I use the metaphor of a fork in the road often with my students when I talk to them about making choices and breaking out of their comfort zone. It’s ironic that when I am sitting down to write my first blog post, like an RSS feed, the fork in the road metaphor has found me rather than I searching for it.
I suppose I’m feeling sufficiently discomforted by the prospect of blogging at this point in time. I’ve written “blog” posts for parents in the past, but those have been simple narratives of what we have been learning lately. It wasn’t like I was opening up, making myself vulnerable to the world or assuming that I would have something of value that merited publicizing. Blogging before now was mundane reporting, reminding and celebrating student learning. Now, it’s supposed to be personal, reflective and connective?
I’m sure my relationship with blogging will change over time as we grow on each other, as will my blogging skills and time it takes to crank out a reflection. But for now, blogging feels semi-forced rather than natural. I would assume this has to do with fact that although I’ve chosen the path towards pedagogical transformation, my inner Scaredy Squirrel is battling his discomforts as I stubbornly will myself to follow the path of most resistance and jump into the unknown.
Less than two years ago, I touched an iPad for the first time. Shortly thereafter, I found out I’d be stepping into a 1:1 iPad Y4/3rd grade classroom. It was at that time in my career that I realized I would need to catch up with how education was changing and completely alter not only the way I teach, but also the way I learn. After signing the contract that would help guide this shift, I went out and bought a smart phone to help ease the transition into the modern world and learn to be more connected. Neither the smart phone, nor the school provided iPad, nor any other technological device eased the transition of pedagogical transformation in my classroom. Rather, it was an intentional discomforting process that required perseverance, humbling and at times humiliating admittances of incompetence (otherwise known as Digital Illiteracy).
The interesting thing about the transformative potential inherent in digital literacy in education is that it’s not an external shift in terms of resources or devices, which so many institutions tend to focus their energy and budget on. It’s an internal shift taken on by the individual to step into the unknown and square up to any insecurities that one may have around feeling out of touch, feeling like they are falling behind or feeling like they may not be as good of a teacher as they thought they were. After attending Learning 2.013, I walked away more inspired and motivated than ever, but also more insecure than ever in my teaching practices compared to what others were doing. It was a readjustment in how I perceived myself as an educator, and an opportunity to clean the lenses with which I was looking at teaching through. I quickly learned that if I’m not riding the face of the technological wave in education, I’m holding onto the past in order to operate within my comfort zone and I’m doing my students a disservice by acting out of fear rather than courage and trust.
It’s been a two year process coming to this point in my teaching practice, and I couldn’t be more excited and inspired for what I’m going to find out and how that potential could be creatively applied in my classroom. I also can’t help but feel like I don’t know a lot more than I do know about digital literacy. But I know that with gentle and forgiving patience, intentional de-construction of self and an ever-expanding comfort zone, I will catch up in practice to my envisioned highest point of contribution as a teacher, learner and co-conspirator of uprooting the current educational paradigm.
Disassociated Ramblings:
After reading Disrupting Class: Student-Centric Education is the Future, it brought me back to thoughts and discussions I’ve had before with our digital technology coaches about what’s lacking in our current implementation of application software. I am a proponent of disruptive innovations in education and I believe the following can help facilitate those intentional systematic agitations.
The most difficult part of teaching in computer-based learning environments is finding appropriate apps or software that can be independently explored by the students and are developmentally and conceptually appropriate for their individual needs (as well as those needs of the institution’s curriculum).
I think a step in the right direction would be for schools to start hiring software developer teams in the same way they hire other educators at international teaching fairs. The software development teams would work solely for the institution that hired them and create apps or software based on their specific curricular needs. The team leader would spend 50% of his or her time inside the school observing teaching practices, attending team and department meetings, consulting with Administration and interviewing students to develop specific learning outcomes and interfaces that would allow for age-specific and concept/skill specific software that could be used in computer-based learning environments. The other 50% of their time would be spent back with their team putting theories into practice and developing software that is specific to teacher and student needs. I think it would be a high-risk, high-reward proposition, but could help those who know most about what students need have a greater say in how they learn. Educators are not often stuck on generating ideas, but can be at a loss for finding practical ways to implement and create a reality for their visions, especially when specific skill sets are required to program. Software developers working for schools rather than with them can help bridge this gap.
After reading World Without Walls: Learning Well With Others, I became excited at the prospect of global collaboration projects in my classroom, but quickly felt reluctant to search and sift through an unassembled collection of unrelated parts on Google. Perhaps what I’m about to propose already exists out there (and please let me know if it does). If it doesn’t, I believe this would be an ideal solution to facilitate reaching out with others and connecting learning as wide as it would be deep.
I would love to see a centralized global collaboration community website where classrooms can filter their needs by region, language, year level, concept/content, time of year and desired form of interaction or collaboration. For every classroom to sign up on this website, they would need to complete a form that indicates what concepts/content they would be learning about during specific months and what technological proficiencies or capabilities they have available to them.
For example, if we are learning about adaptation, ecosystems and interdependence in our Year 4/Grade 3 class in Thailand during the months of September, October and November, I might search for another willing classroom in South America who is learning about similar concepts during that time of year so they we can build our understanding together. This would help both classrooms facilitate scope and sequence efficiency and flow. We might find out that although this class does not have Google Drive set up for their students, we both have indicated that student blogs and Skype are potential avenues for connection and November is a time when we both are learning about similar-enough concepts to reach out to one another. All of this could be filtered out in less than 5 minutes and classrooms would have one-click access to each other in proposing collaborative learning projects.
As I continue this never-ending journey of educational change (the only constant) and perso-professional growth, I’m quickly reminded that with every door that opens and perceived progress that comes with it, also comes the potential for stubbing my toe and being brought back down to reality. I just finished my first blog post, which I can celebrate and use as a stepping-stone for future exercises in vulnerability. However, I ended up banging my toe on the stubbing stone and just realized I don’t really know how to attribute rights to the photos I inserted. Perhaps this is a lesson in gentle and forgiving patience as I intentionally step outside my comfort zone and into the COETAIL zone. More than being a simple step, it’s a rather large and intentional jump…into the unknown.
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