When I close my eyes, I see weeds.

When I close my eyes, I see weeds. Not metaphorical weeds. Not biblically allusioned weeds. Actual freakin weeds.

Despite our sworn promises never to do so again, my wife and I recently purchased a new home, sans yard. So, with apparently nothing better to do, I woke up this morning at 7:00 and headed straight out into the yard. For six long hours (remember, I'm a school teacher and have soft hands) I fought a valiant battle against the weeds in the yard. I'm proud to say that some of them were quite a bit taller than me and I still took them down! Six hours was enough. There's still some weeds in the yard, but six hours did me in.

Now, when I close my eyes, I still see weeds. When my wife said the blessing over lunch, all I saw was weeds. Tonight, when I finally close my eyes to go to sleep, I imagine that I'll probably still see weeds.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, for the last few weeks I've been thinking an aweful lot about educational technology. I've been reading books, reading blogs, playing with computers, and making plans for the coming school. And lately, when I close my eyes, when I lay down for bed, I think a lot about educational technology.

Hopefully all these thoughts, both conscious and unconscious are doing some good.

Smart: The Car for Idiots

In the following paragraphs, I'd like to take a minute to deviate from normal logic and enjoy a rant that's been bouncing around in my head for months:

I went for a bike ride yesterday (I've recently been forced into training for an 100 mile race, but that's another story) and in the course of 30 miles I ran past 3 Smart cars with "For Sale" signs in their windows. Let me just mention at this point that I hate those cars.

Smart cars are rediculous. They seat two people. They look completely retarded. They have no power, no speed, and questionable handling. And (brace yourself for this one) they get decent gas mileage. It just kills me. These are supposed to be amazing, gas-sipping machines. I had a Ford Festiva 10 years ago that cost half as much, got better gas mileage, and had a back seat. Sure, you might die in an accident, but at least you wouldn't look like a pompous ass doing it.

But then, that was 10 years ago (and it was already 7 years old when I bought it). So lets talk more recent. More realistic. I haven't looked into this, but I think I can wing it on this one. Currently I drive a Corolla. I get almost 40 mpg. I don't look stupid. I have decent power, comfort, and room for 4 real adults plus their luggage. Prior to the Corolla, I had a Mazda3. Again, nearly 40 mpg, lots of comfort, room for people, and cool looks to boot.

Why then buy a Smart? Because you're a pompous ass.

What does this have to do with anything? Strangely enough it reminds me exactly of our schools technology. We have a lot of it. It's really pretty awesome. But, I think that we've bought a couple of Smart cars along the way.

That's enough for now. Thanks for listening to me rant. I'll be back to talking logic tomorrow.

Book Review: "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell

Let me first explain my motivation for reading this book. At NECC this year there was a book store. In this book store there were maybe 100 different books. Each of these books was stacked about three of four high. It was a happy, humble little conference book store. Except for one corner. In one corner of the book store there was a large display of one book--probably more than 500 copies of this one book. This one book was "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. Hmmm, off to the library I go to find out why this book is so important.

Surely you didn't expect a book with importance of this magnitude would be immediately available at the library. It wasn't. I dutifully placed myself on the waiting list, and in the meantime decided to check out one of Gladwell's previous books, "Blink." Oops.

I read the book. The most important thing that I hope that you take away from this brief review is this: Malcolm Gladwell is full of crap. "Blink" is a book (supposedly) about the power of immediate thought. It can be summarized like this: You should trust your very first instinct of thought, except when you shouldn't, unless you are a mind reader, then you always should.

I'd like to interject two bits of irony at this point. One, I knew within the first few moments of reading this book that it was BS. Sadly I did not trust that instinct and carried on with reading. Second, if anything can be understood within the first instant, then Malcolm Gladwell will repeat it at least twenty times. A talented writer could have written this same book in twenty pages or less.

Already I am tiring of talking about this book, so let me end by sharing one of the amazing inconsistencies in the book. In one chapter, Gladwell talks about a musician named Kenna who was recognized by industry professionals as a sure thing and an amazing talent, but unless people were able to see him and make a personal connection, they were mislead by their first thoughts and unable to recognize him as the musical genius that he was. A few chapters later, Gladwell discusses classical music and the process of screened auditions. Aparently current practices in auditioning for orchestras involves playing behind a screen so that the audience's first impression will not be swayed by their visual connections. Does it seem to anyone else that Gladwell is using exactly opposite examples to illustrate his point (a point that was already well understood a few pages).

No wait, let me end on a third irony. The book is subtitled "The Power of Thinking Without Thinking." Next time I'd like to see a lot more thinking and a lot less without thinking."

So, am I going to read "Outliers" now? Of course! It's just like watching the really bad auditions from American Idol. We just can't turn our eyes away.

What is technology? Part III

A good 48 hours later and I'm still very comfortable with my definition for technology. But, I want to make sure that I'm clear on one particular part. In my ramblings I mentioned quite a few things that might not qualify as technology for our students. I did not mean in any way that we didn't need to teach those things to our students.

Again with the pencil analogy: no one will argue about whether or not a pencil is technology (and by that I mean that of course some one will argue about whether or not a pencil is technology, but that someone is an idiot), but one of the first things that students learn in school is how to correctly use a pencil. Who knows how many hours students spend with lined paper diligently tracing, crafting, and creating lines and letters with this new tool.

We need to be just as careful and diligent with the teaching of every tool that we use. I'm sick of hearing that students already know how to use the internet, that they know more about computers than their teachers do, they they grew up with this stuff. The fact of the matter is that they do not know how to use the internet, they do not know how to use search engines, they barely even know how to use their cell phones. We still need to set them down with whatever lined paper is appropriate and teach them to use the tools necessary to utilize the technology that will make them the learners of today and the leaders of tomorrow.

...and if you are one of those teachers that claims that students know more about your computer than you do, I seriously hope that you are either being humble, or are prepared to work as hard and fast as possible to get back to the level where you can be a teacher for the students of today.

What is technology--My answer

I wish I could find the reference that got me onto this line of thinking, but I really tried to decide for myself what technology was without asking my friend Google for help and by the time I came up with a definition that I was comfortable with, and then decided that I stole it from someone else, I couldn't figure out who I stole it from. So, here it is:

Technology is anything that was invented after you were.

This means many things, but possibly the most important is that things that you probably consider advances in technology, your students consider everyday and mundane. Think about it, I have incoming 9th graders who have no conscious memory of life before the internet. To me the internet is absolutely amazing, to my new students, the internet is pencil and paper.

I myself am a pretty young dude and I have a serious chuckle every time I see one of my talented coworkers mumbling over the copy machine and reminiscing about the smell of mimeograph paper (or is it ink? that's the point, I really don't know). A copy machine is no where near technology to me. It's a pencil and paper. I never knew life without it.

I'm starting to worry myself the more I think about this. CD's are not technology, computers are not technology, search engines, email, chat rooms, video games...nope. Pencils? Still nope.

So what does qualify? That's a question for another day.

What is technology?

The other day I had a little discussion with our school's technology integration specialist. We were trying to decide what actually constitutes technology. I think that I've come up with a definition that I can live with, but what do you think? What is technology for you? Stay away from wikipedia or dictionary.com and think this one through for a minute. I'll tell you what I think in a day or so!

NECC: My First Time

One of the great things about being an amateur teacher such as myself is that you get to experience a lot of things for the first time. Have you ever been to a big education technology conference? Well, now I have--and it was just a little weird!

From ISTE's email press release: A record 18,500+ educators and exhibit personnel attended the 30th anniversary NECC 2009 held in Washington, DC.

Picture this: over 18,000 educators...wait a second, let's look closer at that statistic provided by ISTE over 18,000 educators and exhibit personel. Still sounds like a pretty impressive number, but I was on the exhibit floor, and I might have a bit of insight. My press release would read something like this: "Over 9,000 educators and 9,000 salesmen attended the 30th anniversary NECC 2009 held in Washington, DC." I'm not kidding when I say that it was a 1:1 ratio, which might sound like a good thing, but the problem is that every single one of them knew exactly what they were talking about and they all had a t-shirt/squishy ball/pen/coffee cup/yo-yo to back it up.

There's a lot of technology for education out there. Throw out your chalk board, paper, pencils--heck, throw out your desk, chairs, even classrooms while your at it. We're moving forward people and technology is the way. If there's not electronics involved, then your 21st century students won't be able to learn.

I'm not sure I buy it. Why do we teach using technology? Why did my school throw out my chalk board? Is an internet based calculator more effective than an abacus (my dad explained to me what an abacus was). What do you think?

I'm Back!!!

Well, I guess if you're going to be technical (and perhaps we should, since much of this blog will have to do with technology in education) I just got here. Welcome to Shellablogger, a blog that I hope will serve as a place for meaningful conversation on topics of current importance in education.

There's a lot of crap out there that I don't understand and a lot of crap that I don't agree with. I hope that there's also a lot of people who can (and will) straighten me out.

There's a ton of stuff that I have on my mind lately, but I'll try and space it all out a little bit (as I wait for summer to draw closer to its end, recruit followers, bribe friends to participate, drink to much Mountain Dew, etc.). Hopefully we'll get a chance to look at 21st century skills, project based learning, web 2.0, software, hardware, books, technology management, and more. First on the agenda: NECC '09. See you soon!