AssortedStuff

From Seth Godin’s blog post today…

In more and more societies, though (including my country and probably yours), I’d argue that there’s a different dividing line [between those who become the elite and the rest]. This is the line between people who are actively engaged in new ideas, actively seeking out change, actively engaging–and people who accept what’s given and slog along. It starts in school, of course, and then the difference accelerates as we get older.

It starts in school?*

So, in which schools are the kids “actively engaged in new ideas”? Where the staff is “actively seeking out change”?

Maybe Godin’s definition of elite isn’t accurate or appropriate when discussing education.

But it would sure be nice if we could identify in which classrooms kids are encouraged to be “elitist” and where they’re just slogging along.

Just a random thought.

*”of course”? He takes for granted this division starts in school? That’s a sad statement by itself.

change, elite, schools, seth godin

As often happens, one of Seth Godin’s daily posts this week left me with things to think about days after as well as to connect to other little pieces.

His title is “It’s easier to teach compliance than initiative” and, unlike most of his entries, he’s not talking about business.

Initiative is very difficult to teach to 28 students in a quiet classroom. It’s difficult to brag about in a school board meeting. And it’s a huge pain in the neck to do reliably.

Schools like teaching compliance. They’re pretty good at it.

Looking around the schools I visit – look around your school – I have to admit he’s not far from wrong.

That concept of compliance vs. initiative also ties into in a new book I’m currently reading, Daniel Pink’s Drive in which he investigates the research behind what motivates people.

In it he presents plenty of evidence that the reward/penalty philosophy at the core of compliance is not nearly as effective at motivating people to perform better as we assume it is.

That people, including many of those in our classrooms, are far more inspired to succeed when they are interested and involved in the outcome, when they have a personal stake in what they are doing.

The kind of approach you might use when teaching initiative.

Initiative, however, isn’t on the test and compliance is.

And, as Godin notes, we’re good at teaching that, even if our kids are less and less motivated to learn it.

compliance, daniel pink, motivation, seth godin

Seth Godin, whose blog is well worth a daily read, wonders about the old cliche which says that if your only tool is a hammer then all problems look like nails.

The practical effect of this thinking is that “when the market changes, you may be seeing all the new opportunities and problems the wrong way because of the solutions you’re used to”.

His theme is business, of course, and specifically with how they’re using social media, but Seth’s basic concept still applies to the institution of American education.

For starters, we don’t seem to understand that the “market” has changed (drastically!), so we continue to pull hammers out of the tool box.

Although we talk a lot about “differentiated instruction” and “individualized learning”, the details and solutions tend to look like the same classroom hammers we’ve always used.

When it comes to the major education reform proposals of the past fifty years, we’ve pretty recycled the same old hammers by painting different politically motivated labels on them (think: Sputnik, Nation at Risk, NCLB).

Then there’s the little corner of the system with which I’m most familiar, instructional technology.

Millions of classroom computers, most connected to world-wide networks, with a variety of amazing communications tools should have brought about major alterations to our process of teaching and learning.

If we didn’t just use them as digital versions of the same analog tools we’ve always used.

We want laptops to be electronic textbooks or workbooks.

Expensive interactive whiteboards are too often used for one-way transmission of knowledge, in very much the same way as the traditional analog chalk version.

Students write research papers and create presentations using sophisticated software for an audience of one.

And here in the overly-large school district we’re taking binders full of central office-blessed curriculum materials and test questions, putting it all in a big database, and declaring this to be a paradigm shift.

As Godin has pointed out many times in his writing, in times of crisis, economic and other, smart companies inspect every aspect of their business processes and find new opportunities to grow hidden in the bad news.

Instead of stocking up on new types of hammers as we in education seem to be doing.

Image: Hammer for what…? by Per Ola Wiberg (Powi) used under a Creative Commons License

business, economy, edtech, education, reform, seth godin, tools

When it comes to web publishing, every school in our overly-large school district is an island.

Every school (and most offices) has someone called a “curator” who has an extra duty as the sole gatekeeper for what appears on their little part of the web.

As a result, the quality of content on our sites varies wildly between each building, and chaotic is probably too lenient a term for the overall look and feel for our system’s web presence.

In a post on his blog, Seth Godin presents a long list of questions that need to be answered before renovating a web site.

While his target is corporate and marketing sites, I wish our curators would ask some of the same questions of their principals and staff, not to mention themselves.

Of course, they include the usual/obvious ones like “What is the goal of the site?” and “Who are we trying to please?”

However I think two of Godin’s suggestions are among the most important for schools to consider.

• Are we telling a story?
• Are we hoping that people will watch or learn?

I hope the answer to both is yes.

School web sites should be telling the many different stories of the kids and teachers that happen every day inside the classrooms.

And they should certainly be places where people can come to “watch and learn”.

olsd, schools, seth godin, web publishing

Seth Godin clearly explains the difference between school and learning.

School was the big thing for a long time. School is tests and credits and notetaking and meeting standards. Learning, on the other hand, is ‘getting it’. It’s the conceptual breakthrough that permits the student to understand it then move on to something else. Learning doesn’t care about workbooks or long checklists.

For a while, smart people thought that school was organized to encourage learning. For a long time, though, people in the know have realized that they are fundamentally different activities.

Godin’s focus is on “higher” education (usually meaning college but sometimes I’m not sure the adjective applies) but his thoughts could just as well be applied to K12.

education, learning, school, seth godin

Another must-watch video from the TED conference, in which Seth Godin explains why everyone should be out leading a tribe of some kind, a talk based on his excellent book, Tribes.

During the presentation he asks three questions of the viewer as part of his challenge to make change.

The first one is: who exactly, are you upsetting? ‘Cause if you not upsetting someone then you’re not changing the status quo.

The second question is: who are you connecting? Because for a lot of people, that’s what they’re in it for, the connections that are being made, one to the other.

The third one is: who are you leading? Because focusing on that part of it, not the mechanics of what you’re building, but the who and the leading part is where change comes.

Since the American education system is the very definition of status quo, we really need to do more with that first question and work harder to upset more people.

Ok, let’s see who I haven’t bothered in a while. :-)

change, education, seth godin, ted conference, tribes

Seth Godin is regarded in the business world as an expert in marketing, and is also someone who writes a great blog on everything related to the topic.

His post today, Personal Branding in the Age of Google, is brief, to the point, and should be required reading for all our students (and probably more than a few educators).

Seth’s bottom line message: “Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record.”.

google, internet, seth godin

For the opening panel discussion at EduCon 2.1, the question on the table was “What is the Purpose of School?” and variations on that question were in the air all weekend.

Sorry, despite all the very smart people in the building, I never heard anyone come up with the definitive answer.

However, Seth Godin, who is supposed to be a marketing guru (he is fun to read), also offers his take on the same question: What is school for?, a “starter list” of 27 items.

Some are straight out of the vague mission statements written by many schools (“Become an informed citizen”), some are brutally honest (“Give kids something to do while parents work”).

Godin’s list is meant to be provocative, of course, but he’s certainly right about one thing.

This is a discussion we as a society need to have.

Certainly it needs to happen before we spend any more time and money on shuffling-the-deck-chairs-type school reform.

educon, reform, schools, seth godin