Where The Teachers Are

INTRO

I spent Saturday October 24 with a roomful of ELA (English Language Art) teachers at the Arizona K12 Center. We learned about educational technology tools, including how to leverage them to support teaching to Arizona’s college and career ready standards. Disclosure: I’m not a teacher. I do instructional design.

IMPROVISATIONAL PD: FAILING TO GET IT RIGHT

Me not being a teacher is a good thing. I don’t know enough to keep quiet when something was introduced during the workshop. It’s all new to me. Except that it’s not. I learn a lot about K-12 strategies and educational technology at the EdCamps I participate in. Through some applied improvisation later on I figure out how to apply it with the adult learners I support.

I get asked sometimes why participate in so many EdCamps? I think I’m up to 30 so far: EdCamps in Texas, Arizona, California and Washington, DC. It’s because I like the improv. Hearing about something cool I want to try it right away, or as soon as possible, before it gets stale. I view doing something that I just learned from teachers as improv because I’m flying without a net. I don’t know what the cues are. Not being a teacher means I’m not sure about context. So I give it a try and add or drop stuff as seems to make sense.

OUT-OF-THE-BOX THINKING INSIDE OF A BREAKOUT EDU BOX

I hear now and then how we instructional designers need to be more innovative and creative. A lot of times the ideas that come back from “How?” involve advanced educational technology. Since EdCamp I prefer simpler more natural and humanistic approaches.

At CUEROCKSTAR Las VegasI learned about this Breakout EDU thing. The way it works is you get a box. But not just an ordinary box. Noooo. You get one with a sturdy hasp. About that hasp, it’s an electricians lockout hasp. There can be as many as six locks on this hasp.

The teacher, or in my case instructional designer, crafts an engaging story. This is what teacher and author Dave Burgess calls “A Hook”. My name for it, after watching Jack Black in Goosebumps, is “The Twist.” Anyway, the learner or learners, once engaged, work to solve puzzles. The puzzles and their solutions are grounded in what the learner is being taught or trained on.

EVENT WHEN IT DOESN’T WORK IT WORKS OUT

At AZTEA’s P3: Problems, Projects, and Possibilities conference I presented a session on designing interactive presentations. One of the things I demonstrated was the Breakout EDU box. There were “technical difficulties”, however, and I had to do some improvisation to get over the bump.

Here’s how it was supposed to go. First there was the trailer. Then the backstory. Lastly was the vital clue. Anyway, given technical difficulties I had to play all the parts live. I got to feel the learning. It was pretty cool. I have a whole new perspective on how to do it next time. I’ll definitely have some backup stuff, too.

SCORE ANOTHER ONE FOR THE ZOMBIE (LEARNER) APOCALYPSE

One thing I need to work on, what teacher Chris Long calls Self-Development is the BOOS (Butts-Out-Of-Seats).

I think, and some research studies suggests, learning efficacy can be deepened when learners are actively engaged and moving around doing learning activities.

THATS WHERE THE TEACHERS ARE

To review, why do I get most of my PD (Professional Development) from EdCamp & CUE? Because that’s where the teachers are.

 

Play Time PD

INTRO

EdCamp Tucson is tomorrow, Saturday September 12, 2015. Unlike many unconferences that I participate in this one’s practically in my backyard, only 90 minutes away. Usually I travel hundreds of miles to EdCamps. I reflect on what I might learn on the way there. On the trip home I reflect on how I might apply learnings to my instructional design practice.

PLAY TIME PD: A LEARNING ACTIVITY BEST EXPERIENCED WITH OTHERS

A few PD (Professional Development) conferences ago, it might have been CUEROCKSTAR, I heard someone describe PD as play time. I’ve been thinking a lot about viewing PD as a fun enjoyable thing to do.

When I was a child I loved when Papa would take me to the park. His experience and mine while at the park were, I believe, a lot different. Sometimes he’d bring the newspaper to read. Other times he’d watch me for a while then kind of zone out and relax. He worked in a Kaiser steel mill feeding coke into a blast furnace. I can imagine what relaxing in the shade of a tree in a quiet place meant to him.

How I experienced park play time depended on who was there, too. Sometimes there were friends I would run around with. Other times, probably more often than not, there were kids I didn’t know that I could get to know, play with, and learn from. Once in a while Papa and I would have the park to ourselves. I think he liked the quiet: me, not so much.

Fast forward to the present day: EdCamp Tucson. There will be lots of people there. It’s going to be held at CITY Center for Collaborative Learning. It’s someplace I haven’t been to before. Their website says it’s an “umbrella organization” but what does that mean? As it kicks-off we’ll post what we’d like to learn there. We’ll post topics we can facilitate conversations on. All this is standard stuff at an EdCamp; they have no preset agenda. Anticipating what will happen reminds me of my park experience. The best times, the ones that come back most vividly, are filled with memories of lots of kids interacting with each other in varied ways.

I was in Little Rock, Arkansas last week meeting with a development team. On my drive there and back, 2600 miles round trip, I stopped often to take pictures of interesting stuff. One of these times was near the village of Honobia, Oklahoma. It seems that every October there’s this Bigfoot Conference hosted by Christ’s 40 Acres.

Anyway, a little before Honobia was this big Bigfoot T-Shirt sign. I thought: “Kodak Moment”, so I stopped to take a selfie. Being alone it took a few minutes to balance my iPhone on the hood of my Pilot, set the timer so I’d have enough time to press the shutter release then run back up to the sign. I was huffing-n-puffing running back and forth trying to get the timing and my positioning right. Honobia is up in the mountains, high up. I was sweaty and breathing hard by the time I finally got it. Admiring the photo I took while I caught my breath reminded me of going to the park again: good times.

OUTRO

Why do I go to so many EdCamps and PD conferences? Is it for the keynotes? Is it for the pre-conference workshops? Is it for the concurrent sessions? Not really. EdCamps don’t have any of those things. The ATD conferences I’ve been to, the eLearning Guild’s DevLearn and mLearnCon have them and they’re informative and valuable PD resources. But where I really learn is when I interact with others. Talking about what their experience was like and then contrasting it with mine has the most value. How about you? Why do you participate in PD conferences?

 

Write This Down

PROLOGUE

“Write this down."

BACKSTORY

A month from now it will be two years that my PD (Professional Development) has taken place primarily through interactions with K-12 educators. I started participating at EdCamp in September 2013. I became a card-carrying member of TCEA (Texas Computer Education Association) around the same time. My learning through CUE conferences and CUERockstar happened this year. It's time and effort well spent.

A few days ago I attended an Explore Teaching session at Rio Salado College. The experience was designed to give pre-teacher students a glimpse of what being a teacher is like. It was quite different from what I expected: the application of pedagogy and technology and engagement. No. It was basic stuff, some of which I had missed during my own K-12 educational experience. Though I had heard that “Being a student doesn’t qualify one to be a teacher." the deeper meaning of the phrase had escaped me until now.

BASICS

My K-12 experience took place in the nineteen sixties and early seventies. I would have liked to have learned about Cornell Notes back then. That’s one cool way of note-taking. I liked learning how to use them as a study-aide too. It’s a more structured way of taking notes but I can see its value.

Beyond learning about note-taking tools I was a little surprised to find that not much else had changed. Teachers still stand at the front of a room pointing and talking. I was a little shocked when the presenter would say, “Write this down.” That was my first aha moment.

ROCKSTAR

The EdCamps and CUE conferences I’ve attended have been dynamic learning experiences. They are heavily focused on educational technology. But the presenters always share how to apply technology to facilitate learning and enable student success. CUERockstar, the most recent K-12 learning experience I completed, was in many ways a capstone where everything came together: creativity, innovation, technology, learning experience. But what about the basics? The teachers I learn from have the basics down. Even the new teachers have student teaching and observation experience.

This was my second aha. Funny to think that it took me almost two years to figure it out. I don’t think I would have gotten it otherwise.

ENGAGEMENT

Since CUERockstar Las Vegas, it ended a couple weeks ago, I’ve tried two things. The first was creating an infographic and using it as a talking point with a subject matter expert (SME). It was amazing. It took my usual design thinking approach to interviewing, something I learned via EdCamp, to a whole new level. The ideas flowed. The SME ended up doing the initial workshop outline for me. This is a big deal because usually I create the outline and the SME reviews and approves it or kicks it back for edits. This saved us a LOT of time.

The other thing I tried was the Breakout Box experience. We, the SME and I, didn’t actually have a box. I explained how it was a box with several locks that needed to be opened and how problems had to be solved to unlock to locks. The SME and I were together for 90 minutes. It was at about the 25 minute mark I mentioned Breakout Box. We hit flow-state a little after.

PROBLEMS

The learning experiences I design are meant to enable learners to be better at solving problems. But what’s a problem? When the SME heard about the Breakout Box the problems all of a sudden seemed to become simpler. They weren’t problems at all. They were puzzles to solve. We could make the workshop a game. I learned from a podcast, I think it was with Jon Corippo, that rigor doesn’t mean harder. It can mean challenging. The SME said it before I did. “How about if we make it so the first activity is easy. They (learners) will have lots of time to solve the puzzle.” Yes. Each iteration of the activity learners have less time to solve the puzzle.

EPILOGUE

A week and a day after CUERockstar Las Vegas ended I earned the Rockstar Badge. Going forwards I have to approach projects using a simpler frame. I can already imagine how to make learning more engaging while consuming fewer resources by getting back to basics. I think I’ll enroll in the teacher program at Rio Salado College. Not to necessarily become a teacher, but to enrich my understanding of how instructional design can teach.

 

Shiny Object Guy

PROLOGUE

I’m a “Shiny Object” guy.

SHINY OBJECT #1

I’m a Navy veteran. I served in the late seventies and early eighties for six years. Some memories from my experience have faded so much that I think they’re fantasy; others remain so vivid in my mind that they seem to have happened only yesterday.

One of the latter vivid variety memories happened on September 13, 1978. On that day I boarded an Air Force C-141 Starlifter. It would take me one half the way around the world to my first overseas duty station: NavComSta Diego Garcia. But that isn’t what this post is about.

What it is about is something that took place many months earlier. A standard Navy activity is reading the Plan-of-the-Day (POTD). During one such reading my instructor, I was then taking Electronics Technician 1 at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, read about a new program wherein students could dream-sheet a sixth choice of what advanced training they wanted to receive and where they would like to be stationed. A dream-sheet gave sailors the opportunity to provide their detailer (the Chief in D.C. who cut orders) input on where and what; usually we could submit up to five choices. He said if we asked to be stationed on Diego Garcia we wouldn’t have to bump one of the other choices to make room for it. So I did. I had no idea what Diego Garcia was.

Diego Garcia was, and remains, a shiny object for me. It’s difficult for me to tell this story because of all the tangentential stories about my time there that scream out to be told, too. Anyway, the gist of it is that as the Starlifter, after leaving Travis Air Force Base, flew over the Golden Gate Bridge (man how I wish I knew where that photo was) I was filled with a sense of wonder and joy for what was to come. It’s a rare feeling.

SHINY OBJECT #2

I have to work today. I’m worried it’s going to be a long one. At the end of my work day I’m going to be getting underway for Las Vegas. I’ll finally be on my way to CUEROCKSTAR. I signed up for it back in March after a CUE conference with Jon Corippo.

I was so motivated by the CUE experience. That CUE ball cap I’m wearing in the selfie with Jon is the first hat of any kind to be on my head since I left the Navy in ’83.

I do and I don’t know what to expect. I know it’ll be three days of learning with K-12 teachers from all over. Not being a K-12 teacher I have a fuzzy idea of what I’ll be learning. The past two years I’ve participated in something like 24 EdCamps. I’ve learned a lot about how our children learn during their K-12 experience. Some of what I’ve picked up has made it into the learning experiences I design. But the thing is EdCamps are brief experiences; several 50 minute sessions over the course of a few hours. I make connections with some teachers and encounter others during educational chats on Twitter afterwards. But CUEROCKSTAR will be different. It’s THREE DAYS!

I like to say that I design transformational learning experiences. That means learners will be butts-out-of-seats moving around doing stuff. They’ll be making their learning visible: to themselves, to their instructor/facilitator, and to their team back home. CUE ROCKSTAR will be transformational.

EPILOGUE

In my mind’s eye I can see the jewel that is San Francisco Bay through the Starlifter’s port-side porthole. A few minutes after leaving Travis I undid my jump seat belt and ambled over to the porthole (this wasn’t a smart move as the heavily laden transport plane, unlike a passenger jet, bounces and heaves like nobody’s business as it claws for altitude. I made my way past pallets piled with who-knows-what and gazed back in wonder at the bay, the bridge, and all that I had known before.

I’m going to be different after CUEROCKSTAR. It’s going to be different. How? I have no idea. That’s how it is with shiny objects.