Private- and Public-School Independence Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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 :)