| Tag Archives: innovation

You Can’t Buy Change

by Clarence Fisher 2 Comments

I’ve received a few grumpy emails from people over the last several weeks.

Tied to a few of the posts I’ve written lately, several people have accused me of being anti-innovation, anti-change and of being anti-corporate.

I can understand how people might feel that way. A few of my posts have had the distinct leaning of my having COMS (Cranky Old Man Syndrome). But actually, nothing could be further from the truth. I think the edtech industry is maturing. And I believe that is bringing us a new set of challenges. Corporations smell the enormous amounts of money that is being spent by schools and districts. They have responded by offering a new set of products for us to purchase. This is their job.

But just as the title of this session at educon that I would have loved to attend says – you can’t buy change.

Change is not a product that you can simply throw money at.

Change is not a new set of classroom ipads, or ipods, or Smart boards, or cameras.

Change is built on practice and research. Change is built on what actually takes place in classrooms. Change is a process that grows, is cyclical and needs to be supported (or squashed).

Change certainly requires us to look at the tools we use in our classrooms, but it can’t stop there. That is too simplistic. Change requires us to deeply examine our pedagogy. It requires us to reexamine our curricula and find ways to construct meaningful experiences and inquiries with our students. To change we must examine what counts as knowledge in our classrooms and think about how our assessments reach into those depths to look for evidence of achievement.

I am more than happy to promote all of the great companies and people and products that bring us into places where change is supported. Corporations that make innovative, accessible and interesting products. Corporations that provide spaces for teachers to examine what they do and how they do those things. People who support those changes. What does make me unhappy though is when any individual or corporation becomes too dominant in the debate. When people more closely associated with a product or a service than a classroom or a school begins to talk about how learning or change happens, it makes me grumpy and worried about where we are headed. I am not prepared to hand over what happens in my classroom to anyone who is not prepared to spend a lot of hours in my space learning about my kids, our goals, and our context. Teaching is a complex business so I’m always worried (and often admittedly cynical) about products that tell me they are going to make things “simple,” or “easy.” While we all appreciate things that make our classroom lives a little easier to handle, simple often comes at a price and I’m often not prepared to pay it.

So lets not let the shiny gadgets distract us from what we are really doing here – helping kids to live in a global changing world. And no, you can’t buy that.

Consumerism and Producerism

by Clarence Fisher 7 Comments

I’ve been holding on to this post for a week or so, rolling it around in my head trying to connect a few dots before clicking the publish button.

It’s got to do with Apple, and SOPA and Raspberry Pi and education and learning and on and on and on…..

It started with the education event that Apple hosted on January 19th. At this event Apple unveiled iBooks2 and iBooks Author. After several weeks of hype and people breathlessly awaiting the great advancement that Apple would give us in education – we got interactive textbooks. Interesting as a business model, interactive texts and textbooks are definitely something that students are interested in, and something that is probably inevitable given how students are becoming used to working with text.

But these are certainly not a ground breaker. And in fact, the details of the end user agreement have created huge amounts of controversy as it becomes clear that using iBooks Author ties you into the loop of using an Apple product to produce the text that can only be sold (or given away) through the iBookstore and then can only be read on iBooks 2 enabled devices such as iPads. Some folks are wondering if this tight loop will survive an antitrust case. Others are wondering how many schools are going to be able to afford to buy into this model. For make no mistake, buying into this model is something that is going to cost. Apple has grown into a massive company. 13 billion dollars in income in the final quarter of 2011. One of the largest and most successful corporations in history. (Its hard to remember that only a decade ago (or so) they were the underdog and were in fact in very real danger of becoming bankrupt.)

And this is where the danger is.

We need to remember that Apple is a corporation. They are going to do what is right for them and their shareholders first. They are more concerned with profits and shareholder value than they are with learning and doing what is good for students. This struck home to me after David Warlick left this comment on this post I had written previously about redefining edtech:

“What concerns me, Clarence, is that technology seems to be advancing to the point that it can behave just like a textbook. I think that we’re approaching a tipping point where edtech truly fuses with the operation and image of education.

But! ..will that tipping point come at the arrival of a technology that fits education as we know it?

..or will the tipping point come as we clearly articulate and adopt a new image of teaching and learning that reflects a new environment — resulting in part from technological advances.

Do we digitize education or do we transform it…”

As time goes by, many corporations are giving us tools that allow us to do what we’ve always done in education rather than producing tools that will help and encourage teachers to transform what happens in classrooms. There is a far larger market for digital textbooks than there is for a tool that will allow us to connect with folks who think in new and different ways than we do.

Which brings me to the final step. This article in the Globe and Mail was published on January 18th, the day that the SOPA protests had darkened a lot of the web. It brings to light an interesting division in society and technology. That of producerism and consumerism:

“Consumerism is the well-known, American-invented philosophy of defining oneself by brands of consumption. I wear Nike, therefore I am an athlete. I drive a Suburban, therefore I am outdoorsy. I drink Starbucks, therefore I am cultured.

Producerism is the less-well-known French alternative philosophy of defining oneself by their output of production. I paint, therefore I am an artist. I draft legal arguments, therefore I am a lawyer. I throw cobblestones, therefore I am a protester.”

How do these philosophies fit into what we believe about education? How do they effect what we do in our classrooms?

Do we believe that we are preparing students for the future simply because our district has spent thousands (possibly even tens or hundreds of thousands) on iPads or Smart boards, or Macbook Pros or whatever shiny gadget has gathered societies attention for the moment?

It makes me wonder, is our current form of education being legitimized, digitized and standardized by corporations, teachers and districts heavily invested in preserving the status quo? Education simply cannot be focused on the consumption of products and information at the expense of creativity, connection and community.

In the last few years as the edtech industry has matured we have seen a blossoming of companies willing to provide services for schools. But we’ve also seen the opportunity to use tools that are cheaper and allow us to focus on creation and community instead of on consumption.

Where do we want the emphasis placed in our classrooms and for our learners?

Interview with James Dyson

by Clarence Fisher

Sir James Dyson wonders what happens to a society who produces twelve times as many lawyers as engineers….

It’s a good question.

He wonders about classrooms and tells us that at Dyson, engineers have to work at creating something there very first day at work. How many classrooms is that true in?

Prep Time and Innovation

by Clarence Fisher 2 Comments

Most teachers have some kind of time built in to their schedules where they don’t have contact with students. This might be time to do grading of assignments, plan lessons, track down resources, etc. It’s called all sorts of things. At my school, we generally call this “prep time.” As in “prepping lessons.”

The time available for this varies wildly from school to school and from nation to nation. Some schools and teachers have zero non contact time. Other nations build in hours each day for teachers to prepare what they are going to teach, meet in teams and learn together. In Manitoba, this has become a bargaining issue and the latest collective agreements are now settling with guaranteed time built in for teachers.

I’ve generally had 40 minutes each day, and for the last few years, teaching grade seven and eight, it’s been an average of about 60 minutes each day. This has been generous and has allowed me time to do a lot of things. But this school year I’m losing over 50% of that time. Due to rescheduling efforts and my having to teach two high school classes (grade 9 and 11 english) as well as my grade seven and eight students for 75% of my day, my prep time has been cut back to 40 minutes each day, for 3 days our of a 4 day rotational schedule. On the fourth day, I will not have a prep period.

I hate to complain about this. I know a lot of teachers who work each day all day and have done so for years. But this has me wondering about the relationship between this non contact time and innovative classrooms. When teachers are teaching all day and have no time away from students, I wonder if the amount of innovation that goes on in classrooms suffers?

I would bet that it does.

Prep time to me has always been R + D time. It has been time when I have accomplished some of my grading and lesson planning, but I have also tracked down and tested out new tools. Set up RSS feeds and tried new things in the online community that the Idea Hive is. So I am obviously sad to be losing over 50% of my prep time for a variety of reasons. More grading and busyness outside of school hours. But I am also interested to see the effect that it has on innovation and change in my classroom.

Knowledge Care

by Clarence Fisher 1 Comment

I’ve recently run into the concept of knowledge care. (downloadable pdf here) Having to do with learning communities, this concept teaches us that academic understanding, knowledge and output should only be half of the “product” we are interested in when we are working with students.

This article gave examples of corporations that are involved in global collaborations. It stressed that the innovation or product are only half of what is important that comes of these collaborations. The other half is the knowledge about taking part in work like this. A time of reflection, of bringing together knowledge gained about working in these ways.

Sounds like a great idea, so Heather Durnin and I, in our thinwalled classroom have taken up this challenge. Heather and I currently have our students collaborating on a final project to do with the novel The Book Thief. We’ve read the novel over skype and supported our students with a daily chatroom and a sticky wall for questions and reflections each day. Now that the novel is completed, the students are working on a field guide to the town of Molching, the place where the majority of the novel takes place. The students have come up with a list of people, places and events from the book. They have self organized themselves into groups, and using google docs, are beginning to write this field guide.

So far we only have had a few classes together working on this, but Heather asked her students to reflect on the process of learning online together. What they have come up with so far is quite interesting:

- People work at different speeds. Slow down and be patient. Not all of us are alike and we all work at different speeds.
- Not all people are comfortable participating right away. Ask them some literal questions to get them involved – something they will no the answer to.
- If someone is deleting your work, ask them to stop, ask them for their opinion.
- Assign a recorder
- If someone is going off track, don’t follow. In fact, don’t be scared to tell them to get back on track.
- It’s important to socialize and get to know your partner.

We’ll be adding to this document as time goes by. It is shared between the two classes and is something we are going to spend time reflecting on with our classes.

These reflections have nothing to do with the academic outcomes the students were asked to focus on. Yet, these are the skills, the scaffolding that make these types of collaboration possible. Powerful learning on the part of the students.

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