olco5’s posterous

Well, I let another year go by without challenging myself to blog more. I let reflections go until tomorrows that never came. I left words and ideas on the tip of my tongue. Well, this year is not going to be like that. This year I will not over filter my learning. This year I will not hold on to theories until they are fully realized, eliminating the conversations that could be had if I talked through each element here. This year I will blog every day. This is not an idle promise. It is not an empty gesture at the beginning of the year. It is a challenge to myself to build a consistent voice. I will not forget about the "big posts", but I will not wait for them either. This year I will speak to my blog with http://dial2do.com and email my blog with http://posterous.com. I will not forget or regret the days gone by this year. I am also counting on you, the reader, to help me fulfill the challenge. If I neglect my challenge, feel free to tweet me, email me, poke me, or otherwise bug me into submission. Thank you in advance for your help.
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Am I just imagining things, or are more and more educators using the term "strategic" when they want to move slowly? Since when does having a strategy mean that there is no hope for reason to feel urgency.
 
I believe in research and I believe in planning, but these things do not seem to have anything to do with how quickly you can get things done.
 
I have had major conversations about making sure that everyone is on the same page before we move ahead with an initiative or roll out a new tool. While I seem to agree in principle, I think it is much more about our wish for everyone to be great, rather than it is based in reality. In reality, you will never have everyone on the same page. In reality, you wouldn't want all teachers to be doing the same things in their classroom, only reaching the same kids. Why shouldn't we let the truly exceptional work and ideas be what they can be? Why shouldn't we run with a great, well thought out proposal, even if it doesn't fit in with a strategy of standing still.
 
Now, I am not interested in only my ideas. I am not so egotistical to believe that I have a monopoly on change. However, it is my contention that the glacial pace of educational reform is not in place because of a lack of good ideas, but rather, it exists because of a lack of urgency.
 
How do we show the immediacy of how powerful connected learning is? How do we make sure that all of what we say has an overwhelming sense of need? I love the direction that our schools are headed, but I worry that we are going to strategize ourselves out of options for saving public education and reaching our kids. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I had a meeting today about transitioning to a google apps for your domain installation from an exchange server.
 
This sounds like a pretty easy sell, actually. It will save something like $13,500 a year. In the end it was, but not for that reason. It was only easy because admin didn't have to change their workflow in any way. They would still be able to use outlook exclusively. It would only be the "back end" that would shift. This idea took me totally by surprise.
 
It wasn't because I want people to completely shift the ways in which they do things just because I think it is better. It took me by surprise because it basically meant that the admin did not want to learn anything that they did not already know. That alone makes me sad. The idea that the current way of doing things is ever "the way" of doing things strikes me as defeatist. I don't think I could handle setting an institution based on that model. Perhaps that does work for some people, but I don't see how.
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I was teaching yesterday using xtranormal (http://www.xtranormal.com/profile/horizon) and edmodo. I found myself trying to justify why I wanted to archive all of the learning going on in the room. As if somehow there were people watching and asking why I was doing what I was doing.
 
I waited, but no one asked the question.
 
In the end I want people to challenge my thinking. I want other teachers to ask what the virtue of chronicling all of the thoughts of students is. This is what I would have said, if anyone had put my pedagogy to the test:
 
Learning is not tangible. It isn't something that all students just come to and recognize easily. It must be made visual and reflective. It must be made into an object to be manipulated. If we are not archiving everything for our students (or if they aren't doing it themselves), how will they ever be able to say "I can use this." If it we don't save our students thinking, how can we ever know that it really happened? How can we know if they or we did a job woth doing?
 
Learning is not for a day or a class period. We need to stop treating it like it were.
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I have to say that as I am preparing to write and create my presentation for Educon 2.1 (http://educon21.wikispaces.com), I am struck by the need to do something very big. I really would like to have all of my efforts to instill an attitude of change in those around me come to a significant point. I would like to have a moment to sit back and reflect, which is what this blog is supposed to be all about. In fact,I have been doing far too little of that recently. Perhaps the doing is getting in the way of the thinking.
 
I had a meeting earlier with the head of the Digital Educator program in our district, and we spent probably about 2 hours meandering through tools and never pinning down what is truly important to pursue with teachers. Is it really important that teachers be able to know how feeds work? Is it really valuable to create a social network for this particular project? Or, is it vitally important that we help everyone create their own networks? Why is it so hard for me to solidify my ideas of what is truly mastering the art of conecting and collaborating with others?
 
So, as I go forward with this presentation, I will be pursuing the big reflection, but not at the expense of the small reflection. I would say watch this space, but until I say something of value, odds are that it is pointless to say something like that. We are only as valuable as our most recent idea, right?
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