Author Archives: boadams1

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About boadams1

Learner. Husband. Dad. Mountaineer. Head of School at Mackintosh Academy - Boulder, in Boulder, Colorado. Have worked in transformation design, educational innovation, and school leadership for 30+ years.

LOOK! Crackers, an iPhone and FSBL

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FSBL – “Father Son Based Learning.” An actual and experimental/metaphorical journey – time with my son and time to examine place-based inquiry learning.

On Friday, April 22, from 10:30 a.m. until about 4:30 p.m., my four-year-old son and I embarked on an Atlanta adventure. I had just come home from reading and writing at a coffee house, after I had dropped my older son at school around 7:40 a.m. JT, or Jbird (he has two nicknames), and I decided on a whim to go get on a MARTA train and see where we ended up. JT loves trains, so trains seemed a good hook to begin the adventure. Getting on a train was the only real decision I made for Jackson.

I took two packages of Captains Waffers and my iPhone and wallet. Those were our supplies. With my iPhone, I would take notes and pictures/videos and post to “Posterous” – an email-based blog system that is as easy as easy can be. I have my Posterous set up to auto-post to Twitter, too, so I get a “two-fer.” On my first post, I failed to include the # symbol, so it will not show up in a Twitter hashtag search. But here is the post that launched the adventure: http://boadams1.posterous.com/an-adventure-fsbl. The other posts can be found on Twitter, using the #FSBL hashtag, or one could simply browse backwards through my 4-22-11 Posterous posts. [There is a link to my Posterous blog on the right column of this It’s About Learning blog – it’s called “Bo’s Links – Bo’s Observation Journal.”]

First and foremost, JT and I had an AMAZING day! We rarely get time for just the two of us, and the time on Friday was magical. We had a blast! But I also got another two-fer…

Secondly, though, I felt I was continuing my investigation of place-based learning possibilities. At Westminster, we enjoy a 180-acre campus. But I am not at all certain that we maximize our use of this incredible resource – our space around us. What if we mildly guided students to explore campus with a package of Captains Waffers and an iPhone-like device? What images and questions might they capture about Nancy Creek or other features of our campus? As teams explored our surrounds and posted to a Posterous observation journal, the other teams could keep track of other explorers via Twitter. What connections might be discovered? Project possibilities might arise from such a day, or even just a period, of exploration. Someone might get interested in the water quality and biology of Nancy Creek. All of a sudden science and writing and history and math might become integrated as field studies led to persuasive letters to Atlanta City Council about cleaning up Nancy Creek – a battle place during the Civil War. Other explorers might use something like the Wild Lab Birds app to chronicle the species of feathered creatures we have on campus. Other teams might examine our use of space in campus planning…”Why did they put that building there?” Such a question might lead to asking to see the master plans for campus which are stored in our Physical Plant and Business Office. Now students could be interacting with other school staff about “city” planning, architecture, and landscaping/environmental issues. Perhaps a team might decide to tap parent resources – people who serve as city planners, architects, etc. Perhaps students might design presentations for improvements and enhancements to their own school or city of Atlanta.

Oh the places we could go! Oh the projects we could explore! Oh the difference we could make! If we would just rethink what it means to be in school. If we would just innovate and leverage the potential of combining our community space with 21st century technologies. Endless learning possibilities. Real learning possibilities.

Wanna go explore? Get a pack of crackers – just in case. And take a 21st century field notebook. Then remember that joyful word that begins many a toddlers vocabulary – “LOOK!”

Good, not fast

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It happened again this week. If I had to guess, I would say it was the 9,234th time. A teacher was talking about quizzes and tests with time limits. The exchange goes something like this:

Frustrated teacher: “Bo, there must be time limits. He could not finish the test in the 55 minutes. He is just going to miss those points of the questions he did not get to. He’ll learn to work faster.” [And here it comes…the dreaded statement for the 9,234th time…] “Do you want a doctor operating on you that could not complete the tests in a specified time?”

Me: “How will you know what the student really knows and understands? Will that grade really measure learning, or will it be confounded by too many other variables? Are your standards time standards or mastery standards? And, by the way, I want a good doctor, not a fast one.”

I challenge anyone to find the time-ranges data for typical operations and surgery. I bet there is a significant range of times for different docs performing appendectomies, bone sets, etc. May all my doctors have found mastery of their skills and concepts rather than beat-the-competition speed.

Real!

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At present, I am sitting at the best kept secret in Atlanta, GA – Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee House. While overlooking the Hooch, I am catching up on my RSS blog feeds. I particularly try to stay current with the Westminster faculty bloggers. Well, I had gotten behind.

Yesterday a tweet caught my attention – a new post from a Westminster JH teacher of 8th grade students who are focused in her class to further develop their writing. The post is titled “A Real Audience,” and it can be found here http://superfluousthought.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/a-real-audience/ (sorry, working on iPad WordPress app). Having seen the tweet, I could not wait to read the actual post this morning.

A mystery solved! On Wednesday, I had received an anonymous email about our dress code in the Junior High. I wondered about somebody creating such an account, but the letter was compelling, so I responded to the request for uniforms. Well, now I am thinking that the anonymous plea and persuasion came from this class of crafty writers looking for a real audience.

I came to the coffee house to sit and think about grading, PBL, and integrated studies. I had no idea my thinking would take such a turn with this blog reading and perceived solution to my recent email mystery. But I am thrilled. If my hypothesis is correct and the email came from writers workshop, then that writing is non-graded. But it was heavily assessed. Isn’t that the best! The student’s letter served a purpose beyond writing for a grade from a teacher. The writing was real, for a real audience. Mine is too. This morning, my learning feels even more real!

It is about relationships and balance

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I hope I can keep this short and powerful. In the past few days, I have experienced a number of thoughts that weave together for me – all about the interesting intersection of relationships, technology, and learning. Let me see if I can draft a thesis statement:

As a learner in the 21st century, I strive to find balance among face-to-face relationships and virtual-tool connections, and I realize that both can enhance or conflict with the other. I am the fulcrum for my balance, and I will be in a state of dynamic equilibrium, not static equilibrium.

Through 21st century tools (like Twitter, WordPress, Google Reader, etc.), I can co-build a rich network of “pen pals.” Yet, I need to be mindful of not having my nose pointed at a screen at the expense of those humans most closely situated around me currently. It is a balance. Picture a scale adjusting to equilibrium as different weights are added and deleted from each side – the face-to-face side and the virtual-tool side.

For almost all of my life, I have been a runner. [Sorry for jarring shift. I promise this is a connected thread of thought…at least to me.] Since I was 9 years old, I have run most days of my life. At various points in my life, though, I have experienced ebbs and flows…ups and downs. Like a balance adjusting. And it has felt cyclical. Some years, I have trained to the point of being super competitive (in 2007, I was the fourth ranked short-distance triathlete in the state of Georgia). At those times, a middle-distance run for me is about 15 miles at a pretty fast clip. But I teeter close to over doing it. And the time comes at the expense of other life pursuits. This week, I struggled to run a mile. Seriously. I have been neglecting my running life for several months – the longest bout of that I have experienced since third grade when I started running 31 years ago. My son wanted to run a one-mile fun run, so I dusted off the shoes last Monday morning. I walked for 12 minutes and ran for 8 minutes. That was the entire work out. I was sore, sore, sore the next day. I had neglected a good balance of exercise. And I ridiculously thought that starting “training” on Monday would help me for a Saturday event. Thank goodness it was a Kindergarten mile. But I learned a valuable lesson…again.

I am blessed to have a powerful memory of when my running has gone overboard and when it has been neglected entirely. SO, I know from experience that I can get back to longer distances with less soreness, but I have to practice and be consistent. I have trained on that route before, and there is an implementation dip (as Michael Fullan adeptly explains in a number of his books) when I start doing something new, or even relatively new. And I need to be mindful not to do too much, too soon. And I need to stay mindful of not letting running – or whatever the action is – become my single pursuit that runs my life rather than the other way around. I am the fulcrum. I decide when to run – not too little or not too much, but just right. Likewise, I decide when the mobile technology is turned on and turned off – not too little and not too much, but just right. I decide.

Several colleagues have written this week about the delicate balance of social networking and face-to-face relationship-building. I encourage you to read them – I am pasting them in below. The balance is like running. If we want to be healthy, we have to find a balance. If we do too much or too little of one activity, we will get out of balance. When we strive to get that balance back, we will experience some soreness – one way or the other. But the soreness helps us calibrate our efforts. It is formative assessment and feedback about getting that equilibrium just right – in this case, the equilibrium among building a PLN and enhancing professional practice AND sustaining and improving those face-to-face relationships that are essential, critical, and vital.

It’s About Building Relationships | PCHSdirectorBLOG http://davemeister.net/2011/04/16/its-the-relationships-stupid/

Losing humanity? http://lynhilt.com/losinghumanity/

April 15, 2011: Jason Mollica – the3six5 http://the3six5.posterous.com/april-15-2011-jason-mollica

My Principal Doesn’t Need to Blog, Metanoia http://www.ryanbretag.com/blog/?p=2275

A Fair Comparison https://itsaboutlearning.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/a-fair-comparison/

10 Minutes to Blog – A Random List of Learnings Today https://itsaboutlearning.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/a-fair-comparison/

What connections do you find? How’s your balance?

A fair comparison

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Yesterday at lunch, I commented to a faculty member how impressed I was with his/her entree into video production of short lesson clips. Who knows what this kind of visual recording and representation could lead to – some great innovation in the future. Not to mention the postive effect it had for some other learners right then and there, in the moment. This person had made a mark to start (see The Dot, by Peter Reynolds). I was genuinely proud of the efforts and outcomes, and I had seen this person’s excitement earlier. After I named a few specifics, the faculty member said something like, “Thank you. But I can’t do it like [so-n-so] can.” Then, we talked about how so-n-so’s been making short video clips and screencasts for over a year. At that point the conversation turned to our children…about a very related issue.

My younger son, JT, thinks he should be able to do everything my older son, PJ, can do. The younger son is 2 1/2 years younger than the older. PJ has had a lot more practice running, scootering, playing video games, drawing, etc. I wish I could think of a convincing, “sticky” way to explain this to JT. If JT wants to make comparisons, which I wish he would’t, then he should compare himself today to PJ 2 1/2 years ago. We could compare (still wish we wouldn’t) PJ frozen in time at 4 years old, so that JT could make an apples-to-apples comparison. Even that, though, would hold its own margin of error and inaccuracies. They are two different people who have practiced different skills.

My lunch colleague has two children, and their family experience has been similar. The youngest wants to “advance artificially” to the level of the oldest. The less experienced makes an unfair comparison to the more experienced. We can understand that children do this, but why do we adults fall prey to such bad comparison practice? [Especially those of us who have read Mindset!]

If we want to use the inequality between the less and more experienced, we could do so just to mark a current reality and a future vision. We could set a goal of what proficiency and mastery look like at various levels of practice and development. Then we would know what a reasonable and fair target would be for a beginner at a new activity, an intermediate at a practiced activity, an advanced at a long-practiced activity. And there wouldn’t have to be a “100,” because the level of proficency and mastery may improve and grow in such a way that a ceiling cannot be artificially set. The ceiling could be broken just like the floor of the 4:00-minute mile was broken by Dr. Roger Bannister. When he did so, a “new possible” emerged, and a number of runners broke the previously sacred barrier in a matter of weeks and short months.

Maybe the most important thing is just to be in motion – to be trying new things and making the mark of current reality – even if one is a brand-new beginner – and setting a goal based on future vision. The gap between current reality and future vision can be frustrating and/or exciting. The distance one travels in the journey is called learning, I think.

We all start as beginners, and we can all can get better through feedback, support, determination, practice, and persistence. Ignore the voices that say we aren’t good enough yet. Pay more attention to the bright spots – what worked that I can do more of to improve. A strong fortress is built one brick at a time. One well-made brick on top of another. One bright spot on another. One successful attempt after thirteen failures and feeling what that success felt like…then reproducing it. It’s not about comparing ourselves to others. It’s about comparing ourselves to standards of future vision so that we can mark our growth and progress, like a child sometimes marks his growth over the years using a door frame and a pencil. But the first step is making a mark on that wall. Then one must grow to see a change in the height of the mark. And only relative to oneself.

It’s not about measuring apples and oranges. It’s about measuring apples to apples. It’s about learning.

What will be your next endeavor? What will you start from scratch? What do you want to get better at? What models of proficiency and mastery will you use? Will you unfairly compare yourself and get frustrated, or will you use another’s example as a future vision of what is possible with effort and practice? Will you maybe even ask them for help and how they got to their current level? Will you make a mark?

Our kids sure could use our good example. So could our colleagues.