Too much tech? Go for a walk in the woods...

Feel like it's too much work to stay up on every gadget and website that's out there to be used in some educational way? You certainly aren't alone, but it doesn't have to be that way. Think of the constant stream of gadgets and tech as an actual stream somewhere in the woods...

On a hike you happen across it and find something worthwhile: a nice view, a cool sip, a good fishing spot. You're there for a bit, then you continue on your journey. There's not a need to explore the whole stream or to stay there for longer than its benefit requires (though some people will and that's OK; we call them explorers and they do valuable work).

Later you bump into a friend at a place you both like to hang out and end up telling her about the stream you found, how to get to it and what it did for you.

Later on, your friend shares your story with some of her friends who in turn tell her about other streams they know about. The next time you run into your friend, she fills you in on what she's learned about other streams and hikes, now that she knows you're someone who's interested in such things. You then get to decide which you will investigate further, which you'll end up returning to again and again, or which streams you'll not bother with.

The next time you feel the need for a different view, a fresh place to drink, or some more fish, you now have options. You don't have to be a stream expert - or an explorer - to find what you need. You only need to have enough initial experiences of your own to have conversations with others who have their own experiences.

It's the same with technology: there's no need for anyone to be an expert in everything - or even to know about all the options. That's nigh impossible; there are just too many streams.

I see this especially with Twitter. People get discouraged because they can't keep up with all the tweets in a particular hashtag. They feel like they're missing too much and it makes them feel lost and overwhelmed. But that's not what the tool is for! Twitter is a stream you happen by, not a to-do list. Like the conversations in the example story above, it's a way to find snapshots of conversations that you can spend more time in if you'd like.

Not everything out there is for everyone, but there's enough for most to to find benefit in the conversation. 

A quick Google Drive organizational tip

A problem as old as computers takes on a new level of complexity in the digital sharing age.

Keeping all of the files and folders that we create, share, and receive nowadays is a full-time task - it's a responsibility that comes with the productivity power of our computers. We all know the best method is to organize our digital data as we create or receive it, but sometimes that just doesn't happen.

In addition to allowing us to share information with an ease never dreamed of before, Google Drive also offers multiple ways to organize the files and folders it holds for us. For me, the easiest method by far is ye olde drag & drop, and I am very appreciative of the Drive developers for keeping this function working well.

But sometimes when I've gone a bit too long between clean up sessions, I run into a snag: if I can't remember where the file I want to organize is, then I can't drag & drop it to where I actually want it. If this happens to you as well, here's a trick I've discovered to help me locate stray files:

  1. Search for the file in Google Drive, and open it when it shows up in the search results. NOTE: It would be great if the search results would tell you the location of the file right then and there, but they don't.
  2. Once the file is open, close it. You don't even have to do anything to it - just let it fully load and then close the tab.
  3. That file will now be listed at the top of the "Recent" section in Google Drive, along with the file's location. 

And voila! What's even better is that if you didn't really need to know the location (perhaps you just wanted to find the file so that you could drag it into a folder), you can do that right from the Recent listing. Easy peasy: search, open, close, drag. Done!

Hope this tip helps you as much as it's helped me!

Time's the thing

One of the things we do in traditional schools is [say] "It's Martin Luther King's birthday" and we say to the kids, "He had a dream, what's yours?" The implication being, "How would you change the world? Or how would you solve global warming? Or how would you solve human trafficking?" Well, those are really sophisticated problems, that really sophisticated adults spend a lot of years trying to solve and maybe not solve at all. When we give children thirty minutes to solve those problems, we deny them authentic opportunities to learn. And what we get as a result is just politically correct parroting, repeating, echoing of what we as adults think that they should say.

- progressive education leader Dr. Gary Stager, from a 2010 interview 

There's a lot wrapped up in the situation Dr. Stager presents in the above excerpt, but currently I find I'm focused on one tangent. I'm wondering what effect the "traditional" class schedule - where students are segregated into ~45 minute chunks of time and thought throughout the day - has on two related things: 1) our students' ability to think about and work with authentic big questions and 2) our ability as schools and teachers to provide our students the chance to engage with authentic big questions.

Now, I'm not trying to claim that we are to be expected to solve those particular world-wide problems in our high school classes, but there is certainly a level of question that lies between "when was the Magna Carta signed" and "how do we stop human trafficking" that is probably more useful to our students' lives than the former and at the same time more relevant than the latter. But given the traditional model of 7 or 8 short periods a day, what kind of questions are we currently suited to answer?

It's pretty much proven that being constantly interrupted by incoming email messages does terrible things to our productivity by cutting off our continuity of thought. So what does that say about asking our students to get up every ~45 minutes, stop what they're doing, and hurry down a hallway to an entirely new area of study? As SLA founder and principal Chris Lehmann says, "We ask kids to have 7 different bosses a day. How many of us would be good at that?"

Additionally, what educational impact does such a schedule have on teachers and their teaching? I know from (albeit, anecdotal) personal experience that there's a lot of energy/effort overhead in the process of trying to lead students on an intellectual journey in the time allotted. Set-up, review, and clock-watching leaving limited time and attention for honest, thoughtful discussion. And since we teachers are under the gun in most schools to deliver content necessary for test-based assessments, in many classes there really isn't any time to even entertain the idea of a student-driven intellectual adventure - there's only room for our content. It physically hurts me whenever I have to say to a student, "That's a great question, why don't you do more with it on your own time?" To me that's like telling the kid, "Your ideas are not as important as my content" and worse, "I also can't really take the time to guide you through how to foster your own learning and investigation. Sorry." That is not the way I prefer to encourage independent learning.

I really believe the most meaningful and satisfying moments of my life as a teacher have not come from my own plans, but from my engagement and interactions with students. There's a serendipity (also a big deal to Dr. Stager) to what comes out of a room of people working on their own understanding together. In my view, any schedule that can increase the opportunity for this serendipity is a better option than the traditional 7 or 8 period school day.

So what's the better option? Block schedules? Completely PBL mini-terms? I love hearing and reading about what other people think about this problem and the solutions they've found, so please leave your thoughts in the comments.