Learn, Think, Write

I can't say it like Sheryl. Or Will. Or David.
Often, after I've tried to articulate my feelings about how we learn or how we ought to teach, I wish for a do-over. Somehow the passion of what I believe garbles the words, and I come off sounding like some kind of an idiot.
That's not to say I can't hold my own in a one-on-one conversation. But in front of a group or on a Skype call, I never seem to lay my argument on the table without babbling or getting overly excited.
When asked why we should embed technology into our classes, often what I WISH I had said was….
...because we can.
The answer is simple yet complicated.
Why do I believe this? For ten years, I have watched teaching with technology work. From the time I let my sixth-graders first learn to organize their research into visual presentations, or my journalism students play with the design of their newspaper pages to frame the articles on which they had spent extra time because of an audience, I have believed in the power of technology to transform education.
Ten years later, and I haven't changed my mind.
Today's students gain even more as they find a writing voice on a blog, share ideas with others on a wiki, or practice their language skills on a Voice Thread.
That's not to say technology can do it alone. No teacher or administrator worth her salt believes that. Throw tech at a weak teacher, and you have a weak teacher who uses technology ineffectively.
Put the power of technology in the hands of a teacher who knows how to engage her students, to create invitations to learn, and you have magic.
I am lucky to work in an independent school, where we are not constrained by federal or state guidelines, where our access to information on the internet is essentially open, and where teachers are encouraged to participate in programs such as the Powerful Learning Practice. I am also buoyed by watching our graduates, including my own sons, make their way in the world as confident learners, ready to tackle whatever comes their way–technology or not.
I suppose in my own case, that I encouraged my two boys in technology early on didn't hurt. When the first wireless access points appeared years ago, we literally strung them around the house so we could get enough "juice" to login! Not pretty, but it worked. We were chatting online when the web was still only text-based.  Today one is employed by a firm in Texas, but works from his home in Virginia. He has had at least four jobs since graduating college (two of them tech start-ups). The other son took his love of art and music and rolled it into working for a video/internet  company, where he also telecommutes three days a week. Pretty cool.
I want our students to be curious. To question. To collaborate.To take risks, even if it means saying something stupid or failing. Put it out there.
Using technology seamlessly to teach and learn brings the world to us and us to the world. Sure, there are definitely times when we say "close the laptops."
But more often than not, I say, bring it on.
That's what I would have said.

Are you still confused by Twitter? I never seem to explain it well enough to my colleagues.
But this video (found on Simon Evans' blog this am) featuring the developer of Twitter is an interesting look at how and why it was started–AND what you can do with it.

Jack Dorsey Presents Twitter from biz stone on Vimeo.

Summer is book time. And I can't wait to catch up.
Taking a cue from Antonio, here is a list of some of the books I hope to read soon. Let me know what you think!

Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, Peter Senge
From Amazon: In a Cambridge, Massachusetts living room, four organizational learning
leaders met for a year to talk about how transformational change is all
in your mind. With Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline
as ringleader, the authors ask us to examine organizations and self by
asking, "What question lies at the heart of my work?" and "How can I
set aside my narrow view point and understand the whole?"

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dwek
From Amazon: Mindset is "an established set of attitudes held by someone," says the
Oxford American Dictionary. It turns out, however, that a set of
attitudes needn't be so set, according to Dweck, professor of
psychology at Stanford. Dweck proposes that everyone has either a fixed
mindset or a growth mindset.

School Leadership That Works, Robert Marzano
From Amazon: What does research tell us about the effects of school leadership on
student achievement? What specific leadership practices make a real
difference in school effectiveness? How should school leaders use these
practices in their day-to-day management of schools and during the
stressful times that accompany major change initiatives?

Brain Rules, John Medina (see previous post)
From Amazon: Most of us have no idea what's really going on inside our heads. Yet
brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent,
and teacher should know–such as the brain's need for physical activity
to work at its best.How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why
is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget–and so important
to repeat new information? Is it true that men and women have different
brains?

Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice, Kylene Beers, Robert Probst, Linda Rief
From Amazon:This is the time to think boldly about adolescent literacy. So much of
what we know about adolescents and their learning has changed in the
last decade, and since then both the world of education and the world
at large have become very different places. Adolescent Literacy convenes
a conversation among today's most important educational thinkers and
practitioners to address crucial advances in research on adolescent
learning, to assess which of our current practices meets the challenges
of the twenty-first century, and to discover transformative ideas and
methods that turn the promise of education into instructional practice.

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The Chronicle reports that students from a digital-arts class at Dartmouth created a video of an animated polar bear to react their power use. He's happy when the students conserve power, but he falls through the ice when they leave too many lights on. It's all about telling the right story, isn't it? (Though some in the comments are worried about how much power the polar bear is wasting…)