#MicroBlogMusings for the week of November 27-Dec 2
The Importance of Nuance
Simply put, society has a problem with the concept of nuance. It is common to read/hear definitive statements about causes and solutions to our problems. Education is no different. With a focus on standardized testing and measurable outcomes, the complexity of teaching and learning has been oversimplified. The field of education is complex and multifaceted, involving the study of how people learn, the methods used to teach them, and the many social, cultural, and economic factors that can impact the learning process. In such a complex and varied field, nuance is of the utmost importance.
Nuance refers to the subtle differences and complexities that exist within a topic or issue. It is the recognition that multiple perspectives, varying degrees of influence, and shades of gray often need to be understood and accounted for to develop a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of a given topic. In education, nuance is essential because it allows for a more precise and nuanced understanding of the challenges and opportunities that arise in the field.
One area in which nuance is essential in education is in the study of learning and teaching methods. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to teaching and learning, and different ways may work better for diverse learners or in different contexts. For example, while some students may thrive in a lecture-based format, others may learn better through hands-on or experiential learning. By recognizing the nuances of learning and teaching methods, educators can develop more effective and inclusive approaches that meet the needs of diverse learners.
Another area where nuance is crucial in education is the analysis of social and cultural factors that impact learning. A wide variety of social and cultural factors can influence the learning process, including race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender. With a nuanced understanding of these factors and how they intersect, educators can work to fully understand the unique challenges and opportunities that students face in different contexts.
For example, studies have shown that low-income and minority students are more likely to attend underfunded schools, which can result in lower-quality education and fewer opportunities for academic and personal growth. With a nuanced understanding of how socioeconomic factors can impact educational opportunities, educators can work to develop effective strategies for supporting these students and ensuring that they have access to the same high-quality education as their more privileged peers.
Nuance is also crucial in the development of educational policies and practices. These policies and practices can significantly impact students’ educational opportunities and outcomes, and they must be developed with a nuanced understanding of the factors that influence the learning process. For example, policies that focus solely on standardized testing and strict curricular requirements may not account for the unique needs and strengths of individual learners and may not provide a comprehensive or accurate picture of student achievement.
On the other hand, policies that are too focused on individualized approaches may not provide the structure and consistency that some students need to succeed. Educators and policymakers can create more effective and inclusive systems that support all students’ academic and personal growth by developing policies and practices with a nuanced understanding of the factors that impact the learning process.
Nuance is of critical importance in the field of education. In a field as complex as education, understanding the many factors that impact the learning process is essential for developing effective policies and practices that support all students’ academic and personal growth. By recognizing the many shades of gray within education, educators and policymakers can develop more effective and inclusive strategies that meet the needs of a diverse range of learners and that help to ensure that all students have access to the high-quality education they need to succeed.
The Importance of Connections
#IdeaCon is over, and I have time to sit back and think about what I gained from the conference experience. Being on the committee gave me little opportunity to sit in on presentations, but I was able to present two sessions. What is the biggest takeaway from the conference, you ask? The importance of connections.
Yes, a plethora of great information is shared and topics discussed, but ultimately, the connections matter. Meeting up with people you don’t see very often, those you have connected with online but not in person, or those who are brand new to you matters the most to me. I get so much from just being around people who care about education. Their contagious passion makes me want to be better at what I do.
It is easy to get into a bubble and only see the world through your lens or the lens of the people with whom you work. Connections at conferences allow you to see the world of education from other perspectives. These new perspectives can help you formulate a new path forward or help you appreciate what you have. For example, I have learned much about DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) by talking with educators about these topics. You can read all the books you want, but talking with others gives you the first-hand experience necessary for an accurate picture to emerge.
Connections are also a way to make and cultivate friendships. I know some think that online friendships aren’t real friendships. While I wholeheartedly disagree with this sentiment, it does help when you can continue the friendship in person. I spent so much conference time just catching up with “old” friends and working on new friendships. These are REAL relationships with people who have mutual respect for one another. We laugh, share our struggles, give advice, and sometimes cry, all of which constitute friendship.
I’ll leave you with two thoughts…
- Online relationships are genuine relationships.
- When presented with the opportunity to attend an in-person conference, take it. Don’t just attend; take the opportunity to connect with people.
My Journey to Control My Brain
Me: Time to go to sleep.
Brain: Did I make Sue mad today? I have so much to do tomorrow. How will I get it all done? Did I close the garage door? Chickens. I hope my flight 3 months from now isn’t canceled. I need to mow the lawn. What podcast will I listen to tomorrow? Horses. Eggs. I need to make an appointment to get my tires rotated.
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Does this sound familiar?
I am writing this blog post to share with you my journey to train my brain to do what I want it to do when I want it to do it. I have always been intrigued by how the brain works, but until recently, I hadn’t been too concerned with taming it. Now I am fixated on it!
I have practiced mindfulness for a few years. Mindfulness, for me, was an at-the-moment experience. I would set aside 10-15 minutes to use my Calm subscription (I am one of the lucky educators who got a lifetime subscription for free) and work to set my mind at ease. I see now that I wasn’t practicing mindfulness outside of the sessions. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t a part of my day-to-day life.
Enter Erin Kiger , a member of one of my online PLNs who thought I would be interested in a new product that Swivl was working on called Skilled Space. I jumped in fully, started using the platform, and regularly connected with Sara Candela, who was working on the project for Swivl. Little did I know that this connection would change how I looked at my brain. I am always promoting making active connections using social media, and this was the perfect storm. My relationship with Sara led to my connection with the project manager Arlen Bitsky and the founder of Swivl, Brian Lamb. Long story short, Skilled Space evolved into something bigger, Focusable, and I am hooked. Simply put, these three individuals have changed my life.
As they state on their website, “Focusable leverages neuroscience to transform learning and work into more enjoyable and productive experiences.” My experience over the last year with beta testing the product has helped me start to take more control over my ability to focus and control my brain. Focusable, combined with my experience of mindfulness, has better allowed me to recognize when my attention is being highjacked and bring myself back to the present. Manageable goals and the opportunity to reflect during the process is genuinely changing the way my brain functions.
Sara also started hosting book studies for books like Peak Mind by Amishi Jha and Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to help further the idea of how the brain works and how we can better understand our minds. I have since added other brain-based books to my reading list. My latest read is Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. All this discussion and reading have helped me make critical changes in my life. It is still a work in progress, but here are some changes I have made or am working to make.
- Mindlessly scrolling through social media- I still use it but am more conscious of when and for long I am doing it. I am considering removing social media apps from my phone.
- Giving myself time to let my brain run wild- I realized that I am pumping stuff into my ears all the time…driving to work, sitting at my desk, working out, etc. My current goal, work out without headphones every other time. My brain needs time to process everything I am putting in it. This blog post started on a 3-mile headphoneless walk.
- Continue to meditate- I am currently on a 26-day streak. The streak is less important than the skills I am learning. I find myself employing the skills in the guided sessions to the outside world. I focus on my breathing many times throughout the day.
- To be happy, I need challenges- I now look at relaxation differently than I used to. I have started to think about productive leisure time and am exploring new “hobbies” that provide my brain with a challenge. Your brain needs stimulation and challenge to grow.
- Sharing these ideas with others- I am not keeping this all to myself. I have shared Focusable with a friend at work, El Higus, and she has become passionate about it. We plan to talk to district-level leaders about using Focusable with staff and students.
I am sure this list will get longer as I continue exploring more brain science. For now, I love the idea that I can change my brain for the better. As the folks at Focusbale say, “You are focusable.”
Complex Problems Require Complex Solutions
I have become fixated on the phrase, “complex problems require complex solutions.” It has become my mantra. Many in our society have difficulty recognizing that the world is not a simple system. In turn, this binary thinking and looking for simple answers create our current dysfunctional state of being.
For those who do not know me, I used to be this type of thinker. Why are people poor? To me, it was apparent, they didn’t work hard, or they were lazy. I realize now that my whole worldview was one of simple right or wrong. My thinking changed about a decade ago for reasons that require much more elaboration than I have space for in this blog post. I now focus my thoughts on trying to figure out all of the complexities of a given problem. I could stop there and say, “thanks for reading,” but it was a conversation with a friend and colleague that has me refining my view of this idea of needing complex solutions.
I work with Jaclyn Hoskins (@JaclynSmith21), and many of our interactions take place through Voxer. She is a reflective educator, and she makes me think. People who make me think cause me to reflect on my own beliefs and attitudes. We all need these people in our lives. Last week, we discussed a recent education Facebook post. Jaclyn commented that the problem with the phrase (complex problems require complex solutions) is that it might make some people feel that there are issues that are too hard to solve and, in the end, might make people throw their hands up and surrender. I started to wonder if I was doing more harm than good by focusing on this mantra.
I continue to wholeheartedly believe that problems are complex, and they do require complex solutions, but here is my new thinking. We need to make the complexities visible by breaking them apart before seeking solutions. Offered solutions need to be broken down into manageable tasks to make changes that will positively impact the big problem.
How can we do this? For starters, we have to have some common agreement as to the nature of the problem. This requires that we talk with others about how they see the problem. We can’t be quick to jump to solutions until we understand the true nature and the impact of the problem. My matra assumes that everyone understands that issues are complex, which is a big assumption to make. Jacyln was getting me to rethink the emphasis that I was placing on the solution rather than the problem. Once you have an “agreement” on the issue, people can devise solutions that focus on the unique complexities. These individual solutions would then work in tandem to solve the overall big problem. Several smaller solutions seem much more manageable than one big complex solution. The goal is to solve that difficult problem, not overwhelm people into thinking that they can’t do anything about it because it is too complicated to grasp.
The million-dollar question is how we get people to see the problem as complex. The current division of our society makes this recognition of complexity difficult. Still, we have to continue engaging and encouraging people to dig deeper into the problems we are facing. Arrived at solutions will not be successful unless we truly know the nature of the problem. The best way to recognize this complexity is to get out of your bubble. Identifying and acknowledging complexity requires us to see the world from a variety of perspectives. I fight against this parochialism by following a variety of educators on Twitter and reading as much as possible.
This blog post was hard to write, and I am still not sure that I clearly outlined my thinking, but it has helped me solidify my new focus of understanding the complexity of the problem before coming up with solutions. Maybe my new mantra needs to be, “Effective solutions are only possible by understanding the complexity of problems.”
Don Sturm
Let’s Connect!
Voxer- @dsturm823
Something New…
Lately, I have been sharing my thoughts using a tool called AudiPen.ai. This seems to be a good place to house those thoughts. Here are my #MicroBlogMusings for the week of November 20-26, 2023.
KathiSue Summers and the Case for Robust Online Communities
It has been a long time since I sat down to write a blog post. I could give a million excuses, but frankly, I just haven’t felt like writing one. The death of a friend has prompted me to write a new post. KathiSue Summers passed away from COVID on Saturday, August 28. It was heartbreaking news for everyone who knew and loved her. I never had the chance to meet her IRL (in real life). Wait… you never met her? How could her death have an impact on you? The answer is in the relationship we had built as members of an online PLN community through Voxer. Voxer is a platform that allows for voice and text communication. This community has been together for roughly four years, and we connect daily about topics ranging from education, our kids, favorite foods, etc. I know many of these people better than I know some teachers I have worked with for 30 years. We have had some great times and some rough times. We don’t always agree. Sometimes I get angry at them, and I am sure the reverse is true. Ok…I know the reverse is true. But, in the end, we are a community that cares for each other.
Some colleagues I work with “make fun” (in a joking sort of way) of these connections, but they are real friendships. My charge to you is to find your group and start connecting. How do you get started? Make your Twitter connections more than just a Twitter relationship. Take the leap and invite followers to join an app that allows you to share your thoughts using your voice. Voice brings so much more to the table than texts. You can hear passion, excitement, and sadness through voice. While Voxer is the app that #4OCFpln uses, others like Synth and Skilled Space allow for the same types of interactions. I have recently become friends with Sara Candela. We use both of these apps to stay in touch. Sara lives 2,000 miles from me; we have never met IRL, but I consider her a friend.
Even though I never met KathiSue Summers IRL, I am thankful for the online community that allowed me to get to know KathiSue and feel the loss over her death.
Don Sturm
Let’s Connect!
Voxer- @dsturm823
The Frontline of Education Reform
I finally have some time to sit down and get several thoughts out into a blog post. I know I am not alone, but the last five months have been crazy, and writing a blog post has not been my priority. I’ll start by setting the scene. My district started back on August 10th with full five-day attendance for all students. We have no special schedules; it is all kids, every day. I was concerned that the required mask-wearing would be a huge issue, but students are wearing masks for the most part. There are currently four categories of students in the district.
Home-Schooled Students: These are the students/families who have chosen not to attend school. Our certified staff has no contact or responsibility for these students. I am not sure if there are any services provided for this group, but families are essentially responsible for their children’s learning.
Remote Learning Students: These students have chosen not to be at school but have the district provide them with their learning experiences for the first semester. Our school district has chosen to contract with two 3rd party vendors. One vendor is for K-4th grade and the other for 5th-12th grade. These students use our iPads to learn on these platforms. We provide technical support for these devices. While this support has been challenging, we are muddling through it. There is a certified teacher who students are assigned that act as a guide through the curriculum. These teachers are not responsible for the actual teaching of the material. Ideally, these teachers are a point of contact for these remote students.
Quarantined Students: This group of students is fluid. They are waiting on COVID 19 tests to come back and might only be out for a few days while some were in close contact with a student who had tested positive. These students could be out for up to fourteen days. Quarantined students are learning right along with those students who are attending school in person. They also have a district-issued iPad.
In-Person Students: Think traditional school setting, except with masks and one-way hallways and stairs. The district encourages a three-foot social distance, though that is difficult for some classrooms. Students who are in school are issued an iPad. Both quarantined and in-person students are using Schoology as the LMS, which is new to all of us.
Enough about the background of my district…I want to turn to the blog’s title, “Frontline of Reform,” because one hope that I have for our collective experience since March is that education will change for the better. I hope that teachers, administrators, and even parents will self-reflect and see that there might be a better way of “doing” school. The schedule rolled out by my district gets students back into school, but at what costs? I want to skip over the overall health concerns and get to the pedagogical concerns. Over time many teachers have worked on implementing new strategies that involve collaboration and student voice and choice. Like any district, not all teachers embrace these new strategies, but I can see that we are making strides in thinking about what it means to educate our youth effectively. Social distancing rules are making classrooms look a lot like they did when I started teaching in 1991. Desks are back to straight rows with students facing the front of the room. Gone are the creative classroom layouts that promote more student interaction. There are fewer opportunities to do group work, and, as a result, collaborative activities are harder to plan and implement. I am worried that these changes will set us back in terms of pedagogy.
As more and more in-person students quarantine, it is evident to me that this is the group that might drive education reform. I think these quarantined students, and the teachers trying to teach these students, are on the front lines of education reform. The fluidity is problematic because teachers don’t know who will quarantine on any given day. More importantly, these students have been stressful because teachers don’t know what/how to provide for them. Do they record lessons and send them to students? Do they make them a part of the class by having them join a Google Meet? When and how do they take tests and quizzes? The answer to each of these questions depends on the teacher. These types of questions are common. When do I have time to record lessons when I am also teaching a classroom of students? Is there a privacy issue with having a live class meeting? Can I require a student to attend my Meet at the time of my class? How can I guarantee the integrity of my tests if they are at home? Is it fair to give the same test to students who might be able to use Google to find the answers? Can I just wait until they return to school to make up the assessments?
I could go on and on with the questions that teachers have about this group of students. Here is the thing, I think teachers working through these problems and the answers they come up with can make school better. Our district is lucky to have coaches that teachers can turn to to help navigate these questions. For the teacher who can’t imagine giving the same test to at-home students as in-person students, they might start to think about the purpose of assessments. If a student can look up answers on Google, is that the most effective type of assessment? A self-reflective teacher might start to think about ways of designing assessments that focus more on application rather than knowledge. A teacher engaged in self reflection might begin to ask if a recorded lesson is effective for students who are home, maybe it would be just as effective for in-person students. That same teacher could explore different possibilities of what class time looks like. Perhaps it is less direct instruction and more student conference-based. Ultimately, I think if we do it right, we can make some significant strides toward making schools more relevant than they have been for some students.
For this period to not be a lost opportunity, teachers have to be given time and be willing to self-reflect. If teachers are always just putting out fires and working one day at a time, they will not be able to leverage this new experience for their students’ betterment. Administrators and Board members have to be creative by figuring out ways of giving teachers time to start to be proactive rather than reactive. The onus isn’t just on the official school leaders; educators need to take a hard look at what and how we have been running our classrooms and make changes that will benefit students moving forward. One of my fears is that when all this is “over,” we will wipe the sweat from our brows and go back to the way that we were. I don’t want all of the work of teachers to be in vain.
Have you read the terms of use??
There is nothing better than walking into my local grocery store, or better yet, an Apple Store and getting the “Welcome Don” greeting on my phone. I get the newest specials and deals right as I walk in the door. I think most realize that this type of personalization comes with a price…a lack of privacy. As an adult, I have consciously decided to allow certain stores and apps to track my movements so I can get this personalized service. Privacy is a different monster all together for the students in our schools. There are both state and federal regulations that govern when we can provide and how we use student data. As a technology integration specialist, I work with both the technology and curriculum departments. I love having a foot in both because I can be that bridge between the back end of the tech side and what teachers need to do their jobs. One of my roles is to help monitor all of the privacy policies for the numerous apps that are requested and eventually pushed out to all of the 3,000+ student iPads.
When I first started in this role, I had to dig into the Terms of Service as well as the privacy policies for each app developer. It was overwhelming! I would try to catch all the nuances of the various policies, but we eventually decided to go with a company that would do the details work. We chose Education Framework. This company does a wonderful job, but I find myself not actually reading the privacy policies anymore because someone else does. As I work to complete my ISTE Certification, one of the assignments is to explore the policies of some of the apps that we use.
My district uses Buncee, Seesaw, Flipgrid, and Edpuzzle quite heavily. What did I find as I explored the user agreements and privacy policies? It was not surprising that all four of these services take privacy and data sharing seriously. All four of them are signatories of the Student Privacy Pledge (the pledge). In a nutshell, the signers of the pledge agree not to collect student information beyond what is needed for the service to work. They also agree to not sell or disclose information to outside sources for the purpose of advertising. Those of us entrusted to judge educational services should be happy to see the companies with whom we work willing to sign this type of commitment. The Internet Keep Safe Coalition (iKeepSafe) is another certification that checks for compliance to state and federal regulations. My research shows that Buncee and Edpuzzle have that certification. After this research, I am confident that these products are keeping student data safe and private.
Teachers sometimes ask for access to services that are not set up to deal with educational institutions. I want to make it clear…I am not saying these are bad companies, they just don’t have the focus on education. One of those products is Bitmoji. Who doesn’t love to be able to share their likeness in the form of these cartoon-type characters? Their user agreement clearly states that the service should not be used by children 13 years of age…period. In addition, my district does not allow access to it at school for those older than 13 because the privacy policy states that information is shared with several entities, many of whom aren’t specified. Adults can decide to create an account with Bitmoji, but students can’t, nor should they, be allowed to create accounts that could potentially provide personal data to other entities. A parent might allow it, but the school can’t be a part of that agreement because of the risk of the violation of student privacy laws.
So what’s the point of all of this. Mostly it is awareness. If you are an educator who has had an app/service denied that you would like to use with your students, there might be a good reason for that denial. On the other hand, before submitting an app/service for approval, do some homework on the privacy and terms of service policies. If you find that they have signed the Student Privacy Pledge and/or are certified by iKeepSafe, include that in your request.
#OneWord2020
2020 makes the 3rd year that I have taken part in the #OneWord movement. I have found that condensing my goals for the year into one specific word is a great way to self-reflect on where I have been and where I want to go. It is one word…no mantra or goal statement to remember. It is a more natural way to always keep my word on my mind. I continue to come up with a guiding word because it has worked! 2018 my word was CREATE and create I did. 2019 was DISSONANCE. My whole goal with PD was to get people thinking about what they believed versus how they ran their classrooms.
My #OneWord2020 is EMPOWER. In my position as a technology integration specialist, it is easy to get into a rut of putting out fires related to tech problems. I will continue to do that, but my goal is to also be sure to work closely with teachers and administrators to make them feel like they can start to make empowered instructional decisions. The issue with starting a conversation with the other party having a problem that has to be solved is that there is a problem that has to be solved! Usually, that problem has to be solved pretty quickly so that a lesson or unit can run smoothly. Many times, I solved the problem, and the other party is grateful beyond belief. It is a good feeling, but it doesn’t do much to empower the person with whom I was working. In fact, sometimes the other person feels deflated because of the feeling that they couldn’t solve the problem.
Empowerment is a feeling that comes from a place where you feel confident to try new things. I don’t think I have been a force of empowerment for many of the teachers with whom I work. The feeling of relief and/or gratefulness are not the same as empowerment. The empowered educator feels confident in trying new things and asks for someone to offer feedback and suggestions. Don’t get me wrong, I do have that relationship with some teachers, but my goal is for that number to grow. The “trick” will be to not only be there to help solve the problem but to follow up regularly about how things went. These follow up meetings are where the best learning takes place because I can help walk them through some self-reflection about the lesson. The more we self-reflect, the more that we can feel empowered to make tweaks and improvements to what we are doing.
Here’s to a great 2020!
Schools Can Be Better 