On the Brink of Greatness

I figure it must have been around 1977, Star Wars was probably just out, and I remember that somehow my parents had let me watch Jaws. As a result, I wouldn't lay in my parent's waterbed nor swim in the pool all summer! (I had what school teachers often referred to as "an active imagination.") I remember sitting in the back of the class in a dirty pair of tough skin jeans that were just a bit too short. I only knew they were too short because some kid had asked me when the flood was coming on my way into class, and I knew they were dirty because, well, I was a boy and it was 1977.

I hadn't memorized my multiplication tables, everyone else seemed to have done it: from every angle of the classroom kids were shouting out 21, 28, 35 in unison, and there I was, mumbling along as if the numbers were forming in my head as quickly as the pig-tailed prodigies to my left and right. Despite never having the correct answer at the tip of my tongue, I did love choral response. As long as I moved my mouth, and avoided eye contact, neither the teacher nor the priest ever really knew

whether or not I had my act together.

Flash forward, it’s 2015, kids are rockin' 1:1 digital devices, more research has been done on teaching techniques in the past 30 years than all the research on the same subject since Socrates. Our teachers study the difference between constructivism, cognitivism and behaviorism in our credential schools and our classrooms are crafted for acoustics and ergonomics.  It is 2015, we are the smartest we have ever been as a species: we put a man on the moon, a rover on Mars and we just got up close and personal photos with the planet formerly known as Pluto.

I believe we are at the beginning of the greatest educational breakthrough in history of the human civilization. I call this the, "You Ain't Fooling Anybody" Era.

Our teachers have formative assessments that drill down to the sub-sub-standard; we have differentiated digital tools that remediate and re-engage students as quickly as you can flip the lid of a Chromebook; we have inspired young teachers who pay far more than just lip service to the belief that ALL kids can learn - this talent of new teachers are dedicating their lives to the pursuit of equity through differentiation.  Students sitting in today’s classrooms don’t get by faking choral response, our modern champions of education are too well equipt with 21st Century tools to allow any student to fake his way through the 4th grade. Online differentiation tools, commitments to research based teaching methods and constant use of formative assessments are changing the learning landscape for our kids and I think they are going to change the world because of it.

I slipped through the cracks in 1977. On the bright side, it taught me some sneaky coping tools that have worked many times in my favor, but truth be known, I didn't like not knowing the answer to 7x6. I believe that if I had the teachers that I see entering this industry today, and had access to the tools these 2015 all-stars are issuing in the 21st Century Classroom, I couldn't have dodged 42 with a simple improvisational lip-sync and a sideways glance to slip the teacher’s gaze.

Our kids are lucky to have been born into the Era of You Ain't Fooling Anybody.

Brown Baggers and the Pendulum Swing

I remember the beginning of my teaching career, when the lunchroom was filled with old timers telling me that what comes around in education will come back around again. No need to jump on the band wagon the first time you see something new, it will make its way around again in about 10 years, freshly repackaged by some new author who has put a fresh spin on an old topic. Collaboration, Reading Methods, Instructional Techniques, you name it, and some brown bag toting, immoveable oak, deeply rooted in routine was telling me that they had seen it all and that it wasn't going to change the way they taught.

So, here we are again, a new set of standards, a new push for infusing instructional technology into the classroom and a new set of brown baggers. This time, as I look around the lunchroom, the oaks are all about my age, which means I have been around long enough to see the pendulum swing.

2015 is a crucial time in American Education. We defined 20th Century Learning in 1998. We are 15% done with the 21st Century, and if we haven't made the shift yet, the best we can do starting now is to nail the next 85 years...That is only a B+. So what is the shift? Is it simply re-targeting the new standards? Is it the shift to paperless learning? Is it rigor over ritual, or depth rather than keeping score with a breadth of studies? Whatever the answer, change is eminent, because our industry is always changing, growing and trying to improve.

Along comes SAMR. Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition. The SAMR model simply put, says that if you are going make change, make it where it is easiest to make first. This

makes a ton of sense. Don't go trying to redefine your entire practice the first day you get a set of Chromebooks, or even a new set of standards for that matter. Go after the substitution first. If you can simply substitute water for soda, you are bound to be healthier. If you want to infuse technology into your classroom, start by replacing something that is non-tech based with a tech-based solution.

If students typically write in a journal in your class, have them type onto a Google Doc instead. That's it. That is the "S" in SAMR - Substitution.

What about Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition? These will come in time. Nobody loses 35 pounds without losing the first 5. By the same measure, some people have not joined the 21st Century Learning revolution because they are waiting for the redefinition to be defined. The problem with this is that redefinition is a verb, it has to be done, not known, it is a process, and the process starts with an action. You will not get to the redefinition unless you start with Substitution.

This is liberating news. We can start, without knowing exactly where the work will end. As I learned in the lunchroom in 1998, it doesn't end, the work just keeps coming around to present itself, so I would encourage every one of us brown-baggers to take that first leap of faith, engage in substituting a former practice with a new one and see where it leads.

Customize the Look of a Google Form

If you know me, it's no secret that I dig me some Google Forms! I use them as surveys, quizzes, tickets out the door; I use them for shopping lists, organizing birthday parties and for offering appointment times to anyone who might want a piece of my time. For the past few years I have learned to set up Auto-Email Responses, Eliminate Choices upon submission and to create Choose Your Adventure style Adaptive Assessments (when a student answers a question wrong it sends them to another page to give them a stab at another set of questions).

In all my time Noodling with Google Forms, I always thought: As cool as these forms are, they ain't much to look at...Until Now. A year or so back, Google introduced new slick looking Themes! Some have curly cue fonts and others bold type face, some have headers with pictures of coffee cups and some have cute drawings of kitty cats, but what I dig most, is now, as of just recently, I can CUSTOMIZE all these options. Not only can I select a theme that I like, but I can customize that theme with fonts, colors and images that work for me!

Next time you are slapping together a Google Form, give a couple moments thought to what picture you want staring down your participants, what fonts will make your point and what background colors make the most sense for your Form!

- Happy Googling!  

Cheeseburgers & Rockstars

Thinking back a decade or three, I remember the cool kids from the next town over throwing the epic all night house party on the swanky side of the freeway. There weren't invitations, just word of mouth, nor was there was a no-go list, but those who ventured across the overpass to stroll the halls of the social event of the season had to make it past the front door with an air of confidence that said, "Who me? No sweat, I go to gigs like this all the time!"

After slipping through the front door, it wasn't long before I realized that everyone, regardless of their parent's zip code, carried the same baggage, packed with the same insecurities, as the ones that I brought to the party: am I dressed right, do I have the right things to say, is someone going to shout across the room, "Hey, you don't belong here!" Looking back at a gig like that, I realize there were really two types of people on the non-existent guest list: those who had the courage to crash the gates and those who stayed away for fear they wouldn't fit in.

Fast forward to 2015 - the hottest party in town: Cue Rockstar! An exclusive who's who in the world of EdTech Uber-Stars. Just like a modern high school prom, from a distance, status seems to be sorted by numbers of Twitter followers and badges earned from conferences traveled. As an outsider looking in, I hoped that nobody would notice that I wasn't sure if I could make it past the gates: Am I smart enough, do I really know enough to attend a gig with people who have presented at ISTE, would somebody shout out from across the room, "Hey, you don't even have a Voxer account!"

I just got home from three days at the Northern California Ed Tech event of the season. Once I crashed the gates I realized that what brought these people together was a common courage to learn. Every presenter and every attendee seemed to share a spirit of comradery and a true commitment to exploration. I learned about creating animated GIFs while in the middle of an after hours frisbee golf game, at lunch I taught a woman I had never met before to use ITTT, at every one of the six sessions I facilitated - I learned as much from the participants as they could possibly have learned from me and over breakfast a middle school teacher blew my mind with the most innovative idea I have ever heard about developing a tech-camp taught by kids for kids.

Cue Rockstar looks as glamorous as the Hip House Party on the right side of the tracks from the long view across town, but upon closer inspection, the three day gig turns out to feel more like a backyard Cheeseburger BBQ filled with friends and family all reunited to celebrate our similarities. My take aways include creating BitMojis, rockin' MineCraft, putting the You in YouTube, drafting Digital Badges, but most importantly, that investing an ounce of courage yields friendships and connections that foster life-long learning.