A Principal Plays Pokemon Go: Lessons Learned So Far

Curiosity won out, and I downloaded Pokemon Go for two reasons. First of all, the publicity and news about the app made me curious. And, secondly, as a technology advocate, I wanted to see if it has any educational value. Immediately, after downloading the app to my iPhone, opening it, and setting up my account, I found a world in which I knew absolutely nothing.

Upon entering the world of "Pokemon Go," the screen warned me "Remember to be alert at all times. Stay aware of your surroundings." Music played, and the progress bar indicated I was almost there, wherever there is. Suddenly I was, or my chosen avatar was, in the game. Immediately, I was facing something called a "Bulbasaur." Not being fluent in Pokemonese, I had no idea what this creature was, and even worse, I had no idea what to do with it. On instinct perhaps, I grabbed the red and white ball with my finger and flung it at the creature. It flew over it, bounced and immediately opened and vacuumed the creature inside. "Gotcha" appeared on the screen, and I assumed that was a good thing. Now, a week later, after capturing more than a dozen creatures with names I've never heard of, I have advanced to "Level 6," whatever that means.

On a surface level, playing Pokemon Go pushed me well beyond my comfort-level from the start. I know very little about Pokemon. I certainly did not know anything about how to play the game. I could have perhaps found some online videos or instructions, but like so many young people do with video games, I just jumped in, with the knowledge that messing up in this world was not the end of that world or mine. In my brief discomfort because of my lack of knowledge, I was forced to learn. I used what knowledge I had from other electronic games I've played, and just played. I spoke to others who have been playing the game and learned more. While I am certainly not claiming to be an expert, I can say I have begun to learn more of the Pokemon world as represented in the Pokemon Go app, and more and more about myself.

Perhaps some would say I've been wasting time; I even have made the comment "What a time-waster!" But, I must not forget that I had many students who said the same thing about sitting in my high school English class. I would tell them, "You never really know when something you learn today might have use in the future." I should perhaps also take this same tentative approach in my judgments toward playing and learning how to play Pokemon Go. I don't really know when I might have need of what I've learned. On one level, immersion into a safe unknown and having to sink and swim has its own benefits. On another, well, who knows, I might find myself someday facing a Bulbasaur with only a handful of balls.

Is All This Talk About Grit and Growth Mindset Nonsense?

All this talk about "grit" and "growth mindset" as a means to get students to think in such a way as to "erase" the realities of the difficult circumstances in which they live seems to me as a way for politicians and educators to absolve themselves from the guilt of the inequality and inequity that exists in our society. Instead of advocating for the less fortunate and calling attention to how those with the most resources are exploiting the system and rigging it in their favor, we are being told as educators we simply need to tell students to engage in the "power of positive thinking" and they will be able to overcome their lives of misery and misfortune. It is the "bootstrap myth" now wrapped up in new clothes termed as "grit" and "growth mindset." What do we tell students 10 or 20 years later with the myths have faded and their lives haven't been magically transformed by the "power of positive thinking?"

I didn't exactly grow up in the level of poverty and misery that I often hear many of my students experience, but I did grow up with a family of five kids and two parents who worked incessantly to provide for us. We perhaps did not live in hunger as some kids experience today, and I can say I always had a coat and shoes to wear. But, I was all too well aware that I did not always have the things my classmates had: a car to drive to school bought by my parents, the most fashionable clothes, or the latest gadgets. I was often aware that money was tight, which meant that I sometimes had to work in order to pay for some of the things I wanted, like my high school class ring or those senior field trips. Those who adhere to the "bootstrap mythology" would say I perhaps was a better person because of this. Perhaps, but is there not something fundamentally amiss here? Still, why is it that some don't even have to worry about "pulling themselves up by bootstraps" and others do not. All of this reminds of one instance where my own family circumstances had a direct impact on my class performance, and no one ever knew.

My sophomore year in high school I took a world history class. A major assignment for this class was the creation of a scrapbook of newspaper articles on current events. The teacher's requirement was that each article had to cover current events in a foreign country, and the final grade for the course was, in part, based on my ability to cut and paste articles from countries around the world. The broader the international representation of articles, the better the final grade at the end of the semester. Sounds like an easy assignment, right?

It turns out I did not do well with this assignment. Why? As I mentioned earlier, my family was large and money was tight, so it turned out that they only newspaper I had access to was our hometown newspaper, which, if I was lucky, during an entire week, it might have a single article covering an international event. This meant that it was very difficult for me to collect international current event articles for this major assignment. In the end, this translated into a much lower grade for this course, not because of my knowledge of the content, but because my parents did not subscribe the correct newspapers.

Now those who aspire to the "grit" philosophy would say that I was perhaps not resourceful enough; that I gave in too easily. Surely I could have scrounged up 25 cents for a more comprehensive and internationally focused newspaper, they say. Perhaps in my "closed mindset" I just discounted any opportunities that existed for me to properly complete the assignment. After all, I only needed to let the teacher know of my predicament and she would have helped me locate resources. Well, all that may be, but what about the lack of consideration by the teacher in the first place? This teacher just assumed that her students would have access to regular newspapers that consistently captured international current events. In the end I was not graded on my ability to understand world history, but on the simple fact that my family did not subscribe to a daily newspaper that covered more events than the local watermelon festival.

I say all this to emphasize that when we talk about "grit" and "growth mindsets," we have to be very careful that we do not use that as an excuse to totally ignore where our students are coming from. Putting unrealistic hurdles in front of our students, and justifying them by saying that they will help them grow is utter nonsense. We can't ignore the impact of our students' backgrounds when it comes to their achievement. Sometimes the deck is stacked against them, and it is our job to step forward, and not use it as an excuse for poor performance, but use it as an opportunity to advocate for equity and social justice. Long ago, I quietly accepted my mediocre grade in that world history course. No one ever knew the real reasons why I did not have 50 articles in my scrapbook. I suspect many of our students today do the same. The ideas of 'Grit' and 'Growth Mindset' should never be used to ignore the poverty and lack of our students; real worlds.

Establishing a PBL-Friendly Culture in Your Classroom, School or District

“PBL (Project Based Learning) offers a unique opportunity for teachers and students to join together in the inquiry process.” Thom Markham, Project Based Learning: Design and Coaching Guide

With the advent of Common Core Standards, there's a great deal of talk from school districts about moving to Project Based Learning because the kinds of learning asked for in those standards can better be approached through a PBL model.  I have heard several districts speak about this change in instructional approach as if it were some kind of basic cosmetic change that could make to their schools. Many still view PBL as instructional strategy that can be added or bolted into their existing schools and classroom systems. Unfortunately, Project Based learning won’t work that way. It can’t be bolted on top of the existing classroom practice. To be successful with PBL requires a fundamental change in teaching philosophy for everyone, from the teacher in the classroom to the school board member. 

Because teaching is fundamentally different in a PBL classroom, for that instructional model to work, a deliberative effort must be made to establish a “PBL-Friendly Culture,” as Thom Markham calls it in his book, Project Based Learning: Design and Coaching Guide. This is no easy year-long agenda of PBL workshops and get-togethers either. Changing a school into a PBL friendly culture means letting go of a lot of conventional school beliefs and norms and deliberately fostering new ways of thinking about school.

Establishing a “PBL-Friendly Culture” basically means to establish and classroom and school that “Builds on Trust and Care.” On the surface, this is a fundamental, must-have shift in thinking, from “controlling students” to moving toward a more learner-centered approach where students have a great deal of autonomy. In practical terms, it means showing students that you trust them by allowing them to take more control of what happens instructionally and culturally in the school and in the classroom.

According to Markham, three core factors can maximize our effort and desire to successfully establish a “PBL Friendly Culture” in your classroom, school, or district.

• Caring Relationships: It is a fundamental truth that people perform better when they know people care about them. If they don’t think people care about them, then instead of engaging in the tasks of the job, they look for escape. In a "PBL-Friendly Culture" a caring relationship begins with recognizing and respecting an individual student's autonomy. This means not seeing students as somethings to be controlled or objects of conformity, but as an individual to be accepted for who they are. It means giving them the freedom to inquire and learn. Autonomy, of course, does not mean there are no rules. It does mean that educators must rethink the nature of rules, in a word,  that students don’t exist for rules; rules exist for students. Rules should fundamentally help students become increasingly autonomous. No student is going to perform at peak levels in the cold, impersonal atmosphere where they have no autonomy and the expectation is that they must check who they are at the door. We must care for the students in the classroom to foster in them the desire to perform at the levels necessary for PBL to be successful.
• The desire for meaning and purpose: In a “PBL Friendly Culture” there’s no place for meaningless work, and busy work is seen as blasphemous. A teacher never, ever gives students work to “just keep them busy.” Assignments and activities must always have a place in the larger goal or purpose of the project. Our students are not dumb. They recognize busy work the minute it hits their desk. There’s no place in the "PBL-Friendly culture" for “Let’s-keep-them-busy-no-matter-what-thinking.” Giving students meaning and purpose in a PBL-friendly culture means doing that everyday all the time.
• The power of mastery: The key to giving students the “True Power of Mastery” which fosters good feelings about what they've done or are doing, is to give, all-the-time, meaningful and relevant projects and learning assignments. Students feel great when they have completed a particularly self-satisfying project. That makes them want to do even more on the next project. The power of mastery lies in its ability to tap into intrinsic motivation which is a key to establishing a “PBL-Friendly Culture” in your classroom, school, or district.

As Thom Markham points, if you want to establish a “PBL-Friendly Culture” in your school, you must establish a “drive and thrive atmosphere.”  In a nutshell, such a place is where students “work hard for results because they believe in themselves.” As Markham makes very clear:

“Check your beliefs here: If you hold a secret conviction that students are naturally unmotivated, or that they need to be frightened into learning, you will not get the results you want in PBL. Successful PBL depends on your belief that young people want to learn and will perform well when respected by an adult and guided appropriately.”

I fear that districts who talk about implementing project based learning across their schools, do not fundamentally understand all the changes necessary for successful implementation of PBL. Fundamental to making PBL work is establishing a culture that respects and accepts students as individuals, and that fosters student effort and desire to learn, not conform and make the next best test scores.

Is Your School or District Ready for PBL? 12 Deep Changes Needed for Implementation

"Schools must embrace a new pedagogy today that will engage 21st century students and enable them to acquire and master 21st century skills. Once they embrace the necessary changes in pedagogy, they realize the need for change in the physical learning environment." Bob Pearlman, "Designing New Learning Environments to Support 21st Century Skills"

In response to the Common Core State Standards many school districts and schools are discussing moving toward 21st century models of instruction like Project-Based Learning and other forms inquiry-based teaching and learning. The problem is, if school leaders do not ask the right questions and do not commit to deep changes in how their schools currently look and operate, attempts to move to a transformative pedagogy like PBL is going to be for naught. Project-Based Learning is not a teaching strategy that can be effectively "bolted" on current or existing school structures and operations. For it to be successful, there needs to be some fundamental deep changes in both thinking and in the way schools carry out the business of teaching and learning.

What then, are those deep, underlying changes that need to be considered to move a school or district to an effective project-based learning model? While these are mostly based on my personal observation and reading, Project-Based Learning is a type of "personalized learning" which means it is at its core in direct conflict with the standardized, one-size-fits-all model of schooling we call the :factory model of education." Simply put, you can't successfully implement Project-Based Learning by bolting it on top of a factory model.

Deep Changes Needed for Effective PBL Implementation

1. There has to be a fundamental and deep change regarding what teaching and learning looks like. At the school level this means that teaching can no longer be seen as "imparting knowledge" or "subjecting students to learning treatments." Learning is no longer viewed as something to which students have done to them. Instead, teaching is more about coaching, guiding, and personalizing learning experiences. Learning is more student-centered and student directed. Students have more choice and freedom in what kinds of content they explore and in how they demonstrate their learning. Everyone, from the superintendent down to the classroom teacher assistant must see teaching and learning differently.

2. There must be a deep and fundamental change in the role of the teacher. Teachers in PBL schools do not see themselves as "imparters of knowledge." They take on the role of "facilitators" of learning. They basically have to turn over most of the work of instruction and learning to students. They give up the role of chief information officer in their subject areas. There is little room for "professors" in the PBL classroom. Becoming a facilitator and guide means letting go of the image of the teacher as expert.

3. The way classrooms are designed and laid out must be reconsidered. Classrooms with desks neatly arranged in rows with a teacher desk at the front are not functional in PBL classrooms. Classrooms laid out in this manner communicate clearly who's in control of the learning. It may be efficient for factory-model learning processes, but the PBL classroom requires flexibility. Students seated at tables for collaboration purposes are a must. Free aisles for movement as students move about the room are necessary. Ample technology needs to be available as well. Move the computers out of computer labs and into the hands of students and in the classrooms. Furniture that can moved and arranged easily is a must in a PBL classroom. Spaces devoted for student meetings and conferences as well as independent work areas are needed. Rethinking how space is used in a PBL school is a must.

4. The concept of using predominately "seatwork" must be abandoned. PBL requires students to move about the entire campus and beyond. Students need to be able to go to the school courtyard to shoot scenes for a video. They need to be able to walk down to the mayor's office in town to interview her about an issue they are researching. They need to be able to get in their car and drive to the local history museum to view an exhibit. Seatwork, by its nature, is designed to keep students sitting in their seats quietly. As Ron Nash puts it, we need give students "feetwork" not "seatwork" in our PBL classrooms. Learning in the PBL classroom is not a spectator sport.

5. The whole idea behind "seat time" or having distinctive "blocks of time per subject" must be modified. The old equation 1 hour = adequate learning or 2 hours = even more adequate learning needs to be abandoned. PBL sets the conventional and long-held wisdom that learning happens only in classrooms on its head. Learning happens where students are and what students are engaged in. Classrooms are no longer the centers of learning in our students' lives. The idea that students must sit in biology for 90 minutes every single day to learn is no longer true, if it was ever true. The idea of seat time simply betrays the thinking that learning is something students must be subjected to rather than something they engage in. PBL is about engaging in learning personally, not sitting in a desk, having  it imparted to you in prescribed, discrete time period every day.

6. School operations and procedures and rules must be modified. To put it simply, PBL implementation plays havoc on the classical orderliness of a school. When students are engaged in projects, they are potentially everywhere on campus. They may be off campus shooting video of an interview with a local CEO, or they may be in the hallways rehearsing a skit or play they have written. Rules like students must remain in their seats until the bell rings are ridiculous in PBL classrooms. Rules such as students can't leave campus during the school day are obstacles to powerful project-based learning. The ways schools operate under PBL must be modified and the rules must be examined and modified to allow for the often messy and chaotic nature of learning under the PBL model.

7. Efforts must be made to demolish traditional boundaries of subjects and grade levels. In high school this means the death of organization by departments. PBL by subjects and by departments falsely compartmentalizes knowledge. In the real world, when workers solve problems, they work interdisciplinary. Solving a town water problem is never just a science problem; it is also a civics problem, a communications problem, and most likely a math problem. Schools adopting PBL must be willing to dissolve departmental and subject boundaries. Traditional high school teachers must give up their turfs and kingdoms and work collaboratively across subject areas. In elementary schools, the idea of devoting time to subjects needs to be abandoned in order to focus on projects that have no subject-area boundaries. In PBL school knowledge is not falsely compartmentalized by subject area.

8. The idea of having one set schedule for all students needs to be reconsidered. Schedules with ringing bells are fossils from the factory model of education. Yes, they do efficiently move students about the building during the school day, but too often they sacrifice effectiveness for efficiency. The whole idea of a discrete schedule for all students all the time can hamper or restrict PBL implementation. Students must be able to leave campus to visit museums, places of business, and governmental centers. Schedules most be modified to allow for learning to extend beyond the classroom walls. To do this, the whole idea of static schedules needs to be re-examined.

9. Administrators must be more tolerant and willing to encourage much risk-taking. PBL requires teachers to be willing to give up a great deal of control over student learning. School leaders must be willing to allow teachers to experiment and explore too. Administrators who try to exert too much control over the immediate environment of the school stifle true exploration. It comes down to the question of whether the desire for strict orderliness outweighs the value of the learning experience. For PBL to thrive, school leaders must be willing to let go of their desire to control everything too. Mistakes are causes for learning, not something to be avoided. Administrators in PBL schools must change their desire to control what is essentially a very messy learning model, yet still maintain safety and operational effectiveness.

10. Teachers must move to interdisciplinary, collaborative learning communities. PBL requires teachers working together. Planning projects effectively forces teachers to work together. They must be willing to use processes like "critical friends" to obtain feedback on their project plans. In a PBL school, teachers must be willing to give up ownership of both time and space. Students in their classes may need to go down the hall and work in a lab or down the street to city hall. Teachers may also need to allow students in their classes throughout the day. Implementing PBL requires collaboration among all staff, including those in the central office.

11. Professional development in PBL is not a one-time, sit-and-get endeavor. It must be embedded, consistent, and perpetual. I fear those talking about implementing PBL are thinking about subjecting entire schools or even their entire districts to PBL training and then calling it a day. Or, even worse, they subject all teachers to the training, provide administrators with "gotcha" lists to then go out to the classrooms and force teachers to engage in PBL. To truly move to PBL requires buy-in. It takes time and lots of support. Teachers must be provided with all the materials and resources needed to effectively implement. School leaders must be willing to provide ample time for common planning during the school day and school year. Professional development must involve a  long-term commitment to provide constant and ongoing training during an implementation period and beyond.

12. Schools and school districts must be flexible. Public schools in the United States in my experience aren't known for being flexible institutions. They demand conformity, not creativity. They demand adherence to policies and rules, often at the very expense of the teaching and learning. Sure, schools as institutions need policies and rules, but these should never exist for their own sake. They need to be flexible to meet the fast-changing environment that is fostered when schools truly move to a 21st century learning model like PBL. Forcing PBL instructional models on inflexible institutions will not work.

Those schools and school districts thinking they can just "bolt" Project-Based Learning onto their existing structures and existing operations are doomed to making the same mistake those who advocated and pushed for the "Open Schools" concept in the 1960s. They built enormous buildings with classrooms without walls and simply put teachers, teaching the way they always have into these spaces and told them to get at it. Naturally it failed. They did not seek fundamental changes to how teachers engaged in teaching and students engaged in learning. They did not change their own deep understandings of how learning should happen in those spaces. If schools are going to successfully implement PBL, they must be willing to engage in a deep rethinking about education and how it is carried out.

Powerful Opportunities for Content Creation & Publication in the Digital Classroom

I began teaching in 1989. My first classroom didn't have a phone in it and the prime piece of technology I had was one of those old fashioned turntables. I remember using that to share my love of blues music with students by playing a Muddy Waters album for them in connection to a short story we were reading. I had a cassette tape player too, and I remember sharing a dynamic dramatic reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Bells” using this device. I also had access to a VHS player, and I remember sharing scenes from the movie Roxanne with my students as we read the play Cyrano de Bergerac. That was the extent of the technology in my classroom at the time, and yes I did have a chalkboard and colored chalk that students enjoyed using to share drawings and messages on my chalkboard throughout the day.

But the point of this trip down memory lane was not to tell you how old I really am. It was to simply say this: Technology when I began teaching in 1989 seems quaint and unsophisticated now, but even at that time, I pushed the limits of teaching and learning with the tools that were available. I used the technology, not for its own sake, but because those were the tools that helped me teach in the most engaging and effective manner. In a sense, that mindset is really the same mindset of a 21st century teacher.

Engaging students in my 1989 classroom and in a 21st century classroom presented the same challenges. I found myself trying to answer these kinds of questions then, and also in the 2006 when I began to heavily engage students in the use of digital technologies.

• How do you engage students who are more interested and engaged in things outside of school than inside it?
• How can I make the best use of technologies to both engage students in my content and teach them to make the most of the technologies themselves?
• How can my instruction best prepare students for a world outside of my classroom and school?

These questions are just as relevant now as they were then.

But here in 2013, digital technologies offer ours students so many more opportunities to learn in ways extending beyond the four walls of the classroom.. Here's what students today can do:

• Students today can be publishers of content. In 1989, it was a struggle to find ways for students to publish content. It was usually limited to either making physical copies and distributing them or posting on classroom walls. Today, blogs and content sharing platforms make it possible for students to publish for global audiences. Publishing content has become cheap and efficient in our digital classrooms.
• Students today can easily create multiple types of media content. During classes in 1989, my students were mostly relegated to creating content that was either textual or graphic, with the graphic content mostly being freehand drawings. Collages were also common. In today’s digital classrooms, students can still create text, but the tools to create video, photos, audio have all become prolific and easy-to-use. Students in today’s digital classrooms have power tools of multi-media content creation at their fingertips.
• Students today have many, many more choices of the kinds of content they can create, hence they are not limited to the research paper or dioramas (Anyone remember these?). In 1989, most of my students content creation was mainly writing papers, creating collages, making drawings, writing/acting out original plays, or creating other kinds of genres. Today’s students have new forms of textual media, new forms of graphical communication tools, and new ways to engage audiences digitally. Students in today’s classrooms can create their own apps, web pages, blogs, vlogs, with the whole global community being the limit.

For those of us who began teaching in the late 1980s, the classrooms of today offer our students so many more opportunities to engage in content creation, content publication, and content sharing. In spite of this, the fundamental educator mindset is the same. In 1989, to create an engaging classroom, I made the most of tech tools I had then. In 2013, that tech toolbox has expanded enormously, so teaching and learning through content creation and publication has expanded as well. It's this wonderful 1989 perspective of teaching and learning that makes me appreciate the greater possibilities of the 21st century classroom.

PBL Resource---Thinking Through Project-Based Learning by Jane Krauss & Suzie Boss

“Project-based learning enables students to become active participants in the world.” Jane Krauss & Suzie Boss, Thinking Through Project-Based Learning: Guiding Deeper Inquiry, Corwin

“We know from experience that project-based learning has the potential to create powerful---and memorable---learning experiences for students,” state educators Jane Krauss and Suzie Boss in their new book entitled Thinking Through Project-Based Learning: Guiding Deeper Inquiry. Those of us who have worked in schools that employ PBL are well aware of the methodology’s power for we have witnessed it first hand. As more and more schools move into Common Core State Standard implementation, they are looking for instructional methodologies that most effectively deliver this content to students. Project-Based learning is mentioned as a premier instructional method to teach those new standards.

Jane Krauss and Suzie Boss’s Thinking Through Project-Based Learning: Guiding Deeper Inquiry is an excellent, compact and comprehensive over-view of project-based learning from planning to culminating event. For the school leader wanting a solid, comprehensive overview of project-based learning, this book provides just that. For the educator looking for more ideas on how to implement project-based learning in their classroom, Thinking Through Project-Based Learning is an excellent addition to the professional teaching library. From cover to cover, Krauss and Boss take readers through topics like these:

• What is project-based learning?
• Why use Project-Based Learning?
• How do I implement project-based learning?
• How does PBL fit in with current brain science?
• How do we create classrooms that make thinking happen?
• How can we create classrooms where curiosity is practiced and welcomed?
• How can we create classrooms where inquiry happens as a rule?
• How can we design projects that provide rich learning experiences?
• What does PBL look like in the core academic areas---language arts, social studies, science, and math?

Thinking Through Project-Based Learning: Guiding Deeper Inquiry answers a lot of questions about PBL without getting too entangled in theory. It is an excellent book that offers practical ideas on how to get started with PBL and create student inquiry-centered classrooms. The book also offers educators other content as well. It includes a Project Library for those looking for project ideas, and it has a Discussion Guide for those wishing to perhaps use the book in a PLC book study. It includes a Professional Development Guide for those wanting to zero in on PBL for PD purposes. Finally, there is a list PBL resources in the back worth its weight in gold.

Implementing PBL is a messy endeavor. It takes a great deal of courage on the teacher’s part, support by administrators, and resources. Thinking Through Project-Based Learning is an excellent resource to provide teachers as they implement project-based learning. It is also a book that administrators would do well to read as well.

4 Principles for Designing 21st Century Learning Spaces

“School buildings must change because instruction must change. We need creative new designs that will support 21st century learning.” Frank S. Kelly, Ted McCain, and Ian Jukes, Teaching the Digital Generation: No More Cookie-Cutter High Schools

A great deal of the reform talk that we engage in focuses on changing how teaching and learning should change to better fit the needs of 21st century learners, but how much of that talk focuses on how we can better redesign our schools so that they better facilitate 21st century learning? Kelly, McCain, and Jukes point out one really sad fact about school construction in the 21st century:

“We are currently spending millions of dollars building new high schools that will last 40 years or more that are designed on ideas that date back to the early 1900s.”

In other words, the high schools we currently build are monuments to obsolescence, and instead of asking ourselves the critical questions about what should a high school in the 21st century should look like, we just keep building them the same way we always have. Then, we shake our heads with wonder when we can’t reform the kinds of teaching and learning that occurs in those schools. As Kelly, McCain, and Jukes so aptly point out, “We are victims of TTWWADI, or That’s the way we’ve always done it.”

What are some principles to guide us in designing 21st century learning spaces? Borrowing from Kelly, McCain, and Jukes, here’s some to consider.

• Instruction should drive construction. Instead of automatically assuming we need classrooms separated into subject-area departments, perhaps we need to ask what kinds of instruction and learning will be happening in those spaces. Too often, the people designing our schools are totally disconnected from those designing 21st century instructional and learning models. We need to design learning spaces that facilitate 21st century learning, not try to fit 21st century learning into 20th century Industrial Age learning spaces.
• Question everything. No preconceived notions about instruction and learning spaces are sacred. For example, do we have to have classrooms that place teachers front and center? Does learning have to even take place in classrooms? Do these learning places have to have the capacity to hold 25-30 students? Can they be larger or smaller, or do we need both? Does learning have to fall within a 9-month school calendar and during a 4-period, block-scheduled school day? In designing true 21st century learning spaces, we must question all of our preconceived notions about what these spaces should look like and how they are organized.
• Design learning spaces that capitalize on technology. Instead of fitting technology into existing classroom and school designs, how can we design classrooms and schools that capitalize on technology’s strengths? In other words, let's fit our schools to the technologies. For example, how does the potential for global connections and collaboration fit into high school design? Maybe we need a conference room with global video-conferencing capabilities. Designing learning spaces that fit the technologies means rethinking those spaces to capitalize on technology.
• Think about designing a school to fit the needs of 21st century learners rather than fitting 21st century learners into existing school designs. We know a great deal about how this digital generation learns and wants to learn, so why not incorporate those into our school designs? Don’t build lecture halls or classrooms with row after row of desks. Instead, build both places where students can engage in collaborative projects and places where they can explore and learn individually. Learning spaces should be designed to fit the needs of today's digital learners.

As Kelly, McCain and Jukes, point out, “What is currently lacking from the school design process is a way to set aside old assumptions about teaching and learning in order to allow people to develop new visions of the future.” School leaders are still designing and building schools not fundamentally different from schools designed and built in the Industrial Age; yet, we expect students to engage in Information Age activities. If we truly want instruction to change, we need schools and learning places designed for 21st century learning.

Blueprint for Moving to 21st Century Student-Centered Schools and Classrooms

“Too many organizations---not just companies, but governments and nonprofits as well---still operate from assumptions about human potential and individual performance that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science.” Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us

It’s not just businesses that are still caught in outdated assumptions about performance and motivation. Schools are caught in that same time warp too. Much of how our classrooms and schools are structured and operate are designed to take advantage of extrinsic motivation, and we are finding that in the 21st century, this structure and way of operating no longer works.

But the question is, how can we transform our schools so that they no longer operate under these outdated assumptions about student potential,  student performance, and student motivation? If one were to make a list of how our schools still operate and what these faulty and obsolete assumptions about education and schooling are, that list would look somewhat like this.

• Students are motivated by grades.
• Students are incapable of directing their own learning.
• Classrooms (and schools) must operate under strict control with specific rules and consequences governing student behavior.
• Teachers are the primary dispensers of learning in the classroom.
• Education is something “done to students” rather than something in which they engage.

If these basic assumptions about classroom operations and education are faulty, what would would 21st century assumptions about how classrooms and school operations look like? In other words, what would a classroom or school operating under the principles described in Daniel Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth  about What Motivates Us look like? Perhaps educator Mark Barnes provides with some answers to that question in his new book ROLE Reversal: Achieving Uncommonly Excellent Results in the Student-Centered Classroom.

In ROLE Reversal, Barnes describes what he terms a Results Only Learning Environment or ROLE. As the name implies, in a ROLE the focus is entirely on results, or student work. Also, in this environment, the principles of fostering intrinsic motivation described by Pink are implemented fully. According to Barnes, a ROLE basically upends many of the traditional assumptions about education and learning. Here’s some of ways these traditional assumptions are upended.

In a ROLE, or Results Only Learning Environment:

• Grades and grading systems are replaced with a “narrative feedback system” that focuses specifically on student work and improving that work. In Barnes’ result-only classroom, teachers do not use numerical grades to provide feedback because numerical feedback systems fail to provide feedback students need to improve their performance. Instead, students are given extensive, comprehensive, and ongoing narrative feedback on their work. This feedback is specific and can be used by the student for work improvement. In ROLE Reversal, Barnes shows teachers how to provide this kind of feedback.
• Instead of teacher-directed learning activities, students are given broad, long-term projects to complete, and they make the daily decisions on how to complete those projects. The intrinsic motivation model described by Pink demands that autonomy be employed to engage people in the tasks at hand. Under Barnes’ results-only classroom model, students engage in six-week long projects that provide a great deal of choice, or autonomy, on how and what is learned and when. Autonomy is a built-in component of his results-only classroom practice.
• Classroom rules and consequences are jettisoned and the use of opportunities to engage in meaningful work, collaborating with peers, and trust/respect are used instead to manage classroom behavior. Too often, classrooms become more about focusing on the enforcement of rules rather than the learning students are being asked to do. In Barnes’ results-only classroom, behavior is managed through well-designed, engaging, and collaborative learning projects that leave students little time to engage in problem behaviors. Also, the results-only classroom described by Barnes fosters a high-level of respect and trust that makes having rules and consequences less necessary.
• Teachers are no longer the “dispensers of information/learning.” According to Barnes, in a ROLE, teachers become coaches and facilitators of student learning. In the results-only classroom, teachers step away from the front of the classroom and spend more time facilitating student learning and coaching students on their work. Teacher-centered activities like worksheets, quizzes, and homework are jettisoned. Instead, students engage in long-term, meaningful activities that challenge them.
• Education and learning moves from being something done to students to something in which students actively engage in on a daily basis. The 20th century traditional model of education is very much still with us. The heart of that educational philosophy and model sees education as a process by which we subject students to, in order to add value determined by test scores. Under Barnes’ result-only model, education and learning is something students actively engage in every day. They are active participants in their learning.

Mark Barnes, Role Reversal

For the teacher and school leader looking for a model of learning that truly captures Daniel Pink’s principles of intrinsic motivation---autonomy, mastery, and purpose---Barnes’ book ROLE Reversal: Achieving Uncommonly Excellent Results in the Student-Centered Classroom offers just such a model. Best of all, Barnes results-only classroom offers the kind of classroom in which students achieve at higher levels. I highly recommend Mark Barnes’new book, ROLE Reversal: Achieving Uncommonly Excellent Results in the Student-Centered Classroom published by ASCD. This book would make an excellent book study to foster discussions in schools about how we can move toward the student-centered schools and classrooms we so desperately need in the 21st century.

3 Steps to Leveraging the Power of Technology to Disrupt Your School or District

“When people adopt technology, they do old things in new ways. When people internalize technology, they find new things to do.” James McQuivey, Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation

James McQuivey’s book, Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation, makes very clear  the difference between businesses who adopt technology versus those who internalize it. He states, “When companies adopt new technology, they do old things in new ways. When companies internalize technology, they find entirely new---disruptive---things to do.” In other words, adopting technology means using technology to do the same old things we've always done. Internalizing it means using technology to do the new and novel. It means disrupting how we currently do things.



Reflecting on McQuivey’s distinctions between technology adoption and technology internalization, I could think of countless examples of technology-adopting in our schools.

• A teacher using presentation software to illustrate a class lesson or lecture.
• A student using word-processing software to type a paper rather than hand-write it.
• A teacher having students use the web to research the definitions for important terms in a unit of study.
• A student using a tablet to read a novel using e-reader software.
• A teacher using a interactive board to illustrate the main points in a lesson.
• A teacher showing students a YouTube video to illustrate a main point in content.
• A principal using Twitter or Facebook to make announcements.
• A teacher recording a podcast or vodcast of a lecture, and posting it on the web and assigning it to students to review as homework.

Each of these activities are considered technology adoption because the students and educators are engaged in a behavior or activity that is not fundamentally changed by the use of technology. The technology simply helps them do what they have always done.

These examples of technology adoption are certainly acceptable if all we want to do maintain the same kinds of learning and teaching we've always had, but we are not leveraging the power of technology in these cases to totally “disrupt the teaching and learning” in our schools, and if we want to move to 21st century models of teaching and learning, we must do just that.

Then the next question is, what steps can we take to leverage the disruptive power of technology in our schools? McQuivey’s offers some suggestions for businesses that can be modified to guide us in developing steps focused on the needs of schools,so we can leverage technology's disruptive power.

• Change the mindset about technology and education. As McQuivey points out, “We need to adopt a ‘digital disruptor’ mindset.” What that means in practical terms is we fundamentally change how we view opportunity and technology. Instead of viewing technology as means to help us do teaching and learning as we have done, we ask the question: How can technology help us engage in new kinds of teaching and learning? The answer to that question will lead us to new ways of doing school. 
• Behave like a digital disruptor. As McQuivey points out, you start this process by “innovating the adjacent possible” not by totally reinventing the whole. To innovate the adjacent possible in education we can begin by identifying what our students needs are. Then, we generate and choose the one or two things we can do using the technologies and resources we have or can obtain to meet those needs. To modify a phrase McQuivey uses: “We need to innovate in the direction of our students’ needs.” Innovation for innovation sake is never a good idea. We need to innovate by always looking to the needs of our students.
• Disrupt your school or district now. Begin by revising policies and practices that inhibit disruption, hence innovation. For example, if requesting and obtaining technologies and resources are hampered by cumbersome requisition processes, simplify. If school district practices prevents teachers from experimentation and risk-taking, change them. If there are barriers that keep people isolated and unable to share practice and ideas, tear them down. Begin disruption by establishing a team of disruptors who are willing to push to the edges of innovation. All of these measures will go a long way in disrupting your school or district.

If technology has had little or no impact on teaching and learning in your school or district, then perhaps the issue is your school or district has only adopted technology not internalized it. We need to leverage the power of technology to disrupt what happens in our schools’ classrooms. We, as 21st century school leaders, need to become leaders of digital disruption to fundamentally change how we do school.

Note: While James McQuivey's book offers a fascinating look at practice things business can do leverage the power of technology and the disruptor mindset, it has a lot to say that is directly applicable to our schools too. His examples of disruption in business and the steps he provides can inform our efforts to make technology internalization happen.

5 Top Blog Posts of All Time on the 21st Century Principal

One interesting ability of blogging is the ability to see which posts have gotten the most views over time. There is obviously a great deal that can be learned from this kind of data. For example, you can see the kinds of content readers most want to see. What's interesting to me is that a post I did over two years ago is still the most popular post on this blog. Here's the Current Top 5 21st Century Principal Blog Posts.

1. Top iPad Apps for School Administrators. This list has been revised and changed over time, and I must confess I do no use all of these apps any longer due to better apps being developed. Evernote and Dropbox are still at the top of my list of iPad apps, though I would add Google Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive, and iCloud as other cloud storage options I now use. Evernote is still going strong as my iPad note taking app, however. It has only gotten better since this original post.I don't use Docs-to-Go any longer. It has been replaced by Google Drive. My favorite E-Reader is still Amazon's Kindle, mostly because that is where all my books reside. My RSS reader of choice for the iPad is now Mr. Reader. I published an updated revised List of Top iPad Apps for Administrators in January of this year. However, this list has moved to a more generic app listing.

2. 10 Things a School Leader Does to Kill a Teacher's Enthusiasm for Technology. This post was actually inspired by the teacher in me. Over my 16 years in the classroom, these were the kinds of things I witnessed that made me want to give up efforts to engage in using technology in my classroom. Administrators have a powerful role in fostering technology use, and their actions and policy can tank excitement quickly.

3.  Top 10 Signs Your School Is Caught in a Time Warp: List for School Leaders. I can't remember the inspiration for this post, except for the quote at the beginning. Our schools are still stuck in the past. Many of those 10 signs are still relevant, however, I would perhaps add a two others.

• Technology is purchased for bragging purposes, not for instructional potential.
• There's still talk of textbook adoptions.

4. 5 Indications Your Leadership Is Obsolete for 21st Century Schools. This post was more direct than number 3. I attempted to directly state those actions and proclivities of school leaders that actually prevent schools from moving to 21st century learning models. Leadership requires action, and many of the actions described in this list are in direct opposition to 21st century learning and teaching.

5. 6 Key Personal Learning Network Literacies Every Educator Needs. This post attempted to capture those things that every educator needs to make the most of Personal Learning Networks. Being able to use social media to foster professional learning is a key 21st century educator competency. We need to be able to engage in Personal Learning Networks, not only because they are efficient and powerful, but because our students learn that way.

That's it. The Top 5 21st Century Principal Posts. Blogging has been and continues to be an adventure in learning and sharing.

4 Immediate Steps Teachers Can Take to Re-engage the Dis-engaged Student

“If tomorrow, every teacher in America spent 20 minutes of class time asking each student what her or his passion was, and then later used that information to understand each student more deeply and differentiate their instruction accordingly, education would take giant positive steps forward overnight.” Marc Prensky, From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom: Hopeful Essays for 21st Century Learning

Sometimes the solutions that have the biggest impact on the most difficult issues our schools face aren't complicated, scientific solutions; they are solutions staring us right in the face. One of those issues with obvious solutions is how to deal with disengaged, disconnected students. Because our education system asks students to “check their interests and passions at the door” widespread student disengagement in our schools is stubborn and persistent. Our education system stubbornly hangs on to the “impersonal, assembly-line-approach” of the 20th century that did not concern itself with students’ interests and passions. Such a system cares not what students think, nor what students care about. That same underlying, obsolete philosophy is the reason why we struggle constantly with students who see what we are doing in school as totally irrelevant. In the 21st century, if we want to reach all students, we should take Prensky’s advice. Let’s pause today, and talk with students about their passions and interests, then use the new understanding to engage them in classroom learning they care about.

The truth is we don’t have to wait for waves of reform and experts on high to have a big impact on student disengagement and disconnection. We can begin to re-engage and reconnect students immediately. In From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom: Hopeful Essays for 21st Century Learning, Marc Prensky offers teachers a list of what he calls “Easy to Do---Big Impact Actions Teachers Can Take to Connect with Students.” This kind of list gives teachers an immediate list of actions to begin the process of re-engaging and reconnecting with students. But to implement these kinds of actions, our schools must set aside their “Just-take-your-medicine-approach-to-education” in which students are told your passions and interests are irrelevant.  At the heart of the "educational medicine philosophy" is the belief that, “Education is done to students; it doesn't matter if they take part or not. It’s for their own good.” With that kind of thinking it is no wonder we can’t get a grip on the drop-out rate and our students see our schools as the most boring places on earth.

What do we do? Is it still acceptable to just accept those disengaged, disconnected students as casualties or collateral damage of an education system that destroys passion, imagination, and creativity? Not if our goal is to bring back the disengaged students and lower drop-out rates and ensure all students are ready for life in the 21st century. We can begin today by doing little things that reconnect our classrooms and schools to students’ passions and interests. Marc Prensky’s list of “Easy to Do---Big Impact Actions to Connect with Students” might be a starting point. But, inspired by Prensky, I would like to offer my own list based on my own 16 years in the classroom teaching everybody’s favorite subject, English language arts. (Said with obvious sarcasm!)

To immediately begin reconnecting with students, teachers can:

• Listen to students more, and do less “professing” and “telling.” The old myth that “students are going to sit on the edge of their seats and eagerly await your words of wisdom and knowledge” was never true.  Begin today by taking an “almost-vow-of-silence” and let students do more talking and sharing of what they think. Of course you are going to have to resist your eager impulses to butt in and share what you think too, but giving students time to share and discuss will go a long way to re-engaging and reconnecting them to your classroom and your content.
• Make it relevant---connect content with current events and the real world. If students come in chattering about the latest happenings in town, the country or the world, find a way to connect that interest to content, but do it subtly. If students know they are being railroaded into learning something, they disconnect faster than I do when getting a phone call from a telemarketer. If you want students to reconnect, you have to bring your content back to the real-world and that means bringing in the things they are passionate and care about.
• Prensky says to reconnect students, we “treat them like learning partners." I agree. Throw out the window the whole idea that you are the “Lord-of-the-Realm-of-Knowledge” and be with students as a fellow learner. The best example of this one comes from my days in the classroom. If I asked students to write an essay, I did it too. There was total surprise when I pulled out my handwritten response to an essay assignment and shared it with them, just before they did theirs. I did caution them though, “Anyone caught stealing my ideas” would be doomed to an endless lecture in their most hated subject, and I would arrange it. Treating students like learning partners means “YOU ARE A LEARNER TOO!" You have to get your hands dirty too. You can re-engage and reconnect with students by treating them as partners in learning, not as empty vessels in which you will pour forth your knowledge.
• Get students using their tools of choice and don’t get hung up on the methodology. If they want to draft their essay on their laptop or iPhone, let them do it. If they want to want write out their first draft in purple ink, let them do it. We all remember those teachers who demanded that we meet painstaking standards such as write only on one side of the paper, in blue or black ink, only on the night of a new moon. In fact, if I were totally honest, when I started teaching I found myself making those same impossible demands. No wonder so many of my students didn't turn in their essays or bothering doing them. I still remember one of my high school English teachers throwing my first draft away because I put my name on the top-left instead of top-right. When I began teaching, you would have thought I would have shown more mercy, but I suppose the adage, "We teach as we were taught" is hard to break. But using these kinds of classroom practices today will push a student to place you and your content in the dead zone for eternity. Letting students choose their tools and tactics will go a long way to re-engaging and reconnecting them to your content and your classroom.

If we want our schools and classrooms to effectively deal with the disconnected, disengaged student, we don’t have to wait for the experts to come up with complicated, research-based solutions. We can tackle the problem of disengaged, disconnected students immediately. We might have to repent and give up the mantra that says, “It’s my job to teach, so if students don’t get it, it’s their fault,” but there are immediate steps we can take transform our classrooms and schools into places where we engage students’ passions and interests, not turn them into Zombies.

8 Must-Have Skills for Spotting Misinformation for 21st Century Students

A 21st century skill that all students need badly is the ability to spot misinformation. As educators, we desperately need to do as Loren Collins states in her book, Bullspotting: Finding Facts in the Age of Misinformation. We need to "arm our students with baloney-detecting tools to prevent false and unsupported beliefs so that such beliefs can be better contained." In other words, 21st century educators need to equip our students with "baloney-detection" skills.

What do these baloney-detection skills look like? Here's a starter list based on those described by Collins.

1. Be skeptical when people toss around the phrase "it's just common sense." Many individuals use this phrase as if it were sacred and unquestionable. The truth is, many things once accepted as common sense turned out to be flat wrong. Just ask those who said the world was flat. Using this phrase should never protect information from a skeptical examination. We need to teach students to be skeptical, always, when someone employs this phrase in an argument.

2. Be able to employ the scientific method to test information. In an age of misinformation, our students must have the ability to test hypotheses and conclusions they encounter. They need to be able to pose a question, research that question, construct a hypothesis, test that hypothesis, analyze the results, and finally draw conclusions. Their final conclusions should then always be subject to further validation. All of our students need to be able to employ these steps to test information because of the amount of misinformation posing as science all around them in cyberspace.

3. Be able to identify ideological and agenda-driven websites and information. In the age of misinformation, the ease with which individuals can publish information online has created a whole new world where anyone, no matter what their beef, can publish. It is vital that our students maintain a level of skepticism and explore the ideologies and agendas those publishing web sites might have. All information needs to be examined with a skeptical eye toward what that person's beef might be.

4. Be aware of their own confirmation bias and the role it has in being misinformed. We know if we are heavily biased toward confirming our own beliefs, we hinder the ability to dispel ourselves of beliefs that might be false. We, and our students, need to be aware of our tendencies to seek out information that confirms what we believe rather than looking at all the data. With these principles in mind, our students need to be able to detect their own confirmation biases and those of others as they deal with the information torrent.

5. Be aware of those who use anomalies to make their arguments. Individuals who use this tactic, gather up a collection of anomalies and attempt to use the weight of those to argue against a consensus view. This tactic is being heavily used by those spreading misinformation about climate change, and it was also used by those who argued against the ill-effects of smoking. Our students need to be able to recognize when someone is engaged in anomaly hunting as a misinformation tactic and recognize it as a misinformation tactic.

6. Be ware of the use of the logical fallacy of "proof by verbosity." Just because an argument is lengthy and complex does not necessarily mean it is true. Students need to be able to recognize when someone is engaged in this logical fallacy.

7. Be able to notice when someone engages in denialism. Those who engage in this tactic, just deny or reject a widely accepted truth, and they usually offer no solid alternative instead. Those who engage in denialism aren't really interested in determining the truth; they are simply interested in rejecting one. Our students need to recognize denialism as a tactic that tries to deflect away from what has been accepted by consensus.

8. Notice when someone employs fake experts. This is commonly used on the web. Those arguing against climate change or for intelligent design curriculum heavily use this one. In the climate change debate, often those making the arguments are not even qualified as climate scientists. Likewise, organizations like the Discovery Institute employ non-biologists in their arguments against evolutionary theory. Students need the skill of checking the credentials and credibility of the information sources they encounter.


In the 21st century, we as educators have a moral imperative to make sure our students are equipped with proper "baloney-detection tools" so that they can avoid being mislead and misguided in a flood of information.

Posted with Blogsy

Learning Real-World Civics: White House Contacts One of Our Students

One of the best ways to teach students to become engaged as a citizen of our country, is to have them try to communicate with those in political office. One of our students did just that. A few months back, a student at our school wrote a letter to the Obama Administration, and in that letter she invited the President to visit our school. This week, she and my school secretary were surprised when we received a phone call from the White House. But allow me to let that student tell what happened:

When President Obama visited our state, the Catawba County Democratic Party Chair said that she would deliver some letters from those of us that wanted to write them. I jumped at the opportunity to have contact with the President of the United States of America. I got my letter in on time. Basically, I told President Obama that he has my support and my family’s support and that the Young Democrats of Catawba County are here for him. After signing my name to the letter, I had another thought. So, I wrote on the back: “P.S. You should visit my school.”

A few weeks later, I received a manila envelope in the mail with the return address of The White House. Inside this mysterious envelope was a letter from Michael McSwain, the Associate Director for Scheduling Correspondence from the Office of Scheduling and Advance, explaining that President Obama has a very busy schedule and cannot come to my school at this time. It said that he values each and every invitation he receives to see the country first hand, but it was with sincere regret that “the President is unable to visit your school at this time.” Also in the manila envelope was a picture of the President, the First Lady, and their two children. It just so happens to be autographed by none other than Barrack and Michelle Obama. Even if it is the electronic autograph, it is the thought that counts.

I hadn’t given it much thought recently until English class on January 25, 2012. Mrs. - - - -,  our school secretary, came into my class out of breath saying something about there being a phone call for me. It was who was on the line that had everyone in shock. It was the White House. More specifically, the President’s scheduling coordinator. He told me that President Obama read my letter and appreciated it. He also told me that it was with sincere regret that he could not visit in the near future. While I was a little disappointed that he would not be coming, I was overcome with joy that the President of the United States of America READ my letter. Not only did he read it, he APPRECIATED it. It is things like these that make the world seem less large. It is things like these that make people feel less small.


All this talk about teaching our students to be 21st century citizens means getting them to engage and understand our government. While our student did not receive a phone call from the President himself,  it is things like these that make our students believe they are heard and valued by those who lead our country. 

Top 10 Tips for Using Social Media for Administrators & Other Educators

According to Andy Beal and Judy Strauss, authors of Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online, “Shifting from traditional to social media requires new skills, new tools, and an understanding of social media platforms.” Any school leader bringing an archaic understanding and knowledge of old media to social media is in danger of looking foolish and perhaps in danger of getting himself in major trouble with stakeholders.

For school leaders looking for information about social media, business and industry have several organizations providing this valuable information. The Digital Influence Group, a social media marketing expert group, provides a “Top 10 List for Using Social Media” obviously directed toward business and industry. (See their list here.) Obviously, business needs are different from the needs of schools, but there is still much that can learned from their experiences with social media. For that reason, I have taken the liberty of revising and updating  this Top 10 List for Using Social Media” so that it might better reflect the things school leaders need to consider as they struggle with this 21st century media.

Top 10 List for Using Social Media for School Leaders & Other Educators


1. Educate your entire school community and all stakeholders about what social media is, what its benefits are, and provide them ideas on how to best use it. Many of the problems and misuse of social media result from both a lack of understanding of its power, and the features inherent in it that make it a way to engage 21st century audiences. School leaders need to first learn all they can about social media. This means attending professional training, reading relevant books and articles, and engaging in conversations with experts. While it is impossible to learn everything about social media due to its continually evolving nature, school leaders who set policy and direct a school community's use of the 21st century media need to know all they can. Once they have that knowledge base, they are responsible for seeing that their educational community is educated on its nature, its potential, its hazards, and its power. This means taking an active role in educating all stakeholders on how to use social media appropriately and effectively.

2. Establish policies and procedures that guide individuals in your school or district in the use of social media, and provide a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities with using social media. School leaders need to enlist teachers, parents, students, and community members in the establishment of policy and procedures to guide social media use for the educational establishment. However, this is not an effort to control content and usage of social media, but merely to set guidelines and policy that direct staff members and students on how to engage in its use for the school or district. For example, policy needs to make it clear when posting to social media is as an agent of the school or district. That same policy needs to delineate who speaks for the school or district in social media communities. It should also define roles and responsibilities of those engaging in social media use. It is important to establish these policies and procedures, not as a means to try to control content, but to protect the school, district, and its stakeholders.

3. Set clear goals for how your school or district is going to use social media. The question of how the district is going to use social media is important. What is the school going to use social media for?Which types of social media tools is the school or district to use? All these questions focus on what the district plans to do with social media. It's time for 21st century school leaders to move beyond bragging about having a social media presence and actually engage in its use to benefit school or district. Having a Twitter account or Facebook account for your school simply isn't enough anymore. It's now time to move to the question of "So what?" which is a 21st century question.

4. When school leaders and other educators participate in blogging, social networks, and online communities, it is important to be transparent. As school leaders move to full engagement with stakeholders using social media, being transparent is important. This means engaging in open, sincere, and honest dialogue with stakeholders through the media. It is a movement from using social media as just another way to make announcements and news updates, to actually engaging in conversations with constituents. To do that effectively though, school leaders and staff need to be authentic and seek to genuinely establish relationships with their communities. By doing this school leaders actually are engaging in social media in the manner in which it is designed.

5. Constantly evaluate the school or district's use of social media. This simply means examining regularly whether social media is being used in the manner desired, and whether the school or district is obtaining its goals and a positive reputation from social media engagement. This process for schools and school districts has to be ongoing.

6. When engaging in the use of social media use plain language, be sincere and candid.  Effective social media engagement is on a conversational level. Engaging others means speaking to them about the things they care about, using language all can understand. Posts to social media aren't dictates from on high. They are efforts to engage constituents in discussions of what they care about.

7. Provide valuable content and information to engage and educate your stakeholders and community.  Social media is an opportunity to provide stakeholders with information and content that is valuable and by doing so, schools and school districts enhance their own online reputations. Providing parents, for example, information about an opportunity for students to participate in a national study program is valuable information. Again, this means going beyond "just having a social media presence" to effectively using it to communicate and engage the school community.

8. Welcome feedback whether it is positive or negative and respond to it quickly. Social media is an opportunity for schools and school districts to allow for feedback on how they're doing. This can be rather tricky, but allowing your constituent groups the opportunity to speak about the issues that bother them is important. It is equally important for school leaders to respond to that feedback in a timely and appropriate but honest manner.

9. School leaders who want to promote their schools or districts need to participate in other online communities. It is vital that school leaders engage in the wider conversation about education and all the related issues. It is the 21st century school leader who sees participation in larger communities like Twitter's weekly #edchat or discussion boards like those sponsored by national and international educational organizations. School leaders need to engage the global community about their school or school districts too, which means using social media to engage in global conversations.

10. Use rich media (such as animation, video, audio) and humor to engage stakeholders. Using just text announcements posted to Twitter or to Facebook misses the real potential social media has to promote a school or district to the wider world. Schools can post moving videos or photos to a Facebook account. A school district can establish a YouTube account to showcase visually what is happening in the schools rather than just with announcements posted on its home page. Social media is much more than text and school leaders need to take advantage of the strengths of other media in their efforts to engage their communities.

It is truly the 21st century school leader who brings a twenty-first century understanding and knowledge to using social media instead of using it simply as a 20th century media to post textual announcements and news. Social media is so much more than a 21st century version of an intercom system. It is a tool that allows for engagement not passive consumption. Perhaps these ten tips will be a starting point that school leaders and educators can use to engage social media as it was intended.

5 Indications Your Leadership Is Obsolete for 21st Century Schools

In October, I posted “Top 10 Signs Your School Is Caught in a Time Warp: List for School Leaders.” Of course the whole idea behind that post was to call attention to those leadership proclivities that are actually hindering movement toward a 21st century learning environment.

Now, let me be just a bit more direct in this post. Here’s the list of indications that your school leadership is obsolete and in need of a big upgrade.


1. You actually find yourself defending school policies that ban the use of cell phones in your building. Cell phone bans need to go the way of the slate and chalkboards. Instead of prowling the halls to catch students with cell phones out, how about getting students to use them constructively? Besides, if a cell phone disrupts class, it is the user that actually disrupts the class, not the phone. Cell phone bans are a waste of administrative energy and time.

2. You defend adamantly the use of Internet filters on your school networks. I know all about the CIPA compliance issues and all, but perhaps your leadership is just a bit outdated and your knowledge of computers inadequate if you actually think filters work. Let’s face it, most districts put filters on their networks, not because they work, but because they allow them to keep their funding. If you really want to know whether your Internet filters are working, just ask a student. The smile on their face says a great deal. Heck, some of them might even show you one way they use to get to Facebook even though it’s supposed to be blocked.

3. You brag about the number of computers, smartboards, or iPads you have in your building. I have to point the finger to myself a bit on this one. It’s darn hard to resist boasting about your computer-to-student ratio when a fellow administrator brags about his, but the truth is, it really doesn’t matter if you have 3 computers to every student if no one is using them effectively for learning. Administrators have historically boasted about needing an iPad for every student or a laptop for every student. I’ve even heard school principals boast about having Smartboards in every classroom. Truth is, it’s not the numbers that matter; it’s what students and teachers are doing with those devices that matters.

4. You see Facebook and other social media as one of the biggest menaces of modern society.  Granted, I will admit I’ve dealt with enough “Facebook-connected issues” that I sometimes think “Zuckerberg” should be a bad word. But, social media is our reality; it’s our students’ reality. We can’t keep blocking it out with the hopes that it will go away. It will, in some form, outlast us all. Instead, let’s figure out some way to use social media educationally. We all might learn something.

5.  You think learning occurs only within the confines of your building’s classrooms under the direction of your teachers. Our students are learning about things they care about in spite of us. Classrooms are not the only places where student curiosity is satisfied (if they ever were). Our students are engaged in massive learning on their own while sitting with digital devices wherever they happen to be. It’s time to measure learning by something other than seat time and length of class periods. Perhaps we could even figure out a way to channel all that energy to learn to accomplish our educational goals.

School leaders suffering from “obsolete leadership” really do prevent schools from becoming 21st century learning places. Perhaps someday we’ll quit trying to defend the rules and question why the rules exist in the first place. That said, I am positive there are others indicators that could be added to this list.

Class Size Does Matter

Most of us are well aware that our students all have brains that are wired quite differently. The idea that students all learn the same way and that their brains can take in learning the same way is an assumption of a 20th century factory model of education whose time of demise has come. According to John Medina, in his book Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School, here's some things that can be done in our schools to make learning more effective in a classroom of diversely wired brains.

• Smaller Class Sizes: In spite of the rhetoric in the news about "class sizes don't matter," according to Medina they do matter. He says, "Given every brain is wired differently, being able to read a student's mind is a powerful tool in the hands of a teacher." It's difficult to read student minds when you have 35 to 40 minds as opposed to 20 to 25, or even smaller. Further, Medina states, "Because a teacher can keep track of only so many minds, there must be a limit on the number of students in a class---the smaller the better." If you're churning on test scores alone, maybe class size doesn't matter, but if you're trying to keep up with student minds and differentiating learning, class size does matter.
• Customized Instruction: The old admonition to create more individualized instruction has a great deal of support in brain research. Medina writes: "You cannot change the fact that the human brain is individually wired. Every student's brain, every employee's brain, every customer's brain is wired differently. That's the Brain Rule. You can either accede to it or ignore it. The current system of education chooses the latter, to our detriment. It needs to be torn down and newly envisioned, in a Manhattan Project -size commitment to individualizing instruction." That settles it, we should strive to individualize instruction for our students rather than engage in trying to standardize it for all students.

It is clear from Medina's work that two things we need to be doing in education are providing smaller class sizes where teachers can "get to know their students' brains" and customize instruction to fit the individual brain wiring our students have. In an era that seeks more and more standardization through testing and common standards, Medina's book makes us wonder whether we are doing the right thing with our current education policy. As usual policymakers engage in reforms that are the opposite of what we should be doing.

Power of Teachers with iPads to Transform Teaching and Learning

 Back in 2001, Ted McCain and Ian Jukes said this about technology in general:

"We need to rethink what is really important in the use of technology. Amazingly, it is not the technology but the people who use it and their mind-sets that are the critical determining factors."

One thing I notice immediately in this classroom is the emphasis on what students are doing with the iPads, and not the iPads themselves. As McCain and Jukes pointed out, the technology itself isn't amazing, its the users and the mindset they have about its use that is more important.


The students in Larry Mitchell's class are not just using iPads. Any teacher can get kids to do that. What's more important are the high-level 21st century tasks of communicating, creating, and collaborating using the iPads that is our goal as 21st century educators. These students are demonstrating the mindsets of technology users to tackle educational tasks.

Perhaps the real challenge we have as administrators is supporting and fostering classrooms just like these. It is a whole new way of learning.




Observations on Transforming Classrooms with Mobile Devices

• The teacher in this video is knowledgeable about what the iPad can and cannot do. It is more than obvious in the video that the teacher is a knowledgeable user of the device too. He doesn't just hand it to them and tell them to go to it. He facilitates the learning they are doing with the devices.
• Use of the iPad in this classroom is not an add-on; it is an integral part of what students are being asked to do educationally. The iPad is not a toy passed out to students when they've been good. They are using it as a 21st century tool should be used: solving real problems, engaging and creating, and innovating.
• Learning in this classroom is truly individualized. Students are engaged in custom learning tasks that fit their needs and interests.

Thanks again @skipvia for Tweeting this link to me.

A New Model for Writing Instruction for the 21st Century

A couple of months ago, our tenth graders received their writing scores for the year. As a school we did very well with our proficiency level of 96 percent. What really bothers me about that particular writing test is a burning question, "Does it accurately measure the kinds of writing our students need to be doing in the 21st century?" Our students in North Carolina are asked to complete a writing test every March. On this test they are asked to complete "an extended informational response" which is further described as writing definition or cause and effect. Students are then scored for content and writing conventions. Basically, the prompts that I reviewed asked students to write articles or letters on a variety of topics. (North Carolina provides access to their writing prompts on the grade 10 writing assessment site here.) They also provide a full description of the assessment and how it relates to No Child Left Behind legislation. But even with all of the information provided by the state, my burning question persists? Just how does this assessment reflect the kinds of writing our students are doing and will be doing in the 21st century?

As a long-time English teacher who enjoyed teaching writing to students, it really concerns me that we are still using an assessment that does not authentically assess writing of the 21st century. The National Council Teachers of English have weighed in on this issue by describing the profound changes needed in literacy education and literacy practices. Because of these changes, they provide some imperatives schools might do well to heed.

• Our schools and our nation need to recognize and validate the many ways we all are writing.
• We need to develop new models of writing, design a new curriculum supporting those models, and create models for teaching that curriculum.
• We need to make sure that all students have the opportunity to write and learn in intellectually stimulating classrooms.
• We need to recognize that out-of-school literacy practices are as critical to students' development as what occurs in the classroom and take advantage of this to better connect classroom work to real-world situations that students will encounter across a lifetime. ("Writing in 21st Century" NCTE.)

The North Carolina 10th Grade Writing Assessment has students writing letters and articles, as if our students are going to become journalists or 20th century citizens who send letters to the editor to their local newspaper. What exactly is not authentic about this activity? First of all, today's students do not read the newspaper. (I am not sure they have ever read the newspaper, but I will give a nod at our state's effort at trying to make the writing task authentic.) Students today, according to the many studies done on "digital natives," they do not read newspapers; they get their information from the Internet. Secondly, 21st century citizens are not likely to respond to issues using letters to the editor. They are more likely to respond to those issues using 21st century tools like blog posts, comment postings, and even posting YouTube Videos.  Besides, how is writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper or an article for the newspaper an "authentic" activity when newspapers are slowly becoming nonexistent? Let's face it, the North Carolina 10th Grade Writing Assessment has become a fossil.

Perhaps we need to begin just as NCTE suggests. Let's validate and recognize all the ways students can write or express themselves with 21st century tools. I realize that could be quite a massive list, but let's start by recognizing that composition and response to issues no longer requires written words. If student gets upset with the BP oil spill disaster, they can post a video they've created on YouTube. They can post an original song they've sung in a podcast. They can post original photos with accompanying music in a slideshow. The list is endless, and as online Web 2.0 tools continue to evolve and be developed, the list of ways students can communicate ideas in the 21st century is never complete. Of course, we still need to have students use the written word. There is still much that has to be communicated that way. But the five-paragraph essay should be relegated to the slag heap immediately. No one ever authentically wrote that way anyway, and writing assessments that force teachers to teach in that manner need to be thrown into the same slag heap. Let's take a close, ongoing look at the kinds of writing our students do and the kinds of writing the 21st century will require them to do and toss out 21st century writing assessments and 21st century writing pedagogy.

Once we've tossed out that irrelevant writing assessment and writing curriculum, we need to do as the NCTE suggests: "develop new models of writing, new curriculum supporting those new models, and develop new models to teach the new writing curriculum." Kathleen Blake Yancey posts a report entitled "Writing in the 21st Century" on the NCTE web site. In that report, she provides a historical context to writing instruction and some themes to think about as we ponder writing in the 21st century. For example, she states "with digital technology and, especially Web 2.0, it seems writers are everywhere." Any new model of writing can't ignore that our students live in a world where "writers are everywhere" and that people "write in order to participate" which is actually an entirely different purpose for writing than to persuade or inform. Any new model of writing would be useless if it still had students writing essays and letters to the editor. Instead, our new models of writing need focus on how writers can use 21st century tools to express themselves in a world where anyone can have his or her writing published.

Once we have our new model of writing and the curriculum to be taught with it, we need revamp the old twentieth century classroom where students sit quietly at desks writing introductions-bodies-conclusions on ruled paper to be handed in at the end of the class. This is the real world of our students. If we want writing instruction to be intellectually stimulating, we need to give them real-world issues, concerns and problems. Then we ask them to use 21st century tools to respond, investigate, report back, and create solutions. English teachers need to put away their red pens which have been used to bleed all over student papers for the last hundred years or so, and become facilitators who empower their students to learn how to communicate effectively in the 21st century with 21st century media.

Finally, like NCTE suggests we need to quit separating what students should be doing in school from what they do at home. Asking students to write an essay in the English classroom using a pen and a sheet of paper then turning it in is an obsolete practice. Amazingly, our students do this, then on their way out of the classroom, they pull out their cell phones and they send a concise text message that follows very strict rules to a friend. We basically ask them to do the inauthentic before they can engage in the authentic. Why can't we have students authentically engaged in using 21st century media as a part of regular writing instruction?

It is time. We need a 21st century model of writing. Actually, we needed it yesterday, but we do need to move the kinds of writing and writing assessments we ask students to do out of the last century. Those of us in administration positions need to help our English teachers make this happen. We need to advocate to policy makers the imperative to remove outdated, irrelevant assessments like the North Carolina 10th Grade Writing Assessment. We need to support our teachers as they seek these new writing models, develop the curriculum to teach them, and provide them with the kinds of access to technology in their classrooms that make writing authentic again.

TaskTome: Task Management Software for Those Who Want Simple

As an administrator, I am always looking for solutions to managing the many tasks that come with being a school principal. During the course of the day, one or two dozen tasks can often come across my desk, and trying to find a way to keep track of all of these is problematic. Of course there are the usual Web 2.0 tools like Google Calendar, Remember the Milk, and Ta-Da Lists. All of the online tools have their positives and negatives, but I am always game for trying new software.

I honestly do not recall when and where I first heard of taskTome, but I do remember reading about it in some open source review. It looked promising so I downloaded a copy from http://tasktome.shanemca.com/. After installing it, I found it really does work as advertised. It basically has five main features:

1. Planner: You can use this feature to keep track of events. It allows you to enter an event, just like many calendar programs, but there is no alarm or reminder feature. The calendar has a very simple interface.

taskTome Calendar Interface

2. Tasks Manager: The Tasks interface for taskTome is also simple. It gives the user the ability to create tasks by clicking a single button. These tasks can then be given due dates, placed in a category, and assigned a priority. Again, though, there is no reminder alarm system with the software.

taskTome Tasks List Interface

3. Diary Entry: One feature that I found interesting with taskTome was the ability to enter Diary entries. During my tenure as an administrator, I keep a running administrative log that contains notes regarding administrative actions taken and the incidents and situations faced every day while on the job. This feature is a handy one to have for someone who is keeping a daily log of activities for documentation purposes. The only feature I wish was included was a timestamp button so that I could easily enter the time.

taskTome Diary Interface

4. Notes Entry: TaskTome also gives users a place to enter notes. This is basically a simple notepad like interface where users can enter information and insert dates and objects into them. Useful for keeping additional notes tied to tasks or events.

taskTome Notes Interface

5. Financial Tracking: TaskTome’s financial tracking feature was personally the least useful feature for me. Perhaps that is because so much of the schools expenses are tracked in other ways. Still, it looks simple enough and might prove useful to some.

taskTome Financial Interface

TaskTome is a very simple Task tracking program. For the user who really does not need a lot of extra bells and whistles, this program fits the bill. It has the ability export its event list, task list, diary entries, and notes, and will also export these same documents into PDF files. The program is also small enough to install and operate from a flash drive. It truly is a simple task management program.