Hey Aviator

PROLOGUE

I'm an aviator. Ok, not really. But I do wear glasses and own a drone quadcopter. The point is I drive something that flies.

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?

For as long as I can remember I've wanted to _______. But I have a short attention span. It doesn't help I'm attracted to shiny objects. So along the way of my life I've half started a lot of things. But now that I'm an OldPa (a term I remember from an old Lionel Barrymore as grandfather movie) I have a little more disposable income.

So the other day I used some to buy a Parrot Bebop 2 drone. I needed one to respond to an RFP (Request For Proposal). Now that I've responded I have a cool red toy to play with.

Speaking of play, I like to have fun while learning. One way I have tons-o-fun learning is by participating in EdCamps. In a nutshell they're gatherings of teachers where everyone is a genius. I've lost count of how many I've participated in. Anyway, at one of them I noticed how learning can be influenced by environment. I was in a first grade classroom. Not only was everything small, like models I glued together as a boy, most things in the room were scaled down, maybe 3:1. I had expected that.

What I hadn't expected was how low things on the wall were. I'm 6 feet and 5 inches tall. I had to look down at learning aids placed on the walls. Something a six year old looked straight into I had to peer down at. This has AHA! moment kick-started my thinking on learning environments.

THE TOPS OF THINGS

When I spun up the props on my Bebop and got it about three metres in the air I saw a whole new world. Tall as I am I mostly look down at things. Of course I look up at stuff too. But being a creature of habit I tend to not really notice the usual stuff around me. Taking a look at my surroundings from higher up than usual really opened my eyes. Cliche though it may be to say I saw a whole new world it's true.

RETRACING OLD STEPS

Cactus tops, tree tops, house tops, my bald head are all things the drone and me have captured. I don't expect the novelty to wear off for a while.

In 1977 I entered active duty with the US Navy. I did a lot of traveling over the next six years. One of my more memorable trips was driving my then new Toyota Celica from Corry Station near Pensacola, Florida to my boyhood home in California. The 2209 mile trip took me around 44 hours. I remember bits and pieces of sights along the way. What I remember most though was how big and diverse the southern United States is.

In seven days I start driving from my home in Arizona to a conference in Orlando, Florida. I'll be in my new Honda CR-V. I expect to make a lot of stops along the way. I'm looking forward at what the drone's view reveals.

EPILOGUE

What the drone really does is expand my view just a little bit. My eyes are almost 40 years older than they were in '77. It occurred to me just now how Google Earth lets me look down. The drone makes it more personal, so much more up close. I think that's what an aviator might feel flying through the air. I'm not a passenger peering out a window at the world going by. I'm choosing the path and experience what's coming up.

 

Learning is motion

INTRO

Initial meetings with clients can be illuminating.

LEARNING ENABLES HEARTS AND MINDS TO GET MOVING

The other day I met with a new client. Their team and I are in the "getting to know you" stage. They showed me a number of slides with data on how many courses were in production, how many were live on their LMS and how many courses were taken by their employees.

When I asked about results, what we refer to in the business as return on investment, they drew a blank. Sadly, this is typical. Their data tell a story about butts-in-seats: developing and completing training. But learning is so much more than that.

Don Wettrick teaches a course on innovation at his high school in Indiana. In a Periscope video this morning he talked about how he's considering moving away from traditional grading to PASS/FAIL.

Reflecting on his thoughts I got to thinking that the methods my client and Don use to assess learning misses on efficacy. How well did they achieve their planned result?

One (among many) things I've learned after two years of professional development (PD) alongside K-12 teachers is that mistakes matter. They're a significant part of the learning process. My client, tracking the data they do, don't have visibility on the number of mistakes their organization is making. They don't know if the training they've developed has moved the organization towards its planned result.

OUTRO

I would suggest to Don that grades are important. PASS/FAIL doesn't capture the mistakes learners make along the way. I don't believe grades are a carrot to entice learners to do better for the sake of a higher grade. In Don's Pure Genius he writes how learners say what they're going to do, how much their ultimate work will be worth and then assess along the way and at the end. I believe learning is much more than butts-in-seats. It's about enabling learners to get their hearts and minds in motion doing stuff. Honor the mistakes learners make along the way. Keep the grades.

 

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.

 

Sit n Get

INTRO

My K-12 experience spanned from 1961 through 1974. My butt polished a lot of chairs in that time.

SIT

I can't recall many times, outside of PE class, where I wasn't sitting down in school. Sure, there were those terrifying moments working problems on the blackboard. But this activity wasn't something a kid looked forward to.

The classrooms I knew had rows of chairs. Desktop collaboration was difficult. Aside from the floor flat surfaces to spread out and collaborate on were few. I cannot recall a time when we used the floor.

@ErikWahl and @KidsDeserveIt if you want to move education forward then your delivery needs to get students' bodies moving.

GET

I design learning experiences for adults. In the almost two years that I've been participating in EdCamp I have learned many ways to teach kids. I have been able to use some of these techniques and strategies and tools with the learners I support. The best of them involve movement.

Devices and technology give students reach: to information and each other. The information stores, libraries, that I encountered in the 1960s were places to borrow books. The Internet of the day, card catalogues, were slow and cumbersome and in the end useful only insofar as the library was able to keep the resource: book, periodical, or map. Accessing the resource required that I go to the library. Today the information comes to students through browsers and apps.

Students need to be set in motion. In a Twitter chat some time ago I heard about Heutagogy. In a nutshell I think its about going after learning. Students, whether adults or children know what they need. It's arguable that maybe adults have a more definite idea of their needs than children. I'm not so sure.

OUTRO

If we're serious about growing flexible, curious, and creative people we have to set them free to go after what interests them. It's our job as educators to design learning experiences that facilitate that chase. Set our students free. My granddaughter Carly is counting on you.

 

 

TGIF

What am I thankful for? Carly's moving in.

 

 

Connect Ed

PROLOGUE

AprilBlogaDay Day 12: What is my passion project? Finally, an easy question.

CONNECT

If the last 18 months have taught me anything it's this: connect, with loved ones, with those in the know.

ED

In most things, maybe everything, the most leverage you'll have in a project is early on.

 

EPILOGUE

Carly is my granddaughter. My passion project is putting things in front of her she can learn from. Doing it from a young age is the thing. It's something I'm not going to pass on.

 

Desktops, Tabletops, and Tablet-Ops

PROLOGUE

Blackboards and college ruled notebook paper: Back when I started school these were the media teachers and students wrote on. Period. Mediums have, of course, evolved since then. During last Saturday's EdCampAwesome (session notes) in Royse City, Texas I had a glimpse on how much has changed.

DESKTOPS

One of the EdCampAwesome sessions I participated in was Moving to Learn/Kinesthetic Learning facilitatedby Cheri Froehling.

One of the images she shared was of a young girl smiling over a sketch she had drawn, in marker, on the top of her desk. My immediate thought was, "Wow! Wonder how many erasers she had to clean after school?" Only of course, she didn't have to clean anything except her own dry erase markings on the desk. Said Cheri: "Naughty is engaging. Doing something you're not supposed to do in class helps learning stick more easily." Cheri and many of the teachers in the room with me had some great ideas, out-of-the-box for me, on how to engage body and mind in learning.

TABLETOPS

Which brings me to the adult learning environment I design for. Dry erase boards are everywhere in this space. Flip charts are common as well, providing places for notes to be written; hanging them on walls to be referred to later is a kind of group memory.

I wonder what might happen if the next training I develop has learners take notes or collaboratively work out problems on their tabletops? I haven't seen this done before, at least not with the encouragement of an instructor and the participation of others. I'm a big fan of the maker movement. Working out problems on something you think you shouldn't be writing on might make for an interesting learning activity.

In the adult learning spaces I design for learners working out problems collaboratively on their desktops might be a stretch. Maybe not. I don't know for sure but it's something to think about, talk about, and play with.

TABLET-OPS

Which brings me to a project I'm working on now. It involves design thinking and rapid prototyping. What would adult learning look like if learners worked out problems collaboratively using the mobile devices, smartphones and tablets, many use every day? I've learned tons from the teachers I meet at EdCamps I've been to in Texas, Arizona, and California. I'll be sharing what I've learned during my Mobile Rapid Prototyping Through AppSmashing concurrent session at the eLearning Guild's mLearn Conference in Austin, Texas this June.

EPILOGUE

The other EdCampAwesome session I attended was Flipping PD with Don Jacobs. It involved doing brief video clips, micro podcasts I guess, to share know-how with peers. So I think I'll give this a try soon. My weekend was EdCampAwesome.

 

 

Outtakes and Sense Making

PROLOGUE

"Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues" -- R. Starr & G. Harrison

OUTTAKES

What is school? School is being exposed to diverse ways of knowing (and questioning everything).

My professional development journey went off on a tangent today. More often than not that's how I seem to learn best. What force launched me in a new direction? Questions 1 to 3 of a Twitter book club chat with the hashtag #lrnbk. The book? Kio Stark's Don't Go Back To School.

Positive deviant that I am I may have tweeted my response too quickly and been misunderstood.

SENSE

Stark's writings make sense to me. One's development isn't, and shouldn't be, confined by walls, syllabi, or accreditation. I'll go a step further: Learning should know no constraints at all. Stark is saying there are constraints. The institutions of higher learning offer education on a range of topics. Employers require documentation that a specific type of learning has happened. Individuals need something to frame.

I've had several careers: electronics engineering, military service with the US Navy, programming multimedia, and learning and development. At heart I am a problem solver. Ms. Stark needs to restate the problem. I disagree with her about misfocused energy.

Consider what is happening in the K-12 space. Significant educational problems are being talked about and more.Educators are collaborating to make learning experiences better. Many of the people I meet there are actively involved in growing their know-how through exposure to diverse ways of knowing via higher education so that model of learning and development still works.

In the trenches there are teachers like Dave Burgess (@burgessdave) advocating for more engaging ways of presenting the learning experience. Teachers Erin Klein (@kleinerin) believe that the learning environment matters. Teachers like Don Wettrick (@donwettrick) are giving students the opportunity to choose their own path to learning. All one has to do is visit an #EdCamp to see this energy in action.

MAKING

I went through school in the 1960s and early 1970s. Back then learning was mostly rote memorization of facts and formulae. Worksheets figured in the learning process, too.

What are the limits of school? I think Stark is asking the wrong question. She needs to tweek its focus a little and ask what is school? One of Webster's definitions for school, the one I identify with the most, is "a source of knowledge." Maybe it's in a building. Maybe it's online. For me it's something that changes me: How I perceive the world around me. The change can and does happen any where at any time.I don't get why one would want to highlight those whom choose another path. They are everywhere.

• The coworker lamenting about a missed promotion
• The parent volunteering at their kid's school
• The supermarket cashier with a textbook tucked under her lunch bag

We are learning. All you have to do is look up at yourself and the people around you. If you're not having a conversation with those around you then you should consider starting one.We still need something to frame. If you're so inclined and not currently engaged in another form of learning give Todd Nesloney's (@techninjatodd) Educator Learning Series (#EDULS) a look and learn and earn.

EPILOGUE

I have an M.S. Ed. I made a couple of tries for a Ph.D. before putting it on indefinite hold. You know what? It's hard. No, that's not it. Not really. It got to be uninteresting. Like one of Stark's highlights I chose a different path. And, whether you realize it or not, you have too.

I wonder what path today's K-12 students might choose?