Category: Commentary

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13 Subversive Questions for the Classroom

At the end of my recent keynote on the power of reflection at TechitU, I closed by saying something to the effect “… as a teacher you get to reinvent yourselves every year … if you want to change the status quo at school, know that everything is conspiring against you … testing, parent expectations, curriculum mandates, etc … so perhaps you’ll need to be a bit subversive.”

If state testing went away tomorrow, would we actually teach differently?

Since I made that “subversive” comment, I’ve been thinking about reflective questions that would challenge the status quo in school. My list was getting rather long, so I decided to split it into two posts. This post focuses on reflective questions for teachers to consider when thinking about their approach to instruction. Its companion post, 14 Provocative Questions for the Faculty poses disruptive questions for teachers and administrators thinking about reforming their school at the program level.

  1. If a question has a correct answer, is it worth asking?
  2. If something is “Googleable” why would we spend precious class time teaching it?
  3. When we ask students to summarize, do we actually want to know what’s important to them?
  4. What do you suppose students think they are supposed to be doing when we ask them to analyze?
  5. Do you ever ask your students questions you don’t know the answer to? Why not?
  6. Think about all those things we teach kids claiming “you’ll need to know this someday.” With the exception of teaching it, when’s the last time you needed to know any of that stuff?
  7. Do your students need more information, or skills in how to critically evaluate the information that surrounds them?
  8. How much of what’s really important in life, is taught in a classroom?
  9. Why do we usually teach all the boring facts first and save the interesting stuff for later?
  10. When we cover material, what is it that we think we have accomplished?
  11. Is being told something the same as learning it?
  12. What would content area teaching look like if it were taught the way an art teacher teaches art?
  13. If state testing went away tomorrow, would we actually teach differently?

Add your subversive questions in the comment section below!

“Subversive” inspired by “Teaching As a Subversive Activity” by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner. You should read it.

“13” is a cool number and people love reading blog posts that are enumerated lists.

Image credit: Banksy subversive street artist.

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This is Not a Travel Blog

Regular readers know that this is not a travel blog. But my wife and I are traveling and I thought I’d share a few observations and thank you’s to some of our hosts.

While in Munich, we took a long walk along a creek through the Englischer Garten. At the south end of the downtown park we came upon the creek inlet (the Eisbach, a small canal) and were surprised to find surfers. Here’s my brief tribute made using Viddy and my iPhone.

Hallstatt Austria, is a picture perfect UNESCO world-heritage village perched between a mountain and a beautiful lake. We only spent one overnight there, but it was enough time to see why the city is such a big hit in China. We found out from a local shopkeeper that Chinese investors are building a replica in China. Here’s my Photosynth of the [actual] Hallstatt town square from our hotel room.

Trieste Italy is a city usually overlooked for Venice, it’s more glamorous neighbor. As one Italian shopkeeper in Verona quipped – “Is it in Italy?” We found Trieste to be a colorful mashup of Italian -Slovenian – Austrian food, architecture and culture. We stayed at a terrific hotel – Albero Nascosto. It’sl is a loving restoration in the old city, steps away from all the major attractions. Breakfasts feature local delicacies but the real assets are the owners and staff. A special shout out to Julio. He gave me lift from the parking garage on the back of his scooter and a quick tour of his neighborhood.

Verona Italy has great art, food, architecture, and shopping in a walkable and historic central city. We spent a few days exploring all of the above based in Tenuta Delo Relais - a agriturismo only a short 15 minutes drive out of the historic city center. Delo is an idyllic restored farm house set high on a hill and surrounded by a working vineyard. A big thanks to our gracious hosts – Ettore and Antonia.

While visiting Verona’s Duomo, I suddenly heard beautiful choral music. A recording? Then I noticed a woman conducting a group of students. I never found out who they were – all I was told was they were “Russian school girls.” (I think you could safely add “choral” to that description.) Right after this song they got up and quietly left. 

One more must-see in Verona is the Castelvechio Museum – as if this view (below) from the castle keep isn’t enough – the entire complex houses a first class art collection in a restoration that imaginatively blends historic and modern design elements.

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Learning: from Face-to-Face to Networked Individualism

This afternoon, I picked up the thread of a LinkedIn discussion “Should we let students opt out of face-to-face education?” Excellent observations by over 100 contributors that got me thinking about what’s next for schools?

That led me back to a post I’d saved on my Evernote by George Siemens who wrote

In education, we have decades of reform rhetoric behind us. I have never heard someone say “the system is working”. There appears to be universal acknowledgement that the system is broken.
Classrooms were a wonderful technological invention. They enabled learning to scale so that education was not only the domain of society’s elites. Classrooms made it (economically) possible to educate all citizens. And it is a model that worked quite well.

(Un)fortunately things change. Technological advancement, coupled with rapid growth of information, global connectedness, and new opportunities for people to self-organized without a mediating organization, reveals the fatal flaw of classrooms: slow-developing knowledge can be captured and rendered as curriculum, then be taught, and then be assessed. Things breakdown when knowledge growth is explosive. Rapidly developing knowledge and context requires equally adaptive knowledge institutions. Today’s educational institutions serve a context that no longer exists and its (the institution’s) legacy is restricting innovation.

Digital networks antagonize planned information structures. Planned information structures like textbooks and courses simply can’t adapt quickly enough to incorporate network-speed information development. Instead of being the hub of the learning experiences, books, courses, and classrooms become something more like a node in part of a much broader (often global) network. The shift to networks is transformative in how a society organizes itself (see Wellman’s Little Boxes, Glocalization, and Networked Individualism)

So I followed that link to Barry Wellman who wrote

Members of traditional little-box societies deal principally with fellow members of the few groups to which they belong: at home, in the neighborhood, at work, or in voluntary organizations. …These groups often have boundaries for inclusion and structured, hierarchical, organization: supervisors and employees, parents and children, pastors and churchgoers, organizational executives and members. In such a society, each interaction is in its place: one group at a time.

…Work, community and domesticity have moved from hierarchically arranged, densely knit, bounded groups (“little boxes”) to social networks. … In networked societies, boundaries are more permeable, interactions are with diverse others, linkages switch between multiple networks, and hierarchies are both flatter and more complexly structured. …Rather than fitting into the same group as those around them, each person has her own personal network.

…This is a time for individuals and their networks, and not for groups. The proliferation of computer-supported social networks fosters changes in “network capital”: how people contact, interact, and obtain resources from each other. The broadly -embracing collectivity, nurturing and controlling, has become a fragmented, variegated and personalized social network. Autonomy, opportunity, and uncertainty are the rule.
Complex social networks have always existed, but recent technological developments have afforded their emergence as a dominant form of social organization. Just as computer networks link machines, social networks link people. … The technological development of computer-communications networks and the societal flourish of social networks are now affording the rise of “networked individualism” in a positive feedback loop.

“Should we let students opt out of face-to-face education?” I didn’t see any F2F learning in my brief intellectual journey. It seemed to be a good example of Wellman’s “networked individualism.” Just in time and self-directed – beginning with my LinkedIn network and extending beyond – each hyperlink both a destination and new point of departure. The results  - this reflective post which might serve as a catalyst for the readers further exploration of the theme. (I’ll complete this “”positive feedback” loop by adding this post to the LinkedIn discussion.

Why would we shackle our students to a face-to-face education?

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Image credit flickr/Marc_Smith  Note: The image shows the connections among the Twitter users who follow the user account @jowyang when queried on December 14, 2011, scaled by numbers of followers (with outliers thresholded). Connections created when users follow one another.

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Think, Before You Email (A Decision Tree Infographic)

As I’ve previously posted, filtering information and maintaining focus may be one of the most critical new literacies. Emails are at the top of my “needs better filtering” list.

And no, I’m not talking to spammers. Friends, family, clients – I’m talking to you. To begin with, why don’t you at least consider updating the subject lines of our emails after a reply or two.

OK enough venting. I thought you’d enjoy this infographic which offers guidance for email hygiene in the work place.

Actually its more of a decision tree than infographic, but it does have a cute kitten.

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Stephen Colbert “Teachers are Destroying America”

A great clip from this week’s Colbert Report profiles Dawn Quarles, a Florida high school teacher, who faces voter fraud fines for registering her students to vote. Quarles, a teacher at Pace High School in the Panhandle, could receive a $1,000 fine for violating Florida’s new law which places strict limits on the voter registration process.

For more in this occasional series, see my post Jon Stewart “Teachers are Destroying America”