The Trouble with People

Sometimes dealing with people can be as difficult as herding cats. It isn't because they are particularly quick, take that anyway you want, or that they are independent, it's that they just don't make any sense. I am very good at seeing both sides of a situation. I can generally tell what is driving someone or prompting them to think a certain way but there are other times where I don't have a clue where they are coming from or why?

There is a gentleman who lives about a quarter of a mile from the school who is convinced that our wifi is messing up his TV antenna. Why does he think this? He says he talked to an engineer from a local tv station that told him it was a wifi problem and he narrowed it down to us as the culprit. It doesn't matter that I talked to the same people, the FCC, other stations and consulted the internet where I learned that it isn't possible. Nothing I say to him will convince him that he is wrong. Every time I talk to him, if I point out where his facts don't add up he changes the facts to meet his data. He won't let me see his TV or even come in his house because he and his wife are very private people. I have concocted many scenarios to explain this but I won't share those here. I do imagine he is sitting in his chair wearing an aluminum foil hat, trying to get messages from the TV.

I love a good intelligent debate, the exchange of ideas and banter. I want to know the other side of the story and I am never opposed to changing my views if I can be shown where I am wrong. I don't enjoy arguing or getting into a discussion with someone who won't entertain alternate view points. That to me is like banging your head against a brick wall. You can't accomplish anything because there will be no change when you are done. I don't mind if the person I am talking to still doesn't agree with me when we finish or if I still have my same views, I just want to know that we now understand each other and can appreciate the others view point.

I know I am rambling but that is because I haven't anything of substance to say.

For Fun or Reward

I just watched a great TED Talk by Daniel Pink. He reminded me, and gave me scientific evidence, of something that I already knew. I don't do anything very well when it is reward based. I just thought it was me and never considered it could apply to other people. As a note, students are considered in other people.

I have told my kids of the time when I turned down more money to teach in California because I didn't like the trees and living in the desert wasn't what I wanted to do. I wasn't stupid about it. I didn't go all hippy and give up material things, but money wasn't the driving force behind my decision. I could have pursued higher paying jobs but teaching offered me incentives that I preferred. More freedom, time with family, less stress in a sense and a satisfaction I couldn't get elsewhere. I coached and volunteered, not for the money but for the experience and satisfaction of knowing I was helping shape or enhance lives. One could argue that these are rewards but they are intrinsic.

Shortly after being hired as the tech director I was told they changed my pay scale to equal that of teachers. This meant that if I got my masters degree I would make a lot more money. I went to talk to the superintendent to see if he truly understood what I could be paid. He didn't, but he still said it would benefit us all if I did. I asked him, "Will my plate get bigger? Will I be able to get more work done?" Needless to say, besides more money and the worry of now making too much for them to keep me, I would not have gotten any more work done. A few years later the recession hit, and had I been making more money they would have replaced me, I have no doubt.

Another example is a year after starting the archery team at the school where I teach, the superintendent and some board members wanted to pay me. I told them I didn't want paid. They told me no one does anything for free and I should be paid. We actually argued over it. My argument being that any amount they paid me would be insignificant and there would be expectations. I just wanted to help students succeed in something and not have to worry about being an employee. I finally won because they determined they didn't have the funds anyway. This just shows the depth of the belief that external rewards, rather than internal, drive people.

I never was successful doing anything for profit outside of my regular job because the money was never enough to make a change. I had to give up too much of what I enjoyed and since the money from my job was enough to provide for my family, I wasn't that driven to make more. I worked outside of my job many times but it was to show my kids what it means to be dedicated to providing for your family and to test the waters for other endeavors, but I never stayed at them once the crisis was over or I determined a future wasn't there.

Intrinsic reward will always far out way external rewards for most people. It is the feeling of satisfaction that we yearn for.

Everybody wants to play Mozart

Everybody wants to play Mozart, nobody wants to play Twinkle Twinkle.

This is what proponents of technology use in schools seem to be proposing. I know they aren't suggesting students should skip learning to multiply before doing calculus but with all the talk about SAMR and TIMS and how technology should be integrated into classrooms, it is easy to get that idea. Taken out of context or out of application, pushing technology for the sake of technology can be destructive to the learning and the teaching process.

Even PBL, which promotes the use of projects to teach all subjects, occasionally refers to the time teachers need to teach a concept and for students to practice those concepts. Unrestrained or uneducated administrators and teachers might get the idea that SAMR should be applied in all instances. This puts undo pressure on the teacher and diminishes the value of the teaching process. Teachers need to be taught that they are still needed to teach but also taught when to let go and allow students to be creative. I will say as I always do that technology is a tool that only works when correctly used where needed.

Teaching and practicing Twinkle Twinkle, multiplication tables, sentence structure and other basics are necessary before students can move on to Mozart, multi-step problems, and writing paragraphs. I just hope people realize it is also necessary before students move on to technology use and more creative endeavors.

SAMR vs TIM

Sounds like a B-movie title to me.

SAMR and TIM were both conceived around 2006 to try to create a way for teachers and administrators to track or determine how teachers were beginning to use technology in the classroom. They were both developed for use by different states but essentially they were meant to do the same thing. I think they are both adequate for what they were intended to do but, (you knew there would be a but. I know you saw that coming) I don't think we are applying them correctly at least I hope so. Before I continue, I want to say that at this point I thought I liked TIM better because it at least includes the student in the model but it is too detailed and seems to model exactly the opposite of what it intends. I don't necessarily understand how they get their conclusions but the attempt is made. SAMR allows some freedom to interpret lessons without being told what to do but TIM gives the freedom to just use technology without redefining a lesson to incorporate new technology. Let's break down both models.

SAMR is like chasing a ghost. You can get to R, redefinition, but it won't last. Once you finally get there, technology will change and you have to redefine your lesson again to a point that what you are doing couldn't have been done before. I think SAMR works well if you are being technology specific but if you are looking at the process as a whole what happens when the technology changes? I might achieve an R but 1 year later I'm stuck doing things like I have been and therefore what couldn't have been done before has been done for at least a year.  SAMR requires constant redefinition. When does it stop? The example used by Dr. Puentedura involves Google Earth. Would that same lesson be viable today as a SAMR model? I have to sidenote and say the latte example I watched was just dumb.

TIM does much the same thing except it is more specific and detailed. After looking through lessons that involved Moodle and other out of date programs, I looked at the math lesson in the highest square possible. The outcome was impressive but I don't understand how it fits the very detailed explanation of what that area looks like for teachers and students. Basically kids wrote out and recorded the process of how to work problems involving decimals. The teacher then used several different pieces of software to put it all in one place so kids could hear and see the problems being worked. It took over 2 weeks and most of the technology use was done by the teacher. The kids just recorded themselves and this was the one they chose as their flagship for the proper way to be at the highest position on their chart?

I think both TIM and SAMR have their place. They are excellent guides for teachers who want to start using technology and know where they stand with its use. They may realize they have a ways to go before they reach the goal they set for themselves. I don't believe either model should be used to judge a teacher's use of technology. Both models are quickly outdated forcing teachers to constantly change. Both models seem to advocate the use of technology for the sake of using technology. There is no need to rewrite everything just so that it is being done with technology. This is my original thought. Hopefully this was not the intent of these models but it seems to be how they are being applied at this time. Forcing the use of technology for the sake of using technology is to ignore and stifle certain aspects of creativity. Let's not just let the technology do it for us and ignore the physical exhilaration of doing it ourselves.

Students these days learn differently?

I will probably repeat this in most of my blogs because I don't want to come across as someone who believes he knows everything. My world is shades of gray and without all the facts and opinions from peers, my opinions are not set in stone. I enjoy a good, well informed debate and looking at things from a different angle and point of view. So what I post here are my opinions, generated from my limited knowledge of the world. Please feel free to correct me or attempt to sway my opinion...attempt is the key word! :)

I hear more and more statements being made about how students these days learn differently. I am amazed by this statement! It's as if some how in the last 10 years or less, because of technology and social media, students brain patterns have evolved beyond traditional methods of instruction. The fact that more people, especially those of the lower classes, became more educated and could read after the invention of the printing press wasn't due to a difference in learning but due to the fact that the material was more readily available and affordable. I'm sure that when our forefathers starting using pencil and paper instead of coal and shovels there learning increased. Not because they learned differently but because it was easier to get the material done and resources were more available.

It is my hope that those who make this statement actually mean that students these days learn differently because they have more options, information is more readily available, they can collaborate with peers and experts, and they aren't limited to the knowledge of their teachers and outdated books. That they can learn from different media sources than were previously available. I have no problem agreeing with this but that is not the context where it is generally stated. It is generally stated after talking about social media, mobile devices and personal computers in such a way as to lead listeners or readers to believe that students are no longer responding to traditional methods and if they don't go 1 to 1 their students will somehow become ignorant cave dwellers, forgotten by society.

Student learning hasn't changed, just the tools and amount of information available. After the invention of books, teaching changed; after paper and pencil became more available, teaching changed; after schools became able to transport students, teaching changed. It is teaching methods that need to change but not because students are different, because the tools are different, society's different, methods are different. If you are one who says "students learn differently these days" please make sure your listener knows why you are saying that. They learn differently because the tools they have available are different, not because their brains processes the information in some foreign manner...Ok, we are talking about teenagers so that statement isn't totally without it's arguments but as compared to teenagers of days gone by, they are basically all the same.

Students don't learn differently, teaching just needs to incorporate and teach students to use the tools that are relevant and essential to make them competitive in today's world. I'll leave it to you to decide what those tools are in the context of what is being taught.

1 to 1 beginnings

After 3 years of teacher planning, our district has decided to institute devices for the HS and maybe the MS starting in January. I am a little concerned that they still don't have the right frame of mind. It is rather chaotic as of yet but hopefully we can pull it all together before Jan. I keep reminding them that next semester is still a training time but we'll see how well that goes over.