darrenkuropatwa

Being Regular is Good

Posted by Dean Shareski on in Blogs, Personal, Video 4 Comments

Being regular is good. In many ways. 😉

But in this case being regular is about trying to be consistent and persistent in sharing ideas and content. I realize one of the beautiful things about a blog or any online space is the freedom to publish whenever. Even though most of us don't publish as our primary jobs, we all understand the power and value of sharing. I've talked about that once or twice myself. 

Like spending enough time with good friends, I have this need to read and listen to my favorite people who happen to also be great thinkers and sharers. These people who have taken the time to set up shop and blog provide me with wonderful insights and ideas to mull over and pass along to others. I depend on their desire to share. And when they don't, I miss it. 

Being someone who is 7+ years into blogging and and even longer reader, I began to think of many of the early bloggers and podcasters who have either slowed down dramatically or quit altogether. For the majority I have no idea why but presume life got in the way and that's understandable. For others I fear twitter got in the way and now instead of meal sized portions of learning, all we're getting is table scraps and candy. Whatever the reason, I've made it a point to post here regularly if only to force myself to be reflective and reinforce the habit of sharing.  Bud Hunt has reminded me often about the importance of writing as has this great post by Seth Godin that I share often with my students. If you've not read it, do so now and then feel a little guilty. Here's the gist:

I believe that everyone should write in public. Get a blog. Or use Squidoo or Tumblr or a microblogging site. Use an alias if you like. Turn off comments, certainly–you don't need more criticism, you need more writing.

Do it every day. Every single day. Not a diary, not fiction, but analysis. Clear, crisp, honest writing about what you see in the world. Or want to see. Or teach (in writing). Tell us how to do something.

Although I ask you to please leave the comments turned on, I think we're all friends here and can help each other. 

So this is totally selfish on my part but as I continue advocate folks to share, I'd love for you to do it more. You know who you are, that's all of you by the way. And also why not try something besides writing, I'd love to hear your voice. 

While I've been trying to write regularly, I think I need to podcast more often. Remind me to do that. Someone who's been doing a great job lately is my buddy Darren. Check out some of his short, but awesome video blogs. 

 

How easy is this? Record yourself thinking. Press about 3 buttons. It's something Darren has been playing with lately and I think it's awesome. These tools make this ridiculously easy. If even a few people find it valuable it's worth it. More importantly it's good for Darren. But even more important, it's good for me. Because I'm selfish. 

So if I made you feel a bit guilty I'm a little bit sorry but seriously write something, anything. Even better, let us hear your voice and maybe see your face once in a while. 

Your Research Matters

Posted by Dean Shareski on in Blogs 6 Comments

Cross posted at the Huffington Post

John Spencer is quickly becoming one of my favourite reads. He’s clever, succinct and more importantly works with kids everyday. His recent post about why he doesn’t believe in research comes to me after experiencing a few issues around research of late.

Much of my own feelings about research are a result of reading a lot of Dave Weinberger’s writings. Weinberger talks about the changing shape of knowledge and that network knowledge is negotiated as opposed to traditional knowledge which was more accepted. Print and books are designed to contain and be the final word on truth. You don’t ask questions to paper. Now with work being online, our reaction is always to want to have a discussion around ideas. Of course this is extremely liberating both also problematic when everything is questioned and conversations involved many perspectives. Welcome to democracy. 

While preparing for an upcoming presentation I came across a slide I’ve used citing that our brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. Sounds impressive and useful for convincing folks to use more images to help understanding. The problem is the research, as far as many can tell is not true. Darren and Alan have done great work in trying to find the source but have had no luck. So given that research is not valid what do I do? I don’t need research to tell me that I learn better when visuals are involved. Some visuals are better than others but in trying to craft a message I know the impact a powerful image has on my recall ability. I could pull up some other research but in the end, if I use John’s questions in his post, I may not find it that valuable.

Yesterday my wife was feeling a bit stressed over a parent who has been emailing her because she’s concerned about the lack of homework, the fact she doesn’t use spelling tests or use paper agendas. These are clearly hot button issues that many feel strongly about one way or another. I tried to track down a bit of research to support her and while I found some that did, I found others that did not. Of course we know as John says, that research can be used to support almost any notion. Which is why for me, the real important research is the reflective teacher. I’ve been talking for an awful long time about the importance, the significance of teachers who blog. I’ve not talked about it specifically from a research perspective but to me the writing that someone does that analyzes and assesses their practice is every bit as valuable as the university studies that follow all the fancy research rules. When working with the dynamics of children, research often leads us to focus on simple solutions. We want to distil and synthesize complex studies down to something manageable and usable. “Give kids homework”. “Don’t give homework.” Do you see how narrow and simplistic those stances are?

Like grading and assessment, many are looking for simple, clean answers that if possible fit in a scale between 1-100. But like parenting, the education of a child is anything but simple and clean. That doesn’t mean research is useless but it does mean that we’ll all continue to use it to serve our purposes and perhaps that’s okay. What’s not okay is to suggest that your findings are definitive and that personal experiences as educators are less important. Again, that’s why I urge teachers to become researchers themselves. I believe they all are involved in action research everyday, trying to move closer to understanding how kids learn. What I need them to do is to share their experiences and describe their own practices. I’ve been saying this a lot to people lately but I try to “describe” not “prescribe” ideas for teachers. There are some things we all agree upon. Among them:

  • reading to kids is good
  • writing a lot makes you a better writer
  • we learn best by doing
  • exercise helps improve learning

I don’t need research to help me support these ideas. I will pick and choose research that support my own beliefs. And by research I mean blog posts and experiences of other teachers. What I won’t do is tell everyone they have to do likewise. I’ll use that research to ask others to consider a new approach, then wait for them to respond. That’s exactly what happened as I described something I was doing with my students around assessment. While I’m building loosely off of research, the real research comes with my practice. I tried it, shared my experiences and invited others to see if it would work. Bill tried it and documented his experience. That’s action research, research that’s valuable and meaningful. 

So my advice is not to suggest formal educational studies and research isn’t valuable. But it’s real value comes practitioners see themselves as researchers, test the theories and share the results in these negotiable, network spaces where conversations and professional dialog provide value not only to yourself but to others.

 

 

Pimp My Slide

Posted by Dean Shareski on in collaboration, design, digitalstorytelling, networks, socialnetworks 1 Comment

I like design and I like making slides. We know that images can increase recall and understanding. You don’t have to agree and this post isn’t so much about convincing you of that as it is about the wonderful ways in which collaboration and push back can happen online and actually make things better. 

I’ve been thinking about the phrase which I have come to dislike, “it’s not about the technology” I wanted to capture that idea in an image and began thinking about the way musicians use their instruments. Trying to find a name of someone who would be most recognizable I chose Yo Yo Ma. You don’t have to acknowledge if you’ve never heard of him before because the image I found tells you all you need to know about his love of music and the cello. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/2297224410

 

​So I began with this:

 

After I posted it to flickr, Darren chimed in with this suggestion:

 

Try using a brown similar to the cello instead of yellow. You can use the colour picker in Keynote to do that.

Love the pic, and the quote.

I tried that and responded:

Tried your advice Darren but the brown was too dark, not enough contrast with the background. I used the cello colour for the outline though. I think it’s better this way though. Thanks for the feedback. I’ll take more if you have it. 😉

 

I like this. Looks better. Are you using two different fonts? I think I’d stick with one; there’s something about the font used in the smaller text that clashes with the larger font.

Fair enough and wise. I tried again.

Darren continued to work at making it better,

Ooo, liking that better; wonder how it looks without white outline of the brown text. Maybe no outline but keep shadow? No shadow?

I played a little with the kerning and positioning until I had it somewhat better.

 

 Darren Draper joined our conversation with his own ideas. 

Outlined text helps, but a solid bg on the photo would make it stronger. 

Darren then went off and made this:

None of us are graphic designer experts and will all admit our amateur approach to design. However we all three understand that it does matter and we also enjoy the process. But also the collaboration, the push back and willingness to go back, edit and revise lead to a better product. We joked later about starting a Fix My Slide meme. I don’t know about that but I do think there’s some simple ideas here for you and your students to seek feedback and find ways to learn with others without the limitations of geography and time. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Playing with ideas at Educon

Posted by Dean Shareski on in Conferences, presentations 6 Comments

I don't go to conferences to get new ideas. I've been down that road. That's not to say that there's nothing for me to learn but as connected as I and many others are, it's rare that something will be shared that is completely new. I attend conferences to play with ideas. That's why Educon is a great conference. It fosters and encourages playing with ideas. 

I was involved in leading 2 conversations and both were learning experiences for me. Darren Kuropatwa and I led a session called "What's Wrong with This Picture?" I learned a lot during our planning stages and since Darren and I have never presented together before, it took some time to get our cadence and feel. We both felt there were some good things we did and also some things we would change if we were to present this again. Educon sessions generally focus around rich conversations using a variety of formats and strategies but the idea is for as many as possible to participate. Darren and I wanted to see if we could get our participants to play and explore with ideas around imagery. We were a little concerned it may not work due to time constraints, equipment and simply because it's not normally the format at the conference. We were both blown away with the quality, imagination and thinking that went into their work. Take a look. Upon return the conversation about critical thinking, media literacy, quantity vs quality emerged. The strong takeaway for me was that a little play can lead to important conversations. While I know that part of the Educon mantra is about moving away from shiny tools and discuss the big questions about school and learning, I think we do both. I'm going to be sure to incorporate that more into my work.

Darren and Shelley

I've had the privilege of working with Alec Couros on many occasions.  In our session about an "Obligation to Share" we really wanted to drill deeper into the terminology, have folks share some of their stories and then discuss cultural shifts and barriers. I've had this on my mind for quite a while so I thought it would be a great opportunity to see if others were having similar conversations in their local situations. The stories that were shared were quite amazing in themselves. The lasting idea that came out of this was in various conversations with Shelley Paul. These conversations were a mix of face to face, blog posts and tweets. As Shelley and I talked it became clear to me that as leaders we need to be storytellers and help others begin sharing and see that sharing is just what we do. I'll blog more about this idea later but it was Shelley who helped flesh out this idea much more clearly than I had before. 

Educon is a great way to spend a few days. Thanks to Chris and crew for once again doing an outstanding job. There's lots of time and opportunity to gather and connect. I'm blessed that so many people are willing to spend time with me and connect personally and professionally. For me it's equal parts learning and party. Which is nice. 

Photo of Darren and Shelley by Kevin Jarrett

Photo of knowledge isn't in our heads by Darren Kuropatwa

The Kahn Academy

Posted by Dean Shareski on in Classrooms, free stuff, Video 11 Comments

I may be the last person on the planet to discover this, but even so, it’s worth showcasing. The Khan Academy is a website created by Sal Kahn who began it by wanting to tutor his nieces. (Reminds me of Darren K and Ellie.) What started out as a simple way to help them understand difficult math and science concepts is now a storehouse of over 1,000 videos. Listen as Sal explains why he did it and the power of this new form of learning. It’s well worth the 20 minutes.

I’m not convinced the idea of short tutorials works in all disciplines but certainly it does for Math and Science. As much as this body of work is impressive for the content, I’m more impressed by the passion and joy Sal gains from helping others learn. In addition the form factor here is worth exploring.  If you skipped the video go back and watch it and perhaps you can answer the following:

What are the implications here? Could a student learn Algebra with this without attending a high school class? What does it make us rethink when it comes to school and learning?