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(Transcript)
Creativity is one of those things that we are told to constantly encourage in our students but many times we talk the talk but do not walk the walk. Are schools designed to encourage or stifle creativity? I know in my own teaching I try to be creative but let’s face it, being creative is a lot of work for a teacher. In order to come up with a truly creative lesson we need to make sure our curriculum is covered (so that we cover the SOL material) and we need to take the time to plan our creativity. Plan creativity? And the hard part is what is creative to me is not necessarily creative for my students, plus I’m swamped with what I need to get done to keep up with the pacing guide, when do I have time to be creative?

I sat on the floor Saturday playing Lego with my Granddaughter when she decided we needed to build a house. I very methodically started putting a basic frame together and sorting out the pieces I needed to create my four walls and she just jumped right in and started. I noticed as she and I were building our house how quickly she adapted to a possible problem and came up with a solution. Her creativity and willingness to throw caution to the wind to build something was amazing to watch, me I analyzed the pieces then had to step back and look when I had a problem. I will admit that my solutions were not as creative as hers.
As young children, we have a unique ability to be creative that for some reason fades with time, unless of course you are a banker and then it flourishes, just kidding. Our schools are designed primarily to work in facts. Your answer is either wrong or right; you get a question right or wrong. How many times do we look at a student who raises their hand to answer a question and respond “wrong” and move to the next student?

Right now in most school we are riding on the fact bus, we are a fact driven society but now we are beginning to realize that knowing the facts is not enough. We need to learn to be creative in our solutions to problems because the old tried and true methods are not working as well anymore. I believe the fact bus is in the process of slowing down but it has not reached a point where people feel comfortable getting off and boarding the creativity bus, some of us might never reach that point. Some of us are realizing that while riding the creativity bus the facts are starting to fall into place. This friends is a long process. Our schools need to learn to ride both the fact and creative bus, getting off and on as the situation arises. In order to build a Lego house we need the bricks. How we put those bricks together to create the house is where the creativity comes in.

(Transcript)
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to make this post here on my blog or not so I figured I’d go ahead and do it. Can always use the practice.

As I review the reflections that I have made in the past I realize that my posts are both reflective and narrative. Some posts will take the form of each type separately. Some of the reflective posts I have made incorporate both a narrative and reflective format. Some of the reflective posts which I have posted and used in the past with students have been more of a review or evaluation of the assignment and how it unfolded. This uses a narrative for talking about the initial assignment and then a reflection on how the assignment could be completed more smoothly. This includes problems that were found and possible solutions on how to avoid those problems in the future.

That’s all for now, we’ll see you in session 2

I spent probably a good hour the other day combing the Virginia Beach website looking for a technology vision and must have been looking in the wrong place because I never found one.  I did find a mission statement for our technology program but could not find a vision statement.  I did find a vision statement regarding 21^st Century learning and found that a great deal of that coincided with the ICT vision statements.  The ICT document breaks down their information in to several categories and shows a definite flow as far as how they envision things happening.  When you boil it all down, you realize that the Virginia Beach vision for learners and the ICT vision are the same.  Everyone wants students who can function and be productive in tomorrow’s society.  As we move forward in education, we need to keep these visions in site and not forget them.  The vision of the future is where we need to go and constantly needs to be looked at and updated is society changes.  As teachers we need to give our students the skills to carry on, we need to teach our students how to collaborate with their peers and we need to make sure that they have the basic skills need to make them life long learners.  As educators wee need to keep our eye on the prize for our students and never lose site of the vision and directions our teaching should take.

It is amazing when you look at the various acceptable use policies that are in place throughout the area.  When you read through them, you can quickly notice that each one lists behaviors and the consequences that should be given for violating the listed behaviors.  One thing that it seems most people agree upon is that personnel who are in positions of authority should model the correct behaviors.  Most people feel the acceptable use policy for their system is good.  These policies have probably been reviewed not only by system administrators but also by several lawyers within the system to make sure that they are enforceable.  It was also interesting to find that although the policies are in place and enforceable, many people do not adhere to the policies and many teachers do not enforce all the policies that they should.  Students and teachers need to learn that there are consequences for inappropriate behavior and that if they misuse the software or hardware provided for them they should be prepared for the consequences.  We as the technology people in our schools need to constantly remind or staff and students of these policies and the consequences associated with them.

Something we have done many, many years has been given a new name, collaboration.  Throughout our teaching careers we have gotten together in groups and talked about lessons and how we can do them better.  Asking opinions of our peers and creating lessons as a group has long been a staple of the education field.  Twenty years ago all collaboration took place face to face in small or large meetings, as the years have progressed and technology has grown, we now have new and innovative ways to communicate.  Through the use of Web 2.0 tools as well as Skype and video chats we can now collaborate asynchronously as well as over great distances.  Although a lot of our current educational practices have been around for years, the tools are now changing and giving us the ability to communicate with our peers and stakeholders in a manner that our predecessors would have never dreamed.

It is amazing how valuable tool collaboration is and yet most of our teachers do not use it.  We still have the picture of a classroom being a nice quiet room with the teacher lecturing while students dutifully take notes.  Part of it might be due to the fact that as students collaborate they begin to get excited about their work and the more excited they get, the louder they get.  Collaboration becomes easier for students as they begin to utilize technology in their classroom but still there is an inherent amount of sound that goes with the process.  There are more and more tools being created that allow more than one student to make modifications to a document at one time.  This comes in the form of Web 2.0 tools.  Many tools only allow students to make modifications one at a time.  This is still a viable way of collaborating but students can lose work if someone saves over what they have done.

One tool that is great for collaboration but shunned by most school systems is instant messaging.  This allows students to communicate in a written format and quickly get a response.  The one major drawback with this tool is the ability for abuse.  I have found that the lab monitoring software we use currently will allow me to set up groups and allow students to IM within the lab when the software is active.  This helps students a great deal in their collaborative efforts.

I look forward to the day that we can begin to implement tools for education and students will use those tools for the purpose they are intended in the classroom rather than attempting to exploit the tool and use it as it is not intended.  I have noticed that some students will spend more time trying to figure out how to break the rules than use it correctly.  Since much technology is new in the classroom we find that group punishment comes into play and when one student abuses a tool, everyone pays and loses access to it.

It has been extremely interesting over the last week reading information about assessment from my compatriots.  Everyone agrees that assessment is important and we need to try to make the assessment balanced so everyone has a chance to succeed.  One of the issues I see with our technology program is we have turned from instructional technology to assessment technology. We started testing in the second week of school this year so computers were not available for student to do projects.  I figure we have spent around 60 percent of our school year already setting aside technology for testing, and all that testing has been multiple-choice.  Although projects allow for assessment, many times it does not feel like assessment.  I think to add realism to testing; we need to find a way of making in more interesting and less like a test.

Seymour Papert, one of the founding fathers of instructional technology, once noted that game designers have a better handle the nature of learning than instructional design specialists.  Part of the reason for this the game designer does not look at assessment for the sake of assessment as we often do but the assessment becomes part of reaching a goal.

Many books have been written on this subject and from the various websites that are available through the Capstone project show us that there are countless websites available with information on multiple intelligences as well as how to address their needs in the educational setting.  One point that most instructional designers agree upon is you must know your learner before you start creating your lesson.  When beginning to create instruction we need to do a learner analysis.  During this process we need to look at our learners, their various learning styles as well as their socioeconomic status and development level before deciding on the best way to provide the optimal learning environment.  Do we do this as educators? 

 Although learner analysis is the preferred method of instructional design I find that many teachers do not have the time needed to do a thorough analysis and then adapt their lessons for these learners.  Learning style surveys are a fantastic way of performing part of a student analysis, there are many examples out there and teachers should take a little time to find the best tool for their use.  Once we have completed an analysis of our learners we can then find the best tool to fit their needs.  As educators we sometimes find that these tools are dictated to us through an IEP or 504 plan.  Once you have looked at the individual learners in your classroom, you should take time to create a composite snapshot of your class, noting strengths and weaknesses, styles and structure so you can address all those need in your instruction.

I recently read a chapter from Marc Prensky’s “Digital game-Base Learning” that was so interesting that after reading three pages I had to send it out to my staff. After reading the rest of the chapter, I went to Barnes and Nobles and ordered the rest of the book. I encourage you, if you have not read the chapter, please go and read it before continuing to read this.

He makes the point that the way we teach has not really changed over the last two hundred years, which can be good or bad. I sat down this morning and wondered what my school would be like if it existed in 1808. It would definitely be a lot smaller for one thing; there would be a desk for each student put in the room so the person occupying the desk would have optimum viewing of the large chalkboard across the front of the room, sound familiar? At the front of the room would be the teacher writing the lesson of the day on the chalkboard and the students would be copying the information down into a notebook to study for a test. Move ahead to the year 2000, we look in the same classroom, we see desks facing the front, a chalkboard stretching from one end of the room to the other and a large projection screen covering part of the board. In the front of the room we see a teacher sitting at an overhead projector (that was invented in World War II), writing the lesson of the day while the students copied the information into a notebook to study for a test. Now we jump to the present, we look again at the same classroom; we see desks facing the front, a chalkboard stretching from one end of the room to the other, a projector screen covering part of the board, an overhead projector that is pushed slightly to the side to make room for a laptop computer and a projector. The teacher is showing the lesson of the day which was put into PowerPoint and the students are copying the information from the PowerPoint into a notebook to study for a test. At this point some think this scenario is only in isolated instances. We integrate technology better than that, don’t we?

Let’s look at the same classroom for testing. We see our classroom (described above) in 1806 as the students prepare for a test. The teacher reads the question, the students copy the question and then write (with correct spelling) the answer on their paper. Enter the technological advancement of the multiple choice test! We move ahead now to 1995, a little earlier but the description of the 2000 classroom works here. We see the students sitting down to take a multiple choice test (this way we don’t have to read their handwriting and figure out if they spelled the word correctly), they are writing the letter for the correct answer beside the question. We move ahead to 2000 and the students are taking the same multiple choice tests but this time they get to bubble in the answer on a separate sheet. Now we move the current classroom. What do we see? Here are our students working on computers! This is great; this is wonderful, wait a minute… They are taking a multiple choice test where they are hitting the letter on the keyboard or clicking on a bubble that will fill in for their test.
I guess my point to all this is how does this make the things we are teaching our students more meaningful? Yes it helps us work more efficiently because now we do not have to spend as much time grading papers, but instead of having time to invigorate our curriculum, we spend the time we spent grading papers in meetings and quite frankly, I’d rather grade papers.
Marc points out in his chapter that we as teachers and trainers are lust sending information as one would send a FedEx package. If no one is home when the Fed Ex man comes by, the package or information gets left on the front porch. The one thing I would add to his analogy is that if we know the package is coming, and it is something we are excited about, we will rearrange our schedule to be home when that package arrives. If we can’t do that, we will rush right home to get that box so we can open it and enjoy the contents. My question is how can we create lessons that our students will want to be home for when the package arrives, and then be excited and use the contents of the package?

I look forward to your comments.