Friday, May 29, 2015

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in." - Rachel Carson

This is the adult I want to be.

My ability to understand and share in the ideas, aspirations, desires, concerns, hopes, fears, and dreams of others is a sign of my own maturity.  If I'm self-focused and unable to do this, which life does sometimes demands, then my goal is to get back to a place where this is how I interact with others.

I remember adults who inspired me when I was young. Unfortunately, I also remember that there were those who made me feel badly about myself...  Perhaps the maturity of our culture can be measured in part by how adults treat children.

Events + News - K12 Online Call for Proposals - Library 2.0 Spring Summit Recordings - Starting to Homeschool Webinar Today

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Library 2.015 Spring Summit Recap

On April 30th we held the first ever Library 2.015 Spring Summit - The Emerging Future: Technology and Learning, a half-day conversation about technology issues and trends in the future of library and information services. The event was inspired by and organized in partnership with Dr. Sue Alman of the SJSU School of Information, and designed to complement the fifth annual Library 2.015 Worldwide Virtual Conference on October 20th, 2015. We are proud to report that we had more than 2,000 people register for this event, and had up to 400 people logged in simultaneously to listen to top experts in the field discuss the future of technology and learning in libraries. Thank you to everyone who attended and to those of you who helped us promote this year's event!

If you missed out on this information rich event, you can still register to view the archives here. And, of course, we hope you'll join us to continue the conversation at Library 2.015 in October!

Two Week Calendar

All events are listed in US-Eastern Time. To become an event partner and have your events listed here, please email amy@learningrevolution.com. For a full calendar of all upcoming events and conferences, click here.

Learning Revolution Events

Future Ready Schools: 2015 School Leadership Summit, June 24th

Each year TICAL holds an annual School Leadership Summit. This year's Summit, on June 24th from 8:00-4:30 PDT, will focus on the pillars of the U.S. Department of Education's Future Ready Pledge. The Pledge is a commitment by district leaders to work with educators, families, and community members to make all schools in their districts Future Ready. Future Ready Schools: 2015 School Leadership Summit will be held online using Google Hangouts on Air. The event will be free for all to attend and to watch the recordings. You must register to watch the event live or to see the recordings. This is truly a collaborative event made possible by the leading organization and event partners. For more information and to register, please go to http://www.futureready.education.


2015 ISTE Unplugged Events, June 26th - July 1st

Thanks to our generous friends at ISTE.org, our NINTH annual set of extra-curricular events at the ISTE conference this year will launch on the Friday before ISTE (June 26th) with an all-day open Maker Day--expect lots of table, activities, and fun for all ages, geared toward education. Saturday's all-day unconference features special guest Audrey Watters again this year, and huge shout-out to this year's unconference and evening party sponsor, StudyBlue and Shutterfly. Sunday is our fourth annual Global Education Summit, a three-hour event + connecting party you don't want to miss. The Bloggers' Cafe will be open Friday - Wednesday, and we're really hoping to add an education slam poetry event still. Stay tuned for all events at http://www.ISTEunplugged.com, which also has Facebook event links for each activity.


Library 2.015 Worldwide Virtual Conference: Tools, Skills & Competencies, October 20th

The fifth annual global conversation about the future of libraries is scheduled for Tuesday, October 20th, 2015. The conference will be held entirely online and is free to attend. Everyone is invited to participate in this open forum designed to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among information professionals worldwide. The Call for Proposals will open May 1st, immediately following the Library 2.015 Spring Summit (which had over 2,000 registrants and the recordings for which are now available). See this year's conference strands and plan to get your proposal in early. We are looking forward to the fifth year of this this momentous event, and to your participation!


Partner Announcements

K12Online Conference Call for Proposals Now Open, Submit by May 31st

Announcing the 2015 K12onlineconference Call for Proposals! Submit proposal by May 31st. FREE, asynchronous, education conference! Follow #k12online15.

Blended Librarians Online Community: On Becoming Open Education Leaders, May 28th at 3pm

Free webcast "On Becoming Open Education Leaders" on 5/28 @ 3pm EDT #OER #edtech.

Learning Revolution Blog Posts

Check out or subscribe to our new curated blog of posts from around the web that are focused on the disruptions taking place in teaching and learning: blog.learningrevolution.com. If we've missed a story, send it to blog@learningrevolution.com.

Partner Spotlight

K-12 Online

K12Online Conference: This is a FREE, asynchronous, online education conference open to EVERYONE. It is organized by educators for educators around the world interested in integrating emerging technologies into classroom practice. A goal of the conference (among several) is to help educators make sense of and meet the needs of a continually changing learning landscape. During the October conference each year, presentations are posted to our conference blog. The conference begins with a pre-conference keynote followed by two weeks of daily presentations. 40 presentations are published in four different strands, with four presentations posted per day. Since the conference is asynchronous you don't need to worry about time zones. View the presentations on-demand whenever it's convenient for you. Archived conference presentations from previous years are also available and accessible from the navigation links (organized by year) at the top of our blog. Our WONDERFUL keynote speakers and strand presenters make our conference an outstanding and ongoing learning experience for educators worldwide. Many schools and districts use these recordings throughout the year to provide professional development for their teachers by viewing them together and extending the experience with discussion, hands-on time and action planning. The K12 Online Conference is a total volunteer effort and is envisioned, planned and implemented by 4 co-convenors, several volunteers who also serve as organizers, and a fabulous group of volunteer presenters. More information at http://k12onlineconference.org/.

Interested in becoming a Learning Revolution Partner? Please fill out a Partner Application today.

Daily Education Quotes and Commentary

Click through to see or subscribe to my daily education quote and commentary on my blog.

See you online!

Steve
Steve Hargadon
www.stevehargadon.com

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Wednesday, May 27, 2015

"We should seek to be fellow students with the pupil, and should learn of, as well as with him, if we would be most helpful to him." - Henry David Thoreau

There's a great, small character in the book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the elderly and stately janitor Mister Jenson. He's beloved by the students, the principal, and the teachers.

This one sentence about this one small character lives with me still:

"When they were teaching, Mr. Jenson would often come in and squeeze himself into one of the back seats and enjoy the lesson too."

Lovely.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Shadows on the Wall - The Futility of Ed Reform

Have you ever had a thought come to you with such force or clarity that you realized your thinking, from this point forward, will never be the same?

I'm sitting in a workshop at the AERO conference this weekend. The session is going to be led by Pat Farenga, who's a good friend at this point because of our work together, but he's running late. I've loved this conference, my second time attending, in large part because it is small and the conversations are so very, very deep.

The conference is in its 26th year. 26 years of talking about learner-centered educational alternatives. I've been wondering all week how it is that this deep, caring, devoted conversation and those who participate in it haven't more significantly influenced the larger education dialog. The topic of this session is "Homeschooling Towards Positive Social Change: Challenges and Concerns for Building a Movement." Perfect.

Someone suggests that part of the reason Pat is late is that they found this great old diner where they stopped for some special omelets. Pat runs in, apologizes for being a few minutes late. Pat worked with John Holt years ago, and now continues the Growing Without Schooling organization. He's been at this work for decades, has seen waves of enthusiasm for learning alternatives come and go, and remains a positive, encouraging voice to all who work in this arena.

A woman across from me has a bottle of juice from Whole Foods on her desk. I think about the omelets, the juice, food, and learning, and it hits me. So I say it out loud:

"If we want to know how most people think about this alternative education movement, all we have to do is to look at how most people think about those who are deeply concerned about processed, packaged, and genetically-modified food.

"If we're wondering why we're not influencing larger change, maybe there is something important we might learn from why most of us haven't been moved by the whole- or clean-foods movement."

The woman next to me seems to be adding to my comment, but she talks about something completely different. I am brave: "Did you move on to another topic because you didn't get what I was saying, or you didn't agree?" I try to make sure she knows I'm truly interested and not confronting her. She looks confused. I realize that what is going on in my head is not clear to anyone but me.

There are some fifteen people in our room, several of whom have expressed their excitement about the work they are doing to build new school models, or to build bridges between their homeschool groups and the local school district, or to help others understand the importance of how you treat children. They are good people.

But I think I'm seeing something they are not. Something that perhaps explains why after 26 years, this is still a very small conference, with hand-written signs for each session outside just a handful of rooms. Something that explains why, even with the opt-out movement and more debates about the value of high-stakes testing, it doesn't seem like we are likely to actually see substantive change in education. Something that maybe would explain why Pat has seen waves of enthusiasm and projects over the course of decades ebb and flow, but never really take off.

I say: "If we are working on education change, believing that this is just a matter of convincing others of how treating children with dignity and respect will dramatically improve education, perhaps we are missing the bigger picture." I go on. "Those of us concerned about food and health are constantly surprised about how people seem so willfully blind to how their eating habits are directly related to their health issues. What if this is all tied together?"

"If we're passionate about seeing learning clearly, but not just as concerned about the damage the food industry is doing to our health, or about the banking or pharmaceutical or any of the other institutions that claim to be helping us are most often often harming us, then maybe we're misunderstanding what's really going on. What if they are all part of the same story, and not seeing their connectedness is a big part of why change isn't happening?"

I know that I'm hijacking the session.  I determine to just say a few more words and then let it go.

"I would never eat an omelet at a local diner. When I began to research food issues [for my health--I have a number of auto-immune disorders, including Vitiligo] and began to understand that almost all food companies are in the profit business, and not in the improve-your-health business, I stopped eating a lot of foods that really harm our health. In my food-eating life, I know I'm seen as being as weird as I often am in my education work. So what if this is actually a bigger story, a story of the ways in which institutions have controlled narratives about how things are or should be done, and education and food and banking and pharmaceutical and medical are all part of the same bigger story..."

Deep breath.

"... and so when we sit here and debate education as though it's just about trying to convince others of our understanding of how to help children, we're really just in Plato's Cave, arguing about the shadows on the wall, and not turning around to see the degree to which education is just one part--and maybe the most important, facilitating part--of a larger institutional system that depends on and manufactures compliance and control, and depends on our not realizing that we're busy being distracted by our idealistic desires and activities, not seeing the puppet-masters who project the shadow-play."

(On reflection, I realize that saying the phrase "puppet-masters" triggers all of our conspiracy theory alarm bells. But who are the beneficiaries of narratives that try to convince us to do things that are not good for us? They are those who makes a profit from that behavior. We know enough about our cognitive inclinations to justify our actions through reasoning to not have to attribute malice to those who have talked themselves into pushing consumer behavior which helps them keep their job or make a living. Above them there are those who accumulate wealth, power, and privilege from a system that depends on most people being followers and not independent--of course their world view would incline toward narratives that justify their position.)

I'm too far gone in my diatribe now to stop.  One more thought, I say to myself. "If I were black and living in the sixties, and you said to me, the answer is just for white people to understand the need to treat blacks more respectfully, and to help them to understand that, and to start clubs and schools that are integrated, I think I might say: 'You're being naive. Long-held systemic discrimination and the abuses of power and privilege do not willingly yield to positive thinking.'

"At some level, power must be confronted. The American Revolution was about confronting the abuse of power. The Civil Rights movement required confrontation to overcome entrenched beliefs and behavior. The American tradition of civil disobedience is a recognition of the need to demand change when power is involved.

"We now have generations of students who were taught above all else at schools that they were not good learners. Taught in some deep and profound ways that they are not capable and should not be in independent control of their own destinies. We have untold millions of children and their parents who have been convinced that they are defective and that medication, rather than changing learning models, is the solution to their misbehavior."

I really am about to finish. "I think I now see why we're not making any progress. Here we are, animatedly and passionately discussing the shadows on the wall, not realizing that we are seeing life as framed by those who project and benefit from a reality that they have created for control and profit, and who benefit especially from our not seeing beyond that shadow play."

I stop. I listen as the conversation moves forward, not really informed by my comments. The woman with the Whole Foods drink indicates to me that she understands. Fairly quickly the conversation moves to the different projects people are excited about. I watch as Pat is supportive and thoughtful in his responses. Aware that I could be seen as trying to take over the session with my own thinking again, I later venture quietly to raise my hand. People are so excited about their own ideas that they ignore conversation protocol, so I wait and I, too, appreciate their enthusiasm. When I get the chance, I do ask my question: "Pat, having watched positive education projects and movements come and go over the last several decades, have you got any advice for why they succeed or why they don't to those just starting?"

Pat says there are two parts to responding to that question, but he's not really even through the first part before the change-makers steer back to their own projects. I'm OK with that. The epiphany has come for me.

Note: I wasn't really anywhere near this articulate. And I'm sure a recording of what I really said and how others responded would show that I've greatly exaggerated or added or even misconstrued what happened. But this is an accurate representation of my thinking, so let's call the rest a fictionalized version of a real event. I've also made a couple of minor updates and correcting to this post as I've tried to clarify what I'm saying--I know that's not great web protocol, but I'll note the changes in the contents.

"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is." - Isaac Asimov

Technically, I don't agree with this quote. There are all kinds of ways that education, teaching, learning, and schooling take place where external pressures or motivators supersede the self, where submission to power or authority is at the heart of what is learned.

But philosophically, I do agree with it.  Perhaps my version would be, "self-education is the only kind of education that really matters."  Not as memorable as Asimov's quote, though, and I'm guessing that was his actual intent.

A healthy society needs healthy thinkers, with each informing and supporting the other. The growing of a next generation self-directing, knowledgeable, critical thinkers should be one of the main goals of the current one. We appreciate the need for each generation to build their own strength and understanding, to help them do so and to give them wisdom along the way. It is both selfless and selfish: we know that it is only by encouraging their agency that we will continue to be able to build a society that we want to live in.

It is scary to think of the inevitable downward social spiral that takes place when selfishness and narcissism demand education by submission.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Announcing Library 2.015 - 5th Annual Global Conference on the Future of Libraries + Call for Proposals

21st Century Tools, Skills and Competencies Take Center Stage at Global Library Conference


“How can we delight our users and customers?” That is one of five questions libraries should ask, according to author Steve Denning in his recent Forbes article about the future of libraries. Denning goes on to say, “Libraries must imagine a future that users will truly want, even though users themselves don’t yet know what that is.”

What are your thoughts about the future of libraries? Join the global discussion during the Library 2.015 Worldwide Virtual Conference, a free online conference co-sponsored by the San Jose State University (SJSU) School of Information. The fifth annual conference will take place on October 20, 2015 from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. PDT, and presentation proposals are now being welcomed on a variety of topics addressing the ever-changing field of 21st century information.

The completely online conference offers an excellent opportunity for graduate students, doctoral candidates, scholars, and information professionals worldwide to network and present cutting-edge ideas and research on contemporary practices and emerging trends in the information profession.

Choose Your Topic

Four thematic subject strands are planned for this year’s conference:

  • Digital Services, Preservation, Curation, and Access
  • Emerging Technologies and Trends
  • The User Experience
  • Management of Libraries and Information Centers in the 21st Century
Submit a Proposal

Proposals can be submitted now through October 1, 2015. Presentations should be at least 20 minutes long, and sessions must be completed within one hour. Free training on Blackboard Collaborate will be available for all presenters. Proposals will be reviewed in the order in which they were received, and a total of 50 proposals will be chosen for the day-long conference. Complete information on how to submit a proposal is available on the Library 2.0 website.

Get Involved

The Library 2.015 Worldwide Virtual Conference is free to attend thanks to the support of partners, sponsors, advisory board members, presenters, and volunteers. Get involved and reap the benefits of the global pool of information.

Learn More

Get the latest conference news and updates at library20.com/2015. The Library 2.0 virtual conference series was co-founded by Dr. Sandra Hirsh, director of the SJSU School of Information, and Steve Hargadon of The Learning Revolution, in 2011.

About the SJSU iSchool

The San Jose State University (SJSU) School of Information prepares individuals for careers as information professionals. Graduates work in diverse areas of the information profession, such as user experience design, digital asset management, information architecture, electronic records management, information governance, digital preservation, and librarianship. The SJSU School of Information is a recognized leader in online education and received the Online Learning Consortium's Outstanding Online Program award. For more information about the school, please visit:http://ischool.sjsu.edu.










"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book." - Groucho Marx


Monday, May 18, 2015

Events + News - This Month in School Libraries - Future Ready Schools Online Summit - Student Coding

To subscribe to this newsletter, please sign up at LearningRevolution.com. Please share this newsletter with your friends and colleagues!

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Two Week Calendar

All events are listed in US-Eastern Time. To become an event partner and have your events listed here, please email amy@learningrevolution.com. For a full calendar of all upcoming events and conferences, click here.

Learning Revolution Events

Future Ready Schools - the 2015 School Leadership Summit, June 24th

Each year TICAL holds an annual School Leadership Summit. This year's Summit, on June 24th from 8:00-4:30 PDT, will focus on the pillars of the U.S. Department of Education's Future Ready Pledge. The Pledge is a commitment by district leaders to work with educators, families, and community members to make all schools in their districts Future Ready. Future Ready Schools: the School Leadership Summit will be held online using Google Hangouts on Air. The event will be free for all to attend and to watch the recordings. You must register to watch the event live or to see the recordings. This is truly a collaborative event made possible by the leading organization and event partners. For more information and to register, please go to http://www.futureready.education.


2015 ISTE Unplugged Events, June 26th - July 1st

Thanks to our generous friends at ISTE.org, our NINTH annual set of extra-curricular events at the ISTE conference this year will launch on the Friday before ISTE (June 26th) with an all-day open Maker Day--expect lots of table, activities, and fun for all ages, geared toward education. Saturday's all-day unconference features special guest Audrey Watters again this year, and huge shout-out to this year's unconference and evening party sponsor, StudyBlue and Shutterfly. Sunday is our fourth annual Global Education Summit, a three-hour event + connecting party you don't want to miss. The Bloggers' Cafe will be open Friday - Wednesday, and we're really hoping to add an education slam poetry event still. Stay tuned for all events at http://www.ISTEunplugged.com, which also has Facebook event links for each activity.


Library 2.015 Worldwide Virtual Conference: Tools, Skills & Competencies, October 20th

The fifth annual global conversation about the future of libraries is scheduled for Tuesday, October 20th, 2015. The conference will be held entirely online and is free to attend. Everyone is invited to participate in this open forum designed to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among information professionals worldwide. The Call for Proposals will open May 1st, immediately following the Library 2.015 Spring Summit (which had over 2,000 registrants and the recordings for which are now available). See this year's conference strands and plan to get your proposal in early. We are looking forward to the fifth year of this this momentous event, and to your participation!


Learning Revolution Blog Posts

Check out or subscribe to our new curated blog of posts from around the web that are focused on the disruptions taking place in teaching and learning: blog.learningrevolution.com. If we've missed a story, send it to blog@learningrevolution.com.

Partner Spotlight

ACRL LF-PEI

The Association of College and Research Libraries, Librarians in For-Profit Educational Institutions Interest Group (ACRL LF-PEI) is charged with providing a forum for librarians in for-profit educational institutions to network, share knowledge, and collaborate on tasks, direction, and issues specific to their roles within the for-profit education industry; facilitating discussions and programs related to identifying best practices, trends, and technologies aiding librarians for alignment with institutional outcomes, student learning objectives, accreditation standards, government principles, and other guidelines specific to the for-profit higher education industry; providing information and education to libraries and other academic professionals about the role of librarians in for-profit educational institutions; and advocacting for librarians and library resources and services in for-profit educational institutions and the field of librarianship and academia as a whole. More information at http://guides.rasmussen.edu/c.php?g=132571&p=866905.

Interested in becoming a Learning Revolution Partner? Please fill out a Partner Application today.

Daily Education Quotes and Commentary

Click through to see or subscribe to my daily education quote and commentary on my blog.

See you online!

Steve
Steve Hargadon
www.stevehargadon.com

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"If you want happiness for a lifetime, help the next generation." - Chinese saying

Investing in and caring for future generations is surely the hallmark of a mature society. It is the motivation of almost everyone I know who teaches.

The catch-22 of an education systems which produces so many students who feel like failures (and often have literally failed), where only a small minority leave as rigorous, independent thinkers, is the historic self-reinforcing downward spiral in all of our institutions--institutions which need generational-thinkers to mitigate the tendencies toward selfish and narcissistic behavior.

It's hard not see see a connection between our increasing inability as a society to think long-term and our system of schooling that makes it hard for the generationally-minded teacher to truly help a student.

Because of my recent post on W. Edwards Deming's ideas has kept me thinking about him, I remain struck by the need for those who manage a "system" to do all that they can to ensure the success of those in the system--rather than finding fault with and punishing them. It would be like HP saying, we'll, our computers are crummy because our workers are no good, so we're going to test and test and test them until we find the bad apples. Instead, we recognize the responsibility of the company to create good systems, to train and support their employees, and that the making of crummy products is not the fault of workers, but management.

My favorite definition of leadership is the act of training other leaders. Everything we do should contain a major component of helping the next generations deal with the difficult dilemmas ahead--instead of our creating the problems that they will need to solve, and then not giving them the cognitive or emotional tools to do so.

We're at senior night for our daughter's soccer team.  Each senior has answered a series of questions that the announcer is reading as the senior players are escorted onto the field with her parents at half time. One girl, a lively player, whose athleticism always seems to exude some sense of joy, is having her answers read.  One of the questions is: "Academic achievements?"  "Not applicable," she has responded. We all laugh, her energy and humor coming through. I later think about this. If she actually believes this, what did she spend the last twelve years doing? She hasn't failed, we have.

Friday, May 15, 2015

Money, Power, and "Science" as Policy

I'm so very appreciative of those who do scientific research, whose work helps to better lives and deepen understanding.

But we have to be very careful when science is used to demand conformity, or when its use in policy arguments can clearly be tied to financial gain by the parties involved. There's a difference between independent research used to help people inform their practice, and scientific conclusions that are tied directly to corporate profits, or that establish governmental powers, or that are used as arguments for political policy and as part of that bestow very direct financial benefits.

For example, the USDA dietary guidelines: which don't require that we have a degree in nutrition to see how the claims of "science" have changed over the decades, or how politics and money have influenced science-based claims, or even how much those authoritative guidelines may actually have been a part of tangible harm because of their influence. (See A Fatally Flawed Food Guide by Luise Light, Ed.D, the fascinating USDA Food Pyramid HistoryGovernment “Help” Makes Nutrition Worse: Fats, or Time to Retire the USDA's Dietary Guidelines?)

"Science," in the hands of lobbyists, or paid-by-industry employees or experts, ends up showing how easy it is for results to mirror that which produces a profit, and not that which is credibly and independently verifiable.

Malicious intent, willful blindness, or the benign unawareness from demanding task work--whatever the causal cognitive mechanism at play with individual actors in this game, it doesn't make any sense for us to allow food companies and their agents to set food guidelines, or bankers to help set banking policy, or ... you get the picture, right? ... or testing companies to influence education policy.

Even worse is when we allow these companies to perform their own studies, or to pay for others, without decent checks and balances. If you know your paycheck comes from someone, and they have an expected or hoped-for result, it takes an incredibly strong ethical backbone to deliver the opposite or contradictory results and be willing to walk away from the money.

And then there's the lobbying. Why do we let this go on?

So, the next time you hear someone tell you that we should adopt some policy decision because there is scientific proof, I hope you'll think about the following (boldface type is mine):
Peer review is a sacred cow that is ready to be slain, a former editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal has said...

Richard Smith, who edited the BMJ between 1991 and 2004, told the Royal Society’s Future of Scholarly Scientific Communication conference on 20 April that there was no evidence that pre-publication peer review improved papers or detected errors or fraud. 
Referring to John Ioannidis’ famous 2005 paper “Why most published research findings are false”, Dr Smith said “most of what is published in journals is just plain wrong or nonsense.” (more)
Or this, from Drug Companies + Doctors: A Story of Corruption in the New York Review of Books, by Marcia Angell, Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and former Editor in Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine.
The problems I’ve discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices.  
It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Whatever the policy field (and especially in education and when children are involved), when we pretend that conflicts of interests don't exist, that motivations are not influenced by money, that financial actors don't collude for financial gain, or that money doesn't try to influence legislation, we run a terrible risk. By not recognizing the corrupting power of money in politics and policy, we risk overshadowing or shutting down the actual honest and healthy dialog where research and science can truly help inform our understanding of the world and how we improve it. 

Save the Date: June 24th - Future Ready Schools | 2015 School Leadership Summit




Each year TICAL (http://www.portical.org) holds an annual School Leadership Summit. This year's Summit, on June 24th from 8:00-4:30 PDT, will focus on the pillars of the U.S. Department of Education's Future Ready Pledge. The Pledge is a commitment by district leaders to work with educators, families, and community members to make all schools in their districts Future Ready.

Future Ready Schools: the School Leadership Summit will be held online using Google Hangouts on Air. The event will be free for all to attend and to watch the recordings. You must register to watch the event live or to see the recordings. This is truly a collaborative event made possible by the leading organization and event partners.


Keynote speakers and breakout sessions will be aligned to the Future Ready School's framework, and will encourage school leaders and administrators to learn more about the initiative. Admin20.org is the online community-of-practice network for TICAL and the Summit. Continuing networking and conversation will take place on that site, as well as individual connecting between attendees and presenters.

About Future Ready:

Future Ready highlights the critical role of district leaders in setting a vision and creating the environment where educators and students access the tools, content, and expertise necessary to thrive in a connected world. The Future Ready Pledge and Regional Summits are an important step to realizing the goals of the ConnectED Initiative announced by President Obama in 2013 to connect 99% of students to high speed Internet and empower teachers with the technology they need to transform teaching and learning.

Background: 

For the last two years, TICAL (portical.org) and Steve Hargadon (LearningRevolution.com) have hosted a free, online, peer-to-peer global/U.S.-centric conference for school leaders and administrators called the School Leadership Summit (SchoolLeadershipSummit.com). This event has had special keynote speakers (including Yong Zhao, Eric Sheninger, Scott McLeod, and Pam Moran) as well as dozens of practitioner-led sessions focused on the ISTE Standards for Administrators. Sessions included: Using Technology to Bridge the Rural/Poverty Divide, Data Privacy and Our Students - How much is being shared and who are we trusting with the information?, and Facilitating 21st century Learning with Technology- Navigating the Change with a 20th Century Mindset.

The Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership (TICAL):

TICAL provides professional development to help K-12 leaders provide informed and effective leadership in the use of technology to improve education. Starting in the year 2000 under the auspice of the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, TICAL was contracted by the California Department of Education. In 2002, the Arkansas Department of Education contracted the TICAL project to serve educational leaders in their state. The TICAL Project consists of a 3-pillared professional development approach including (1) Local PD: A core group of 20+ principals, superintendents, curriculum leaders, and other educational leaders representing all geographic regions of CA and AR who receive training and provide regional support. (TICAL Leadership Cadre); (2) Statewide PD: A statewide technology leadership symposium (Leadership 3.0 in CA and TICAL Conference in AR) and an online, global conference for NO-COST (School Leadership Summit); (3) Online PD: A website of resources including tutorials, templates, and promising practices of technology integration and leadership (www.portical.org) as well as an online Community of Practice for ongoing discussions and resources sharing (www.admin20.org) and monthly webinars on trending leadership topics.


The Learning Revolution Project:

The Learning Revolution Project holds online and physical learning events, and highlights professional development opportunities from a network of 200 partners in the learning professions. The great majority of these events are free to attend by virtue of sponsors and special partners (like TICAL). In addition to the School Leadership Summit, Learning Revolution holds annually a number of conferences and summits, including the Global Education Conference, the Future of Libraries, the Future of Museums, and the Student Technology Conference. These events draw tens of thousands of attendee log-ins annually, and the weekly Learning Revolution newsletter is sent to 130,000.

"The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you." - B.B. King

RIP

Thursday, May 14, 2015

"Curiosity is a delicate little plant that, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom." - Albert Einstein

Having researched many quotes only to find that good ones tend to get credited to famous people (maybe because that lends them more credence), I have no idea if Einstein really said this, but here's a fuller version of the quote attributed to him:
It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry: for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom: without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly.
Extending freedom is much easier in theory than in practice, in large part because of the time involved in helping those whose freedom you are supporting. Coercion is faster... in the moment.

The time savings of coercion are an illusion, as the consequences of unwinding human capacity from a lifetime of coercion are even more significantly time consuming. That is, if you even get the chance to, since the personal and social consequences of coercive societies are often permanently damaging.

I feel like I have the following conversation almost every day. To the sandwich-maker at our local Subway store, a sweet girl who's a senior at our local high school. "What are you going to do next year?" "College, I guess," she says. She then says she'll probably end up at the local community college. "What do you want to study?" She names a technical field. "But I haven't taken the test, I probably won't get in the program." "When are the tests given?" I ask. "I don't know," she says, "I'm sure I'll fail the test."

Really?!!

We've so squandered the potential of generations of kids by allowing them to leave high school believing they are failures. This sweet girl is not alone, she sadly represents MILLIONS of people who have no idea how to work on leading productive lives. If you measure a system by its outcome, our education system teaches one lesson really well: you're not very smart.

We've robbed healthy students of a "voraciousness" they should have to manage their own lives.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Education Needs a System of Profound Knowlege

An understanding of W. Edwards Deming's teachings is so very needed in education today.

Just look at his fourteen key principles for transforming organizations (the bold type is mine for emphasis). You'll have to read more of Deming to understand fully what his "system of profound knowledge" is, but we can just call it "thinking at a deeper/higher level about people and how things get done." Of course, this is business manufacturing language, and students aren't widgets, but you'll get the idea.
  • Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive, to stay in business and to provide jobs.
  • Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
  • Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for massive inspection by building quality into the product in the first place.
  • End the practice of awarding business on the basis of a price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
  • Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
  • Institute training on the job.
  • Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
  • Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
  • Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, in order to foresee problems of production and usage that may be encountered with the product or service.
  • Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
  • Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute with leadership.
  • Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers and numerical goals. Instead substitute with leadership.
  • Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
  • Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objectives.
  • Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
  • Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.

"One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure." - John W. Gardner

Failure is not a fun word.  It's something negative.  When we try and celebrate failure in education (and I understand the positive reasons why this is tried), it falls flat for me.

It's not failure that we want to encourage. It's taking a risk. Nothing gets done without some risk involved. Babe Ruth's batting average of .342 isn't about celebrating the times he didn't connect with the ball, it's about honoring the three out of ten times he did--and knowing that in order to do so, he was taking a risk each time at bat that he might not get a hit.

No risk = no progress. And when we risk and don't succeed, it's about understanding that formula and keeping perspective on our failures. That so many students graduate high school (or don't even graduate) and feel that they are themselves failures--the accumulation of all their tracked and tested failures--is a tragedy of enormous human consequence.

So how do we create a risk-conducive environment for students? Babe Ruth's batting average wasn't about getting lucky three out of ten times, it was the result of skill and work and perseverance. So we care an environment that includes lots of:
  • skill building
  • practice
  • times "at bat" (opportunities to hit or miss)
  • adults who model risk-taking behavior (not the same as risky behavior)
  • measuring that actually helps the student know how he or she is doing
  • appropriate consequences
  • opportunities to try new things
  • opportunities to stop doing something that's not working
  • independence
  • time to reflect, think, and start anew
There is also the cognitive coaching associated with an environment that helps students to take risks, the modeling of a way of thinking about being and learning that need to get passed on. Associated with this mindset, and skills the adults need to have in order to be able to share them, are are the skills of:
  • ignoring other voices or putting them in context
  • ignoring or taming the self-critical voice
  • understanding that you cannot do or be all things
  • recognizing the role of chance in life
  • always having multiple "irons in the fire" so you can match what you care about with what the world is willing to pay you to do
  • being able to let something go that is not working
  • having perspective
Want to build a learning environment that allows for risk and helps build student cognitive skills? It takes time. In fact, helping students take risk involves a LOT more time than just asking them to follow along with everyone else. This is a human endeavor. Technologies may increase the scope or opportunities, but they do not shorten the human interaction needed.

We all need to hear this:  "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." - Wayne Gretsky





Tuesday, May 12, 2015

A Perspective on the Role of Foundations in Education Policy

“We view with alarm the activity of the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations—agencies not in any way responsible to the people—in their efforts to control the policies of our State educational institutions, to fashion after their conception and to standardize our courses of study, and to surround the institutions with conditions which menace true academic freedom and defeat the primary purpose of democracy as heretofore preserved inviolate in our common schools, normal schools, and universities.”  

--National Education Association special congressional committee report, 1913 (1914?)

"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood." - Fred Rogers

Well-worth reading on play: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201505/early-academic-training-produces-long-term-harm

"For example, in the 1970s, the German government sponsored a large-scale comparison in which the graduates of 50 play-based kindergartens were compared, over time, with the graduates of 50 academic direct-instruction-based kindergartens...  Despite the initial academic gains of direct instruction, by grade four the children from the direct-instruction kindergartens performed significantly worse than those from the play-based kindergartens on every measure that was used.  In particular, they were less advanced in reading and mathematics and less well adjusted socially and emotionally. At the time of the study, Germany was gradually making a switch from traditional play-based kindergartens to academic ones.  At least partly as a result of the study, Germany reversed that trend; they went back to play-based kindergartens.  Apparently, German educational authorities, at least at that time, unlike American authorities today, actually paid attention to educational research and used it to inform educational practice."

Monday, May 11, 2015

Events + News - ISTE "unplugged" Events - Educational Podcasting Tips and Tricks - Using Movie Magic

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Two Week Calendar

All events are listed in US-Eastern Time. To become an event partner and have your events listed here, please email amy@learningrevolution.com. For a full calendar of all upcoming events and conferences, click here.

Learning Revolution Events

2015 ISTE Unplugged Events, June 26th - July 1st

Thanks to our generous friends at ISTE.org, our NINTH annual set of extra-curricular events at the ISTE conference this year will launch on the Friday before ISTE (June 26th) with an all-day open Maker Day--expect lots of table, activities, and fun for all ages, geared toward education. Saturday's all-day unconference features special guest Audrey Watters again this year, and huge shout-out to this year's unconference and evening party sponsor, StudyBlue and Shutterfly. Sunday is our fourth annual Global Education Summit, a three-hour event + connecting party you don't want to miss. The Bloggers' Cafe will be open Friday - Wednesday, and we're really hoping to add an education slam poetry event still. Stay tuned for all events at http://www.ISTEunplugged.com, which also has Facebook event links for each activity.


Library 2.015 Worldwide Virtual Conference: Tools, Skills & Competencies, October 20th

The fifth annual global conversation about the future of libraries is scheduled for Tuesday, October 20th, 2015. The conference will be held entirely online and is free to attend. Everyone is invited to participate in this open forum designed to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among information professionals worldwide. The Call for Proposals will open May 1st, immediately following the Library 2.015 Spring Summit (which had over 2,000 registrants and the recordings for which are now available). See this year's conference strands and plan to get your proposal in early. We are looking forward to the fifth year of this this momentous event, and to your participation!


Learning Revolution Blog Posts

Check out or subscribe to our new curated blog of posts from around the web that are focused on the disruptions taking place in teaching and learning: blog.learningrevolution.com. If we've missed a story, send it to blog@learningrevolution.com.

Partner Spotlight

Each One - Teach One

Each One - Teach One Alliance for Academic Access, Achievement & Success: Our mission is to work with inner city youth through a number of community collaborations, to improve their academic performance in mathematics, science and technology, in order to ensure higher levels of Access, Achievement and Success in the most prestigious colleges and universities throughout our country. Our Vision: To see dramatic improvements in the number of underrepresented college students who pursue careers in science and technology. We want to build transformative images in the mindset of our youth, that promote and encourage a tactical shift beyond being mere technology consumers, to being technology creators, facilitators, and shareholders. More information at http://www.e1t1.org/.

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Steve
Steve Hargadon
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"I try never to let my schooling get in the way of my education." - Mark Twain

Like many other clever quotes, this does not appear to have actually been said by Mark Twain, but is often attributed to him. It appear that the original thought, which appeared in slightly different ways in his work, was from the author Grant Allen.

The quote does capture the way in which the systems, procedures, policies, and activities of school often feel not just disconnected from, but opposed to true learning. In her fascinating book, Wounded by School, Kristen Olson explored a consistent theme in interviews with hundreds of people of "negative or self-defeating learning stories based on our experiences in school."

I have a good friend who uses the metaphor of a tree to describe a common problem with policies and procedures.

The fruit of the tree is our end goal, the result we want. The trunk and branches of the tree are the policies and procedures that are developed to support the fruit. The roots of the tree are the actual source of strength.

What often happens is that we are so focused on the branches (policies and procedures), and constantly adding to and changing them, that when the fruit doesn't ripen or grow at all, we fumble and manipulate the branches in vain efforts to attain our goal. Very few are willing to trim back the branches and start watering and fertilizing the roots.

In education, the roots are what we believe about children, their growth, and the role of education in helping others. Voices (and money) get raised about all of the policies and incentives and testing, but try to have a thoughtful, deep conversation about why we school and the philosophical models that drive our beliefs, and watch the engines of efficiency roll right over you, as we have too little time to spend it on such deeper thinking.

In our desire to be efficient, we become not just inefficient, but self-contradicting. The heavy, complicated, serpentine branches of our educational policy tree ultimately produce a sickly and meager fruit, and we're fighting battles that make no sense at all. There's a lot of money and power and influence represented in those tangled branches, and so their continued existence represents hard-fought battles ultimately unrelated and even harmful to the child or fruit at the end.

To fight for change in what particular branch gets put where is to ignore the evidence that the current system of branches is not about education at all, but about profit and power, and the roots are being ignored. It's time for students, parents, and teachers--for all of us--to reclaim the conversation on education.

Friday, May 08, 2015

"Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him and let him know that you trust him." - Booker T. Washington

I'm thinking about the corrosive effects of criticizing teachers.

If you're in a business, you talk about "managing" people. But in a social endeavor, in doing work that we believe helps people, it's a word and a concept that I think is fraught with misunderstanding.

When you manage someone, you are seeing them as an object. Managing presumes you're capable of understanding their situation, that you know better than they do, and that you are are able to control their actions. As the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber said, in an "I - it" relationship, you see another as a separate object to use. In an "I - Thou" relationship, you find meaning in the relationship to a sacred other.

This is religious language, as "Thou" ultimately denoted God, and therefore an "I - Thou" relationship involves seeing the divinity in others. But you don't have to be religious to believe there is something so sacred and uniquely valuable about everyone, and that how we treat them matters.

Again, using religious language, but not confining ourselves, we are either managing people or ministering to them. To minister is "to give service, care, or aid."

If the ultimate goal of our efforts is to help others, then taking the shortcut of managing someone rather than ministering to them arguably negates that very goal. Yes, it takes time (sometimes a lot of it) to work with someone, to understand their situation, to help them understand what you know or care about, and then to build together a plan to accomplish worthy goals. But it takes even more time to recover from the consequences of not making the investment in others early on.

People are not machines. Treating them as such creates a psychic crisis on both sides.

Think about how hard it is right now to even have the conversation about trusting teachers, we are so far down the path of consequences from not trusting them. The rebuilding we have before us to understand the sacred importance of the role that teachers and mentors play in the lives of children is so enormous that it may even be a cognitive protection to imagine such a role is unrealistic or no longer possible.

We've become so used to the lens of managing others--teachers and students--that we may not even realize that we have glasses on. Measuring and managing other people is a choice we have made, a terrible shortcut that does not, and can never, give us the outcomes we desire.

Trusting and working with people, caring about them, and helping them do a better job is actually the only pragmatic course to helping build better learning environments.

Thursday, May 07, 2015

"People seldom see the halting and painful steps at which the most insignificant success is achieved." - Anne Sullivan

I've notice in my own life how long the arc of learning sometimes is for me. Grappling with difficult thoughts or challenges I sometimes measure in months, if not years, rather than hours or days.

Learning that leads to change is different than memorizing. Collecting "data," testing hypotheses, measuring the thoughts against real-world experience--these all take time.

We are seasonal. We ebb and flow, and like a stream, we cut our course over time.

Learning and change aren't fast, and they aren't easy. Nor do they happen linearly or sequentially. After we've learned, we see the broader patterns and can organize the intermediate steps, but that clarity is after the journey. If we present the linear information and expect someone else to just absorb and memorize, we've robbed them of the struggle to get there--like the caterpillar, it's the strength gained from breaking open the cocoon that is needed to become a butterfly.

There are knowledge stepping stones, which once gained, we can encourage others to accept so that they may climb higher. Theirs is a different, new journey, but it is still a journey nonetheless.