based) education. I outline four steps that must be taken to champion insight: start with strategy, build out the technology, raise your sights, and ready the culture.

Foster Leadership: Without quality leadership at all levels (faculty, staff, administrative, and governance) change initiatives will at worst not work or at best not be sustained. I offer four fundamentals for fostering leadership: find it, grow it, energize it, and renew it.

I hope you find the resource useful!

Waking the Fire

2008-07-12T08:26:00.003-05:00

We’re in to campfires. Our family and friends love to get a fire going, cook out, roast marshmallows, tell ghost stories--the whole thing.

Everyone seems to have a theory about camp fires. They tell you the best mix of wood and tinder; which kind of wood burns the longest; how much space to leave between the wood to let in oxygen; they set up the logs in X patterns, teepees, and square crisscross. We’ve seen it all.

New technology has crept in as well. Commercial fire starters are a cheap tinder mix, but make your life easy if you don’t have the time to rustle up dry leaves, small twigs, or newspapers. Nana is never happy about fire starters. Seems like cheating to her.

Lighting a fire is an often-used metaphor for learning. All the pieces fit: tinder (engagement strategies), room for oxygen (reflection and critical thinking), theories of arrangements (learning theory), and new technologies (reading this on a computer, are you?). Moreover, once a fire gets going, there is an intense, glowing center that continues to light new fuel as it is added (deep learning informing new experiences).

However, what strikes me most about the metaphor involves what can happen the next morning. A new day is here. The sun rises, birds sing, dew glistens, and little creatures all around bring greetings as you stretch awake. The camp fire that was the literal center of attention last evening is spent—reduced to a small pile of grey ash. But wait. There is a tiny plume of smoke rising from the center. You can easily kill the fire by spreading the ashes to burn out the last bit of fuel. Pour a bucket of water on it and the final spirit of the fire sizzles and releases a billow of smoke to the heavens.

But you can wake the fire as well. You have to stir it to add some oxygen. And be careful, if you don’t add anything new, stirring can lead to an even quicker death. You have to add new fuel. Carefully add tinder and wood to the existing fire, and within minutes your glowing, warm friend is back as hot as ever. In fact, the deep center of a woken fire catches quickly and cooks a great breakfast.

This is the learning metaphor that warms me. For all of us, there are times we burn down. Our ashes are glowing, but there is no fire. All that seems left to do is to wait for the bucket, the sizzle, and the smoke.

But if we are stirred--by teachers, reachers, kids, grandkids, new technologies, or old photographs--and new learning is carefully added, we can wake up hot as ever. Indeed, our lives are a constant cycle of fire renewal, adding fuel and tending flames. So don’t be fooled by the sullen ashes in yourself or others. Look for the plume of smoke, and see if learning can wake the fire.

Are You a Life Entrepreneur?

2008-07-01T12:43:00.003-05:00

I love this new book: Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives. It’s written by Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek. Many of us in the education world know Chris for his vision and leadership in founding Smarthinking.com, the innovative online tutoring company.

In short, Life Entrepreneurs advances the idea that there is a new breed of entrepreneurs who buck the conventional wisdom of entrepreneurship. They are not enamored with killing themselves and sacrificing family time in the process of starting new ventures. Indeed, they are applying traditional entrepreneurial skills toward the end of creating a more balanced, integrated, and personally fulfilling life. The venture fits the life more so than the life fits the venture. Indeed, its ideal when they are a synergistic blend—i.e., you are doing your life’s work in a way that lets you live a great life.

Central to their premise is that often you can’t find this beautiful balance by working for someone else. You have to start your own thing. Courage, passion, and purpose are all a necessity here—as are mindfulness, effort, and insight. However daunting it may seem to leave the embrace of working for someone else, Gergen and Vanourek profile people from all walks of life who have taken this fulfilling plunge. Its inspiring stuff, made more so by the sense of personal exploration that is at this movement’s root.

The reactionary education question that jumps out for me after reading this book is whether or not students at all levels of education are actually learning the skills necessary to even test these waters, much less jump in. Because of the volatility in the job market, we now talk about preparing students for careers and not jobs. However progressive these statements sound, we have to ask ourselves, do our schools and colleges prepare our students more to fit in or find a fit? Are we consciously inspiring the creativity and introspection necessary to become authentic life entrepreneurs?

The good news is that America has one of the best and broadest education systems accessible to second-act students—those returning to pursue a life’s dream. So, even if you don’t get what you need on your first swirl through our education system, there is still hope. From community colleges to alternative-delivery-model universities to corporate training providers, we have one of the best on-demand learning systems in the world. You just have to be an entrepreneurial student and use it.

And so the final question: Are you a life entrepreneur?

Let’s Open Up in Education!

2008-05-23T19:51:00.005-05:00

Open education is on the move. Check out the Cape Town Open Education Declaration to explore an example of the ideas behind this movement. Putting quality resources at the fingertips of educators around the world is the ultimate goal—opening up accessible learning opportunities to millions.

Serving as board chair for the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME)—an organization founded and inspirationally led by Dr. Lisa Petrides—I’ve had the pleasure of watching one powerful response to this open education movement. ISKME’s response is showcased in the Open Education Resource Commons (OER Commons) site. We had our spring board meeting this week, and once again I was taken aback by the breadth and depth of this initiative—not to mention it’s skilled use of Web 2.0 strategies (e.g., social networking) to connect educators and content in compelling ways. And while the resources already available are stunning, it’s the long-term potential of this initiative that has me beaming.

If you're an innovative educator, it will be worth your time to visit OER Commons and check out the thousands of quality, open, and innovative learning objects/resources available across K-12, community college, and university settings. If you want to learn more about the background of the initiative, how to best leverage the content, and how you can contribute, check out this presentation put together by Mark Basnage that describes one of the OER Commons international pilot projects.

I hope you decide to explore and leverage the resources on OER Commons. More important, however, the folks at ISKME hope you’ll be willing to add your voice and talent to this emerging open education community. There’s so much we can do together in education if we’re willing to open up!

Private- and Public-School Independence Day

2008-05-08T20:30:00.003-05:00

Monday of this week was Independence Day . . . well, sort of. I spent the day with leaders, school heads and directors from the Pacific Northwest Association of Independent Schools (PNAIS). We talked learning, technology, leadership, educational trends, and more with representatives from independent K-12 institutions of all shapes and sizes. We’re not just talking about private schools serving “elite” kids who would do well in any context. Many of these institutions are designed to serve at risk, developmentally disabled, and special-needs children. Several provide specialized education outreach. For example, one school was run through a social service agency and focused on educating the children of the homeless.

What struck me when I talked with these leaders—some of whom actually founded their schools—is the passion and purpose they bring to their focus on student learning. Moreover, many expressed a common challenge of leveraging creative and innovative educational strategies, while being laser focused on documenting and advancing educational quality. Indeed, a major part of this meeting involved their dialogue about learning outcomes and accreditation strategies.

Of course, public schools are wrestling with many of these same challenges; however, their contexts are radically different. Public schools in the US are more often than not swimming in funding challenges, testing trauma, school-board sagas, leadership transitions, and teacher turnover. Those who fight for focused learning conversations in the public school arena report feeling like voices in the wilderness. Ironically, its business leaders that sometimes end up driving learning dialogues in the public school arena. The State Scholars Initiative is one such business-partnership endeavor—focusing on inspiring rigor-, relevance-, and relationship-based learning strategies in public K-12. The independent school conversations, on the other hand, don’t seem to need the external push to bring learning to the center of the debate. The drive seems internal and independent of requirements.

I wonder how we can bring this sense of independence, ownership, and passion back into our public schools? Some turn to charter schools and key innovators to find the recipe for this independence—for example, see the Mavericks in Education D-Wade schools for some unique ideas on serving the at-risk students in the public arena. But the larger questions of scale, scope, and significance loom as we vision transforming the larger all-important public school system that serves millions and builds the foundation for our economy on the road ahead.

There are no easy answers here. And there are PLENTY of showcase examples of individuals, programs, schools, and districts that do amazing work with a learning-centered focus in our public schools. However, the daily dialogue of our public schools is all-too-often dominated by so many other things besides high-quality learning. Budgets, buildings, and boards capture the conversation—and most of the energy and effort of the leadership.

Here’s hoping for an Independence Day for public schools somewhere in the near future—a day when the passion, promise, and purpose of our teachers and students can be unleashed in the creative quest toward more inspiring, deep, and relevant learning.

*The Technology Prayers for Education

2008-04-17T21:43:00.001-05:00

Imagine, if you will, a time on the road ahead when information technology becomes so ubiquitous, stable, and integrated into the educational enterprise that it is no longer the center of great debate, fervent support, or angry contention. The hardware, software, networks, and integrated database systems work together to make everything we do easier. We are empowered to better focus on students and their unique learning journeys. Information technology simply "goes away" from immediate attention, no longer trapped in wonder and confusion, and is more comfortably welcomed as an everyday and valued part of our world.

Although some would have you believe that this heavenly time is upon us, our everyday experiences defy the prophecy. All too often, we find ourselves earnestly turning our computers off and on again, hoping that their demonic behavior will somehow be exorcised by a lack of power. We passionately pray for the lost document to return, for the e-mail attachment to open, and for the wireless card to connect. First-born children are jokingly offered as sacrifices to keep a computer lab working through a class period or a network connected to a printer. And, the technology mystics on our campuses still descend from their mountain tops to help us solve problems without being able to adequately explain what they've done—trust them, have faith we're told.

All the while, academic leaders and scholars all over the world are offering poignant prayers within the text of national studies, conference programs, and committee reports to any and all powers that might help us realize what Steven Gilbert from the TLT Group calls "a vision worth working toward" with technology. Judging from the rhetoric of the researchers and painful practical experience, the following prayers are going to have to be answered if our desired technology heaven is ever to be realized on earth, if technology is ever to "go away" in the best sense.

Please Make it Work
Help our hardware, software, and systems stabilize to the point where befuddling incompatibilities, buggy software, and conflicting network protocols are a thing of the past. Give us truly user-friendly projectors, programs, and web services that don't embarrassingly crash in the middle of key projects or important class presentations. Weave change and improvements seamlessly into products and services, so our health is not endangered by the stress of our technological worlds being turned upside down with each new version of software or upgrade in hardware. We'll gladly take the responsibility for the problems we cause in use if only the information technology itself can mature to the point where these all-too-frequent problems no longer take precedence over our work with students.

Please Help Us Accept It
Give us the patience to temper the true believers and carefully listen to thoughtful critics. Help us understand and welcome technology as a tool, not as a savior sent from on high or a devil destined to destroy us. Let not hyperbole or fear stand in our way as we thoughtfully integrate information technology savvy as a basic skill, necessary for our students as they become educated citizens in a world fueled by and filled with information. Teach us all the important lessons of critical reflection and intelligent consumption of the mass of information at our fingertips.

Please Help Us Pay for It
Show us the bottom of this hell-fire pit in to which we seem to be pouring our money for technology upgrades, improvements, replacements, ERP systems, course management systems, and data warehouses. As we explore purchasing, leasing, and elaborate phasing plans, give us options that don’t force us to sacrifice the Peters of our organizations to pay this pervasive Paul. Finally, grant us the wisdom to integrate technology planning into the broader production of a learning-centered institution, where technology plays a role without overpowering the more important members of the cast. In addition, help technology become a welcome part of our overall infrastructure planning—and the lion of facilities shall lie down with the lamb of technology.

Please Help Us Help Each Other
Encourage us as we collectively embrace the humbling feeling of techno-ignorance. Help us use this process to better empathize with the fear and discomfort, the challenge and stress that many of our at-risk students feel as they begin their studies at our institutions. Bring the continuum of technology users closer together and keep us open to learning from anyone—external agencies, internal trainers, and colleagues. Let us not forget the importance of professional development and technology support as we move forward. More important, open our spirits to the possibility that students may need to be our guide at times as we step into this new world.

Please Help Us Bring All into the Fold
In our zeal to move forward with technology, let us not leave anyone behind. Help us remember that education can be the gateway to information technology inclusion for all, much like public libraries were for the printed book. Remind us also of those with disabilities and their needs. Quality technology accessibility efforts can help many more ascend in education. Help us work to make sure that any and all of our students can benefit from the information technology infrastructures we develop.

Please Let It Bring Us Closer Together
Tempt us not with terse e-mails, immersive ipods, bombastic blogs, and beeping blackberrys that consume our time and inhibit thoughtful, sensitive, and more substantive interactions. Make us more mindful of the ways and whys of our communication, so technology becomes a useful tool in improving and expanding our relationships—so technology remains the medium, not the message. Let us never lose sight of the importance of the caring smile, the encouraging word, and the interested ear. Remind us that human connections change lives in the education world more so than any email, podcast, social network, or interactive game ever will.

Please Let Learning Lead the Way
In all we do with technology, let us ask the burning question: "How does this practice, policy, or procedure improve and expand student learning?" Moreover, let us use technology to answer even more insightful questions about our students’ learning journeys. And let these answers help us ensure that our technology use significantly supports them all. In short, grant us the ability to move beyond the intoxicating interest in the novel and the new to a deeper and more systemic concern for the learner and the learning.

In Closing
If someday all of these prayers are answered, our image of a time when technology "goes away" may come into full relief. Until then, however, most of us will continue searching for answers to these prayers and grappling with the emotionally charged issues associated with each. And, we will keep turning our computers off and on with mystic and positive expectations.

___________

*I used this framework in a town meeting this week and promised to post this slightly updated version. I wrote the original version of this piece with a dear friend, Dr. Cindy Miles, who is now the Hialeah Campus President at Miami Dade College.

Reaching Higher at the Virtual High School Conference

2008-04-12T17:28:00.004-05:00

Visiting New Hampshire was on the agenda this week--spending some time with the good folks at the Advancing Online Learning, Virtual High School Conference. From the VHS president and CEO, Liz Pape, to the instructors and administrators attending the conference, the conversation could not have been more engaging. Some fascinating findings from recent research were presented. For example, today 30 states have state-led online learning programs and 42 states have significant supplemental online programs or full-time programs. In addition, more than half of all school districts offer online coursework, which is a 30% increase from 2004.

What was most encouraging, however, is that the conversation here wasn't about basking in glow of the expansion of online options. More dialogue was happening about how these options are blended with on-ground education and how the quest for even higher-quality could be continued. From the recently released North American Council for Online Learning's national course and teaching standards (a GREAT document by the way) to the National Education Associations course and teaching standards, they showcased the benchmarks and presented the challenge--innovate with online education, but don't forget the quest for quality in the process.

Above all, my favorite characteristic of the educator conversations at this event surrounded their commitment to leveraging online education in the high school space to expand our ability to help students develop 21st-century skills. These folks were all about advocating new techniques to help inspire the learning of everything from critical thinking to decision making to interpersonal skills to information literacy to media savvy. I just loved it! Because thinking about how we leverage new tools and techniques--in conjunction with the tried and true--to reach for higher learning is always more compelling than the tired "get on board or be left behind" technology rhetoric we hear far too often.

Looking Over Your Shoulder: Mobility and Learning

2008-03-13T14:48:00.002-05:00

This will be a quick Blog today – I just want to get this idea out there for some dialogue. As most of you know, I’ve been doing a good amount of work on the New Generation of Learning project. As part of the conversations I’ve been having with educators surrounding new technologies and learners from different generations, we’ve been exploring mobile learning technologies—everything from Blackboard’s recent purchase of NTI to the rapid expansion of iTunes University. I plan to do a lot more writing on this topic soon, but the following mobile learning example is just so interesting, I wanted to get it in the ether.

The bad news is I didn’t get the name of the faculty member that shared this idea. So, if you’re reading it and it’s you, just let me know so I can give the proper attribution. She was an English professor just putting her toe in the water with using mobile learning. She gives writing assignments that include graded draft review stages of each paper. Now, instead of written grading for the draft reviews, she records MP3 files of her responses as she’s reading the paper (in essence a mini podcast for the student). For example:

“I really like the introduction—nice use of metaphor. The second section needs some grammatical clean up. You might want to think about the dragon imagery—is it too intense for this topic? And what about a stronger transition here in the middle . . .”

She still gives them a grade on the draft stage, but her feedback is all in the voice file. She then sends the podcast to the student (I think through the Learning Management System) along with the grade.

According to her, the students flipped. They loved having this mobile, in-depth feedback. She loved literally being able to talk her students through her impressions. They told her they often began their rewrites immediately, listening to the recording on their iPod as they worked on the paper at the coffee house. “It was like having you over my shoulder the whole time,” one student told her. They reported how much more personal the feedback felt – and how it seemed so much more encouraging.

This is such a simple, yet useful strategy for leveraging mobile learning tools—particularly in feedback-intense disciplines like writing. I’m sure it’s not new. I just loved how it’s being applied with today’s technology.

Just thought I’d share!

Shoes . . . and Other Thoughts from WGU's Graduation

2008-02-19T11:29:00.006-05:00

I just returned from a meeting of the Board of Trustees of Western Governors University (WGU). The meeting was held in conjunction with their February graduation ceremony. WGU is an interesting story in the world of education. Just five years ago, this online, competency-based, non-profit university, formed by forward-thinking education governors, received its multi-regional accreditation and started its work with some 500 students. I joined the board four years ago when they were just passing the 1,700 student mark. Today, thanks to the great work of President Bob Mendenhall and a dynamic team of leaders, mentors, and support staff, WGU has more than 10,000 full-time students spread across its business, education, information technology, and health colleges. About 650 students from 48 different states were a part of this graduating ceremony. Appropriately, some were live with us in Salt Lake City and others joined the ceremonies online.

While at some point I probably need to spend a good amount of time talking about the successes of WGU over the last five years, I want to take a little bit of time here to talk about shoes. Yes, that’s right, shoes.

Whenever I attend a graduation and have the great pleasure of sitting on the dais, I’m struck by the shoes. As the students cross the stage, if you take a minute to look below the hemlines on the black gowns, you see it all. These celebrating students are sporting sporty shoes, practical shoes, dress shoes, work shoes, boots, pumps, stilettos, and even sandals. Some shoes are new, symbolizing how special this moment is for the graduate. Some are worn, almost telling the trying story of where that student has been on their educational journey. Some look comfortable, especially on those students who seem full of confidence. Others clearly need to be broken in, for those who are about to go on to a very different life.

Of course, the shoe sights are more interesting when it’s an institution that has a diverse student population. And WGU not only has ethnic diversity, but age diversity as well. In this graduation, we had students as young as 20 and as seasoned as 60. Moreover, the stories of their journeys were as unique as their footwear. Several students spoke during the ceremony about overcoming significant challenges to achieve their degrees. Some spoke about inspiring educators and mentors who guided them. Others told of grade-school teachers who tried to kill their aspirations—telling them they were “not college material.” Some praised the support of family and friends. Others told of finding new strengths in themselves. Their stories made you laugh and they made you cry. Most of all, they made you proud—proud of these determined students who now are on such an exciting pathway.

But these stories also made you proud to be a part of the education system we have in the United States. Yes we have challenges in policy and practice, funding and finance; but still, the opportunity in the US is unparalleled. Because of the diversity of our educational opportunities— from public and private K-12 schools to local community colleges to state colleges and universities to small independent colleges to Harvard to Western Governors University—students from all walks of life, from disparate and diverse backgrounds, at all ages and stages, can walk on the pathway to possibility that is education . . . in whatever shoes they like.

Transcendence and Education

2008-02-10T23:05:00.000-05:00

During one of the catalytic conversations I often hold during consulting visits at colleges, we started talking about transcendence and education. One teacher commented that, for a minute, she thought we were going to start chanting. Sorry, no soft music and mantras on this one folks. However, what we were opening our minds to in this conversation was the importance, process, and challenges of transcendence in education—for all of us.

Transcendence is about “taking it to the next level,” as one student put it. She was right on. Much of education is about helping students transcend their current state. Sometimes it’s their financial state—helping them leverage education to move from working poor to credentialed professional. Sometimes it’s their state of knowledge—challenging them to move from curricular beginnings to more nuanced and full understanding of content. Sometimes it’s their state of mind—helping them move from having unquestioned belief systems to embracing critical thinking and problem solving. Sometimes it’s their state of ability—assisting them in their progression from fumbling nursing student to well-trained clinician, from frightened med student to a quality doctor.

However, arguably one of the most vital transcendence challenges for students involves their state of belief. Do they believe that they are capable of going to the next level? Do they believe they deserve it? Do they believe it’s worth the effort? An important part of breaking this boundary is overcoming a fear of the unknown. Research is pretty clear that our students’ internal homeostatic psychological systems—systems that try to keep things at their current pace and place at all costs—are not all that cooperative about this “next level” stuff. Indeed, student self sabotage is one of the key barriers to student transcendence.

Great educators understand these transcendence journeys. Indeed, their work often revolves around being the instigators, guides, cheerleaders, and celebrators of and for student transcendence. One of the great psychic benefits of being an educator includes watching students of all ages and stages take their steps along this journey to move up and on. It is always inspiring to see a student overcome internal fear, to break old borders down, and move beyond where he or she even dreamed possible.

What came out of our discussion next was an interesting and ironic turn. Because we as educators know the power and promise of transcendence, why aren’t we embracing it for ourselves more—particularly in areas like brain research, technology tools, and a host of other possibly transformative education topics? Are we really challenging ourselves to do the work necessary to transcend—go to the next level—as educators. Can we do more to transcend our state of knowledge about brain research? Can we work more with each other and our students to improve our state of ability in using learning management systems, e-portfolios, blogs, podcasts, social networking, gaming, and analytics? And, most important, can we overcome our fears about the new and novel (particularly regarding technology) to ask the hard questions about whether or not these intriguing theories and power tools might take our teaching and student learning to a new level? Are our own fear-based homeostatic systems keeping us stuck? Or are we on the move?

Physician heal thyself is the phrase used in the medical community. It was a phrase used in this conversation as well. Put simply, not only should we be energetically encouraging our students toward transcendence, we should be willing to take the transcendence journey ourselves. The students in our group assured us they would be just as joyful in watching our move to the next level as we are in watching theirs :)

Saying Goodbye to the Two-Year College

2007-12-28T00:43:00.002-05:00

For those of you interested in community and technical colleges and their place in the larger world of education, you’ll want to check out one of my recent articles called “Saying Goodbye to the Two-year College.” It was published this month in Leadership Abstracts from the League for Innovation. I’ve already received some interesting responses on this one!

Holiday Message

2007-12-23T13:34:00.000-05:00

All the best to you and yours for the Holidays! Here’s hoping for a season full of good health, good times, and good heart. Special thoughts and prayers go out to those in our communities and around the world in need—whether for safety, food, shelter, purpose, or love. And let’s hope that it is the spirit of giving that stays with us into the New Year.

Motivating Education

2007-12-21T08:53:00.000-05:00

Watching a group of Scottish college students talk about the importance of their motivation was interesting—and pretty funny at times. It seems that access to food has a lot to do with instructional inspiration. They went on to explain that more often than not they also feed off the motivation of their teachers and other college employees.

It’s not just what they say, it’s how they say it. How they make us feel about being here, it affects us.

If they aren’t happy, we know it. We can see it in how they act toward us.

When they are having fun, we have fun. When they are interested, we get interested. I think it’s that simple.

When you listen to these students, it becomes pretty clear that we own a shared responsibility for creating a positive and productive learning environment. Like it or not, it impacts their learning. This is one of the underlying premises of the Scottish Further Education Unit’s (SFEU) Motivated College Initiative. The initiative began as their adaptation of Alan McClean’s book, The Motivated School and has since morphed into a higher education take on the topic. This session was another in a series of seminars SFEU has sponsored to dive deeper into this topic.

Of course students have the primary responsibility to own their own learning—and we should help move them to a place of being more hardy, self-motivated learners. But we kid ourselves if we think their motivation to learn is all about them. The environments we foster, the cultures we contribute to, even the “aura of a classroom” (as one student put it), all make a difference. Moreover, most talented and highly successful education professionals want to work in positive and inspiring environments. This premise is at the heart of Fortune’s “best places to work” research. It’s the reason why Google is scooping up a good number of the top IT scientists in the world. So, it makes sense to ask how motivating our education environments might be. If you read Daniel Goleman’s Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, you’ll see just how connected this human system really is – down to our collective mirror neurons! Put simply, our collective motivation matters.

How’s your motivation these days? How’s the motivation level of your colleagues? If you work in education, what impact do you think these motivation levels have on the learning of students? If the only motivation our students hear about is testing excellence for NCLB or documented learning outcomes for accreditation, what impact does that have? In primary and secondary schools, what if the real trick to motivation is reaching them with beauty, art, or music. What impact does all but eliminating these subjects in an effort to “raise standards” have on student motivation? In colleges, can we come to grips with the Emersonian notion that who we are is screaming so loudly that all the strategic enrollment management strategies and Web 2.0 technologies in the world won’t have the same impact that authentic positive engagement will? Read Parker Palmers’ A Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life for a wonderful exploration of this topic.

The students who presented at this seminar have a message for us: they know that their motivation matters in advancing their learning. But they also know that in the connected human endeavor that is education, so does ours!

Is IT Bubbling Back Up?

2007-12-05T16:39:00.000-05:00

It’s a playful video that brings home the problem of techno-hyperbole again hijacking our conversations about learning. I’ve called it the Techno Cro-Magnon Theory in other articles—the almost primal assumption that . . . technology . . . gooood.

Yes, new technologies—Web 2.0 in particular—can help us reach and teach many students. But they can also get in the way, complicate connections, and dehumanize an all-too human enterprise. I’ve heard some say boldly that technology will improve education. Nope. It is the thoughtful and effective use of technology that can improve learning. Still, more and more school board members, college and university trustees, and institutional leaders are being deluged by the flood of fanciful technology terms and again being pushed to change or die. In many places, it looks like a new IT bubble is forming.

This tech bubbling and babbling notwithstanding, an increasing number of teachers, reachers, and leaders in education are not as quick to believe the hype this time around. Instead they are asking hard questions, looking deep into the data, and reflecting on the learning outcomes surrounding new learning technologies and techniques. Indeed, the search for better insight surrounding learning is clearly on. And, ironically, in many cases it will be technology (e.g., data warehousing, data mining, and analytics) that enables people to check on the effectiveness of technology tools in the learning world.

So, the question is: are we better prepared this time. Or, will we again let IT bubble back up?

A Vision of Students Today

2007-10-29T07:15:00.002-05:00

The video study above is number two on the Viral Video Charts today. And while this vision of students today is focused on a limited sample of younger university students, it raises some good questions for educators in all sectors to consider. I wonder, however, how different the video would be if you added in the wide array of adult students and part-time students that are swirling in education these days. The kinds of students in this profile account for less than 20 percent of the credit-bearing higher education students nationally. Would there be differences in the stories students would tell in large state schools, private liberal arts colleges, community colleges, and online universities? Would there be differences based on student diversity--e.g., ethnicity, age, work status, family income, access to technology?

My guess is that all too often even broader and more diverse student groups would experience an education system that feels like an industrial factory model, operating on an agrarian calendar, trying to meet the needs of the information age. However, I would also bet that they would tell stories of faculty and staff members who reach beyond their cumbersome systems to engage, challenge, and inspire students. Which brings us back to our earlier discussions about working to build a more modern and sustainable learning infrastructure; challenging ourselves to learn something new and engage our students using both tried and true methods, as well as some new and novel--as long as we know they improve learning; and then challenging students to take personal responsibility for their learning and develop visions worth working toward.

Ready for the Information R/Evolution?

2007-10-24T05:31:00.000-05:00

This is a compelling video from Michael Welsh at Kansas State University. It has interesting implications for how we construct, connect, and convey information, as well as for how we prepare students for a ubiquitously linked Web 2.0 world vs. a fixed-media, stored-information world. Moreover, there are serious implications here for how we teach information literacy, critical thinking, and decision making in the context of this r/evolution. Learning outcomes, learning theory, and learning technology all come into play as we tackle this challenge. But the key question may be not wether are our students ready for this change . . . but are we?

Visions Worth Working Toward

2007-10-13T14:27:00.000-05:00

I’m reflecting this morning on my recent trip to Tampa. I had the pleasure of keynoting the International Research Conference on Service Learning and Community Engagement thanks to a kind invitation from one of Florida’s champions of service learning, Dee Dee Rasmussen. During the event, key leaders from K-12, Community Colleges, and Universities from across the country and around the world were deep in dialogue about their strategies for connecting with a new generation of students. During the keynote, we talked a good deal about how to leverage technology in connecting with these students, and further about how to engage them in service-learning opportunities to help us all keep up with technology. Their service as student technology assistants for those on the wrong side of the digital divide—not to mention working with us to help us keep up—might be essential if we truly want a more sustainable learning system on the fast-changing road ahead.

After the conference, David Grossman, Director of the Civic House at University of Pennsylvania, sent me a note making the connection between Thomas Friedman’s recent article on Generation Q and our dialogue at the conference. For those of you who can’t access the premium content of the NY Times, the essence of the article is the argument that this new generation of learners is indeed a caring, connected, and concerned cohort. It is a group that is socially aware, and interested. However, in Friedman’s mind, they are far too passive, too quiet (thus Generation Q). He continues:

. . . (this generation) may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good . . . Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms. Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way — by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that — virtual.

This exchange reminded me of an article I wrote some years ago for Steven Gilbert of the TLT Group—one of my favorite thinkers in this space. He was looking for “visions worth working toward.” The premise was that we need compelling visions of the future to spark our use of technology, transformations of education, and directions in major policy work. Without something that strikes our imagination and calls us to action, we are too often stuck in the admiring “that’s interesting” repose, rather than striving, learning, and growing as needed. In response to his query, I took Ghandi’s famous seven deadly sins and turned them to a more positive positioning to frame just such a compelling vision. Here it is:

A Vision of what can save the world:
Knowledge with character;
Business with morality;
Science with humanity;
Politics with principle;
Pleasure with conscience;
Wealth from work;
and Worship with sacrifice.

-paraphrased from Mahatma Ghandi

A good argument can be made that Generation Q is sitting tinder ready for a spark of motivation, direction, or passion. We may need to challenge ourselves to engage them early and often to see if we can ignite their interest and help them move from passionate point-and-click socialites to positive change-and-progress drivers. It just might be the best service we can provide for their learning—helping them develop a vision worth working toward.

Playing the Game: Working Together to Advance the Creative Economy

2007-10-03T13:34:00.000-05:00

Are you playing? In the creative economy that is. More and more, state by state, nation by nation, the conversation is turning to the importance of education and the creative economy. We’ve talked about it at length in this blog, and others are buzzing and building around the same topic nationally and internationally.

Most recently, I had the chance to speak to the California Community College Statewide Economic Development Advisory Committee on new generations of learning. The most interesting part of the engagement was seeing the laser focus on their role in the creative economy. For example, we had a fascinating presentation by the folks leading the Multimedia and Entertainment Initiative for the state. It’s an inspiring community of practice, bringing together programs to advance the creative economy, inspire creative program development within education, and build a strong network of interested and inspiring institutions taking on this work.

Having worked with educators across K-12, community colleges, and universities interested in both reaching and teaching with creative economy strategies, this is the kind of community of practice that will drive change. I often encourage educators to read Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever and begin to expand their use of creative outreach and engagement of students. But one of the most common refrains is: who is doing this work? Where can I find models? Check out the California MEI work at www.cccmei.net to learn more, join forces, and start to play. Let’s see what we can create together.

Simple Acts, Beautiful Results

2007-08-25T07:30:00.000-05:00

Bermuda is beautiful. I’ve had the pleasure of working here with the good folks from Bermuda College for the last few days. The people, their passion, their college, their focus on students, and so much more—it is all a thing of beauty. And their view of the ocean isn’t bad either!

However, the most beautiful moment happened after one of our sessions. We were diving in to the findings of the Practical Magic: On the Front Lines of Teaching Excellence study. We explored how the faculty from this study—all of whom had received awards for excellence in teaching and reaching students—seemed powerfully passionate about connecting with students, catalyzing their success, and inspiring them to fall in love with learning. Moreover, they dared to be different as they made a difference—dared to be “goofy” as one faculty member put it. They put their egos on the line, because it wasn’t about them. Their lives were not about their prestige; they were instead committed to seeing their students succeed. We talked about the learning theory you can draw Daniel Goleman’s recent book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships; and how after reading this work and better understanding the power of teachers, coaches, parents, and leaders to literally shape the brains and patterns of thinking of those in their charge, it is impossible not to take the most simple acts seriously.

After the session, one of the faculty members came to the front of the room while I was closing down my computer. She wanted to share her story personally. She taught math at Bermuda College and deeply resonated with the section of the study that talked about daring transformative teachers and their often powerful but simple words and deeds.

She, like many Bermudian students, had left the island to complete her bachelors. Upon entering her large US University, she realized that this was going to be a very different experience. The institution was large, impersonal, and loaded with bureaucracy. Put simply, and in her words, she was scared. However, one of her faculty members dared to stand out. He got to know his students, understand their backgrounds, and seemed to really care about their success—and not just in math. He was the opposite of the sloppy Darwinian, “let them sink or swim,” faculty that made students feel like they were a nuisance. He was her island in that lonely university sea.

At the end of the semester all of the students taking calculus—from a wide variety of teachers—were brought together in a huge hall to take the end-of-course exam. She was worried enough about the test, but now she was sitting in a gigantic, sterile room with what seemed like a thousand students. To her, they all looked ready. She was terrified. Her heart rate soared, she began to sweat, and her mind seemed to be locking up. She couldn’t remember the simplest of things she knew would be on the test. She began looking for a way out.

But just as this panic was cresting and she was preparing to crash to shore, she heard a voice. It was her teacher. It was five minutes before the test was to begin, and he was making his way through the sea of students to personally encourage his class. He knew all of his students’ names and faces and sought them out one by one. The other students were looking at him like he was crazy. The proctors were not pleased. He didn’t care.

He found her in the middle of that sea, she said. “Then he put his hand on my shoulder and just leaned in by my ear and said, ‘I just know you’re going to do well!’”

With that one touch and those simple words, “All of the worry, stress, and panic seemed to flood out of my toes. I remember that moment to this day. It just may have changed my life.” He was the only teacher who took the time to make that pre-test connection with students. She wondered what would have happened to her, if she hadn’t had the one teacher willing to be that different. “Without that simple act, I’m almost positive I would have failed that test,” she said. “But because of him, I not only passed, I fell in love with math. Now, I try my best to pass that feeling on to my students.”

From the moonlight on the ocean to the pink sand by the sea, you can’t help being struck by Bermuda’s beauty. But it is this simple story that will stay with me from this trip. It’s a great reminder that while the bells and whistles of technology might ring and blow with possibility and the power of education policy is formidable indeed, it is often the simple acts, the small moves, and the supportive side comments of those on the front lines that can have the most beautiful results.

Sustainability in Education

2007-07-30T09:03:00.000-05:00

Sustainability as a topic of conversation in the world of education--in both programs and operations--is moving from the fringes to center stage. I recently attended the Bay Area Regional Workforce Development Consortia’s summer meeting in Burlingame (CA) where explorations of sustainability, renewable energy, and alternative fuels drove the dialogue. David Esmaili from West Valley College gave a compelling presentation about their curriculum efforts and operational initiatives. Check out their Advanced Transportation Technology and Energy page to get a good overview of their efforts.

Of course they are not alone. Many K-12 school districts, community colleges, and universities nationally and internationally are taking on efforts to help students explore sustainability, prepare for careers that enable sustainability, and learn in environments that leverage sustainable energy strategies. Examples include and can be found in the projects of the Partnership for Environment Technology Education, the Center for Sustainable Energy, and the National Renewable Energy Lab (I particularly like their student resources). Of course the US Department of Energy has a good resource page – particularly for those interested in outfitting their campus to be more energy efficient.

The benefits are clear: (1) good careers for students, (2) clean and sustainable campuses for our faculty, staff, and administrators, and (3) increased competitiveness for our communities, states, and nations. The question is: have you catalyzed the conversation on sustainability—on both the programmatic and operational levels—at your institution?

Surfacing Education

2007-05-31T13:07:00.000-05:00

Check out this video on Microsoft's Surface , which will be released this fall. Just think about the uses in education! Here's another video that explores the possibilites and another that is a review from Popular Mechanics. Surface could help bring classroom and online learning to life in very new and interesting ways. As we've discussed before, technology innovations like Surface--along with gaming, social networking, holographics, and more--hold the potential to bring student engagement to a whole new place.

Shift Happens, Even to US

2007-05-31T08:57:00.001-05:00

In the stunning Shift Happens presentation (click here for the music-enhanced YouTube version or here for the award-winning PowerPoint version) the premise that size and focus matter comes through loud and clear. Basic facts like China has more honor students than we have students, more people with bachelors degrees than we have people, and that they soon will be the largest English-speaking country in the world, make you take pause. I'm still trying to verify these data; however, if they are even close to accurate it is worth exploring the possible impact. Couple these trends with the larger changes we are seeing in the flat world, creative economies, and newer technologies, and shifting seems far too tame a verb for what’s coming our way.

In Kristof’s NY Times column this Monday, The Educated Giant, he dives deeper into how serious China is about shifting—and doing so through education. He argues that there are four reasons for their progress: (1) they are hungry for education and economic progress, and as a result they work harder; (2) they have enormous cultural respect for education, revere teachers, and pay them well; (3) they believe in their bones that hard work means much more than talent—in their mind, grades come from engagement and work, not being “smart;” and (4) they don’t believe they are anywhere near good enough. They want to drive more creativity and innovation—which, by the way, will be quite hard in a country that suppresses the liberal arts of critical thinking, dissent, and personal decision making. However, this challenge notwithstanding, after spending time in China and exploring their drive, Kristof echoes a now common refrain from politicians, educators, and economic development specialists: The US needs to respond to this challenge like we did to the launch of Sputnik in 1957, with a massive mobilization of effort, focus, and funding. And it’s not about winning a cold war this time; it’s about whether or not the US will be swimming in the hot springs of education and economic progress that are bubbling up all over the world.

So what’s happening here? Yes, we are spending an inordinate amount of time on testing and testing-related issues because of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). However, given the challenges at hand, it’s not surprising we want to help institutions develop the power to know they’re making a difference through education. Leaving NCLB aside, we are waking up to the fact that our system is large, democratic, diverse, with many opportunities to stop in and stop out. These characteristics are clearly a positive. However, our system also is far too porous. Retention, persistence, and academic achievement seem to take a backseat to access. We need to blend the positive access agenda with the now imperative success agenda to drive change. Initiatives like the Lumina Foundation’s Achieving the Dream are doing just this by challenging institutions to work together to meet collectively agreed upon student access and success goals. It’s definitely worth a look. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is trying to build business and education dialogues to better set standards. And the American Council on Education has launched its http://www.knowhow2go.org/ and http://www.solutionsforourfuture.org/ initiatives to make the case for education preparation and investment. There are many more initiatives to list, but, you get the idea. We are trying. But will it be enough? Would we be better served by a much larger local, state, and national political dialogue surrounding education that goes well beyond arguments about outcomes testing?

Yes, shift is happening—particularly with China driving their education agenda. However, the US has some innate and powerfully positive aspects to its education system—growing commitments to access, success, and flexibility—that might just position us to leverage these changes like no other. We just need to get our shift together!

When Learning Hurts

2007-04-17T14:49:00.000-05:00

Senseless, horrific, and disturbing are only a few of the descriptions that come to mind when contemplating Monday's tragedy at Virginia Tech. Who, how, and why are only a few of the questions for which we want answers. Regardless of the answers, however, the hurt this incident will inflict on all involved will be deep and lasting. Moreover, ripples of this hurt are already radiating out in our larger national psyche.

These school, college, and university tragedies hurt so much and so broadly precisely because they violate the very nature of learning. Learning is genesis. It's supposed to lead to new and better life. It's supposed to nurture the seeds of promise to bring forth the buds of potential that open up into the glorious blooms of possibility. It's not supposed to reap, but to sow and grow. When these violent acts viciously violate our learning venues it hits hard.

Our thoughts, prayers, and support go out to the students, faculty, families, and friends involved in Monday's tragedy. You have the love, care, and concern of millions flowing your way. And let's hope that the administrative allegations, political pontifications, and social recriminations don't dominate the national dialogue for too long. Rather, let's strive to come together sooner than later and focus on honoring those lost and supporting those hurt by this tragic incident.

On YouTube, Engagement, and Learning

2007-03-16T16:47:00.000-05:00

Students still report that too many learning experiences are passive, linear, formal, and impersonal. All of us have been on that side, as a student that is—being talked at, ignored completely, and bored to death. As we discussed in the last post, some educators are either adamantly against or almost afraid of making their teaching and learning fun. You might even argue that the Serious Games Initiative is such an example. Just the fact that we have to call it “serious” says it all. These games are supposed to be serious in education, not fun.

However, new technology and a new sense of willingness in teachers and learners might offer a new way—a way to both seriously improve learning and have fun. I’ve been working with two colleagues—Dr. Coral Noonan-Terry and Kathleen Plinske—on a remarkably enjoyable study called A New Generation of Learning, where we have been exploring the infrastructure institutions will need to create engaging education on the road ahead. Our overarching premise is that all too often we separate physical infrastructure from virtual infrastructure (remember this commentary), and that if we truly want to combine them we need to consider things like blended learning, social networking, gaming, high-impact presentation technologies, mobility, analytics, and mindful high-touch connection strategies.

Coming out of these discussions was a great example from Kathleen. She is a doctoral student at Pepperdine University, which has leveraged these types of tools in her learning experiences. They have a virtual classroom in which they meet in Second Life, they do extensive virtual work for remote students around the country, and they even let her demonstrate her learning using YouTube. Check out this video she prepared as a virtual video portfolio of her study of learning theory. Not only is it an interesting use of technology to engage and document learning, it is a pretty impressive overview of learning theory in practice. I particularly like the tongue-in-cheek jargon meter that runs throughout.

A hand-held digital movie camera, Final Cut Pro software for the video, Garage Band software for the narration, and an internet connection were the only tools she used to produce this video. Just think about how much richer and enjoyable the learning experience documented here is versus writing a typical paper or answering a multiple-choice test. She told me that she ended up spending “way too much time on this” because it was engaging and interesting. Kathleen estimates it took almost five times longer than a traditional research paper would have, but she loved the assignment. Many of the tools necessary to produce something like this are free and our students use them all the time (literally millions of students post on MySpace and YouTube every semester). In another favorite example from the student recruiting and engagement side of the house, Kettering University leveraged a comic flash movie—rather than a professionally produced video—to drive their recruiting of new students (you have to check out their Stick Man video). The viral marketing chain was so powerful that they now have a cult following of the Kettering Stick Man.

If you’re an educator willing to put your toe in the water, you’ll soon find out that these teaching and learning strategies are fun for all involved. But you have to be willing to really engage your students and learn some new things yourself. Don’t worry; many students are more than happy to tutor you. You also have to be willing to let go of your ego. Getting over your sense of self importance is a must to make these kinds of strategies work. Do these things, however, and you’re likely to help your students connect as never before with the positive affective domain in education—which is our jargoned way of saying you'll help them fall in love with learning. Part of the reason this is so is because they'll see that you are willing to learn with them, and enjoy it.

As a final conversation catalyzer, I submit that these technologies and techniques absolutely need not dominate the learning experience, but they at least warrant a try in our continuing attempts to improve and expand learning opportunities for our students. Will you YouTube?

Making Fun of Learning Objects

2007-02-20T12:39:00.000-05:00

The good folks at the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management (ISKME) just launched what looks to be a powerful teaching and learning network called Open Education Resources (OER) Commons. OER Commons brings social-networking features and open-source technology to educational content. In essence, it combines an open-source style learning object repository with a MySpace-like sharing, rating, and collaborating infrastructure—in other words, small chunks of curricular resources combined with collaboration tools for faculty sharing those chunks. Membership is free, and the potential is huge.

What’s happening here is the free exchange of learning resources, coupled with the ability of faculty nationally and internationally to collaborate, share, and dialogue. Ideas and insights about what’s working, what’s not, and how to best make use of resources are right at your fingertips. Amazon- and YouTube-like rating systems guide you through highest-rated, most-viewed, and new content in a myriad of disciplines. If you buy the premise of Daniel Goldman’s book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, you can see the genius behind OER Commons. It’s a vibrant social network that allows faculty to collectively make meaning, interact, and engage with learning content. It’s not just an electronic file cabinet of modular learning materials, as many learning object repositories become.

OER Commons holds the real potential of making the search for and construction of curriculum and delivery strategies more social and maybe even fun—imagine that! Add to this the idea of bringing interactive gaming technology into this mix, as folks like Chris DeDe from Harvard’s College of Education advocate, and you really ratchet things up. Extending the idea we discussed earlier about gaming in student orientation, imagine teachers choosing from interactive game modules (learning objects) that dynamically teach math concepts, engage students in comparing and contrasting philosophies, or take them deep into historical contexts as participants. It’s a future where teaching and learning becomes literally playful for teacher and learner.

But therein may be a problem. There are some for whom the idea of making learning math, philosophy, history--any "serious" subject for that matter--fun completely misses the mark. To them, learning should be hard, full of unremitting work that leads to painful realization. Play has no part in this mix. Even though the medical industry, the military, and many more have all found the broad value of creating more social and game-centric learning experiences, in their minds we just can’t let that kind of thinking sour thousands of years of educational practice! They are essentially saying, "I had to give blood, sweat, and tears to learn this stuff, and so should you!" These are the same folks who are still getting over the fact that search engines can instantly give you research results, when they had to spend hours in the library searching through the stacks to find the same information.

However, I don’t think this sentiment is shared by most teachers. From work studying thousands of teaching excellence award winners, it’s clear that the best of teachers want to make learning about their disciplines fun, engaging, and even inspiring. Moreover, they want to have fun in the process as well.

So to best meet the learning needs of our communities and our students, let’s make use of tools like OER Commons and strategies from gaming as we engage our neomillennial learners. Let’s be known for making fun of learning objects!

Cutting Out the Middle Man

2007-01-22T07:49:00.003-05:00

Check out Gootman’s story in today’s NY Times—Taking Middle Schoolers Out of the Middle. This has been one of the most welcome trends to watch in the world of K-20 over the last few years. The research is clear. US students perform as well or better than international students until 6th grade, and then they fall off the cliff. Guess what happens then? Middle School.

We have to remember that today's middle schools are really a large-scale experiment from the 60s and 70s. The idea was that these kids were going through such a unique time of change that they needed a special kind of focus. To the advocates, segregating these kids made sense. While the sentiment was good, the data are not. There are little-to-no concrete data that support the premise that middle schools work. Indeed, it is about time we admit that this is an experiment that failed, and failed miserably.

Drs. Bill and June Sanders are the researchers behind the SAS Education Value Added Assessment System, which includes deep student-outcome data from more than 500 school districts—many with more than 15 years worth of longitudinal information. Their findings are clear. Any time you transition a child from one school building to the next, you lose on average up to ½ a year’s worth of academic progress. Do the math. Moving most kids twice in two-to-three years means they can lose up to a year’s worth of progress or more!

It makes no sense to take these children at their most socially and academically vulnerable stages and make them suffer through these tumultuous transitions. In essence, we rip them from one learning community to the next and leave them with fewer and fewer adult support systems. Whether you’re a fan of brain science, learning communities, student engagement, the three R’s, or social intelligence research you can see why the middle-school strategy doesn’t work. These students have to spend so much time rewiring their brains to accommodate new social systems and support structures over two transitions in two-to-three years that academics become hard-pressed to compete—particularly with powerful pre-teen social dynamics.

As the NY Times article points out, and as I’ve heard educators who have implemented this change recount, there is something powerful about a seventh grader who is goofing off seeing their 2nd grade teacher stare them down. Or for a young girl going through her early stages of puberty to be able to quickly reconnect with a safe-feeling teacher from third grade. They are in a comfort zone, which helps learning fight for center stage. And there are good ways to insure that you don’t have abuse problems with older and younger kids. In fact, the worry over older-child/younger-child abuse is mostly a red-herring argument used to justify not changing.

The K-8 model makes much more sense to me. However, I’m not wed to that idea alone. Some school districts are offering 6-12 systems, to spark an earlier focus on college readiness. Maybe K-7 would be a compromise that makes sense? I’m not sure. My guess is all of these models will be successful because of fewer overall transitions for kids. However, I personally feel kids are being forced to grow up too quickly these days; so, I’d err on the side of letting them stay bonded K-8 until there are compelling data either way.

A serendipitous side effect here is that by ending middle schools we fully eliminate the need for another layer of administration—helping us focus more money on instruction. Will the benefits never cease?

In the end, we’re all about helping our kids and community members learn more effectively. If eliminating the middle man helps our children learn more effectively, better prepares them for college and a world driven by learning, then lets make this a priority. I’d hate to see another generation of kids suffer through this well-intentioned experiment’s outcomes yet again. Let’s not get in the middle of their learning!

KnowHow2GO

2007-01-17T10:08:00.000-05:00

The American Council on Education and the Lumina Foundation finally launched the much anticipated KnowHow2Go website. This campaign is all about inspiring kids and adults to aspire to college education, to prepare early and often, and to take proactive steps on this pathway to possibility.

All too often in the US and around the world, what you learn is based on where you live, what family you were born into, and what expectations were drilled into your head (negative or positive) from an early age. But you and I can help change the game. In today’s world, with information at our fingertips and inspirational stories a click away, no child or adult should have to be lost in the wilderness about education.

In a learn to earn world—even a learn to live world!—we can’t afford to let our children and community members be left in the dark. Help someone in your world KnowHow2Go!

Another Promised Land!

2007-01-09T12:05:00.000-05:00

A note from Phil Neal at The University of Texas at Austin:

I was reading your blog about the Kalamazoo Promise and wanted to pass along some information about a similar program in Wyoming. Wyoming has recently experienced great fortunes with the royalties from oil, gas and coal production. It is one of the few states that actually has a surplus of money at their disposal. A couple of years ago, there was a proposal to use some of this surplus to create an endowment which would provide scholarships to Wyoming high school graduates.

The Hathaway Scholarship program was created and students began taking advantage of the scholarship in the fall of 2006. Reflective of their GPA (2.5 and higher) and ACT scores (17 and higher), students will receive one of the four graduated scholarships to be used at the state’s community colleges and/or university. All levels of the scholarships pay for most or all of the full-time tuition at the community colleges, while only a few levels pay for all the tuition at the university. In my mind, this inadvertently created an incentive for students to attend the community colleges for those students with lower GPS’s and ACT scores.Basic scholarship information can be reviewed at http://www.hathawayscholarships.com/. The site also contains links to the university and community colleges, all of which have more extensive information.

This program will be a great benefit for students of Wyoming, and has made the financial offices rethink how to use their existing resources for recruitment.Hopefully, its successes, like the Kalamazoo Promise, will serve as models for other communities and states. I agree with you that this type of forward thinking helps to enhance more than the just the educational attainment of the citizens within a city or state. Wyoming is hoping to keep many of its high school graduates from moving out of the state – a problem they have experienced for years – while creating a more educated workforce that helps promote economic development.

Learning to Live Longer

2007-01-04T17:18:00.000-05:00

Gina Kolata has a fascinating article in today’s NY Times that is a must read for those interested in education, healthcare, and quality communities. The long and short of the research reported in the story is that the longer you stay in school, the longer you live. Education is more important than ethnicity, income, and a host of other expected key variables. The root of the hypothesized effect of education on life span is related to the ability of a more-educated person to make good choices, delay gratification, and consciously make decisions that positively impact health.

While the studies abound that explore the learn to earn relationship—the more you stay in school, the more you earn—we rarely talk about the significant impact of education on health and wellness in our public policy debates. But this story raises the bar. How can any right-thinking politician or policy maker not care deeply about expanding and improving education access and success with these kinds of stakes? Or, at the very least, how could they not become deeply interested in finding out more.

My favorite part of the article is that the education effect doesn’t end as life goes on. Indeed, it doesn’t matter when you learn, just that you learn. So, pick up a book—your life is at stake :)

The Best Gift for Education: Fixing the Funding Gaps

2006-12-23T20:20:00.000-05:00

Check out this story on the funding disparities driven by our current DOE formulas. We need to aggressively address these and other disparities if we truly want to address the achievement gaps in this country.

On a related note, it still breaks my heart that the wealthiest in our country still focus so much of their giving in support of the mega endowments such as Harvard's $30 Billion. There is no denying that those who need it the least, get it the most--money to support education that is.

A Creative-Class Promised Land: The Kalamazoo Promise

2006-12-01T12:15:00.000-05:00

We’ve spent a good deal of time on this blog talking about changing and fast-intertwining economic and education dynamics. We’ve reviewed Thomas Friedman’s argument about the role of education in an increasingly “flat” world. We’ve also explored Richard Florida’s argument that the rise or flight of the creative class—dynamic, educated, and talented people staying or leaving—is either empowering or disabling communities. Here’s a stunning response from Kalamazoo, Michigan.

The Kalamazoo Promise was announced last year and is now in full swing. Through the generosity of anonymous donors, the Kalamazoo Promise set up a permanent scholarship fund to pay for four years of college for any child who graduates from the Kalamazoo public schools. There is a sliding scale of support based on the number of years in the schools system, with a minimum of four years required. However, the promise is basically this: stay here or move here and your kids go to college for free. The promise supports up-to-four years of attendance at any of the states’ public community colleges or universities (or any combination thereof).

Prior to the announcement of this program, enrollment was sharply declining in Kalamazoo schools. The economic development outlook was bleak. Property tax revenue was in free fall. Now each of these indices is moving in the other direction. Folks have moved from as far away as Hawaii to locate in Kalamazoo and take advantage of this unique benefit. Enrollment is up, property values are up, and prospects are rising—all because of this unique investment in the creative capital of a community. Jamal Abdul Alim—who recently studied the impact of the program—describes it this way:

“The program is as much a social experiment aimed at leveling the playing field of access to higher learning as it is an economic development initiative meant to generate school revenue, boost the economy and reverse the effects of a middle-class flight.”

Initial estimates place the program cost between $3-5 million for the first few years. In peak years, it could cost more than $20 million. However, the donors have assured the community that there is enough money to support the program in perpetuity.

Looking at the road ahead, this may be the best money ever spent. For many families—as Abdul-Alim notes—Kalamazoo has just become “the promised land.”

Flogging Blogging

2006-11-24T12:08:00.000-05:00

A special thanks to Gerald Napoles, a doctoral student from the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin, who sent us this link to an interesting story about college presidents: College Presidents’ Blogs Opens Door to Controversy: Some Get More than They Bargained For.

What’s somewhat striking about the article is how it portrays the blog as a somewhat new phenomenon in making information more public, allowing anonymous attacks, and stirring up controversy. I hate to break it to the author, but these are the same challenges that group e-mail, listservs, and bulletin boards—or just basic web sites—have posed for more than a decade. Indeed, folks have been using web tools to attack administrators and faculty for years. Whether it’s “Corruption at LaGuardia Community College” (an attack that has been going on so long it’s almost comical) or http://www.myprofessorsucks.com/, the online world is not shy about ganging up on folks. Indeed, the folks at the Cluetrain Manefesto have long posited that this postmodern pattern will be a pernicious day-to-day affair for organizations trying to serve any clientele.

This always-on, often-attacked phenomenon is one of the major arguments for extreme authenticity; because in a connected and transparent world, you’re not going to hide anything for long. What we’re getting more used to however, is what folks in small towns have known for a long time. In tight communication circles, some stories are true and others are just really interesting or really inappropriate.

I am concerned that the presidents from this story aren’t more careful about moderating their blogs. While moderation slows down the conversation a bit, it’s the only fair thing to do for your online participants. There are plenty of other open air communication vehicles for folks to vent; why would you allow your blog to be hijacked by the hyperbolic? Good online teachers have known this for years. It’s one of the reasons many choose moderated threaded discussions over chats for class online discussions.

In short, let’s not flog the blog. Let’s instead learn how to leverage it more effectively as an ongoing communication vehicle for communities committed to learning together.

Are Student’s More Engaged Online or In-Class?

2006-11-14T12:32:00.000-05:00

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) just released their 2006 Annual Report. This survey of 260,000 randomly selected students from 523 colleges and universities had some interesting findings, not the least of which was that online learning students report the same-or-higher overall engagement scores when compared to in-class students. The data actually make sense if you think about the high numbers of students in large-lecture classrooms in the US who at best feign engagement throughout the semester en route to taking two multiple-choice tests (mid-term and final exams) that measure their “learning.” However, online students did report lower active and collaborative learning scores than their in-class counterparts.

Given that most students will experience a blend of teaching and learning methods—online and in class—we need to explore these data carefully to see what works best in which context to achieve specific learning objectives. However, something NSSE is being criticized for is the private nature of much of their data. Unlike its sister survey CCSSE, which demands public reporting from all participating institutions, many NSSE institutions are able to keep their data from students. I guess some institutions don’t want to engage their students or us in conversations about engagement!

Dying to Learn Together

2006-11-04T06:59:00.000-05:00

In the run up to the dotcom boom and bust, Cindy Miles and I published an article called Are you Dying to Use Technology. In the piece we made the case that you could track many faculty members’ adoption of technology along Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ stages of death and dying. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance were everywhere, as the uses of E-mail, PowerPoint, and the Web were driving toward the mainstream.

Casey Green’s annual survey of higher education’s adoption of technology—the Campus Computing Survey—is pretty clear that these basic technologies have arrived. Indeed, over the last fifteen years, we have moved technology and technology leaders from the basement to the boardroom (literally in some cases). Most campuses now employ a chief technology officer and target an increasing amount of their infrastructure budgets toward technology.

This technology mainstreaming notwithstanding, conversations about technology are changing. Folks today are not wondering whether their colleges will leverage technology, but whether or not they are getting a true return on investment—is student learning really being improved with all these bits and bytes. And it’s not just about technology use. There are national, state, and local dialogues about all of our administrative and academic strategies and their effectiveness.

Enter a whole new phase of “dying to use” adoption. This time, it’s about research and analytics, the use of data to inform decisions about reaching and teaching students, or evidence-based education. The beginnings of this movement can be traced back to the days of total quality management and then the learning revolution. Terry O’Banion’s A Learning College for the 21st Century is the seminal work in the latter movement. In this book and in speeches nationally and internationally, he argued that colleges in the future would need to consistently and doggedly answer two key questions: (1) do our policies, procedures, and practices improve and expand learning?; and, more important, (2) how do we know?

As I’ve noted here before, groups like the Community College Survey of Student Engagement have begun to collect data directly from students, and use national benchmarks, to try to answer these questions. Projects like the Lumina Foundation’s Achieving the Dream are pulling colleges together to develop common data definitions (e.g., what is a full-time student, part-time student, course success) so they can start using common data across multiple institutions to really get a handle on what works in driving access and success in community colleges. The Education Testing Service (ETS) recently held a summit in Charlotte called Building a culture of Evidence from the Ground Up that explored these programs and others in community colleges. The reports from the presenters noted that it is hard, but incredibly substantial and rewarding work. It really is making a difference.

CCSSE, Achieving the Dream, and ETS Summits are happening in the context of accrediting agencies demanding plans from institutions to define and measure learning outcomes as part of their accreditation reviews. Moreover, the federal government is beginning to poke—and poke hard—at our use of data with reports like the one recently published by the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Not surprisingly, we are beginning to see the movement of institutional research tools and personnel from in-the-shadows staffers to center stage.

Because of the push from programs and the powers that be, folks are once again feeling like they are “dying to adopt” something new—this time it is analytics and data use. All stages can be seen, sometimes in different people, sometimes in the same person over time: (1) Denial: “These data cannot be right!” (2) Anger: “Don’t these **#$@ administrators have anything better to do!” (3) Bargaining: “We can measure passing, but we’ll never really measure learning” (4) Depression: “I think it may be time to retire”, to (5) Acceptance: “I wonder what these data really mean?”

However, as was the case with technology, we’re always better if we don’t drive this as a fad or as a top-down directive. We really don’t have to slam people through stages of death and dying. The folks at CCSSE, ATD, and ETS note that we’re much better off inviting faculty and staff to the table and inviting them to help shape the process.

For example, Steve Mittlestet at Richland College in Dallas Texas—a college that recently became the first institution of higher education in the country to receive the Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award—states that his college focused first on building a culture that valued learning together. He cautions colleagues that when beginning to do work on analytics, outcomes, and data you have to stop the natural tendency to adopt a culture of blame (e.g., who is failing with these students!), and promote a culture of wonder (e.g., I wonder what we can do together to turn developmental math around?). Talented faculty members are trained to wonder. Give them good data, invite them to the table, and be willing to start the conversation. When we can substantially improve student learning in the process, this can be a compelling conversation indeed!

Learning together is never easy. But, it’s at the heart of quality work in the academy. To do our part in the process, NISOD will be hosting an analytics summit at our annual conference in May 2007. We set this kind of stage because we know that talented teachers strongly believe in the CASE method—Copy And Steal Everything. Folks who care deeply about reaching and teaching students have always enjoyed learning together, always enjoyed the task of tackling tough problems with talented people. Now, with better information at our fingertips, we’ll have more tools in the toolkit than ever before.

This time let’s make it clear, we’re not “dying to adopt” a new trend; but we are dying to learn together, so we can help our students learn for a lifetime.

They're Raving About It

2006-09-25T14:21:00.000-05:00

We’ve taken some time in this blog to discuss the use of gaming in education, as well as working to use alternative strategies to connect with hyper-connected students. We’ve shown some of the unique strategies to reach out to post-modern student interests with viral marketing and more engaging content.

But now comes the Rave! While visiting the good folks at South Texas College (STC), I heard about the results of their new strategy to reach out to younger students. For those who don’t know, STC was formed thanks to the leadership of former Governor Ann Richards and others in an effort to better meet the educational needs of the Rio Grande Valley area—a predominantly Mexican-American community. It has grown from a bold idea in 1992 to a thriving institution of more than 18,000 students today, offering everything from certifications to four-year degrees. It is proof positive that we underestimate the educational needs and capabilities of minority populations all too often. And when tapped, amazing things can happen in terms of supporting human potential and expanding workforce development.

Anyway, about the Rave. I was present for their all-college convocation when they announced the results of this innovative strategy. They held an all-night Rave Registration, allowing students to do everything from admissions to paying for classes—at 3:00 am if they wanted to—with food, fun, music, and lots of college support.

Some folks thought that the student services folks where out of their minds for proposing this, that only a handful of students would even be interested. They ended up with close to 500!!

All night Rave Registrations. Talk about 24/7 student services! I love it.

Lighting Candles

2006-09-23T18:04:00.000-05:00

Educators coming together around the use of research and analysis to drive decisions. Practitioners and policy makers calling for more openess and transparency in exploring outcomes. Is this a meeting of the Spelling Commission? No. This is the University and College Information Systems Association’s (UCISA) seminar on the rising use of business intelligence in education. UCISA is the UK equivalent of Educause, and it held this futuristic meeting in the hallowed halls of the University of Bristol, just outside London.

After writing about the Power to Know You’re Making a Difference and the Need to Know Situation in Education, it was quite interesting to hear the challenges that US school districts, community colleges, and universities are facing in their efforts to gather and leverage data to drive decisions being echoed by colleagues in the UK. We heard about the “Edinburgh Enlightenment Project,” from the University of Edinburgh. I liked the take of the “Knowing Me, Knowing You” presentation—complete with ABBA soundtrack—from Liverpool John Moores University as well.

One key consensus point from these presentations—the technology is not the tough stuff in insight initiatives. It’s the people, processes, and culture that are most challenging. Moreover, a key element of all three of these issues was emphasized here: power. Those in power have to get it, support it, and be willing to use it, or else intelligence systems will never get off the ground.

The money quote from the seminar was borrowed from Sir Winston Churchill (a former Chancellor of University of Bristol): “If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it.”

Here’s to lighting candles with the good use of information. Our students deserve it!

Ingredients and Recipes

2006-09-15T19:24:00.000-05:00

Reading the President of Iran’s comments about how more than 150 years of academic freedom—or secular education—had poisoned Iranian youth, I’m reminded of a very basic fact: ingredients do not equal the recipe.

For example, the tough lesson we see in practice in the Middle East and South America is that democracy does not ensure freedom. Indeed, democracy without quality education, freedom of the press, and stable civic institutions, is typically just mass manipulation--dashing demagogues dominate the ballot box and drag their societies through all sorts of nonsense. In short, democracy in and of itself is not a recipe for freedom.

Education is not a recipe for freedom either. While I and others wax poetic about the power of education, the truth is that without true academic freedom, freedom of the press, broad access to public education, and more, teaching and learning can be terrible and lethal. Schools and universities can be used to inculcate the worst of values and the most dangerous of thinking—not to mention developing the most terrible of talents (e.g., think about building nuclear devices).

Remember, education literally changes the brain (great book by the way). My worst fear is that millions of young people will live neither well nor free thanks to the “education” provided by some hateful regimes. They will be burdened with patterns of thoughts and constructions of reality so warped, that all of our cogent arguments, good intentions, and peaceful gestures will be hard pressed to make a dent in their version of reality.

We’ve got to tackle this head on. Yes, democracy and education are deeply intertwined. However, they are only ingredients in the larger recipe of free societies; moreover, as the Iranian President makes clear, they can be used quite dangerously in isolation.

Interests and Interest

2006-08-30T15:03:00.000-05:00

Steve Gilbert, the leader of the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Group (TLT Group), and I had an interesting conversation yesterday. We were doing an interactive interview/conversation piece for use with his national listserv and online community.

As we talked about the usefulness of student evaluations of instruction, new course designs at MIT, and broad strategies to increase student engagement, another topic kept popping up. The persistent theme we circled back toward involved the modern push and pull between preparing our students—and ourselves for that matter—for a world of rapid change, career mobility, and shifting priorities versus challenging our students to be part of a community, to develop a sense of authentic purpose and belonging. This conversation got me thinking that this dynamic strongly relates to a defining dialectic of our postmodern age: practical cynicism and individuation versus daring to believe in something and becoming a caring member of a community.

I’ve seen it in almost every world in which I’ve worked over the last ten years: education, association, and corporate. People are torn between looking out for number one and looking out for each other, focusing on their own interests or really showing interest in someone else. It’s as if we are desperately hopeful for real, authentic, inspirational leadership that will make us a substantive part of something larger than ourselves, but cynically resigned when our greatest wishes are dashed away by scandal, betrayal, or incompetence. I touched on this a bit in the Don’t Stop Believing post a few months back.

What is this duality doing to us? Maybe it’s a healthy dose of reality therapy, and this push and pull is an important part of being hardy enough to take the “slings and arrows outrageous fortune.” Probably true. However, there is also a possibility that this duality is becoming so pronounced that whole groups of people are swinging too hard either way. Some are becoming so cynical and individually focused that they’ll withdraw from any position or stand. They sit on the sidelines deriding all players on the field. Others are so fanatically obedient that they dutifully play their part in partisan divides or, worse yet, will blow themselves to bits for a cause.

What is the perfect pathway to the balance of interests and interest? I’m not sure. But we might want to challenge ourselves to be even more thoughtful of our own take on this divide. Even though we are hard pressed to prepare our students for a fast changing world, we may be sowing some hurtful seeds if we don’t also help them learn more about being thoughtful members of a community. In this regard, developing interest may actually be in all of our interests.

Maybe

2006-08-22T21:29:00.000-05:00

I’m being serenaded by the sounds of my oldest son’s video game, soothed by the sight of my daughter playing on the swing set outside, and amused by the antics of my youngest. You see I’m home after making my usual August tour of education institutions, speaking at convocations, opening staff development weeks, and leadership workshops. I’ve been to K-12 districts, community colleges, and universities on this go around, jumping from Tulsa to Tampa, from Illinois to Indiana. I’ve also visited more Walgreens and CVS drug stores in more states than I care to remember. No toothpaste allowed in carry-on bags, remember.

Because I’m finally home after thousands of miles of travel, this entry won’t be that long. But, I do want to share a quick observation about a common cluster of questions that came up in working with faculty across K-20, and from whom they came.

In my town meetings and Q&A sessions, there was a lot of excitement surrounding the challenges and opportunities facing the world of education. Teachers, reachers, and leaders alike seemed eager to rise to the challenge of swirling students, global social networks, and rising insight initiatives. There is an almost overwhelming acceptance building surrounding the fundamental overhaul our education system is undergoing, and deep interest the shape it might take. What was unique, however, was the reaction from cohorts that usually remain either quiet or contentious.

During these dynamic dialogs, there is almost always a contingent of faculty and staff that wait patiently as we “consultants” do our thing. Some are polite and quiet, just waiting for it to be over; while others like to throw bombs in the forms of observations and/or questions just to see how you might react. It’s just part of the process. However, this time, there seemed to be something different going on. I got the sense that many of the folks that often fall in these camps were engaging in a different way. They were asking hard and heartfelt questions. Questions they might not usually ask. Things like:

“Okay, I’m interested in these technology tools; but how am I supposed to find the time to take try these new things? I’m already buried under paper grading and advising. I’m serious, if I was going to try one thing, what would it be?”

“How am I supposed to support a ‘culture of evidence’ when our technology systems won’t even spit out a clue . . . much less evidence? I really do want to know if we’re making a difference, but I don’t control the information I get. How can I change that?”

And there was a different tone. I didn’t get the sense that these where excuses for not changing in the forms of questions—which is often the case. There was a somber seriousness in these sentiments. These were veterans who really wanted to know what the risk/reward ratio would be, what the right strategies might look like.

I tried to be as responsive as possible. I noted the reality that there was real work to be done to get our systems in line to enable the “front lines” to meet rising student expectations. But I also noted, the great news that when it comes to ideas for where to start, it’s often nice to be “the second mouse to the cheese.” And if you’re willing to honestly look, there are models all around. We just have to be open to trying, to putting our proverbial toe in water.

This little observation about the questions and questioners could easily be an artifact of these August engagements. However, it just may be that we’re approaching a critical mass. Maybe we are reaching the Tipping Point in the coming overhaul of our educational system. Maybe the policy and practitioner worlds are finally beginning to align around fundamental ideas of access, affordability, quality, and engagement. Maybe were on the verge of an exciting decade of dramatic change, where even the most caustic cynic will carry the transformation banner. Or, maybe, listening to my oldest son, watching my playful daughter, and laughing at my littlest boy is making me just a little too hopeful. Maybe.

Learning and Living Well and Free

2006-08-03T00:35:00.000-05:00

I spent the day yesterday with a passionate group of educators—career and technical program leaders, teachers, and reachers serving in the Orange County Public Schools in Florida. These are the folks who teach kids and adults courses and programs in electronics, construction trades, business entrepreneurship, information technology certifications, and whole lot more. We dove deep into future trends surrounding technology, globalization, and student social networks, and how each of these drivers might impact career and technical education in the years to come. More interesting, however, was the town meeting we had later in the day, which evolved into a deeper and more interactive exploration of these trends.

Joining this conversation with these educators brought to top of mind an important truth—learning is valuable in many forms. Learning about literature has incredible value; but so too does learning about career and technical topics. Academic rigor is essential; but so too is engaging and practical education. All too often, however, we see divisive wars of importance emerge in educational settings. Liberal arts educators denigrate practical training, and career educators disparage the utility of Shakespeare. “Higher learning is more important than training,” scream elitist English teachers. “Philosophy degrees simply help you think deep thoughts about being out of work,” sneer testy technology teachers.

Of course, both camps are wrong. And both are right. They are wrong in assuming that either is of greater value. They are right to think that their focus on learning is essential. As with many debates, the answer to this conflict is found somewhere in the middle.

Without higher-order learning and an academic core, students who aspire to any career will have a difficult time keeping up with the modern reality of lifelong learning. However, without practical, job-related skills, it will become increasingly difficult to find employment in a job market increasingly requiring certifications of learning. From doctors to electricians to real estate agents to network administrators, demonstrated and continuous learning are essential to employment.

We have to remember that our local, state, and national learning systems need to help people live both well (e.g., get a job they love) and free (e.g., be empowered, well rounded, and engaged community members). And please let us jettison the arrogance that pushes too many to think that all students need to go to Harvard, or that life as a construction foreman is unfulfilling. Hard truth: there are extremely happy, thoughtful, and educated people and dangerously unfulfilled, angry, and ignorant people in every career field, in every income bracket. Some of the saddest characters I know have the most money, the highest degrees, and the loftiest titles. It’s not about money or prestige in learning; it’s about great fit, good choices, and people having an authentic sense of purpose. And nothing will help us live well and free like all of us embracing learning across the K-20 spectrum that is engaging, practical, rigorous, and on purpose.

A “Need to Know” Situation in Education

2006-07-29T07:53:00.000-05:00

In the power to know we’re making a difference in education we talked about the emerging education imperative—the metaphorical “learn or die” scenario. There is little doubt that this imperative is driving expanded explorations into how we educate. Which is why when you look worldwide, there is a dizzying array of regulatory frameworks emerging at all levels of education, ranging from the U.S. Department of Education’s No Child Left Behind Act to the Higher Learning Commission’s Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP) to the Bologna Process in Europe to test regimes in Qatar.

In addition external sources are bringing publicly available data to parents, community leaders, and legislators to start conversations. The Education Trust is one of the leading drivers of these dialogues. Their goal is to highlight success and start difficult explorations of weaknesses in educational systems. Check out their College Results site to do some of your own examinations of college effectiveness. It is a completely different way of looking at college quality than US News and World Report rankings. In addition, the Gates Foundation posts a US report card of state-by-state school system performance as part of their work in igniting change in education through rigor, relevance, and relationships.

Other initiatives are also bringing insight to education from more direct sources—student surveys. The National Survey of Student Engagement, the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, and the newly created High School Survey of Student Engagement, all use the technique of leveraging the reams of research reports about what works in teaching and learning and then reaching out directly to students. The leaders of these efforts have created surveys that capture data from students about whether they are engaged in teaching and learning activities that research shows will lead them toward success in education. Moreover, they encourage the hundreds of institutions that participate to benchmark themselves against like institutions to compare their effectiveness and drive conversations about what level of engagement is “good enough.”

In the United States, broader benchmarking activities are being driven by associations and grant initiatives. For example, The Western States Benchmarking Consortium members are searching for “more meaningful accountability.” Leading school districts in this group are driving student performance analysis, financial intelligence, strategic performance management, and human capital intelligence projects. The Achieving the Dream (ATD) project, funded by the Lumina Foundation, is challenging community colleges to use systematic data collection to learn more about access and success in two-year institutions. Moreover, ATD and other programs, like the College and Career Transitions Initiative are driving institutions to look at data sets that explore the flow of students between levels of education. And the Educause Center for Applied Research is striving to use research and analysis to help higher education leaders make better decisions.

While they may not have achieved the sophistication of the predictive analytics used by Amazon.com or the interactivity of gaming systems, it’s clear that education insight initiatives on the local, state, national, and international level are on the rise. I just hope they fulfill the promise of helping us learn what’s working, what’s not, and what holds the potential to drive transformational change in the way we teach and reach students. Because given our modern education imperative, this is truly a “need to know” situation.

Coffee Talk with Dad: A Homecoming

2006-07-15T10:53:00.003-05:00

The end of this month will mark the one-year anniversary of our father’s passing. John Michael Milliron was a gentle, kind, and caring man whose joy in life came from watching the comings and goings of his nine children and 11 grandchildren.

He was diagnosed with terminal small-cell lung cancer in February of 2004 and given 3-6 months to live. We were devastated. He was devastated. For the first time since he was 13, he had to quit work and stay home. Driving him to pick up his things from work was crushing. He was 'going to work' for the last time; and for a man who came of age in the fifties—an organization man—this was tough stuff. You could see it in his eyes.

But serendipity soon came. He used this time to dive deep into our worlds, to spend hours and hours talking with us over morning coffee, finally reminiscing about his past, and encouraging us about our roads ahead. The older children took turns going to the house to spend time with him in the mornings before work. It was like he was running his own little Starbucks. I have the sneaking suspicion that he was having so much fun connecting with his kids and grandkids, he fought harder through the chemo, weight loss, and nausea to stay in our lives. He was with us almost three-times longer than we expected. In fact, he was placed on Hospice in October of 2004, and the doctors told us we were probably six weeks away, at most. After more than six months, they realized this might be a longer haul. Although it was a painful time, it was a special time. A time we wouldn’t trade for the world.

I had taken a new job in North Carolina in the fall of 2004. Julia, my wife, was completely supportive of me flying back to Arizona on a regular basis to stay with family, help with Dad, and get my morning conversations in. I could write forever about these experiences, but today, as we approach the one-year anniversary of his passing, I’ll share a lesson that came my way. I was reviewing my journal from that time and found a piece I had written called The Homecoming. I witnessed this scene after having to cut one of my Dad trips short and rush to the airport to get back to NC for work meetings.
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A Homecoming

I’m sitting at the airport, which is no surprise, eating a quick lunch before I pass through security and get on to the gates to board my plane. As I’m people watching to pass the time, I notice that a plane with soldiers must have landed—kids returning home from Iraq, from what I can tell. They’re streaming by with bags in tow, all shapes and sizes, all in a hurry. The first thing that strikes me is how young these guys are. They barely look old enough to drive, much less lead a charge in Iraq.

The next thing that catches my eye is a family patiently waiting just beyond security. There’s a nervous and excited mother, wringing her hands, nervously checking her husband’s watch, and trying to keep the two kids close by. There is what looks like a 10-year-old little girl and maybe 4-year-old brown-haired boy. The latter is bouncing off the walls; the former has yet to move a muscle. She’s just staring into the group of soldiers emerging from the terminal. The father is an average-sized man, with a tension about him; but clearly he’s the rock. His worn jeans, what looks like a work shirt of some kind, and tattered black shoes tell you he’s not used to airports, which is also clear by the glances he shoots at business travelers buzzing by as they talk on their cell phones. The family is standing together about 100 feet back from security, eyeing each soldier, as if wondering if they can still recognize their child. Finally, their son emerges from beyond the check point.

First the four-year-old charges the child soldier and tackles him waste high. The short-haired, short-standing boy guards himself against the charge and picks up his little brother. The sister and mother are next, shrieking as they rush to his side, kiss him, hug him, and maul him with joy. The father hasn’t moved. He’s just standing and watching as if in disbelief. After a little of the excitement settles, they all turn to the father. There is a long pause, and then the son puts down his duffle, guides his little brother to the ground, and slowly walks to his Dad. He boldly puts out his hand, but in what is clearly not a natural motion, the father opens his arms. The boy, taken aback, falls into his father’s hug. The father guides his son’s head down into his shoulder with his left hand, and holds on with all his might with his right.

The mother, daughter, and brother are standing just staring at this scene—as are we. No one at close range can look away. Overwhelmed, crying, the father is holding on to someone he thought he had lost forever. And he won’t let go. The rest of the family gently moves closer and just put their hands on the two. And then they melt into the hug as well. He is home.

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I took this all in and just melted in emotion for a bit. I wasn’t going to fight it. When I’m 70, I would never remember the meeting to which I was rushing. I would remember, however, my coffee talks with Dad. I went to the US Air counter, canceled my ticket, and got a cab. When I came into the house with bags in tow, my Dad looked puzzled . . . but pleased. “Flight was canceled,” I said. “Got any more coffee?” He just grinned and poured the Folgers.

Bubble Wrap

2006-07-11T22:35:00.000-05:00

By now you may have already seen the online bubble wrap sheet. After popping a few bubbles myself, I starting thinking about the uses of bubble wrap. Most important of those uses is the wrapping of valuable articles so they don’t get broken during times of transition—particularly big moves.

Then I started thinking about the major education overhaul that we’re undertaking. It’s clear that the fundamental transition from our industrial factory model of education to one better suited for our knowledge, or creative, economy is underway. And much like big house moves, this is a time of massive transition. And during transitions, there is great stress. During transitions—if we get sloppy—valuable items break. During transitions, it’s good to use bubble wrap liberally.

What about our students? I really hope we’re not throwing them into the educational transition moving van without adequate protection. Are we holding them to new standards without the teaching, reaching, and leadership resources in our schools to help them make the grade? Are we tossing them about in a turbulent ride, the destination not quite in site, all the while focusing protection on past infrastructures, contracts, and models of education? What should we be doing to ensure that during this unique time of transition, our current students don’t just suffer the ride, but learn to thrive? How can we be certain these attempts to smooth the transition won’t become enabling crutches?

There may not be perfect answers here. However, we definitely should be asking the questions. Unfortunately, there is a false assumption floating around that students are already there. They are “NetGen” kids, already one step ahead. I’m not so sure. Yes, they are comfortable with new technology. But are they prepared for the new knowledge economy? Are they ready to learn for a lifetime? Organizations like the Partnership for 21st Century Skills are asking these kinds of questions and engaging local, state, and national conversations on the topic. Take a hard look at their good work to get an idea of the transitional challenges we’re about to undergo.

Of course we don’t need to cloister the kids. However, we should be particularly patient with a generation of learners that will live through this massive move. A little bit of bubble wrap with these valuables is probably a good idea.

A Healthy Independence Day

2006-07-09T11:42:00.000-05:00

Interdependence can be a good thing. It wraps partners into relationships that encourage them to at least look for compromise and win/win scenarios. But when it gets one sided, it can be a trap. Just think about our dependence on foreign oil. Our brothers, sisters, children, and parents fight and die in far away places that we would hardly consider intervening in were it not for oil or the resulting dysfunctions of the surrounding region. Because of our dependence, questionable governments and leaders are blessed with largess, and often live out Gandhi’s admonition that wealth without work is a blunder that can destroy the world.

Now, don’t get me wrong. In a deeply connected world, we must engage. We must be good partners. However, in every good partnership, marriage, or friendship, the players operate best from a place of strength. When one holds a substantial advantage over the other, or the pain of exit is greater than the ecstasy of entry into another more positive relationship, dangerous dynamics ensue. In personal relations, verbal abuse, physical battering, and exploitation can result. In global foreign relations, radical rhetoric, erratic economies, and military maelstroms are our reward.

As most of us clearly recognize, we are best served by having a healthy, educated, independent, personal base from which to operate in our worlds of work, home, and beyond. When we center ourselves and get on purpose, take care of our bodies, and expand our education, we are better parents, partners, friends, and neighbors. It’s no different with our country. When we take care of each other, educate our citizenry, and foster healthy, independent infrastructures, we can be better, more responsible players on the world stage.

It’s not about protectionism, isolationism, or xenophobia. It’s about being a good partner in an increasingly flat, connected, and interdependent world. Maybe it would help if once a year we champion a healthy independence day. July 4th sounds good!

21st Century Catalytic Conversations

2006-07-02T09:17:00.000-05:00

I had the great pleasure of participating in one of Florida State Senator Ken Pruitt’s 21st Century Summits last week. Senator Pruitt is the incoming president of the state senate in Florida and is a major champion of education. He holds these summits on different topics to bring diverse leaders together in what we would call "catalytic conversations" about key topics in the state. Much like our earlier entry about Erskine Bowles’ inaugural address, the conversation here was about K-20, lifelong learning, and the increasing ties to economic development. Learning and earning indeed. All sectors from across Florida were represented and did an outstanding job of outlining the challenges and opportunities of the road ahead. Just take a look at the agenda to get an idea of the dialogues they put together.

We were hosted by Indian River Community College (IRCC) and their president Dr. Ed Massey. IRCC is one of those special community colleges that fully embraces its role as an educational catalyst. In addition to the standard comprehensive community college programs, they run a magnet high school, a dynamic adult learning center, and are home to the newly minted Kight Center for Emerging Technologies. I joked that the Kight Center was the kind of education facility God would build if he had the money! It is home to cutting-edge biotechnology, engineering, e-learning programs and more.

The stunning Kight Center was a perfect venue for these catalytic conversations. Senator Pruitt and team did an outstanding job of pulling in diverse constituencies to really hit some hard topics head on. Instead of pitting sectors against each other—particularly surrounding a topic like career and technical education that can lead to uncomfortable elitism—he sent the powerful message that it’s all about how we work together to position the state to play a successful part on the global stage. With conversations like this going on, coupled with the solid educational leadership in the state, Florida is more likely than most to be ready for the road ahead.

ACE's National Competitiveness Strategy

2006-06-30T06:17:00.000-05:00

If you’ve followed this Blog, you know that we’ve been talking about the rising education imperative all along. There is a rising tide of discontent about our place in a highly connected world increasingly driven by an economy directly tied to education.

The American Council on Education (ACE) is on a campaign to increase awareness about this education imperative and has launched a incredibly useful site called SolutionsForOurFuture.org. A recent article from that site’s newsletter is a must read. It’s called: Towards A National Competitiveness Strategy: Congress Turns To Higher Education.

Here’s a quick excerpt from the beginning:

The nation’s capital is abuzz with talk about the state of American competitiveness. From the groundbreaking National Academies of Sciences report “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” to journalist Tom Friedman’s best-seller “The World Is Flat,” a chorus of corporate chieftains, world-class scientists and public intellectuals is sounding the alarm that America’s future prosperity is at risk and that American preeminence in the 21st century cannot be taken for granted.

Check out the article. But more importantly, check out the site. The resources are outstanding, the policy briefs are useful, and the links to take action are compelling. ACE is doing great job of trying to mount a National Campaign for Higher Education. We need to support them!

Connecting with the Connected . . . Not So Easy

2006-06-29T03:04:00.000-05:00

Today’s students are quickly becoming hyper-connected, media inundated, network informed, cynics. As a result, they just don’t trust our standard press releases, brochures, catalogues, commercials, or standard website rhetoric. The folks at ClueTrain have been saying this for some time. Just look at MySpace, FaceBook, Massive Multi-Player Online Games, Wikipedia, or www.ratemyprofessor.com to see the how students are leveraging vast global social networks to share, compare, and search for the real story.

Reaching these students in this postmodern world with outreach and recruiting messages is more difficult than ever. That’s why it’s not surprising to see colleges turn to more creative viral marketing strategies. Just check out SchoolDaze from Kettering University. This first foray into an alternative outreach strategy has been forwarded around student communities like wildfire. It’s been so popular, Kettering created episode II to respond to “fan mail” flooding in. It’s not quite the standard campus tour, is it?

This just gets you thinking: how are we connecting with connected students? More importantly, is what we’re doing working? How do we know? What do they know about us that we don’t? You’d be surprised.

Sometimes You Have to Slow Down

2006-06-27T21:11:00.000-05:00

Things are moving fast. Life, work, and all the rest. E-mails are pouring in, cell phone buzzing non stop, and meetings, meetings, and more meetings. At times like this, I think of Sandy Shugart’s Brick Work poem. It makes you pause.

But something closer to home woke me up to slowing down this time. I was riding our Honda ATV through the Western North Carolina Mountains near our little farm. Joining me on the ride this morning is my 8-year-old daughter Alex. We’re buzzing through the Blue Ridge when suddenly she starts waving her hand up and down. I slow down and ask her “what’s up?”

She tells me, “Daddy, sometimes you have to slow down to see the butterflies.” My little Buddha. I slow the ATV down and sure enough, as we creep along the path, black, gold, yellow, and white butterflies come fluttering from the flowers and bushes all around. It’s like they came out of hiding. She waves her hand again, so I put my ear closer in and she tells me, “If you stop you can hear the birds sing.”

We come to a stop and I cut the engine off. Here we sit, on this crisp morning in the Blue Ridge, butterflies all around, being serenaded by bird song. She’s right. Sometimes you just have to slow down.

Rookie Courage

2006-06-09T07:33:00.000-05:00

If you read some of the current literature on brain research and learning, a major maxim jumps out: be a rookie every year. From Ian Robertson’s Mind Sculpture to James Zull’s The Art of Changing the Brain to Eric Jensen’s Brain-Based Learning to Daniel Amen’s Making a Good Brain Great, we find that the brain has somewhat of a use it or lose it protocol. And you are best served by not only deepening your current learning, but by stimulating fresh neural-synaptic pathways through explorations of the new and novel. Learning a new language, new technology, knitting, or horseback riding, it really doesn’t matter. Just learn something new.

We’ve known the value of learning renewal for some time. Remember Merlin’s admonition to the Once and Future King:

“The best thing for being sad . . . is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."

Still, it takes a lot of courage to admit you don’t know what you’re doing. The best of teachers understand the raw courage of this moment for their students. In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer argues that this realization is essential in breaking the cycle of fear—the fear of both the teacher and student that the other will find out that they don’t really know everything.

Rookie courage is sometimes quite difficult for veterans in particular. Their expertise weighs on their minds; their pride in past accomplishments restrains them from embracing a learning experience which might make them look like a duck out of water. However, the best of veterans know that living out loud with this experience—right in front of your students—may be the most important gift. It teaches students about the importance of rookie courage, and the fact that they need to develop it as a skill for lifelong learning.

The great news is that our modern technology changes so rapidly we continuously have opportunities to be a rookie. From trying out online learning to experimenting with Podcasting, there is an endless array of moments for us to keep our own brains fresh with new learning and to engage our students as well. Yes, we may look foolish at times, as we fumble with new hardware, software, and systems. But we’ll not only survive, we’ll thrive because of it.

We all just have to have a little Rookie Courage.

Don’t Stop Believing

2006-05-08T19:07:00.000-05:00

For all the talk and awe surrounding our creative, fast-moving, constantly connected, ever-innovative world, there are some dangerous challenges. The most pernicious problem may be the belittling and marginalization of belief. The postmodern world trains rising students not to believe that an organization will provide a career. “You will change jobs 7-15 times!” we tell them. We train consumers not to trust press releases, advertisements, and the basic claims of our businesses—just check out the well known Cluetrain Manifesto for some of the most profound and startling claims surrounding this perspective. From parishioners to the body politic, we are disillusioning the masses en masse.

The academic in me says there is real value in belief bashing. The Eric Hoffer’s of the world have shown the terror of True Believers. The extremes of belief are dangerous to be sure—particularly in promoting the loss of self. Still, there is something divisive and destructive happening as we are today pushed to the other extreme; because, at our core, we are desperate to believe. Just look at how the US population turned to faith after 9/11, how family reconnect during the terminal illness of a parent, or how quickly we rush to the banner of a new politician that holds even the sliver of a promise of being real. While we need to be personally fulfilled, we remain a believing bunch.

If you want to make a difference in a student’s life, drive a movement, transform your business, or change the world in this turbulent time, here’s a thought: don’t stop believing. As leaders in our schools, colleges, corporations, or counties, we can thoughtfully embrace belief without cynicism and achieve amazing results. We really are Better Together. And we owe it to ourselves, and those who join us in working toward a collective mission, to at least try.

Here are four pillars to consider for harnessing the power of belief:

1. Be worthy of it. Don’t even think about going after what’s possible with belief if you’re not willing to be authentic and real. Remember the classic line from King Arthur, “you are the land, and the land is you.” When you’re in a healthy, authentic place, there is transference to your organization. Don’t think this is trivial. In my experience, it is the root challenge in most organizations.

2. Encourage it. You may find that there are so many caustic, cynical people in most modern organizations that it feels more hip to be flip, to deride those who dare to care about making a difference. Have the courage to fight this feeling. As long as you authentically believe, encourage others to as well. The result will be more than worthwhile for you and for the people in your organization starving for something worthy of their extra effort.

3. Create a safe place for it. The minute you and others begin believing, the attacks will start. Be careful. Often, the people who come at you are folks who’ve been burned by belief in the past; and they will play out their psycho-drama on you and others with vitriol you cannot imagine. Verbal aggression, cultural bullying, and much, much more may come your way. Confront it; stand up for those who are going the extra mile without fail. In particular, protect the absent in meetings and side conversations—this is where much of the cultural belief bashing takes place.

4. Be real with it. Don’t skimp on this one. If you’re not a tough-minded realist about what’s working and what’s not, belief will backfire. The cynics will have a field day. Unfortunately, some people think that just because they care, because they believe, because they try hard, what they are doing is valuable. Nope. If you really believe in making a difference, check—and check often—if your strategies are working. Whether your desired outcome is learning, profit, or efficiency, make sure you are tireless is testing your assumptions. In addition, do not hesitate to take action, confront negative behavior, separate poor performers and cultural-poison spreaders from the love of the institution, and follow through on your promises, or else. Your credibility is everything.

These are just a few thoughts for fellow architects—leaders—who dare to care enough. Let me know if you have other “pillars” I need to add to this building.

Phoenix Flight

2006-05-04T00:39:00.000-05:00

I’m sitting in 16C, unsettled, flying to Phoenix after attending the World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT) in Austin, TX. WCIT brought together government, technology, healthcare, and education leaders in a discussion around innovations and issues in information and communications technology worldwide. The event was an interesting exploration of challenges on the road ahead and the unique swath of global programs and practices being engaged to make a difference and make money. Moreover, the WCIT collective agenda of digital access, 21st century medicine, and privacy framed some compelling international dialogues. In the end, one cannot attend this kind of event without being taken aback by how far our world has come in the use of information technology in such a short time. It’s stunning.

But it’s not the bits and bytes blazing by that are bothering me on this plane ride. It’s hearing about how Korea has made high-bandwidth computing available to ALL citizens; how China is committing to wiring its rural communities; how the Indian government is strategically investing in its education system to turn out elite engineers equipped for this new world. And these are just a few of the examples from the keynote stage in Austin. I’ve heard these before; but hearing them altogether once again got me thinking. Where are the American examples of coordinated national responses to our changing world?

It hit me like a punch in the chest—the embarrassment that is. Particularly after Brazil just announced its energy independence, while we can only offer political pandering in the face of our national energy crisis. It seems that we are paralyzed in our industrial revolution paradigm; we seem stuck in a painful “aren’t we wonderful” mindset. Meanwhile, countries around the world are happily using our current self-congratulatory largess to outfit themselves to pass us by.

Don’t get me wrong; there are amazing technology and education programs taking shape across the US. But, where is our national coordinated educational response to the needs of our connected world? Who is in charge of visioning a national response to creating a technology infrastructure that allows citizens to connect, companies to compete, and our country to once again stand out as a world leader, not just a world dominator? No, we just let the companies fight it out for market share, while rural and inner-city school children suffer in collapsing schools. Test them more, that’s our answer to our utterly embarrassing educational outcomes. Let the market sort it out, that’s our national technology plan.

While other countries are designing compelling national strategies to take on the opportunities of our globally connected knowledge economy, our response is to focus more on old bureaucracies like the US Departments of Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Agriculture. Agriculture! You can’t help but notice, the players at our national table gained their seats as responses to the agricultural and industrial revolutions; and they are not likely equipped to—or interested in—outfitting us for the information revolution. Its no wonder the Department of Homeland Security is replete with behind-the-times technology.

Maybe I’m just a little overtired from all this travel. But I can’t help but think, we’ve got to catalyze this conversation soon if we plan to rise in concert with the Phoenix-like countries all around us. Otherwise, we’ll just be focused on our landing.

Portions

2006-04-29T11:03:00.000-05:00

I’m just returning from Paris after attending the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) annual International Conference. It was a good event that once again reinforced just how seriously leaders from around the world are taking education these days. Political, corporate, and educational leaders sang a similar song—colleges, communities, and countries must educate well or die on the vine.

On a different—but related—note, whenever I travel to Paris, I’m struck by the size of the portions. They’re tiny. Every coffee cup and wine glass seems like it comes from my 7-year-old’s Barbie set. Of course, the problem is mine. America’s portions are ridiculously big—not to mention incredibly wasteful. It’s hard to deny that, on the whole, we are a country of food excess (see Super-Size Me). And, more often than not, we take it for granted.

Our K-Ph.D. education system is another good example. While other countries scramble to give access to education at least a portion of their population and parents in other parts of the world only dream of giving their children the ability to read and write, some in our country blithely neglect our treasure. In relation to the rest of the world, our education portions are huge. Moreover, we just assume it was always that way. We forget that universal high schools, community colleges, and Pell Grants only came about in the last 100 years. In addition, we have to admit, we’re a little wasteful. We throw curricula, interventions and technology at students without always doing the hard work of assessing impact. We can tell great inspirational stories about the outcomes, but rarely do we develop the culture of evidence necessary to really know if we’re making a difference.

Still, just like the food situation, I’m not unhappy with the US education excess. It’s better to be battling problems of excess, rather than crises of shortage. My Grandparents stories about the Great Depression make that very clear. However, wrestle with our comparative education excess we must. Because anyone with excess has a moral imperative to ask harder questions about what you do with what is provided. We also need to discuss the fact that, just like with food, the unevenness of our education excess is galling. From K-12 school district funding to higher-education endowment distribution, one doesn’t have to look very far to see that those who need it the least, get it the most—money to support their learning.

Hard truth: excess can lead to unevenness, lack of focus, and the devaluing of the goodness at hand. Do we have a portion problem in US education?

Pavlovian Problems

2006-04-24T10:29:00.001-05:00

Ding. I turn to the computer screen and look as today’s 113th little announcement box for e-mail emerges. Ring. While I’m still on the other line, I scan my Blackberry screen to see whose calling. Ping. A pre-selected sonar sound announces an incoming instant message. Fling. I hurl myself from the open balcony.

OK, the last one’s a joke. But after a day full of these Pavlovian prompts pushing persistent partial attention, anyone can get pretty close to making the leap. There are some simple things, however, we can do to take on these Pavlovian problems. I’ll offer just three of them here that can help make a dent in our Crazy Busy lifestyles. They take a little time, and sometimes even some tech support. But they are worthwhile to ensure that we are using technology, not being used by it.

First, turn off the automatic download function in your e-mail program. Whether it’s Outlook or Netscape, you can stop the preconfigured “check the server for e-mail every two minutes” function. By doing this, e-mail only comes in when you hit send/receive. You take the control back. Why do this? Imagine if 15 years ago the mail clerk jetted by your office or cube every two minutes with new memos, letters, and junk mail and yelled “Mail!” as he threw them in your inbox. Even without the ubiquitous Viagra ads, it still might be a little distracting, no? The constant ding of your e-mail is the modern virtual equivalent. Some have related to me that the e-mail chime problem is so bad that they feel their workday is nothing more than responding to e-mails—no time for reflection, planning, execution, or interaction. Talk about being reactive instead of proactive! Worse yet, I’ve seen more than one person’s e-mail announcements go off during major presentations in front of hundreds of folks. It’s just that pernicious, persistent, and deeply problematic. Take the controls back.

Second, all-in-one devices are wonderful. Blackberry’s, Treos, and web phones make mobility and ease of connection a reality. I’m all for them. With my Blackberry, I can knock out little office emergencies quickly, clean out the inbox before I ever sit down back at my desk, access my full contact list whenever and wherever, and hop online for quick Google lookups as necessary. At their best, there are a thousand reasons whey these devices are useful and just plain lifesaving. At their worst, however, they can become painful Pavlovian pals. How many of us see our colleagues ding, ring, and ping their way through their meetings, lunches, and conversations. It’s almost an epidemic.

This is where profile management comes in. It takes some work, but dive into the profiles on your device and ensure that you choose the least distracting notifications (if any at all)—don’t take the defaults. For example, the Blackberry’s default has you buzzing and ringing and beeping with every task, e-mail, and phone call. It’s impossible to go 3 minutes without some sound or blinker going off. Stop it. Change the settings to fit your tastes, and remember, the person or people in front of you deserve your attention. The task at hand is best done without a divided mind. We need to get off the "Crackberry pipe." Remember, off buttons can be amazing things. Not taking a call may say more to the person you’re with than you may ever know.

Third, wireless technology is freeing, but it’s becoming a meeting and class killer. Trying to teach a class or hold a meeting with keyboards clamoring is stunningly distracting. I’ve been in meetings where the leader is checking their laptop while running the discussion! If that doesn’t say something about the value of the meeting, I don’t know what does. Worse yet, if the folks at the table haven’t muted their sound, you get this wonderful concert of dings and pings all throughout the dialogue. And every once and awhile someone turns their machine on, off, or reboots and you get that marvelous Microsoft minute that brings the meeting to a halt as the Windows theme song serenades you all.

Think long and hard about bringing your laptop to a meeting. If you must, mute it well before the meeting begins. And don’t kid yourself; if you try to steal a minute for a quick check of the e-mail or to scan a website, someone notices. It sends a loud cultural message about your commitment to the group. If the meeting is that bad, then you may want to lead a larger conversation about why are you having the meeting in the first place.

Well, these are just a few observations and ideas drawn from colleagues around the country as they have taken on these challenges. Make no mistake about it, we’re all figuring this out as we go along. So sharing some best practices is probably a good thing (e.g., visit the TLTGroup’s Overloadatorium). It can be our own little massive multiplayer online support group. And it may just help us solve some of these Pavlovian problems before they take too big a bite out of our lives.

If We Build It, They Will Come—Maybe

2006-04-22T07:23:00.000-05:00

Dr. Steven Johnson, one of the most innovative college leaders in the country, co-presents a workshop with me called On the Horizon and In Your Face 2.0: Key Issues in Information Technology for Education Leaders. In this 2.0 version of the workshop, we again look at major trends “in our face” and “on the horizon” and explore ways in which educators can adapt, leverage, and engage these happenings.

One of the trends in this version of the workshop we call the “Technology Building.” This idea sprung from a conversation about how to help more seasoned board, faculty, and staff members understand how vital technology is, how much a part of the infrastructure it must be for education institutions to be credible in the today’s world. An early problem was that the early rhetoric around technology tended to be full of hyperbolic fury about how fundamentally different IT is, how transformative it will be, and how we need to think differently to really understand its impact. At some level, this is nonsense. In many ways, technology infrastructure is very similar to something legislators, board members, faculty, and staff are used to: buildings.

When we build buildings, we usually operate off of a campus master plan. We have a facilities committee that meets regularly to update the plan. We benchmark other facilities, develop capital budgets, build in operational funding strategies, and plan for deferred maintenance. We know how to do these things because for hundreds of years, we’ve had to. It’s the cost of doing business. It’s expected to have “curb appeal.”

In today education world, we also need “tech appeal,” however. And the building metaphor is exactly the strategy we suggest that leaders begin adopting when advocating for technology infrastructure—from computers to new simulation labs for healthcare. Instead of doing what Casey Green from the Campus Computing Survey calls the traditional “dust bowl financing”—buying software, computers, servers, network hardware with year-end money that has to spent or lost—we should be more strategic. Casey’s survey shows that at the higher education level colleges are getting better and better and preparing and leading from a technology plan. If we review these plans, they are much like our facilities plan; capital, operational, maintenance strategies all linked to institutional mission—if they’re good that is. Steve Gilbert from the Teaching Learning and Technology Group advocates driving this plan based on conversations first about quality teaching and learning, and then asking “Oh by the way, what technology will we need to do this?” Technology should not drive the learning agenda anymore than finance should.

Learning-centered technology planning makes all the sense in the world. But there is still a challenge; many institutions across K-Ph.D. are still running parallel planning tracks. Facilities master planning happens, technology master planning happens, and maybe in a final strategic planning document prepared for accreditation or budget allocations they actually share the same stage. But what would happen if we build these plans together.

Most modern businesses are a complex set of infrastructures—at the most simple, Web, phone, and face-to-face. In the modern world of customer relationship management, they are taking hard looks at the blends of these worlds. Our students—not to mention our legislators, board members, faculty and staff—are swimming in this world. They shop for airline tickets online, but still call the travel agent to book the tickets. They shop for cars online, but still go to the dealership to test drive and make the deal. We drive doctors crazy; we go to WebMD and self diagnose and then come to our appointments with the printouts. Put simply, while sometimes it’s or—web, phone, or face to face—more often it’s and. Because of this, companies are leveraging extensive data mining and predictive analytics to do activity-based costing and customer analytics to determine the best version of and.

Shouldn’t we begin to think about more deeply and strategically blending our infrastructure planning? What if instead of doing two planning cycles, technology becomes a fixed component of the standing facilities master planning process? Or what if—wait for it—facilities became a fixed component of the technology planning? What if we committed to never do these in isolation again—it’s not only an artificial division of our modern infrastructure in education, its just inefficient. As a result, many college leaders end up in episodic interventions because the work of either the CIO or CFO so impacts the other area that the two end up having to get at the same table to hash things out. Let’s just end run this whole scenario; let’s hash it out up front! Let’s just do infrastructure master planning.

There are real issues to be worked out in this strategy. Facility and technology planning horizons tend to be different, skills sets of those involved more specialized, and budget allocations may come from different sources. Still, at some point we need to blend these efforts, or just resign ourselves to the constant push and pull of competing vital infrastructures.

If we build it, they will come—maybe. Today’s modern education infrastructure needs to be a thoughtful blend of online, over the phone, and face to face infrastructures. If we neglect this blend and just hope it works out, students may make another choice. Worse yet, we’ll be less capable of teaching and reaching with the best tool set available. However, with the right planning, we can be well positioned to meet the needs of those students in our face, and on the horizon. It’s a master plan worth working toward.

We're in This Together

2006-04-19T21:11:00.000-05:00

Earlier this month, Erskine Bowles, the former chief of staff to President Clinton and newly appointed University of North Carolina System President, delivered his inaugural address. I encourage you to read the speech and notice something breathtaking. The speech is not just about how great the university system is in North Carolina—and I happen to think it’s outstanding—and where it’s going. The speech is much more about a simpler and harder hitting truth.

Unlike many system leaders who see it as their place in life to challenge, deride, or excoriate other education sectors in the fight for their piece of the legislative appropriation pie, Bowles reaches out to the K-12 schools in the state and says, “How can we help.” He pays tribute to the NC community college system—representing some 58 institutions—and talks about the importance of supporting and connecting to their work. And it’s not just lip service. He makes the larger case to the public that to successfully compete in the modern global economy, a state must bring its full complement of educational resources to bear; all sectors have to work in concert, support each other, and play to their unique strengths. It’s not about which system is better, more important, or more deserving; it’s about what is possible if they work together.

Watch for great things from the partnership of Erskine Bowles, Martin Lancaster, the North Carolina Community College System president, and June Atkinson, the North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction. They are three leaders that are ready and willing to work together. Better yet, they clearly understand that as the world becomes flatter and more driven by creativity and innovation, folks across the K-20 spectrum are served well by remembering the simple truth: we’re in this together!

E-Mail Serenity Prayer

2006-04-15T20:25:00.000-05:00

God
grant me the Serenity
to accept the e-mails
I cannot get to,
the Time to answer
the ones I should,
and the Wisdom
to know the difference

Arming our Students for Success with Games

2006-04-13T16:02:00.000-05:00

OK, I’ll admit it: I love to play video games. There is little doubt that one wonderful part of my being a parent is drawing at the kitchen table with my daughter and playing catch in the yard with my youngest son. But I also love battling it out on Shrek2 with my other son. Actually, all four of us regularly jump on the X-box and work collaboratively to get from one level of a game to the next. Now mind you, we also hike in the woods, play with the goats on our little farm, and do creative story telling—so we’re not techno freaks or anything. But the video games are just plain fun for us. Not to mention, it gives me a great venue to teach them about working together, winning gracefully, leveraging strategy, and the power of persistence.

They’re also useful for learning other things. For example, before Richard scrambled around the field in his first soccer game, we bought an FIFA-World Cup Soccer video game. He learned all the rules, strategy, and scoring weeks before he ever touched the field. In the end, it didn’t lessen his love of kicking and scoring on the field at all, it just put some learning of what he called “the boring stuff” (i.e., the rules) into another context. Not to mention, he saw some pretty impressive models of quality soccer playing on the screen. We’ve since used the same strategy with baseball and tennis. In addition, all of my kids use video games to learn language and math skills on sites like DisneyBlast and PBSKids.org. It’s just an everyday part of their routine; to them, it’s as novel as a toaster.

This experience really came to the fore recently when my brother joined the National Guard. And after seeing America’s Army, and learning about the success of this huge online gaming site in preparing new recruits for boot camp, this learning strategy hit home. New recruits that play America’s Army enter basic training already understanding chain of command, battlefield strategy, and base protocols. It doesn’t help them shoot straight or calm the pounding heart in conflict situations, but a good deal of learning can be displaced long before they hit their barracks. Take the time to check it out to see the impressive breadth and depth of this online resource.

Gaming is here to stay. And when you compare the learning our kids will do in school vs. in games remember the often stated maxim: the worst thing you can say about homework is that it’s too hard; the worst thing you can say about a game is that it’s too easy. It’s great that the Army uses these tools to train soldiers, but shouldn’t we be looking to develop something similar to arm our kids for schools and universities. Couldn’t we work together to develop interactive games and online communities for school readiness, college orientations, and even virtual co-opts? The answer is a resounding YES. I just hope it’s a regular part of our children’s learning soon, because playing video games is fun. And when learning is play, it’s the best of all worlds.

Questions about a Quality City Life

2006-04-11T08:01:00.000-05:00

According to the most recent Quality of Life survey by Mercer Human Resource, our major cities are falling behind—yet again. Pollution, traffic, crime, population density, and access to quality education are all dragging our ratings down. Honolulu and San Francisco are our highest rated cities, and they don’t even crack the top 25. Bagdad, not surprisingly, is the lowest rated city for the second survey in a row.

Mercer conducts and distributes this survey as part of an effort to inform international companies as they make choices about where to locate headquarter and design compensation packages for expatriates. Again, as the world become “Flat”—as Thomas Friedman argues—or as the international creative competition ensues—as Richard Florida argues—we had better start paying attention to the data. Others certainly are.

We can argue about the structure of the survey or the weighting Mercer gives to different elements; however, the fact remains that international conversations are not swaying positively in our favor. We look more insular, anti-education, regressive, and protectionist than ever. Yes, our large cities may not be the most accurate reflection of how “most” in the US live. However, they are our largest brand to an increasingly connected and competitive world. While they may be a convenient target for dogmatic diatribes, we may be shooting ourselves in the foot as we demonize these urban centers.

So, the question remains: How do we create a quality city life? What should be doing to improve our approach to education, environment, and safety? I read with interest what NY is investing in their massive reforms of their city schools. Is this the right kind of model? How will this relate to and improve rural and suburban funding, connections, and community building as well? For other ideas, check out the One Cleveland Initiative, which was introduced to me by the always impressive Lev Gonick—CIO of Case Western Reserve University. This may be another powerful option, a creative way leverage technology, community building, and collaboration to improve our cities. Their work to address poverty and improve quality of life has been impressive. Are there other areas where we can use the information already at our fingertips in our cities to make a difference?

I’m not sure of the answers here; but as champions of quality learning, leadership, creativity, and health, I know we better start asking the questions.

Let's Get it On!

2006-04-09T07:54:00.000-05:00

Let's end online segregation. Let's continue to bring online tools—from e-mail to websites to mobile phones to ipods—fully into the mainstream and stop thinking of them as “new” or “innovative.” It’s time we simply welcome them into the family of options for teaching and reaching students in the modern era.

Yes, online education used to be considered innovative. Along with e-mail, the idea of getting online to retrieve resources was a first step to a teaching-with-technology craze in the 1990s. It was followed by the idea of taking an entire course online. This was a traumatic step for some, and the quality police came raging. While they rarely held in-class courses to the same standards that they expected online courses to match, they were quick to pronounce online-course taking DOA because of the lack of academic rigor.

Once online educators jumped the course hurdle, they looked to online degrees. Places like University of Phoenix (which, contrary to most people’s preconceptions, is still a predominantly on-ground university), Rio Salado College, and Western Governors University stepped into the breach and proved it could happen—with quality and accreditation. Creative projects like the Florida Virtual School pushed the envelope and helped bring online education into High Schools. You should really take the time to attend the Virtual School Symposium put on by the North American Council of Online Learning if you want to see just how much online action is emerging in public schools.

Still, most of this work remained segregated. In many educators’ minds, there was the online world and then there was the “real” education world. The online courses had to be specially marked in the catalog, if they were allowed in at all. Often, the online program resided in the continuing education department. Tenure-track faculty that dared to support this work had their promotions held up (see the early material from Randy Bass and the Crossroads Project) and administrators searched to find a “lower friction” location for this innovative learning model.

Then came the rise of hybrids, or blended learning. Truthfully, it wasn’t really we educators that pushed this envelope, it was the students. First, studies began to show that “distance” education—which many folks positioned online education as—actually was predominantly serving students within 30 miles of the campus. Online education, it seems, was much more about students being able to take a course at more convenient times, places, and paces. Second, students began doing both traditional and online education at the same time. It became commonplace to find that most students taking online courses were taking two or more traditional courses. At one point, the largest cohort of students in Michigan Virtual University was made up of students living in the University of Michigan dorms!

The next natural step has now been taken. University of Phoenix launched its FlexNet service last year, which quickly became its fastest growing segment. FlexNet is basically a blend of online and in-class instruction. Community Colleges and Universities are launching their hybrid programs, or at least putting their toe in the water. The Florida Virtual School is showing that hybrid resources for High School Students are powerful tools to keep engagement with a new generation of students that fully expect online tools to be comfortably woven into their learning experiences. You see, the rising student block doesn’t get all the fuss.

We’re finally here. We’re at a place were we can begin fully integrating online tools into how we teach and reach students—mainstream them, if you will. And as you know, I will never say that online education and outreach tools are “better” than face-to-face methods. In my college days, I sat through too many lectures where I wanted to stab my eyes out with my pencil, and since have seen class PowerPoint presentations that had neither power nor a point, and online course mazes that lead to nowhere (particularly learning). I don’t have any illusions about one method being better than another. It’s all about how the tools are used—and usually it’s the teacher and reacher that have greatest impact in the direction the tools take and the difference they make.

To really make move online into the mainstream, however, we have to continue pushing through the sticking points and keep a dialog going. We have to have thoughtful conversations about when online tools are appropriate, when face to face interaction is essential, and when moderated and mobile tools might help. The list of topics is long. But the conversation is vital if integration is to reach it potential.

This is one of the reasons I’m such a fan of NACOL (mentioned earlier) for the K-12 level, and the Sloan-C consortium at the higher education level. Sloan-C was founded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to help drive what their Program Director Frank Mayadas calls “Asynchronous Learning.” Frank and Burkes Oakley (you have to check out his work at University of Illinois) are two of the leading idea champions behind Sloan-C, and have been at the forefront of this movement to the mainstream from the beginning. Sloan-C has a great catalog of online degrees and resources, a rowdy listserv, and great conferences. Both NACOL and Sloan-C both help create communities of practice and share solid resources for interested educators. Check them out if you want to end the online segregation at your institution. Check them out if you want to get the conversation off the on-line vs. on-ground debate. When it comes to the kinds of conversations we should be focusing on, I say, "let's get it on!" On whatever works to improve and expand learning.

Poverty Perspective

2006-04-07T08:52:00.000-05:00

Jeffery Sachs is the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and a special advisor to the UN. He’s also the author of the powerful book, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, and the economist guru behind much of the singer Bono’s work in the developing world. In fact, Bono wrote the forward for The End of Poverty. I’ve been diving into the book as I prepare for some meetings in Europe in the coming month and am taken with its breadth and boldness.

Many of the points that Sachs make come from data you may have seen in other places. The way he makes the case, however, is unique. While the data may be bleak, he is not a defeatist. With over a billion of the 6 billion people on this planet living in extreme poverty—literally a cultural or conditional hiccup away from disaster—it is not surprising that more than 20,000 people a day die of completely preventable diseases (e.g., malaria, aids, dysentery). Most of this poverty is found in parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America—however, there are pockets elsewhere around the world as well. He does a good job of pointing out that the growing divide between have and have not is immoral, unnecessary, and really unique to the last 220 years. Before then, most people on this planet lived at or around the same standard of living. The industrial revolution, geography, and a host of other factors began the poverty split in earnest. Extreme poverty, you see, is not explained away by the convenient “pull yourself up by your bootstrap” rhetoric—you need boots for that. The challenges have more to do with infrastructure (political, physical, and cultural), health systems, and education. This “holy trinity” of development is a starting point for understanding the plight of those trapped in extreme poverty.

The good news is that the knowledge revolution we are living through today holds the promise of helping address many of these issues and turn the situation around. However, we have to do the hard work of educating people about a situation that many would rather forget or ignore. We also have to resist the temptation to explain it away because we don’t want to back the hard work necessary to bring world economic bodies and developed nations together in a strategic way. Yes, we have to care enough to work together with other nations to make a dent in this problem. And yes, there is “tough love” for the countries in distress. However, we have to be careful in the latter approach. As I like to say, throwing a drowning man a self-help book means he soon won’t have a self to help. Most of men, women, and children in extreme poverty are drowning in it.

Sachs outlines the exciting truth that we have the tools at our disposal to end extreme poverty in our generation. Not surprisingly, education will be essential on many fronts. We need to educate our students and communities and leaders about the real challenges of poverty to help generate the support necessary to make a difference. We need to educate a new breed of economists and development specialists with true “clinical development” skills to address the key issues that drive extreme poverty. Finally, we need to help stand up educational systems for these areas to create a new community of learners supporting their countries joining a community of nations as happy and healthy partners.

Take the time to pick up the book and learn more about the topic. The read definitely helps put poverty in perspective.

The Power to Know You’re Making a Difference

2006-04-04T12:24:00.000-05:00

Learn or die. The need for insight in education is almost that stark. Whether you’re talking about countries, counties, cities or citizens, whether you’re reading Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, Richard Florida’s The Flight of the Creative Class or the Education Commission of the States’ report Keeping America’s Promise, the conclusion is clear: Without education, the prospects are bleak. Freidman argues that without education and imagination, a country cannot compete in a globally woven world. Florida argues that communities that fail to support education — or worse yet, mute education expansion — are ensuring their fast decline. The authors of Keeping America’s Promise point to harsh statistics showing that without achieving at least “some” higher education, a person is destined for a very different future, one with far less security, far less opportunity and far less promise.

Thankfully, the converse also is true: Education is a powerful pathway to possibility for individuals, organizations and communities. In many ways, it is the modern difference-maker. Education opens doors to economic opportunity, individual empowerment and creative expression in a way no other force can.

It is not surprising, then, that the power to know we are making a difference in education has become a necessity for schools, colleges, universities, communities, states, provinces and nations. Nor is it surprising that the search to make better decisions, leverage better strategies and design better systems in education is the highest of priorities in academia today. To achieve these ends, to gain the power to know we’re making a difference, we need to begin to embrace insight initiatives. Insight initiatives in this context can be thought of as explorations of information from the past (hindsight) combined with looks to the future (foresight) that come together in a moment of insight to power decisions that make a positive difference. In the corporate world, some would use the term business intelligence to describe this work, or they might call it “competing on analytics.” These initiatives leverage technology, planning, research, strategy and host of other key elements.

If you're interested in these issues, here's a link to a free White Paper based on my speech to the Higher Learning Commission's 111th annual conference earlier this month; it's called The Power to Know You’re Making a Difference: Embracing Insight Initiatives in Education. What I offer in the paper is a broad exploration of the embrace of insight initiatives across multiple sectors: business, government, healthcare and education. It also explores the technological infrastructure necessary to make these insight efforts work. Finally, we dive deeper into the key issues that arise as a result of these initiatives and surface a powerful role for education, not only in leveraging insight but also in living free in the modern world.

Most likely, you agree that education is a modern imperative; and that this imperative is driving the embrace of insight initiatives in education. And you’ll see in the paper, we are not alone. The corporate, government and healthcare sectors also are taking on this sort of work, for a host of different reasons. So it’s time for us to use the CASE method—Copy And Steal Everything. Let’s see if we can learn from other sectors, learn from each other and learn from our own work in an effort to bring more meaningful, deep learning to our students. By working together, we can know that we’re making a difference — and know that we’re helping students embrace their exciting futures.

A Higher Learning

2006-04-04T09:44:00.000-05:00

On Sunday I had the great pleasure of keynoting the Higher Learning Commission's 111th Annual Conference in Chicago. What a powerful event with more than 3,700 leaders from across the North Central Accreditation region. When I reflect on the evening, I have to once again note how impressed I am by folks like Steven Crow, Executive Director of the Commission. Even in the face of the open, broadside attacks on accreditation—the core purpose of his organization—he challenged these higher education leaders to listen to the criticisms, be thoughtful in analyzing the issues, and to come together to respond. He could have launched into a dogmatic diatribe, but he’s not an education reactionary that bristles and bites at any challenge of the education community. He’s quality leader of a powerful education body that is committed to driving positive change. He and the insightful leaders he catalyzes will continue to make a difference in education because they don’t simply defend the status quo; they work together to thoughtfully champion quality learning.

I’ll be posting a bit from my speech and the resulting white paper a little later today. In the meantime, I just wanted to pass on a little of Steven Crow’s Higher Learning!

Crazy Busy

2006-03-31T09:57:00.000-05:00

It’s over before you know it: childhood, young love, the kids’ early years, life in general. We’re just moving too fast: the Internet, cell phones, blackberries, instant messages, TiVo. We’re hearing these comments more and more, from elders, peers, and sometimes even from children. Yes, even the Herculean speed-demon kids are saying, “Whoa! I don’t want to rush from thing to thing today, I just want to play.” We’ve moved from a world that “creeps in this petty pace” to what too often feels like an existence percolating with panicky persistent partial attention.

The Harvard Medical School psychiatrist and leader of the Hallowell Center, Edward Hallowell, has long been one of my favorite authors and speakers on this subject. His books on Connections and Human Moments are fantastic journeys into this timely topic. In his speeches, he points out the irony of the information age: that we have more connection capacity than ever before, more technology to reach out and touch someone than you can imagine, but the most common reason for visiting a psychologist or psychiatrist tends to be depression related to feelings of loneliness, disconnection, and lack of inclusion. We are knee deep in water, dying of thirst it seems.

A friend just sent me the link to Hallowell's newly released book, CrazyBusy - Overstretched, Overbooked and About to Snap! Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD, which promises to be another of his thoughtful explorations on these issues. Upon hearing about this book, however, Steven Johnson, president of Sinclair Community College, joked, “Sounds like a great book, I just don’t have time to read it!”

What I look forward to in Hallowell’s Crazy Busy is that he’s not one of these, “let’s throw the technology out and go back to a ‘better time’ folks.” He’s much more thoughtful, practical, and human. It’s clear to me that the key issue isn’t how we throw technology away, but how we make sure that we are using it, not being used by it. We should not be responding like Pavlovian dogs to the e-mail chime or taking a cell phone call from a public restroom. But we should be thoughtfully integrating these powerful new tools into our own framework for quality interactions and meaningful relationships.

For example, anyone who teaches and leverages e-mail to connect with students knows that the challenge is that they sometimes think you’re always on. They’ll wonder why you haven’t responded to their 3:00 a.m. e-mail by the next morning. I, for one, think it’s a GREAT thing to help set the expectation about when you’re likely to be online and not likely to be anywhere near a computer. We’re all living through this adjustment period of the rapid adoption of Internet technologies and your boundaries are a good model. However, teachers who use e-mail with their students have likely also found that some students, usually the ones who never talk in class, suddenly open up and share online. This new form interaction gives them time to collect their thoughts, reflect, and interact at their pace—something that fast-paced, in-class interactions do not. To return to a ‘better time’ when e-mail, threaded discussions, or e-portfolios didn’t exist, would, in many ways, re-marginalize these students.

Yes, it’s time to slow down, look around, and take control of the technology to serve our ends. We can use the cell-phone off buttons a little more, turn off monitors or close laptop lids when people walk in our office, turn off the automatic e-mail check function in Outlook, and turn off the ‘white noise’ television. But polemic attacks on tools that literally save lives (e.g., stranded on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and using the cell to call for help) or change lives for the better (e.g., a working mother who could never have gone back to school if not for online learning) aren’t the dialogue to be had. It’s about balance, mindfulness, and intention.

So, in a truly balanced move, I’m going to sign off here so I can order Crazy Busy online and read it this weekend. You see, I’m traveling, and way to busy to get to a book store in the next two days. :)

Education in the Ether

2006-03-29T19:49:00.000-05:00

Just in the last few weeks, Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer-prize winning columnist for the NY Times and author of the best-selling The World is Flat (which is an absolute must read for anyone interested in learning, leadership, economic development, and global affairs) has been ringing the education bell. First he noted the key role that education is playing in the future plans and rapidly expanding economies of India and China. The article was titled Worried About India' s and China' s Booms? So Are They. The main point: we’re worried about them, they’re worried about education—much more than we seem to be. In particular, they are interested in expanding their educational systems to allow for more creative thinking, innovation, and broader literacy skills. Then yesterday, he released a columned entitled Facts and Folly, noting that the Bush administration’s consistent belief that we will “always be a rich country” is belied by the fact that our educational system is in disarray, full of underpaid and overstretched teachers. He noted the work of the Teaching Commission, an organization that has sounded the clarion call for more and more qualified teachers. Without the foundation of a quality education system—highly motivated, innovative, quality teachers—we are not likely to remain the richest of countries.

This comes on the heels of a panel I had the pleasure of moderating at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at NC State University. The Friday Institute hosts a quarterly Friday Forum that brings key thought leaders in to meet with educators, community members, and corporate leaders. This event featured Richard Florida, the award-winning author, economist, and idea champion behind The Rise of the Creative Class and The Flight of the Creative Class. Richard gave a spirited talk about how we’ve come through the industrial economy into a creative economy—where everyone reaching their creative potential is key in economic development. In short, communities that inspire, welcome, and catalyze creativity through things like quality, innovative education will continue to thrive. Those that neglect creativity and education, do so at their own peril. After his talk, we convened a panel with Richard, Dr. Jim Goodnight, CEO and founder of SAS, and co-author with Richard of the article Managing for Creativity in HBR, and June Atkinson, Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of North Carolina. The panel pounced on Richard’s ideas and really challenged education leaders to drive change in how we teach, reach, and engage our students. June in particular was right there with Florida and Goodnight advocating for change, innovation, and focus—focus on the need for and needs of education in the modern economy. She wasn’t defensive at all, as some educators become during these dialogues. She was laser focused on how we drive change.

It just strikes me that when award winning columnists for the NY Times and leading economists are jumping into the education debate, and practicing educators sing in harmony, we should take note. Education is in the ether; more so because in the creative/knowledge economy we can no longer suffer a sloppy Darwinian education system. We MUST do better. And that imperative will keep education and creativity, and the leadership necessary to power education and creativity, on the front page.

Moving from Blame to Wonder

2006-03-29T08:57:00.000-05:00

If you’re interested in college access and success, take the time to visit a new site that just launched called EconomicDiversity.org. It’s an interesting look at the stratification of higher education that is occurring based on income. As college becomes increasingly expensive, with tuition increasing much faster than the rate of inflation, this is going to be a necessary conversation for policy makers, institutional leaders, community members, and parents. The institutional profile section is quite good, and the comparison tools allow you to do some benchmarking. Kudos to the Hewlett Foundation for once again driving the dialogue in education.

EconomicDiversity.og reminds me of others like EdWatch Online and CollegeResults.org, which were launched by the Education Trust. EdWatch allows you to dive deep into public data about public schools. College Results allows you to break down public data about colleges, in particular their success with women and minorities. Then you can rate them against a peer group of institutions that fit their same profile. The Gates Foundation Transforming High Schools site has an interactive state by state profile of college readiness. Click on their interactive map on their front page and look up your own state’s performance.

One of my favorite “put the data out there” sites is the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE). These data aren’t drawn from public data sets, but from actual institutional student engagement surveys that the institutions have allowed to be made public in an effort to create benchmarks, catalyze conversations about student engagement, and to learn from models of successful student outreach. Kay McClenney and her team at the University of Texas at Autsin have done an amazing job of pulling this national community of practice together.

The long and the short of these services and sites is that there are more data available for education dialogues than ever before. This is a VERY good thing. Facing the brutal facts and celebrating the successes are both made easier by opening data to exploration. The challenge is that often these data don’t tell the whole story—there are real qualitative contingencies that just don’t show up in the neat charts and graphs. Moreover, some of these public datasets have REAL problems with missing data and other inconsistencies. Still, contingencies and conditions notwithstanding, without this first step – putting it out there--we’ll never begin to address what Steve Gilbert from the TLT Group calls “Dangerous Discussions.” I just hope we take a deep breath and as Steve Mittlestet, President of Richland College—a college that recently became the first educational institution to win the Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award—argues, “we turn to wonder, not blame.” Steve and his team argue that wonder makes you dive deep into root causes and solutions; blame gets you on the defensive immediately. We need wonder these days, coupled with doing the hard work of asking next-level questions and piloting solutions. The blame game just isn’t getting us anywhere.

Learning at Poway and the Extreme Kindness Tour

2006-03-28T17:53:00.000-05:00

I had the pleasure of sitting in on some education sessions at the SAS Users Group International meeting in San Francisco over the last few days. SUGI is a coming together of more than 4,000 advanced analytic minds from all sorts of industries, from Amazon.com to the World Wildlife Fund. The folks in this presentation, however, were laser focused on education. John Collins is the Deputy Superintendent from Poway Unified School District, just outside of San Diego. He and his colleague Ray Wilson did an amazing job of talking about how they have worked to bring a culture of evidence to the learning process of their school district. The best thing about their presentation was the “reality therapy” about how the technology may be powerful, the dashboards may be dazzling, but it’s working to create a culture where everyone actually USES the information you put at their fingertips to change how they teach and reach students. For example, they made the case that standardized test scores are sometimes so general as to be useless beyond the broad tracking of kids. Poway tries to bring much more powerful diagnostics right to teachers—daily!—so that when they work with kids they know more about specific challenges and possible strategies to help. Most interesting, however, is the way they have used data to link learning to the budget. Their comment was “the way to get budget in this district is to document that what you are doing, or want to do, will somehow improve learning.” It’s not just about headcount and “fair” allocations; it’s about what will impact the kids. Great stuff from Poway!

SUGI also featured the Extreme Kindness tour. These four guys have worked with Fortune 500 companies, local communities, and non profits with the goal of educating, inspiring, and motivating. I had the good fortune to talk with them for a bit before their presentation—which is a hilarious and humanistic ride on a kindness express. They are the real deal. They are fully engaged in what their doing and loving every minute of it. They certainly make you want to wake up and take on your challenges. The most interesting thing was watching them relate to conference attendees who are mostly IT folks—i.e., a whole lot of introverts. It was almost like watching and extroverted aunt hug an introverted nephew. Still all seemed to have a good time, and connected well with the message. Check out their manifesto, and choose your act of kindness!

The Courage to Learn

2006-03-28T10:45:00.001-05:00

A few years ago, I wrote an open letter to adult learners called The Courage to Learn. This simple little article spurred more interesting conversations with people all around the world than any previous work I’d produced. It’s been reprinted in a number of places, leading to even more interesting interactions. The conversations with students of all ages and stages, taking on their various challenges, and the leaders and teachers trying to reach them, were engaging, inspiring, and fun. At other times they were deep dives into very serious and difficlut issues. These are the kinds of dialogues I hope to catalyze here: real conversations about the good, the bad, and the day to day of learning, leadership, creativity, and health. In addition, I hope we can turn this into a resource-sharing vehicle for those of us keenly interested in how we can make a difference with our work in these arenas. Here's to the road ahead!