Zombie Pedagogy Matters

PROLOGUE

Pedagogy comes before technology when designing learning experiences. Whom are we designing learning experiences for, devices or people? I’m writing this post in response to a blog post by RJ Jacquez suggesting elearning is dead.

ZOMBIE

I work with several devices on any given day: a Dell notebook, a MacBook Pro, an iPad, a Blackberry, and an iPhone. I do different things with each device. I don’t do the same things on all my devices. How would a single instructional experience apply across all devices all the time?

Instructional designers, and the learners we support, are not zombies. Context, where a learner is and what they are doing matters. Squeezing learning content from a laptop screen to a smart phone screen doesn’t extend a learning experience. It constrains it.

PEDAGOGY MATTERS

How do you interact with your mobile phone? I use mine for taking pictures, texting, and making calls. I have a lot of apps that I don’t use often. Mostly they’re there for quick one-off tasks like uploading a photo to Instagram or checking the weather. I tend not to read on my phone. For reading and watching video clips I have my iPad.

My tablet’s form factor enables me to consume a richer variety of information than my phone. iPad, for example, is good for doing research in the field. I have apps that enable me to rapidly produce a range of information types including video clips, spreadsheets, presentations, and documents.

Pedagogy has to come before technology.

EPILOGUE

I started using Plotagon after reading a tweet about it by digital innovation consultant Christy Cate. I think I was accessing Twitter from my iPad at the time. A few minutes after downloading the app I created my first story.

While it’s true the story can be played back on any device that works with YouTube what the learner does with it matters. Are they looking at the clip while finding an emergency exit? Head down while moving down a corridor there’s a good chance they’ll miss it. Maybe the device is running an app that shows them where they are in a building relative to the exits?

Pedagogy, the mindful application of instruction, comes before technology.

EdCampLDR Phoenix Reflections

INTRO

#EdCampLDRPhoenix was yesterday. I was mostly there. Mostly? Read on.

EDCAMPLDR

EdCampLDR is a gathering of people involved with and interested in K-12 school leadership. The way I understand it Joe Mazza of the Graduate School of Education at Penn started it as a way to get people talking about the challenges and opportunities facing primary and secondary education today. There were several EdCampLDR sessions held on July 10 and 13 across the United States and China.

MOSTLY

I say I was mostly at EdCampLDR because I recently started reading The Achievement Habit by Bernie Roth. I started reading it last week. It has me reflecting on how my thoughts affect my doing. I have been to a lot of EdCamps the last two years, 23 I think. I’ve met lots of educators and learned tons about educational technology and its application to engage students. In one sentence EdCamps are free meetups of educators where know-how is exchanged.

Periodically during the day my thinking wandered off and made connections with what I was learning and the book. I started reforming some ideas about how I could make my work a little more interesting while helping educators with their professional development.

RELATIONSHIPS

Teaching is about relationships: teacher, students, parents, stakeholders, learners coming together and engaging.

There was a lot of engaging. I got to deepen my understanding of the issues facing educators. Some of what I heard included inconsistent or absent curriculum, disconnects between what was being taught and what would be needed once students graduated, availability of educational technology, and ways of teaching.

I also heard about resources, including the elephant in the room: time. How do teachers develop professionally when they’re as busy as they are? I learned that, in Arizona schools at least, PD (professional development) organized by the schools or their districts happens three times per school year: beginning, middle, and towards the end. That’s one day three times per year.

I had an amazing talk with two teachers during a Teach Like A Pirate session. We talked about ways to engage students andhow to use design thinking to plan lessons. I also got to try out Periscope to stream the EdCampLDR experience out to people following #NotAtEdCampLDR.

NO EXCUSES

One of the classes at Chandler High School, where #EdCampLDRPhoenix was held, had the sign below hanging on a wall.

It brought me up short when I saw it. The thing from the book about meaning came to mind. How things (and thoughts) have no meaning until they’re brought to life by doing something with them.

OUTRO

Anyway, time for me to get busy working on what this meaning means to me.

Transformational Learning Experience Design

INTRO

During tonight’s #TLAP chat I got a DM (Direct Message) from someone asking for my spin on transformational learning experiences. This is my short answer. Note that I support adult learners.

TRANSFORMATIONAL

Butts in seats: When I think about learning that’s what comes to mind first.

Teachers talk while learners..

Can you identify with this scenario: A teacher, an overhead projector, slides, and a darkened room? How did it feel to you? Maybe it’s a computer-based training application where the learner reads, clicks, drags, and navigates to the next screen.

LEARNING EXPERIENCE

I think learning has to be experienced for it to stick. It’s moving around a learning space. Maybe it’s using an app on a mobile device to research, draft, and create.

How I like my courses to flow: the teacher shares a story on the thing to be learned. Then there’s a conversation where questions are answered and additional details are shared. Note that the details need not come from the teacher.

DESIGN

We have lots of experience with stories. A well crafted story elicits its own meaning to the person hearing it. This is where context comes in. Given a learning objective wrap a story around it.

The stories I like to use describe something bad that has or could happen. Sometimes the stories are about opportunities. The learner brings their own context or need to the learning space. The learner does or produces something that brings closure to the story. I like to think it ends happily for teacher and learner.

OUTRO

Learning should be about more than butts in seats. Learning should be about movement, collaboration, and making the learning visual. Designing transformational learning experiences means learners are actively engaged, sharing perspectives with other learners, and creating something real that says “See? I got this.”

Suggested reading: Teach Like A Pirate by Dave Burgess, Pure Genius: Building a Culture of Innovation by Don Wettrick, Professional Learning in the Digital Age by Kristin Swanson, and Invent to Learn by Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary S. Stager.

Pin the Tail On the Edustory

PROLOGUE

Yields of next generation CPUs fabricated on semiconductor wafers were trending down, and with them profits and bonuses. Something had to be done, and quick.

 

PIN

I inherited a course that sought to train workers how to use a loss control system (LCS).

Sadly, it relied on Powerpoint slide after slide in a darkened room.

 

TAIL

You can guess at the result.

The learners were disengaged and yields continued to decrease. What to do? What to do?

EDUSTORY

I reworked the course design. We wanted technicians to be able to identify losses and document near-misses that almost resulted in a loss.

Building on an accelerated learning strategy I designed an activity to do just that.

The class began by introducing learners to the LCS components. This took about five minutes. Questions were asked and answered.

Learners would then pull simulated wafers (our product) from a cloth covered wall where they had been held by Velcro.

A yellow sticky note on the back of each wafer told a story about what happened to it. Some stories were losses, others near-misses.

EPILOGUE

Learners then determined, based on the LCS criteria, how to document what happened on a worksheet that simulated the online data gathering app.

It was my first successful transformational learning experience design. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’d been following a design thinking problem solving model to get there. Getting learners up and moving around, I know now, was straight out of Teach Like A Pirate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zombie Spockalypse

PROLOGUE

The space between my ears, that gray matter frontier, is in tumult.

ZOMBIE

I was a last minute registrant to the CUE (Computer Using Educators) annual conference in Palm Springs, California. Today is day one of three. I had planned each session meticulously, mapping out the shortest path between one session’s venue and the next. Happily, it turned out not to be.

The first session on my list of must-attend was @am_estrella’s Remixing the Do Now and Exit Slip in a 1:1 Classroom. A few weeks ago I’d learned what an Exit Slip assignment was by reading a tweet by @sciencepenguin. The session had an activity where we had to create a short story based on a couple of pictures; we were encouraged to craft a story and share it with the person nearest us.

As it happened, the nearest person to me was Danica Marsh; she and Kelly Baker were doing the next session in the room. She happened to tell me its name. All I heard her say was.. ZOMBIE. The rest is a blur.

 

SPOCKALYPSE

I’m a fan of Star Trek. During its original run I didn’t watch it much. In 1966 we were a one-TV family. If papa didn’t like it we didn’t watch it. He was a big cowboy movie fan and except for that one episode set at the OK Corral none of the Enterprise crew wore stetsons.

Anyway, I liked Spock. I iked his curiosity. I was saddened when Leonard Nimoy passed. I got to thinking about Spock during the CUE 15 Common Core Performance Tasks… and Zombies session. I learned a bit about engagement during the session. More importantly, was what I didn’t learn. Here are a few words that aroused my interest and that I have to figure out:

• Ess fack lingo
• Zombie engagement model

EPILOGUE

Okay, maybe I misheard the first one. But wow that zombie engagement model. I have to figure out what that is. I’m in the right place for it. There are 5600 educators attending CUE 15 right along with me.

 

 

MRPtA Draft 00

PROLOGUE

“Every picture tells a story, don't it?” — Rod Stewart

MRPtA

My mLearnCon proposal was accepted by the eLearning Guild: Yea! So now the work begins.

 

DRAFT 00

I had thought to do my talk on a case study but during a chat on Twitter someone suggested a different spin.

EPILOGUE

So that's where I'm at now, ideating how it might work. Good things happen, I've found, when you throw ideas out there.

 

 

 

Sticky Learning

PROLOGUE

How do you figure out if your learners get it?

STICKY

How about if we ask them? Only we do it immediately after the event rather than in a survey weeks or months later. A little while ago I read this tweet in my Twitter timeline.

I clicked on the link and.. wow moment.

LEARNING

I design transformational learning experiences for online and face-to-face training modalities. Exit slips are definitely transformational, at least for my adult learning population.

I'm thinking the way it would work is following a lesson or activity asking learners to complete an exit ticket. Rather than all learners being asked the same question there would be several questions. On leaving the session learners would post their sticky note response on a wall. The instructors then review the tickets to see how sticky the learning was.

EPILOGUE

This fits somewhere in between formative and summative assessment. It helps learners to recall the new information they were exposed to while giving the instructor a snapshot into how well the know-how transferred. Thank you @BergsEyeView and @SciencePenguin for a cool idea.