Drape's Takes

I've never really been one for pomp, and few circumstances warrant a love for ninety minutes of "Jon Doe, Master of Science in Science of Science Science and Science..." But I decided to walk the walk yesterday, and here's why.

First, a little backstory.

I successfully defended my dissertation in March 2011 and was told at the time that I was then eligible to participate in the commencement exercises that would take place in early May. I said, "Great!" but quickly learned that a successful dissertation defense doth not a graduate make. So, last year's commencement came and went without my presence and I finished my doctoral requirements two busy weeks later. Why celebrate the completion of tasks when those tasks aren't really complete? My diploma came in the mail four weeks later, and my email signature has read "Darren E. Draper, Ed.D." ever since.

Next, more backstory.

One of the most meaningful aspects of graduate work, for me, has been the opportunity that research and deep, concentrated thinking provides to form strong, lasting relationships.

In August 2011, I noticed that a colleague hadn't yet completed his dissertation. Being the strong friend that I was, I took the opportunity to verbally abuse him first. "Quit your slackin' you slacker slack slack!" I then made him a deal that if he finished his dissertation on time, I would walk by his side at the next USU commencement.

At the time I made that deal, there was no way in a million years that he'd ever finish in time to graduate yesterday, so naturally he finished in time to graduate yesterday.

And so I walked.

We weren't twenty minutes into the ceremony yesterday when I remembered why I'd skipped every other similar opportunity to be miserable since high school (an Associates degree at UVU, Bachelors degree at BYU, Masters degree at USU, and an ESL endorsement in between). I also felt guilty for asking my wife, my kids, my parents, and in-laws to attend this grueling event with me; because two hours of crowded boredom can seem like a steep price to pay just to view dad dress up like Dumbledore for 20 seconds of hooding.

In the end, though, I'm really glad I did.

Because I "walked" and my family was there, they were able to see firsthand that some projects really do have an end; that even though the road might be long - and believe me, this one has been long - there's value to setting goals, working to accomplish them, and carrying through to the end. Because I "walked" and my family was there, I was able to thank them in person for their help and support. Yesterday, the words that I wrote in my dissertation's Acknowledgment were real, heartfelt, and expressed.

I would like to thank my committee chair, Dr. Jim Dorward, for his helpful and pointed advice throughout this entire journey. Few know the pain involved in climbing a mountain, but those that have climbed it before.

I also give special thanks to my family and colleagues for their encouragement, support, and patience as I have worked my way up the mountain. I couldn‘t have done it without you, and wonder if my children will ever recognize their father not hunched over his computer while sitting at the kitchen table.

So, I'm glad that I walked the walk. Even though it was nearly a year later. Even though it was boring and long, and even though it was painful for my kids. That's what families are for, and I love them dearly for their support! Here's to the hope that yesterday's experience might aid in inspiring my kids to succeed in school and understand its benefits.

Here's to their eventual, hard-earned, college and career success!

This was a fun email I wrote tonight. If you find these recommendations helpful, all the better.

Colleagues,

With Scot wanting to tour my favorite iPad apps yesterday and Hollie asking for recommended math apps today, I thought I'd throw together a quick list for you tonight. Hit delete on your keyboard now if you're not ready for a lengthy email: I won't be offended in the least. :-)

First, the iOS Report that Katie Blunt and others recently created includes dozens of recommendations. I asked them to include specific examples by subject and evidence-based instructional priority and think they've made a solid start. Be sure to use the clickable Table of Contents on page 2 to quickly jump to your interest.

Download here: http://cnyns.org/JwiKj8

Next comes my list. Because I come from a secondary background, these apps are probably best suited for older users - including adult learners - although many are also mentioned in the more elementary-slanted iOS Report.

Some of the apps included below are free, but most are not. Therefore, you can at least rest assured knowing that if I recommend an app here, I've given it a try and found it worthwhile enough to recommend to you. If you'd like to try any of these apps before you buy, you're more than welcome to take them for a spin on my iPad. (Would a list of apps to avoid purchasing be worthwhile to publish on our site?)

To be sure, iOS apps keep getting better and better every day! More to come, if you're interested. Which apps can't you live without?

D

---

Drape's Recommended iPad Apps
(Random Order)

iThoughtsHD - Decent mind mapper for brainstorming and thought organization.

iMovie - Very well-designed nonlinear video editor. Easily publish to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and elsewhere.

iPhoto - Powerful photo editor and organizer. Great for digital storytelling and organization!

Comic Life, Skitch - Digital storytelling, different apps for different projects and audiences. I also like Skitch for annotating photos, quick note summary of meeting slides.

PDF Pen - Edit PDFs, think of a textbook that is now editable by each student.

GarageBand - Teach music theory and generate a love for music creation and organization. Try it, you'll like it.

360 Panorama - Quickly and easily create panoramas. 2D pictures are so 2011.

Reminders - Now ties to Outlook Tasks (and has replaced ReQall and IMExchange for me with Siri - thanks Paula Logan for the suggestion).

Quick Office Pro HD - Nice alternative to iWork (Pages, Keynote, Numbers). At $20 for the suite, it's $10 cheaper than iWork if you're going to purchase all three, but doesn't yet support the retina display. Ties into more storage providers than iWork. If on a Mac, though, I prefer iWork - mostly because I'm bored to death of PowerPoint.

Noteshelf - Note taking app, with a Cornell template.

Remote - Control Keynote presentations from your phone, allowing you to wander the room. A little buggy, but better than nothing.

Goodreader, Dropbox - De facto storage solutions for iOS.

Star Walk for iPad - Interactive star map, smells better than most astronomy professors.

Google Earth - Interactive map with geographical highlights. I love using this for historical tours.

ArcGIS - Tap into ESRI's online GIS or create your own maps. Also GeoMobile for ArcGIS. 

GeoMeasure - Would've loved to have had this app when teaching geometry! Have students measure the area of a sector in real life (like a football field or section of lawn), verify answers with GeoMeasure.

iTunes U - Now on the iPad. See also Newsstand, iBooks, and iBooks Author!

ShowMe - View and create digital tutorials. Simple, yet very effective for electronic explicit instruction.

SCOtutor for iPad - Free for a limited time, video tutorials on how to use the iPad!

Study Apps:

TIPPS - SAT Prep, not ACT but still decent
ACT Student - Practice ACT questions
Khan Academy - Instructional videos by topic
Wolfram Alpha and most Wolfram Course Assistants - Nice supplements to traditional instruction
Simplepedia for iPad - Wikipedia reader with offline support

Which apps can't you live without?

Adapted from a conversation held during last week's round of job interviews. Solid candidate, refreshing perspective.

Our state Board of Education meets tonight to discuss the extent to which we - as a state - will be adopting or ignoring the emerging Common Core State Standards. They've invited public comment on the issues. Here's what I've written on their Facebook post, knowing the kind of right-wing thinking we're often dealing with in the great state of Utah.

The Common Core State Standards are neither distributed by Satan nor designed to send our unique state into a tailspin. Rather, they provide a collective and consistent understanding of that which students are expected to learn, so we all can then focus precious resources on topics that matter most.

Essentially, there are two key reasons I fully endorse Utah’s adoption of the Common Core:

1. If Utah students are to compete with students in other states, we’re better off playing by the same rulebook. (What kind of advantage would the Jazz have when playing the Lakers, if in LA points are scored differently than they are in Utah?)

2. The near nation-wide adoption of the Common Core has already improved the quality of curriculum materials immensely, and will continue to do so in years to come. Giving publishers a target that is common across all states facilitates an increase in competition for educational dollars (good for learners in a free-market economy) while eliminating the need for extraneous solutions (bad for those who insist upon going their own way).

Because we now live in a global society, the Common Core State Standards simply make sense.

What's your take? Am I a fool for thinking this way?

The Utah State of Office of Education (USOE) announced today that “it will develop and support open textbooks in the key curriculum areas of secondary language arts, science, and mathematics.” They also encourage “districts and schools throughout the state to consider adopting these textbooks for use beginning this fall.”

This is clearly a major victory for proponents of open education and a move laden with tremendous potential!

That said, I have mixed feelings about the announcement – or more specifically about the timing and readiness of districts across our state to transition toward open textbook use. Here’s why:

1. USOE requires Utah districts to conduct standardized testing using a Measured Progress-developed software client that can only be installed on Macintosh or Windows devices. There are no immediate plans for progressing (measuredly) away from this client-based testing solution and no solutions for the iPad or Android tablet devices in sight.
2. Very few districts in Utah are ready for 1:1 technology access: neither pedagogically, financially, nor culturally. Really.
3. Any initiative announced just before the Legislative session is subject to immediate suspicion.

Two questions now ring inside my open-education-loving head:

• Have you ever snuggled up with a netbook to read a good (e-)book?
• Is this really more of a political move – designed to convince proponents of private and home schooling that public school districts will now gladly hand over students (vouchers) AND develop a viable curriculum for them (open textbooks)?

Openness in education continues to be plagued with more than mere moral dilemmas.

For me, there are four key reasons that schools should transition toward 1:1 technology access for students:

1. Broadband, social networks, and mobility have spawned a new kind of learner (Waters, 2011). Children expect different things out of life today than we did in our youth and as a result, technology is a very important (and fully anticipated) part of their experience. Failing to produce the kind of learning environments that are tailored to those of the rising generation will be the hallmark characteristic of defunct schools in this and future years to come.
2. In its ubiquity, the Internet has become the primary instrument commonly used to access knowledge on any subject. Under the guidance of a skillful teacher, every student should be privileged with unfettered access to knowledge – unhindered in his or her progress toward understanding. Clearly, an essential role of educators today should be to pay attention to the present (Draper, 2007), while leading students along safe and successful paths to a bright but challenging future.
3. When used properly, technology can be the avenue through which teachers and students become co-creators of knowledge. Through these more learner-centric approaches to pedagogy, the “banking” concept of education can better subside as truly impactful learning takes hold (Freire, 1963). With greater access to educational technology, the customized learning, social and emotional support, self-regulation, collaborative and authentic learning experiences, and assessment for learning that commonly accompany learner-centric classrooms can be realized with far greater ease (Aslan et al., 2011; Watson & Reigelut, 2008).
4. Outcomes of previous 1:1 efforts have included increased teacher and student engagement, higher test scores and a narrowing of the achievement gap, more effective professional development, and greater digital citizenship and community outreach (see for example Gray, 2011; Digital Education Revolution NSW, 2011).

What are your thoughts concerning 1:1? What are its pros and cons? In your opinion, is it worth the investment?

In your opinion, can schools afford not to make the transition?

I love this by Dan Meyer, and dare you to spend twenty seconds reading his sarcastic take.

Direct instruction encompasses far more than mere lecture, videos can only go so far to teach, and some lessons are best learned by pedaling.

Too bad too many look too hard for that ever-elusive silver bullet.

I took a picture this morning, of a guardrail strategically placed between buildings at the Philadelphia Conference Center. I think the whole guardrail idea is fascinating. Imagine what was happening before the rail was there...

Narrow enough to easily walk around, this safety feature prevents people from quickly but dangerously dashing out into traffic - because of their natural desire to quickly reach the other side. It's not that people want to walk right into traffic; but more that they may not realize the dangers present, especially when their focus on the end-goal might be so intense.

Pretty similar to the kinds of safeguards we need in place for kids while they're excitedly learning to use social media, isn't it.

Will Richardson announced this week that he has "decided to pretty much bring [his] run at Weblogg-ed to a close." Instead, he'll be using Tumblr to facilitate his sharing and provide a space for him to disseminate his thoughts.

Being one of the first to join the educational blogging scene, I see Will's abandonment of traditional blogging as a clear marker for the beginning of the end of long-form educational blogging. While I don't think blogging will disappear entirely, I have noticed and experienced a substantial shift in how people prefer to collaborate - and even share deep thinking. I elaborated further on these shifts three years ago, as I began to flesh out my own thinking on the matter.

Around that time, I took a graduate-level course on the diffusion of innovations from Dr. Gary Straquadine, one of my favorite professors and teachers with whom I've ever been able to associate. As I explained to Dr. Straquadine my efforts with blogging and OpenPD, he was naturally fascinated by the diffusion aspects of these technologies and seemed genuinely impressed with the potential afforded by these once-emerging collaborative techniques.

At the same time, he asked me pointedly, "Darren, do you think you'll still be blogging five years from now? Do you think it will be as popular then as it is now?"

Shocked that he might be suggesting that blogging would one day have an end, I defended how immersive and incredibly powerful the technology was and how I had hoped all teachers would embrace its use. He then expressed his apprehension in blogging's long-term shelf life and his heartfelt confidence that improved innovations would eventually and inevitably come along.

He was right.

While blogging, for me, has been an incredible experience and convenient method for collaborating and sharing deep thought, other tools have emerged that now make some of this sharing easier. Will Richardson is moving now to Tumblr because its "flow" better accommodates his preferences. Similarly, I've changed some of my procedures by using ifttt.com to automatically push my shared items in Google Reader, along with my comments, neatly and nicely to Twitter. Posterous makes it dead simple to grab content and comment, although I haven't yet used this tool to its full potential, and the Diigo bookmarks I add to a specific list likewise push to Twitter. Flow.

Regardless, I continue to appreciate this space, the feedback you're willing to give me here, and the platform traditional blogging provides me when I need to elaborate.

In the end, I'll be curious to know how many of Will's original followers decide to move with him over to Tumblr. We're becoming more flexible in the tools we use to share information; are we equally flexible in our manner of acquisition? (Currently there are 18,461 Weblogg-ed and 69 willrichardson.com subscribers in Google Reader. Perhaps Will would be willing to share his actual subscription numbers in the future.) Furthermore, I wonder how our increased tendency to share snippets of thought alongside snippets of 3rd-party content will continue to impact our level of truly deep thinking - presumably forced (or more openly embraced?) by the constraints of blogging as our once-preferred medium.

As a society, if our move toward more convenient flow also translates into at least equal levels of shared deep thinking, then I'm all for it. If not, however, then the increased-ease-of-use for increased-shallow-thinking trade-off will be harmful in the long run.

My challenge for you now is to help me understand just how harmful it will be.

Last week, Scot McLeod finally published the article he’s “always wanted to write.” In an open letter to educational leadership professors across the United States, he raised several issues and posed a variety of important question to the field. Namely:

• Our world is changing quickly.
• These changes dramatically impact learning.
• Schools have largely failed to respond to these overarching societal changes.
• This failure to quickly respond is dramatically damaging our profession.
• We, as educational leadership [and by extension, all within the profession], must do better.

I agree completely with Dr. McLeod and have also said these things before. I think his article was very well researched and will play an important role in motivating many within the field toward a more intentional focus on contemporary needs and skills - while highlighting the role teachers and their behaviors play on influencing and preparing those that enter the profession. Because his article was published in a printed journal, I also think it has the potential of reaching a population of stubborn professors who may not have yet heard this message before.

Many, nevertheless, have heard this message - on a number of different occasions - and I believe the time to move beyond mere motivation has clearly come. Until we strategically attack each of the barriers that hold so many back, we will continue to move slowly, our schools will continue in (relative) irrelevance, and the faces of many-an-ISTE-goer will proceed through every shade of blue imaginable while singing this same sad tune. Additionally, I think some cultural circles will simply never adopt technology as a primary tool for instruction.

To be clear, I think looking to the knowledge gained in other fields, at this time, can drastically help ours as we continue to battle the sociocultural and other issues that obviously plague our population. Just as Dr. McLeod has called on his peers to clue in on "the largest transformation in learning that ever has occurred in human history," I call on these same peers and others to:

1. Consider carefully Everett Rogers' five intrinsic characteristics of innovations that influence an individual's decision to adopt or reject an innovation. Is the technology we're expecting teachers to embrace during instruction adequately compatible with the curriculum they're expected to teach and the learning environments they're required to inhabit? If not, then what needs to change, and how? Is the technology's trialability sufficient and are teachers able to graciously learn from their mistakes? If not, then why are we really pushing so hard?
2. Analyze the processes and procedures followed by engineers while constructing dams or other structures designed to divert the current flow. In this set of photographs (for example), taken while the Flaming Gorge dam was under construction, note the use of a diversionary tunnel - painstakingly created to allow the traditional flow of water while construction of an eventual regulation of water flow was under way. What might we learn from this practice, and how might we apply it to our field?
3. Contemplate diligently the role of sociocultural evolutionism and its parallels to the changes we hope take place in schools. Defined as "the creation and change of social roles through new knowledge that changes and creates social rules," sociocultural evolution "alters and enlarges a society in the two dimensions of social structure and culture." In other words, with new social rules (i.e., we must change our traditional pedagogical practices in order to better prepare students), which essential social roles might schools be lacking, such that more members of traditional education cultures will more easily evolve? Surely these roles must consist of more than mere motivators. (A combination of Break-fix and Ed-Tech support roles has begun to work very well in our new District!)
4. Recall how a gardener facilitates change in the plants under her care. While some plants never react well to external stimuli guiding growth and others respond only after extended periods of time, a willingness to trim and scaffold, where needed, will often produce amazing results!
5. Like the gardener and the selection of plants with which she has to work, accept that in many areas of curricular focus, technology simply isn't the best avenue for providing beneficial instruction. Trust me: there are many.
6. Alternatively, explore the viability of punctuated equilibrium in the evolution of school cultures. While I remain unconvinced that our society is headed toward an intellectual event horizon (beyond which the future becomes impossible to comprehend), I do think that the cultural evolution in schools also exhibits a type of punctuated equilibrium. Is it not plausible that after a lengthy period of evolutionary stasis (i.e., the last hundred years), we'll eventually experience a dramatic and rapid shift? Are we not currently in the midst of that shift? Moreover, if this be the case, is there really anything that can be done to prevent these phenomenal transformations from eventually taking place? If not, then why are we still trying so hard to make people change?

Sometimes I think we work too hard to push (force?) those along who will eventually - and very naturally - be left behind. Sometimes I also think that if we're really serious about making change happen more quickly in our schools, then we need to do a better job of understanding and helping the culture within these schools to change. Change a culture, and you've changed the future; for better or for worse.

• Why do you think change happens so slowly in education?
• Which barriers to change might we most easily overcome?
• Ultimately, what does it take to transform a culture – and is it even feasible on this scale and at this magnitude?