Questioning For Life

For years I have been listening to podcasts while I drive to work or do housework. A few years ago I thought it would be fun to try creating a podcast with a small group of friends, but our schedules never seemed to align. Now I have the opportunity to try my hand at creating a podcast.

Frequently I find that my passions and curiosities line up with each other in my classroom. The program I work in has allowed me to build lessons around my personal interests. In the last few years I started using board games (Risk, Dominion, Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, and 7 Wonders) to teach strategic thinking and problem solving. I built a role playing game lesson where students controlled a character in a campaign similar to a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. And with each student having access to an iPad has allowed me to record my lessons so that students can access them at any time. I have begun finding ways to incorporate my passions into my teaching, and it makes me wonder how I can better incorporate my students’ passions into their learning.

Berger, in his book A More Beautiful Question, explains how technology makes us aware of how little we know. And recognizing how little I know has driven me to ask more questions. My goal as a teacher is to ensure that my students learn as much as possible in the time that they are with me, but that looks different for every teacher. I have to figure out what that looks like for me personally. I think including my personal interests and questions into my teaching

I am not the only teacher interested in tying my interests, and those of my students, into the classroom. Websites like Breakout EDU provide a community of educators creating educational escape rooms and a set of resources to borrow and build from. After searching some I came across a doctoral students dissertation focused on role playing games in the classroom. Technology has given me access to other teachers interested in the same things I am.

Below you will find my first attempt at creating a podcast. This year I begin a new job, and I am wondering how I might be able to incorporate podcasts into my teaching.

 

Reference:

Berger, W. (2014). A More Beautiful Question: The Power Of Inquiry To Spark Breakthrough Ideas. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.

An Innovative Solution

For the last few weeks I have been asking questions and considering potential solutions to the wicked problem of innovation as an ethic in education. We defined innovation as the ability to connect two separate ideas independently. Innovation is a requirement for our students to be successful after graduation. That makes it critical that we as educators incorporate innovation into our educational system. Communication, problem solving, cooperation, and creativity are more important now than ever before, and students must have training and practice in order to master these skills. We have to do more than just teach innovation, we must be innovative professionally.

Initially, we researched what innovation looks like in schools today, both in the United States and around the world, and started asking “why” questions to begin understanding what makes this problem so wicked. I created this infographic to more fully explain the wickedness of innovation as an ethic in education. From those “why” questions we focused on just a few and developed a survey (linked here in case you would like to view it) to get a better idea of how educators feel about innovation, what they understand about innovation, and how their schools or administration are already supportive of innovation. Finally, with our data we asked “what if” and “how” questions to develop a potential solution to this wicked problem.

Our working solution to this problem is to create small beta programs in each school where teachers and students have a period of immunity from standardized testing scores and formal evaluations. This period of immunity is designed to create a space where everyone involved feels safe during the initial implementation of a more innovative program. From this one beta classroom the innovative program could spread through the school like a pyramid scheme. Teachers with more experience would create professional development for less experienced teachers and mentor them through their first year. The presentation embedded below was created to show our process from our initial questioning through this potential solution.

Innovation is critical to our students success. To teach them to be more innovative we must innovate how we teach.

An Innovation Survey

This week I worked with my team to create a survey to gather some data focused on educators comfort and current understanding of innovation as an ethic in education. The primary focus of this survey is to discover how teachers feel currently about the creation and implementation of innovative lessons, as well as the support they have from both their administration and the setup of their school.

Our working definition of innovation is the ability to connect two separate pieces of knowledge independently. This looks different in each content area, but innovation is foundational to many of the twenty-first century skills (critical thinking, problem solving, grit, teamwork, and curiosity) that employers have identified as essential for students’ success after graduation. These skill may not be a central component of many states’ required standards, but they are central to the future success of many of our students.

Please consider answering this short survey about the wicked problem of innovation as an ethic in education. There are 13 questions. It should take you about 5 minutes to answer them.Your answers will be collected anonymously — please do not give your name or any other personally identifiable information. I will analyze these data and submit them for evaluation to my professors at MSU. I will share my analyses with you once they are complete. I really hope this survey helps us to gather data that we can use.

As we collect the data from this survey my group will begin to ask more specific questions focused on finding a potential answer to this wicked problem. While we will not be able to identify one answer that sufficiently solves this problem once and for all, we do hope to identify an answer that begins the process of making innovation an ethic in education.

With this data I hope to more fully understand how educators view innovation, what, if any, support should be added, and if more resources should be allocated to the development of innovation in our schools.

Thank you for your participation in this survey.

Innovation in Education

This week I worked with a small “think tank” group to grasp the wickedness of making innovation a part of education. Initially, I thought as teachers we could just implement a new system, and with the necessary training innovation would just happen. However, the larger problem is that we have to innovate how we teach and the entire educational system as a whole. That is what makes innovation such a wicked problem. There is not a quick fix solution out there. As our group worked to understand the problem of integrating innovation into the entirety of our educational system we stepped back and asked four questions:

1. Why innovate in the first place? Hasn’t school figured it out by now?
2. Why aren’t more teachers and students given protection from potential failure with consequences when attempting innovative practices?
3. Why is the apprenticeship of observation not broken when teachers go through teacher preparatory programs?
4. Why are success indicators not adjusted to allow for innovation to be more central to the educational practice?

To better depict this problem I created this infographic:

To make innovation an essential element in education we have to understand what innovation is, and why we should focus on teaching our students to be innovative in the first place. Schools were designed to teach students to follow expectations and complete the tasks their jobs required. If students were able to do that they would be successful after graduation. Today, success is dependent on students’ ability to find problems, as well as solutions, rather than simply complete a task.

 

Adjusting my InfoDiet

I do not often stop and think about why I decide to read the articles I read online. It is fast and easy to find new material to read when I want it, and scrolling past an article I am not interested in is second nature. This week I have been challenged to think about why I chose not to read an article and begin searching for information that does not neatly agree with, and support, what I think personally. By expanding the perspectives in the information that I choose to engage with, I am provided with the opportunity to more completely understand topics I am interested in.

Finding articles that primarily agree with my existing perspective is easy, and I certainly enjoy the affirmation that comes from reading an article that further supports my thinking. Creating an online presence that does not challenge my ideas or work to broaden my perspective is simple. However, information that only supports my thinking does not encourage much, if any, personal growth. Most of my career as a teacher I have had a classroom full of iPads. Each student has had their own device, so I have seen how engaging and beneficial increased technology is in a classroom. I have not spent much time considering the potential downsides or the obvious distraction a technology rich classroom is.

This week I spent time searching for websites that publish articles focused on educational technology. I looked specifically for articles with warnings about the downsides of increased classroom technology or clear opposition to that technology. What I found was many of the sites I frequented had articles matching exactly what I was looking for. Those were the articles I scrolled past like it was second nature. I found that asking what reasons there are to be cautious about increased classroom technology made those articles noticeable and interesting. Simply asking a new question transformed the way I understood existing information.

I have been told that very little of life is black and white; we live and work in the grey spaces. I do not apply this concept to everything; of course there are clear right and wrongs, but increased technology is one of the areas that resides soundly in the grey space. There are many examples of teachers and students not benefitting from increased technology. Some teachers are not adequately trained or willing to learn how to use new tools. Some students are distracted by the technology. And even with well trained teachers and perfectly engaged students some of the technology is not designed to be beneficial regardless of who is using it. These are real concerns as educational technology increases. For me to be prepared I have to be fully informed. This means understanding more perspectives as completely as possible.

I do not search for articles that oppose my thinking with the intention of convincing myself that I am wrong, but rather to encourage myself to think of questions that I would not have asked otherwise. Berger says that to ask new, strong questions we have to “challenge assumptions (including our own)” (2014 pg. 75). In my thinking technology is a beneficial addition to the classroom. I have spent time with iPads and have defended the increased presence of technology in my classroom. The arguments for increased student technology are a natural part of my everyday teaching. For me to ask questions that result in my development as a teacher I have to engage in something that challenges my assumptions. Reading articles that question educational technology does just that. Having arguments that oppose my own assumptions makes it easier for me to ask new questions. And ultimately, asking new questions allows for a more informed and rounded understanding of the whole issue of classroom technology.

Asking better questions is key to my development as a teacher. It is especially beneficial when it comes to my use of classroom technology. Searching for articles written from a different perspective allowed me to step back and view my own thinking in a new way. They allowed me to ask questions I would not have thought to ask on my own. This week spent searching for sites that did not completely agree with my beginning assumptions helped develop better questions and a more complete understanding of the increased use of technology in my classroom.

I have started a website to collect articles that encouraged me to ask questions or that challenged my existing assumptions. Click here to view that site.

Reference:

Berger, W. (2014). A More Beautiful Question: The Power Of Inquiry To Spark Breakthrough Ideas. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.