My post from yes­ter­day got me think­ing about a com­ment that I some­times hear from edu­ca­tors when talk­ing about tech­nol­ogy and in par­tic­u­lar one-to-one.  Many edu­ca­tors worry that stu­dents will be dis­tracted because of all of the stim­u­lus tech­nol­ogy can pro­vide.  I’ve posted about  this before (Ban bore­dom not lap­tops), but can’t miss the oppor­tu­nity to write about it again.

Dictionary.com defines dis­tracted in the fol­low­ing way.

“hav­ing the atten­tion diverted”

My expe­ri­ence would say that many peo­ple would define dis­tracted as  “not con­cen­trat­ing on some­thing because you are think­ing about some­thing else or some­thing that draws your atten­tion away”.  I am even guilty of think­ing of dis­trac­tion in that way.  The prob­lem with this def­i­n­i­tion is that it doesn’t rec­og­nize the mul­ti­ple ways that peo­ple learn.  When I look at the true def­i­n­i­tion of dis­tracted, I can think of a list of exam­ples that have had me extremely dis­tracted with­out hav­ing much stimulation.

• Long bor­ing lectures
• Painful Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tions with too many facts and too many bullets
• Tasks that require lit­tle effort
• Work that doesn’t allow me to inter­act with oth­ers (online, face-to-face, phone)

These exam­ples cer­tainly don’t have lots of extra­ne­ous stim­u­lus, but my atten­tion is cer­tainly diverted dur­ing each of those exam­ples.  I really strug­gle to not have my atten­tion diverted dur­ing those exam­ples.  Else­where is often some­where in that space between my ears with a totally non­relavent topic.  In many ways I may be the poster child for multi-tasking when I’m in an engag­ing work­shop or class.  Some may argue that I’m not focus­ing, dis­tracted, and off-task.  Dur­ing yesterday’s work­shop with Jeff, I bounced between Twit­ter, Google notes, a backchan­nel con­ver­sa­tion, surf­ing the inter­net, and even email.  The rea­son it was engag­ing for me is that I was able to find a tool that engaged me as opposed to being forced to learn in one way.  I’m sure there were oth­ers in the room who sim­ply lis­tened to Jeff and took notes because that is how they learn best.  That’s OK!  We know how impor­tant dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion is, but yet we often fail to pro­vide stu­dents the oppor­tu­nity and own­er­ship to differentiate.

But what about the time you spent check­ing email, surely that isn’t appropriate?

I would argue that by not allow­ing me to check my email, I would be more dis­tracted.  Sim­ply put, if there is an impor­tant mes­sage I am wait­ing for, my atten­tion will be else­where.  By quickly check­ing my email, and resolv­ing the issue, I can hope­fully put the issue to rest and focus on the pre­sen­ta­tion.  This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t have guide­lines about check­ing email or face­book.  You may find it ben­e­fi­cial to teach stu­dents how and when to check them at the most appro­pri­ate times.  We need to teach respon­si­ble behav­ior!  If you don’t allow for it, they will do it any­way!  Next time you walk into a work­shop with edu­ca­tors,  notice how many check­ing those net­works dur­ing the presentation.

One-to-one schools have a unique oppor­tu­nity to keep stu­dents MORE engaged by pro­vid­ing mul­ti­ple stim­uli and dif­fer­en­ti­ated tools.  Some stu­dents may love the col­lab­o­ra­tive notes, oth­ers the lec­ture, and oth­ers a mul­ti­tude of things.  Hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about what dis­tracted and engaged looks like with your stu­dents may be a great place to start.

Nick Sauers

I spent today in a learn­ing ses­sion with Jeff Utecht and a group of admin­is­tra­tors from North­west Iowa.  The con­tent cov­ered in this ses­sion was excel­lent, but instead of focus­ing on it  I want to high­light the deliv­ery method of Jeff’s ses­sion.  Although my post isn’t cen­ter­ing around the con­tent today , that isn’t to say I won’t be steal­ing lots of ideas he shared in the furtue.

Through­out the ses­sion, Jeff mod­eled ways to use tech­nol­ogy to move our think­ing to higher lev­els on Bloom’s Tax­on­omy while actively engag­ing our group. Here are some of the ways he did that:

• Mul­ti­ple mem­bers took notes in Google Docs.  One mem­ber was respon­si­ble for each of the sep­a­rate columns.
• One mem­ber “doo­dled” about the con­tent on the board.

• Par­tic­i­pants who had Twit­ter accounts tweeted about the day (#aeatrain­ing)
• The rest of the group was able to par­tic­i­pate in a backchan­nel conversation.
• Group mem­bers also posted com­ments and ques­tions to wall­washer.
• Par­tic­i­pants’ groups were given a very high level task to com­plete and then report back to the group.
• Through­out the day, the entire group was eval­u­at­ing and explor­ing resources and examples…lots and lots of examples.

At the end of the day, Jeff chal­lenged the group of admin­is­tra­tors to model the use of tech­nolo­gies with their teach­ers.  Jeff’s train­ing wasn’t focused on tools, but he did high­light ways that tools can enhance teach­ing and learn­ing.  Hope­fully, all edu­ca­tors see the value in mod­el­ing.  Can admin­is­tra­tors really expect their teach­ers to use tech­nol­ogy to trans­form edu­ca­tion if they aren’t mod­el­ing that?  Can teach­ers?  Sure, your high fly­ing teach­ers and stu­dents will excel with­out mod­el­ing, but we also need to be con­cerned about the rest of the group!

Nick Sauers

I spent the day on Wednes­day in Sigour­ney, Iowa with a group of approx­i­mately 250 edu­ca­tors from 25 Iowa schools.  Across the state at Newell-Fonda, a gath­er­ing of approx­i­mately the same size also met, for a day of pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment for one-to-one schools.  For the last two years I have worked with many of these schools, and it is excit­ing to see how the schools have worked together to help one another grow.

I “led” one very infor­mal ses­sion, with no set agenda, for admin­is­tra­tors.  This group included cur­rent one– to one admin­is­tra­tors as well as prospec­tive one– to one admin­is­tra­tors. Nat­u­rally the prospec­tive one– to –one admin­is­tra­tors had ques­tions about the” nuts and bolts” kinds of things like staffing and expenses.  These ques­tions were addressed by the vet­eran one-to-one edu­ca­tors in the group.  The direc­tion the  con­ver­sa­tion went from there is what I found to be the most excit­ing.  These vet­er­ans focused on how one-to one has to be about chang­ing teach­ing and NOT about  the tech­nol­ogy.  I was eager to join the con­ver­sa­tion and even­tu­ally jumped in to echo their com­ments.   I wish every one –to-one edu­ca­tor could have heard this con­ver­sa­tion.  I get con­cerned about one to one fail­ing because the focus for some has become the tech­nol­ogy, and not about chang­ing teach­ing. Our con­ver­sa­tion re-energized me because it seems like many of our lead­ers are using one-to-one as a trans­for­ma­tive tool.

Ear­lier in the day I sat in on a ses­sion led by Matt Towns­ley and Shawn Cor­nally that also was refresh­ing because it didn’t focus on just the tech­nol­ogy.  Many ses­sions at tech­nol­ogy con­fer­ences, some of which I have led, sim­ply focus on tech­nol­ogy tools.  Obvi­ously, there is a need for tools train­ing, and those ses­sions are ben­e­fi­cial for many edu­ca­tors.  Matt and Shawn’s ses­sion was unique because it didn’t focus on tech­nol­ogy tools.  Their focus was about chang­ing the way that we teach.  They chal­lenged one-to-one edu­ca­tors to use the tech­nol­ogy to change their teaching!

Thanks to all of the edu­ca­tors from around the state and nation who helped myself and oth­ers grow with a great day of learning!

The inabil­ity of stu­dents to get online once they leave school is a prob­lem fac­ing many one-to-one edu­ca­tors.  A while back I posted about this con­cern, but I’d like to revisit the topic. 

How can/do edu­ca­tors assign home­work that requires stu­dents to go online when not all stu­dents have inter­net access?

I don’t want to regur­gi­tate my pre­vi­ous post entirely, but step one for schools must be to actu­ally eval­u­ate what the level of access is in their dis­trict.  Many dis­tricts find that it is much higher than they expected.  An excel­lent way to gather this infor­ma­tion would be to sur­vey all of your stu­dents. The Pew His­panic Cen­ter recently pub­lished such a sur­vey by race and eth­nic­ity.

Once schools know the real­ity of inter­net access, they will still need to address the home­work issue for stu­dents who “don’t have access”. 

This issue actu­ally came back on my radar because of a recent change the FCC made to E-Rate fund­ing.  On Sep­tem­ber 23, the FCC released var­i­ous updates in a press release.  The point below is the one that stuck out to me. 

“School Spots: The FCC is also open­ing the door to “School Spots” — where schools have the option to pro­vide Inter­net access to the local com­mu­nity after stu­dents go home. With afford­able fiber, these School Spots are a major step toward the National Broad­band Plan’s goal of con­nect­ing an anchor insti­tu­tion in every com­mu­nity to afford­able 1 giga­bit per sec­ond broad­band. School Spots will help ensure that peo­ple who oth­er­wise lack access can use broadband.”

Schools can now help stu­dents get access out­side of school!  I recently brain­stormed with a group of teach­ers in an urban one-to-one dis­trict who rec­om­mended some of the fol­low­ing options for stu­dents with­out access.

• Develop a google map with com­mu­nity hotspots so stu­dents can eas­ily locate places to connect.
• Encour­age busi­nesses to open their wire­less access.
• Work with local cell phone com­pa­nies to obtain wire­less modems that stu­dents can con­nect with from any­where.  Develop a sys­tem to check these out from the media cen­ter so that stu­dents with the most urgent and pur­pose­ful need can use the device.
• Work with inter­net providers to pro­vide less expen­sive plans for low SES fam­i­lies.  This could be a great PR oppor­tu­nity for the provider!
• Give more time on home­work when stu­dents are expected to use the internet.

The “home­work inter­net prob­lem” can be solved with some cre­ative thinking!

Edu­ca­tors fre­quently ask me what tools their school should be using  and teach­ing to their staffs.  They also rou­tinely express how dif­fi­cult it is to stay cur­rent with all the new tools that exist. My responses always cen­ter on the fol­low­ing two things. 

Ask­ing what tools your school should be focus­ing on is the wrong ques­tion to begin with.  Schools instead need to begin by ask­ing what goal(s) they are try­ing to accom­plish.  Once they have deter­mined their goals, then schools are able to select tools that align with their goals.  The fol­low­ing sites help edu­ca­tors find tools for the goal that they are tar­get­ing.  (Thanks to my Twit­ter friends @B_Wagoner and @DrDial for their help find­ing these sources.)

• Blooms Dig­i­tal Taxonomy
• Mas­ter List of Web 2.0 Tools
• Visual Bloom’s Taxonomy

The sec­ond con­cern I fre­quently hear is from edu­ca­tors who ques­tion if they can stay cur­rent with tech­nol­ogy tools.  Edu­ca­tors also won­der how they can stay in front of their stu­dents knowl­edge and use of tech­nol­ogy.  Quite sim­ply, this is almost impos­si­ble.  Most edu­ca­tors will never be able to “keep up” with all of their stu­dents.  What they can do is con­tin­u­ally improve their teach­ing with the help of their learn­ing net­works and even stu­dents.  They can con­tin­u­ally evolve and improve their skills.  With an atti­tude of con­tin­ued learn­ing, edu­ca­tors will keep their stu­dents and them­selves mov­ing forward.

 Nick Sauers

A few days ago on Dan­ger­ously Irrel­e­vant, Scott McLeod posted about a “text­book chal­lenge” con­test. The short descrip­tion that fol­lows comes from that post.

In a sub­se­quent post he wrote about his analy­sis of his daughter’s 7th grade Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence text.  This could be an awe­some activ­ity for any edu­ca­tor.  As you can imag­ine, you’ll most likely find that the resources in your text­books are not nearly as rel­e­vant, cur­rent, and engag­ing as the things that you can find online.

• Don’t try to do every­thing at once!  You may ini­tially want to start with one class, or unit.
• Share the respon­si­bil­ity with other team mem­bers respon­si­ble for teach­ing the same cur­ricu­lum as you. You may also want to use stu­dents to help you find resources.
Make con­nec­tions with teach­ers out­side of your school who are teach­ing sim­i­lar things.  Use their resources!
If you truly want to use more online resources, make the time to do so!  This may mean that you elim­i­nate time that you gen­er­ally com­mit to some­thing else. 
Google is your friend!  Once you start doing this, you will real­ize that you can find good resources fairly quickly.

I hope to hear from some of you who use the text­book chal­lenge to begin chang­ing the way that you select the resources you use with your students!

Nick Sauers