Earbuds Overload: Making the Most of Societal Escapes

By Ed Tech Maniac, Darin Anderson

If you work at or near a school (or airport or mall or anywhere else), you perhaps have noticed a disturbing trend amongst the youth - and many adults - of the world today.

http://www.plumbeddown.com/2012/10/summoned-to-principals-office-short_1.html#.VgBOeOdBCu4

I'm not talking about the styles of clothing, hair, and makeup that would make our grandmothers simultaneously shudder in fear and weep for the future. No, what I am referring to is the popular practice of earbuds being used as a recidivist devices.

From my observations in schools specifically, I have seen phone files firmly inserted as a divide between teacher & student and even student & student. While there is an appropriate time and place for music streamed through Beats by Dre, the idea of students retreating into themselves will not yield positive results in the long run.

The science behind the addiction to music provides insight into why helping students break away from earbuds will be both imperative to their wellbeing as well as an entirely difficult process.

Consider this generic scenario: A student leaves her house at 7:15am to board a bus that takes her to a place she does not necessarily want to go. Immediately she pops in her earphones and traces a path of social removal into a world that she both understands and enjoys. The music speaks to her and she lives her life accordingly even as she is surrounded by friends, peers, and copious amounts of school work that she may or may not find irrelevant.

Her teacher either allows her to be half-in during instruction (as is evidenced by the one ear-bud placed in her ear) or he has given up trying to get her involved in daily activities.

Knowing that the human brain, the frontal cortex in particular, cannot process more than one stimuli at a time, it is nearly impossible for hum-drum instruction or even interaction with peers to consistently win out over her undying interest in Fallout Boy or Major Lazer.

http://www.rock.com/p/fall-out-boy-stencil-logo-magnet

The concerns among teachers, of course, are the disengaged student and competing against what causes students to retreat. In years past, the devices were sufficiently large enough (think 80s style boomboxes) to not be practical, while the concept of connectivity was not even an issue. But now, in our connected society, educators must balance the use and the banishment of Personal Isolation Devices, or PIDs.

But now that the problem has been laid out, here are a few suggestions for either lessening the desire to sink into the world of earbuds or to temporarily abolish it:

• Understand that retreating into music can be a signal of something good. Music can help inspire and motivate students to greatness. Just as a weightlifter uses tunes to push through a workout, students may also benefit from the extrinsic stimulus music provides. 
• Quality student-centered instruction is often the remedy for most anti-cooperative behavior. If status quo content delivery renders the same results time after time, maybe those teachers need to re-evaluate their practices. Interesting content can take away the temptation of a student to wind away the minutes with Metallica.
• Music can help remove distractions. If the student can indeed complete quality work with the aid of music to keep peers' antics at bay, then the ends justify the means. 
• Relationships with others trump the need for music-induced dopamine. The chemical dependency on music often fills the gap left by social interaction with others. Dopamine offered by laughing with friends can replace the need to wander through crowds in extrinsic silence.
• Engage students in high-interest peer discussions. Explicitly teaching young people how to properly interact with others, while dissecting relevant content, can invite them away from playlists and into the world of meaningful human interaction.
• Let kids be kids, with parameters. Outright bans of headsets will most likely result in an unwanted battle of wills. If music is their thing, let them go for it, while providing constant situations to practice real communication with peers. If the kids know they will have opportunities to rock out during math, they will not be as likely to obsess over connection to music.

Truly, with the wide variety of personalities and backgrounds amongst the students we see everyday, there are a few commonalities shared by the human race.

1. The need to be entertained (or find intrinsic motivation)

2. The need to be involved and accepted

http://bodyonept.com/2015/05/whats-your-motivation/

When #1 is present, the need for music (or Instagram, etc.) subsides. When #2 is present the need for extraneous stimulus subsides. When neither is present, humans search for them both in other places, and often music becomes a simple stop-gap escape mechanism.

If our classrooms provide environments that serve to entertain, at least mildly, in order to activate the students' intrinsic motivation, we have greater odds of helping to alleviate their fixation on earbuds and streaming music.

Not that it is possible to successfully engage every student every hour of every day...but it is a step in the right direction.

Is it possible to engage every learner, every hour of every day? Or is just enough to just keep trying?? #EdChat #EdReform #Edutainment?

— Darin Anderson (@coachdarin22) September 21, 2015

Class Discussion and Collaboration Made Better with Voxer

By Ed Tech Maniac, Darin Anderson

If you are reading this, it is likely that you are about as tech nerdy as they come. While it is doubtful that a teenager looks at a new app and thinks, How can I use this in school?,  most of us in #EdTech land seek out the educational and instructional potential in each and every new tech device, app, or fad that comes along.

Recently, I was introduced to Voxer by a teacher peer who uses the app to keep tabs on the latest and greatest goings-on with his PLN. As he uses it for such practical advances as sharing lesson ideas and resources, I began to wonder how students could also make use of Voxer's capabilities for more than sharing pics from the football game or messaging answers to tests back and forth. (Not that any group of students would ever do such a thing.)

If you are unfamiliar with Voxer, here is an introduction:

Upon exploring the app, I began to settle in on what is perhaps an obvious conclusion: student collaboration. But however blatantly simple it might seem, the practical uses of Voxer in a classroom setting - the collaboration potential - has my head spinning.

Here are just a few of my ideas:

• Groups of 3-4 each discuss a different, yet related, topic. Then each member is to add a voice message or two to classmates in different groups. In a matter of a few minutes, there exists a threaded backlog of student thoughts and responses, available for review at any time.
• Allow pairs to message one another back and forth during review time, brainstorming sessions, or just to discuss a concept. The relative safety of speaking to just one other classmate has the potential to elicit better responses.
• Anytime Learning is a snap with Voxer as kids, and teachers, can keep conversations going beyond school hours.
• Voxer has a feature that shows users which group members have heard/seen the message and which have not. This allows the teacher to know who is engaging and who is not, at least at a superficial level.
• Brainstorming project/product ideas with others is easy with Voxer. Whether on the bus to a football game, sitting in math class, or at home on the couch, if a thought strikes, send a Vox.
• PLN collaboration on Voxer allows more depth than 140 characters on Twitter. While I am in no way discounting Twitter chats, Voxer lets users send voice, picture, and link "Voxes" as well as unlimited-length text messages.
• Personal notes and reflections from both students and teachers. Students can reflect on learning as a type of formative assessment, while teachers can also use the app to reflect on lessons that rocked...or those that went awry. 
• Continuous staff or department chats. Voxer just might be the solution to discussing issues outside of PLCs or department meetings. No more field trip discussion getting in the way of data analysis and planning.
• The groups are relatively private, unlike a Twitter chat which all of your followers can, well, follow. If you are not invited to a Voxer group or discussion, you will be none the wiser about content. 

There are a few caveats to consider as you look into using Voxer:

• Voxer works on smartphones. However, If your school does not have Wi-Fi access for student devices, then student mobile data usage may become an issue. Conveniently, it works just fine on a laptop.
• Not all kids will enjoy hearing the sound of their own voices in the playbacks. It could make for some awkward moments.
• Listening to responses can be time consuming and some students - and teachers - will prefer not to engage at the depth you'd like.
• Voxer integrates with Dropbox, even as most folks have become Google Drive users. Not necessarily a huge concern, but something to keep in mind.

Certainly, there are several tools available out there to help spur along student discussion. The basic - but by no means is it basic - version is free, and there are some very nice extras tacked on to the paid edition, which is a paltry $3.99 a month.

Feel free to reach out to me on Voxer to discuss this or any other edtech topic. My handle is darinanderson :-)

I'm running a professional experiment. How do U use @voxer in your classroom? Plz reach out to me at darinanderson #EdTech #SatChat #SunChat

— Darin Anderson (@coachdarin22) September 11, 2015

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Technology and Entitlement: A Recipe for Success?

By Ed Tech Maniac, Darin Anderson

Life is not to be graded like a standardized test, as is evidenced by the kinds of opportunities available to some but out of reach for others.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, puts forth the theory that people do not attain success in spite of their circumstances, but because of them. For every inspiring rags to riches story that we hear, there are thousands more success stories that are nowhere close to folklore.

The fact is, Gladwell claims, talent and ability notwithstanding, most successful people simply took advantage of the fortuitous bounces that came their way, while their less unlucky counterparts were left behind. Superior intelligence, for example, is less a factor in one's ultimate success than is where they were born and what advantages were proffered to them.

The son of a farmer in rural Kansas and the Doctor's son from Los Angeles may well have equal intellect and ability, but the two will have vastly different opportunities that will shape them and help determine where they end up.

Or so the theory goes...

While there is much truth in that line of thinking, there is also a much more level playing field in the world today, as each and every one of us strives for our own brand of success. And it is thanks, in large part, due to technology.

To help put this in perspective, in Outliers Gladwell writes about the characteristics of a typical middle-class upbringing:

"The heavily scheduled middle class child is exposed to constantly shifting set of experiences. She learns teamwork and how to cope in highly structured settings. She is taught how to interact comfortably with adults, and to speak up when she needs to. ...the middle-class children learn a sense of 'entitlement'."

Even as Gladwell admits that the word "entitlement" carries with it a negative connotation, in its truest definition it actually makes sense. As humans we are all entitled to certain unalienable rights, among those being the ability to acquire information and to learn,

The gift of technology has allowed all of us, where able, to reap the full rewards of entitlement. Let me illustrate my idea with this example: I was born and raised in a small farming community in Idaho. While I was no stranger to knowledge - I had access to all the books I would ever want to read - my opportunities were limited compared to those my same age who grew up in more urban areas. For several years, we received our newspaper two days after printing. And since we had only two TV stations via our rooftop antenna, I never knew who won Sunday NFL games until the Tuesday after.

Now, with the marvels of ever-advancing technology, such a scenario is rather unheard of. Since that time in the 1980s we have evolved from catching NFL scores and highlights on cable TV programs, to anytime access via the Internet, to now being able to watch live games on mobile devices from wherever we are.

Simply stated, we are now in a culture where we feel entitled to getting whatever information and content we want at the touch of a screen. We don't even need the proverbial button anymore!

If I want to learn how to fix my wife's kitchen mixer, I look it up on YouTube (true story). Similarly, if a kid wants to play guitar or put her hair up in a crazy new braid, there are unlimited resources online to help her do so. If by chance there is not a YouTube tutorial, there are literally millions of discussion threads out there full of all kinds of advice and suggestions. Honestly, at least as far as popular culture goes, there is not an original question out there. By and large, we do not have to wait for our inquiries to be addressed.

However, it is not all good. There are two sides to this tale of entitlement:

1. Access to knowledge has long been the cure to abolishing ignorance, which has been and still is the fodder for tyranny. Ask Hitler or Stalin if they would have liked the Internet in the hands of their citizens.

2. Immediate access to knowledge creates a generation of lazy, me-first citizenry who will grow accustomed to having their brains filled with little to no effort of their own.

These two different roads can and do run simultaneously. What's more, they often intersect with one another, sometimes several times on any given day.

This is where we can make significant and meaningful differences as teachers of our emerging and curious students. We can show them how to navigate the two diverging and converging roads to best make use of the talents and abilities they have. We can help inspire them to pursue their greatness while also teaching them to temper their desires and take purposeful baby steps.

Technology offers our young people opportunities that we could never have imagined even a decade ago. Here are a few examples of what technology can do for our kids as they practice their cultural entitlement to knowledge:

• Encourage them to serve - Knowledge is useless unless it is put into action to better someone. It is even better if what they learn is used to make the lives of others easier. So many students have received acclaim for doing good works; our kids need to see that they can make a difference - and not in some cliched way - but a real impact on their community and their world.
• Connect with others globally - The world is a smaller place because of technology, but how many of our kids use their knowledge of social media to its fullest potential? More than just talking about sports or cute boy bands, discussions of cultures and traditions and beliefs are just a matter of bringing them up.
• Teach them to create - From what we learn comes products and services that make life better for all of us. With all of the creation technology available at little or no cost, our students can be coding and creating new apps, designing and printing useful 3D models, or building robots that perform otherwise mundane tasks for people. The difference between learning and doing is often just access to some basic creation tools.
• They learn to improve their own station in life - Knowledge is power and now more than ever that power can be used for entrepreneurial endeavors. The path from poverty to comfort can be a short one with today's capacity to produce something and market it for little to no cost. E-commerce is not going away, and will continue to flourish in new and unimaginable ways. Many teenagers are taking advantage of the possibilities entitled to them simply via Wi-Fi access.
• No more blind acceptance - In the past hearing something from a reputable source made it as good as true. Now there are so many more avenues for students to explore answers to their questions beyond a classroom. Not only that, there is typically a massive network of students across the world with similar aspirations. Meeting up with them is, well, something our kids take for granted; it's entitled to them.

All recipes must follow a specific order with predetermined amounts of ingredients. Success with technology and entitlement is no different. As Gladwell puts it, we are, to a large degree, products of our environment. Rather than squandering our fortuitous circumstances, we must take full advantage of what we've been given.

Growing up in a world with so much technological ease is a perfect scenario for success for our students. They just may not know how to put the ingredients together correctly.

Are we helping them?

#Breakfast with #EdTech. Using #technology and our #entitlement culture as a #Recipe4Success pic.twitter.com/6dmKFOTsyx

— Darin Anderson (@coachdarin22) August 11, 2015

Lessons in Education Featuring Gary Larson: Part IV

Written by EdTechManiac, Darin Anderson

In the latest installment of our comical series, we will explore the concept of idea exploration in schools. Let's just hope that no one gets hurt in the process. ;-)

Among other things, Gary Larson is noted for using prehistoric figures to represent modern kinds of thinking. In this comic, we see a group of neanderthals exhibiting modern scientific principles (note the clipboard-holding caveman near the bottom) by conducting a controlled experiment.

What we also have before us is a comedic look at the sheer idiocy of tying a living being to the outside of a rock wheel.

Whether or not he has studied science, modern man understands the basic principles of physics, through experience mostly, and knows what is about to happen to the unsuspecting man...and so we laugh. (Granted, it shows how demented we can be as a society, but that is another story for another day.)

Looking at the paragraph above, which is the most important word to you? Science? Physics? Demented?

I contend that the single most important term is "Experience."

Now, look back at Larson's creation and ask yourself this question: 

Is it not true that the only reason we find humor in this comic is because these men do not have the background knowledge necessary to see an otherwise obvious tragic ending?

We are laughing at them because they do not know what we know. In that light, maybe it is not as funny anymore.

When put into educational terms, how many of our students walk into class knowing as much as WE know? How many of them have had the same depth of experiences as WE have had? The younger they are the less likely it is that they are aware of much of the content they learn about.

Schools often claim that they allow their students free range of exploration and experimentation - that they are free to make mistakes because that's how we learn. But then they are effectively held hostage by mandated testing that does not honor them for experimenting with the 4 answer choices. No standardized assessment that I know of allows students to make a choice, determine that it was the wrong option, and be able to go back and try again.

Or even worse, school and classroom environments create situations where risk takers and trendsetters are laughed at when they fail. Or ridiculed for trying to be "better" than their peers. Or told that being excellent makes others feel bad. Their experiences are controlled, to a certain extent.

Under similar environments would the airplane exist? Indeed, no one makes fun of the Wright Brothers for crashing plane after plane because society now takes advantage of their ultimate triumph everyday all over the world. We are grateful for their experiences and what their failures amounted to in the long run.

What about the kinds of technology we use on a daily basis? Would we all be pulling out our smartphones and strapping on wearable devices if developers around the world were given one single shot to create the touchscreen interface?

The trouble is that legislation and funding and school accreditation are all tied to some extent or another on static, one-shot assessments.

However, not all aspects of education revolve around standardized test scores. That which we do not control, we cannot change. So what can we do?

With educational technology, and many other teaching tools and strategies, we can create environments that foster creativity and exploration and that encourage experimentation. All of these serve to give our kids experience. Here are just a few ideas:

• Learning Logs or Journals (Written or Audio) - In whatever format they may be, these student-created products provide so much more than just a running commentary of the process of learning. When used to their full potential, logs or journals can become a student's personal portfolio, full of examples of what works and what does not, reflection on successes and failures, and key understandings related to any academic experience. Some of the entries can be teacher recommended, but by and large, log content must be student-generated reflection and analysis. Digital formats, such as a Google Doc, allow for anytime access, which is a stark advantage over paper notebooks. Further, the written word is a vital component of learning, but no one is saying that the logs must be word-processed. Let your students record themselves over a series of PodCasts or audio messages available on most mobile devices and laptops.
• Grading and Assessing Processes not Products - If all a teacher sees is a student's final product, which may or may not be a success, he is missing out on the whole story. Comparatively speaking, if someone only reads the final 15 pages of a novel, she is left with confusion and an uneducated opinion of the story as a whole. With the advantage of the above-mentioned logs or journals, that same teacher can get a snapshot, aside from classroom formative assessment, that helps give her a better understanding of the students' complete stories - she gets the whole picture.
• Legal Hacking - The new definition and function of hacking is nowhere near the same as its predecessor, although many of the same skills are used. Today's hacking (aptly called hackathons) refers to brainstorming sessions put on by businesses across the world. Employees and other interested parties come together to code, with the intent of improving, creating, and/or exploring business software programs and other operations. Some companies sponsor time for employees to develop ideas for and work on new apps. Schools, and a few corporations, have taken the concept a step further and provide structured time for "hackers" to brainstorm solutions to local or regional problems, or to come up with ideas for improving, well, anything.
• Bad Idea Factories and 20% Time Projects - Sometimes the best ideas come from horrible beginnings. The old saying goes that there is no such thing as a stupid question. The same can be said for bad ideas. Even if the result is worthless and/or dangerous, there is something to be learned from the process - if not the product. While I do not condone students burning down random structures to test Freud's Theory of Psychoanalysis (now THAT"S a bad idea), I am a advocate of the process of separating good ideas from not-so-good ideas; the thinking and creativity involved cannot be replicated any better. When classrooms across the country kick off 20% Time Projects, many of them begin with bad idea factories as a way to brainstorm and get ALL ideas out on the table. From those bad ideas grow fruitful endeavors - think manure as food for fruits and vegetables. The 20 Time projects speak for themselves as far as creativity, sustained reflection & analysis, and dealing with setbacks are concerned.
• Teacher Modeling - This is far and away one of the best teaching strategies out there. Especially when it comes to the concept of learning from mistakes, when a teacher is willing to put him or herself out on the line and authentically "screw up" in front of a group of kids, an environment is being established. However, messing up and laughing it off is only step 1 of the process. From there teachers must explicitly model the additional concepts of reflection, revision, and the good ol' fashioned second try. Or third. Or fourth. It is this almost systematic grit and determination that we wish all kids develop and cultivate in school. Any of the above suggestions will work only if students and teachers are fully participating in the entire process of learning, not just checking in at the end of a unit or at test time.

After Grog gets mowed over by the stone wheel, instead of laughing at him or scolding his cohorts for a poor product and their "what-on-earth-were-you-thinking?" moment, we must revisit the occurrence in terms of what it would look like in the classroom.

Aside from stopping Grog and his buddies before they hurt someone, we should be praising the initiative and ingenuity of the group as it tries something new, or something more revolutionary that has never been done, if that's the case. All of these mini moments - micro-experiences let's call them - add up to create authentic macro-experiences that make a huge difference in the lives of our students.

Quality daily #microexperiences in school allow our Ss to build #Macroexperiences in the long run. #Neverwasteaday #Italladdsup #edtech

— Darin Anderson (@coachdarin22) August 7, 2015

Lessons in Education, Featuring Gary Larson: Part III

By EdTechManiac, Darin Anderson

Many of Gary Larson's comic strips from The Far Side tell so much of a story without so much as a word of dialogue. With his brilliance - no matter how off-the-wall it might be - Larson can indeed draw a picture that is worth well more than a thousand words.

In Part III of the EdTechManiacs comical Gary Larson series (see Parts I and II here), we will discuss how the "delicious" dish of liver and onions relates to the kinds of products we deliver to our students in the classroom and to teachers in schools across the country.

Compare this comic to a classroom
setting from your past. What did you learn?

This Larson offering is both playing off of the innocence of youth and preying upon the insecurities of all of us. Remember, ages ago, when you would clamber outside at the very sound of the ice cream truck rolling down your street? Do you also recall the opposite emotions upon finding out that your mom was making your least favorite meal that night? (Mine was goopy and neon green split pea soup.) This cartoon sums up both the elation of summertime treats and the gloom of unappetizing fare.

Honestly, most of us are fairly competent at sniffing out each kind of opportunity. As the old adage goes, if it looks like liver and smells like liver, it's probably liver, no matter what lengths a person goes to in order to make it seem otherwise. Our students, on one hand, are especially keen at this - and the younger they are the better they are at it.

Kindergartners enter their first year of "official school" having gone through six years of questioning and inquiry and curiosity. Many times, they also lack a filter that typically comes with maturity and age. (This is why a 5-year-old can get away with calling a man fat, while a teenager would get scolded for not knowing better.) All of this results in groups of children who know what they want ...and also what they do not want.

Our students come into our schools with preconceived ideas about what they want to learn and what they will attempt to avoid at any cost. Granted, so much of their desires center around content that schools cannot offer directly, but the students still show up with that yearning to learn more about them.

Even as traditional school may be a chief contributor to killing that creativity and inquiry, this Larson comic speaks volumes about changing school culture at fundamental and actionary levels.

How can we better gear our kids towards reaching standards outside of their control while also allowing them to achieve their own learning goals? This becomes the $68.6 billion question that educators must try to answer.

Let's begin jumping into the answers to this deep and broad subject by posing a few more questions.

• How many educational opportunities are packaged as something inviting and cutting-edge, but really offer only outdated or irrelevant information and content?
• Or worse, why is something viable and meaningful too often delivered via a vehicle designed for carrying disgusting meats?
• How can we do it all without adding anything more to our already heavy plates?

To me, any response to this question begins with some analysis of your constituency - students, parents and/or staff. You may think you know what your kids need, for example, because of mandated testing, curriculum maps and such. But DO you really have a finger on the pulse of your kids? Or your staff?

Like the kids in the comic, you might be approaching them with some scrumptious liver...when they are actually looking for a dreamsicle. I mean, who would do that, right?

To a certain extent, our hands are tied when it comes to the WHAT in education. However, we have a multitude of options when it comes to the HOW. With that in mind, we can better serve others if we know more about what they like (ice cream) and what they do not (liver).

To begin, here are a few "Livers" (things that were once cool, but are now like the 8-Track) that might be better left behind:

• Introducing and delivering content via PowerPoint - They are essentially the same as paper, but you can't doodle on them during classes or PD days.
• Sit-and-Get lectures and PD offerings - Today's generation is mobile and agile; sitting is the new smoking
• Pencil and Paper worksheets, graphic organizers, and, well, anything - While I understand that pencils will never become obsolete, ummm, neither will technology.
• One-at-a-time student presentations - Not only do these take up valuable instruction time, they also take up way too much time. Did I mention that they are time-consuming as well as lengthy? Oh, and it's boring, too. 
• Teacher-Assigned Products or Projects - Honestly, the world does not need any more landfills full of dioramas and tri-fold posters.
• The Archaic "No Cell Phones" Poster - Nowadays, it's the same as telling folks to leave their textbooks and such at home. The mobile device is a powerful tool that can be used for good AND evil. The choice is up to you.
• Speaking of Textbooks... - With constantly changes research landscapes, textbooks are almost outdated the moment they are published. Up-to-the-minute information is available at the touch of a screen. Why fight a losing battle when learners will head to Google anyway?

Rather than rolling down the street in our Liver-Mobile - even with the catchy trolley-style music - we could approach our Cell Mitosis unit or Standards-Based Grading PD (or whatever) from a different perspective.

Try these on for size:

• YouTube - Your kids use it...so should you. Perfect for flipping or blending instruction and for anytime learning.
• Social Media - Of course, this is a biggie for most of us. So brainstorm ways to get your kids and/or peers discussing and collaborating on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
• 3D Printing - What if your 2D doodles could come to life as tangible 3D objects? This is a current craze that will only gain more ground as the products advance. What was once untouchable technology if now fairly standards in most schools.
• 4D Augmented Reality - Programs like Aurasma, Augment, and DAQRI have taken interacting with content to a whole new level. Once limited to just consumption, AR programs are now beginning to allow kids to create and publish their own 4D designs.
• Green Screen Technology - What used to be sophisticated and expensive is now available on laptops and tablets alike. Going green allows for creativity and expression while also producing quality content that is digitally shareable. Did I mention that it also saves valuable instruction time?
• Making the World a Classoom - Whether it is connecting with someone from abroad on Twitter or sharing resources with a classmate from across town on Google Drive, people are no longer limited to what they can see from their own location.
• Gamification - On the heels of the recent Microsoft purchase of Minecraft, the EdTech world is all the more abuzz about combining what many kids already know - gaming - with what they "need" to know (in an academic sense). With some creative thinking Clash of Clans can indeed become a viable curriculum.

As we look to advance our field and hone our craft, we will be in a constant state of research and reflection. Change is certain. No longer should we disguise liver and onions as quality education. One taste and they'll figure it out. 

As #educators do we provide #relevantinstruction for our schools or R we delivering #liverandonions? #EdReform pic.twitter.com/CSsavE6bHa

— Darin Anderson (@coachdarin22) August 3, 2015

Lessons in Education, Featuring Gary Larson: Part II

By EdTechManiac, Darin Anderson

In Part II of our comical series on education reform, we examine two different ideas of education in need of some reform. Oh, and ducks...there will be lots of ducks.

Like most of Gary Larson's The Far Side comics, this particular frame offers both a superficial humor as well as a deeper, more philosophical meaning. In this post, I will offer my thoughts on both levels of understanding as they relate to education reform - or altering behavior in any aspect of our lives.

The initial humor is found is the obvious fact that ducks fly, but for some reason or another, this particular brace (look it up) has not yet lifted its wings to the air, so to speak.

Here, Bugs Bunny offers up a cruel bit of irony, at least where Daffy Duck is concerned. In order to save himself from disaster, all the duck has to do is flap his wings, or take advantage of his natural abilities. But he doesn't.

So too, we laugh at the blatant irony of the lead duck looking up at his peers with the sudden epiphany that they too could fly. In educational terms, it is similar to a student (or teacher) who observes his own peers completing any certain action and then thinks, I can do that too. Before long they are simply soaring.

Sometimes all it takes to leverage change is for an interested party - often it is an impressionable child or teenager, but it can be an adult as well - to closely observe the behavior of others and then mimic it. While it is not always that simple in actuality, many behaviors (movements, actions, procedures) can be reproduced on the basis of mental images  - let's call them mind-made movies - alone.

In his book entitled The Inner Game of Tennis, tennis pro Timothy Gallwey speaks of the battle between Self 1, our mind and ego, and Self 2, the part inside of us all that knows what to do if not interrupted by the conscious brain.

Gallwey explains his theory in the context of a tennis lesson he once gave: 

"My next lesson that day was with a beginner named Paul who had never held a racket. I was determined to show him how to play using as few instructions as possible; I'd try to keep his mind uncluttered and see if it made a difference. So I started by telling Paul I was trying something new. I was going to skip entirely my usual explanations to beginning players about the proper grip, stroke and footwork for the basic forehand.

"Instead, I was going to hit ten forehands myself, and I wanted him to watch carefully, not thinking about what I was doing, but simply trying to grasp a visual image of the forehand. He was to repeat the image in his mind several times and then just let his body imitate. After I had hit ten forehands, Paul imagined himself doing the same. Then, as I put the racket into his hand, sliding it into the correct grip, he said to me, "I noticed that the first thing you did was to move your feet." I replied with a noncommittal grunt and asked him to let his body imitate the forehand as well as it could.

"He dropped the ball, took a perfect backswing, swung forward, racket level, and with natural fluidity ended the swing at shoulder height, perfect for his first attempt! But wait, his feet; they hadn't moved an inch from the perfect ready position he had assumed before taking his racket back. They were nailed to the court. I pointed to them, and Paul said, "Oh yeah, I forgot about them!" The one element of the stroke Paul had tried to remember was the one thing he didn't do! Everything else had been absorbed and reproduced without a word being uttered or an instruction being given!"

Most of us self-identify as being visual learners, and this anecdote fully supports that idea. Our students and teaching peers can and do learn so much by closely watching those around them. I imagine that these ducks will be joining their brethren in the sky in no time...as long as no one intercedes and tells them they cannot or should not be doing so. Or worse yet, over-instructs to the point of confusion and discontent between Self 1 and Self 2.

Gallwey put it this way:

"...it is the constant "thinking" activity of Self 1, the ego-mind, which causes interference with the natural doing processes of Self 2. Harmony between the two selves exists when the mind itself is quiet. Only when the mind is still is one's peak performance reached."

While I do not know if anyone told these ducks to walk south instead of fly, it appears that their minds were indeed getting in the way. The old adage, "Spread your wings and fly," is more truth than fiction, at least in a philosophical sense.

How many children enter Kindergarten having been told over and over to not do this or to stop doing that? And once they gain entrance to the school walls do they not still hear the same tone on a daily basis?

Ask a duck. He knows the answer.

If a child wants to experiment with something new, whether it is a new piece of technology or simply a new way of completing a task, is she honestly given the freedom to do so? Educators preach ingenuity and creativity, but how many of us are actually willing to not just lighten up on the reigns, but to take off the halter all together?

Furthermore, how willing are we as educators to model the same kind of behavior by integrating something new into our respective classrooms? Technology. Behavior Management. Student Engagement.

If you think of the flying V formation as a peer you respect and admire - and yourself as a ground-bound duck - does it seem silly to you to NOT try and reach for higher climes? Of course we would make an attempt.

The capacity to excel exists in all of us  - even as most of us will never become as talented as Serena Williams or Roger Federer are at tennis. We do not all have to be given teacher-of-the-year awards to be considered great. But like hitting 9 out of 10 balls in the court is amazing, so to is believing in the children we teach.

You can learn a lot from a duck. #EdTech #EdChat #EdReform (Stay tuned for the next @edtechmaniacs post.) pic.twitter.com/fa9DIFTpFb

— Darin Anderson (@coachdarin22) July 31, 2015

10 YouTubing Uses that Align with Common Core Part 1: Speaking and Listening

By EdTechManiac, Blair Einfeldt
*update* For anyone interested, our family YouTube Channel can be found here.

For the first time in quite a while, I have had an abundance of time to spend with my children at home. Chalk that up for my first true teacher summer or living substantially closer to the high school where I teach. Regardless, upon spending this time with my kids I have learned one very important thing:

MY KIDS LOVE YOUTUBE!

Like Lays potato chips, it's impossible

They watch YouTube non stop. They watch gaming videos, they watch cat videos, they even watch videos of people watching videos. You read that correct. I observed my children watching a man who was making a video of himself watching a TV show. And they aren't alone. Sixty thousand other people have watched that same person watching that same video.

I pulled out my phone for quick research (there is extreme value to this which I will discuss later) to see how much this man, who watched a TV show, mad for watching said TV show. It was a bit vague but I came to a general consensus that through ad placement, YouTube pays out around about $1.50 per thousand views. So looking at that, I realized that this man made about $90 to sit and watch a 20 minute video of Steven Universe. While that is not a ton of money, if I made $90 for every Steven Universe episode I watched...OH GEEZ!

Anyway, in an offhanded comment I mentioned to my children that they could do something like that and probably even better. I did not realize that I had opened up Pandora's Box. I could not unsay that statement. My children went crazy, jumping around at the possibilities of being YouTube famous. So I, being that Arms-Race-Parent, followed by upping the ante with "Of course, let's do this, and we are going to be the best YouTubers EVAH!" I tend to fall into the world of Hyperbole. 

We soon found ourselves purchasing microphone headsets, video cards, digital film editing programs. I'm a bit ashamed at the amount of time and money that followed that first statement, however there have been some awesome things that come about and while I am an educator, I gave reflection to how YouTube and our current foray into viral video distribution has many parallels and uses in the world of education and especially Common Core. And yes...you should have a class YouTube Channel.

Many of you know this, but Core Standards build upon each other. With that said, I intend to focus on the 11th/12th grade standards as our end goal. If you would like to downgrade the standard to fit your particular grade level, have at it.

Let's Start with Speaking and Listening:

Standard:
Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 11-12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

The traditional way of hitting this standard is a typical class discussion. However, the standard talks about having the students come prepared to the discussion. Class discussions do not generally create that need of preparation as it should.

Try this:

Google has an app called Hangouts. It is essentially Skype for Google. Google, which owns,YouTube, automatically saves a Google Hangout sessions as a video on the YouTube accounts of the people within the Hangout. Put your students in small groups, give them a topic to discuss, but make the discussion a Google Hangout. Give them a 10 minute limit. Spend some time prior and have the students create an outline or even rudimentary script for their hangout.

Being that it will be posted on YouTube, watch the level of quality drastically increase as they are held accountable to the internet (trolls and non-trolls alike).

My children are a perfect example of this. They have created their own standard of creation based on the videos they watch. We have had to create intros, channel art, written scripts, added effects and editing because they were afraid to put poor quality out in the event that the YouTubers that they admire were to watch. They are 5, 7 and 9 years old. Imagine how a 11th grader would improve their quality with that type of internet positive peer pressure.

Standards 2 and 3:
(2) Integrate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) in order to make informed decisions and solve problems, evaluating the credibility and accuracy of each source and noting any discrepancies among the data.

(3) Present information, findings, and supporting evidence, conveying a clear and distinct perspective, such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning, alternative or opposing perspectives are addressed, and the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and a range of formal and informal tasks.

Many of the YouTube videos my pre-double digit aged children watch are Theory Channels. The Gamer Theorists, Cartoon Theory, Film Theorists, Cartoon Conspiracy channels, to name a few, put different ideas and hypotheses in place about relevant (to them) topics. Today, my children are being tasked to take a particular theory and evaluate it for accuracy. This is forcing self driven inquiry and research and will culminate in a 7 year old response video disputing or supporting the thesis of someone else. Again, my 7 and 9 year olds are doing this.

Have your students create a response video to another popular video and provide links to their sources in the description. Or provide your students a debated topic like the validity of the moon landing and have them create a YouTube video breaking down their opinion with sources.

On presentation days, rather than your typical stand-in-front-of-the-class presentations, provide your students links or even QR codes to scan with their iPods or personal devices to watch the videos of their choice. Have your students comment on the video for feedback.

Using YouTube in this way will provide the following things for your classroom:

1. Real-world audience

2. Real-world accountability

3. Engagement

4. Transparency

5. Evidence of Use and Implementation of Standards

6. Evidence of Integration of Technology

7. Self Driven Activity

8. Peer review

9. Possibility of Immediate Feedback

10. Increased Level of Ease in Assessment