#HiveSummit Day Four - Tara Martin & Being Real

Every time I watch a Hive Summit video this week, I think: "This is interesting, I know a bit about this topic," and every time I'm blown away by the insights provided by the speaker and host. If you haven't signed up by now, I urge you to do so and to watch the videos of the talks, or even just follow along with the twitter chat.

The most recent video I've watched (because I'm slowly getting behind and I want to make sure I can fully focus on the videos), featured Tara Martin, where she spoke about Being Real and how to be relatable so that you can affect positive change everywhere in your life. I honestly thought I knew a lot about this idea and topic, but the conversation between Tara and Michael Matera has helped me frame ideas and thoughts a little bit better.

Let me first give a plug for Tara's book: Be Real. If the book is only 10% as good as the talk I listened to earlier today, it's worth every penny you'll spend on it. You can find info about the book HERE.

There is no way I can relate everything from this talk, but I'll try to sum it up as best as I can. 

Basically, the idea is that we, as educators or as human beings, need to be authentic and to recognize the things that make us real and unique (which is essentially the sum of our experiences, which is different from person to person) and acknowledge all of those things, rather than try to put on appearances or be something we're not. That's the first step to being relatable.

The next step is to listen to everyone around you, especially those that you've been tasked with supporting in any sort of educational way (students, your own children, other teachers you're working with). But it's not just about listening It's also about asking the right questions. The advice given is to ask questions that are non-judgemental so that when you listen you can listen to learn - and that the person you're speaking with feels that. We don't want children (or adults) to say what they think we want them to say, but we want to actually find something out about them. We can call this humbly listening.

Later, both Tara and Michael talked about the idea of cannonballing. To explain the metaphor quite quickly, cannonballing is something you do that's a new thing. Like jumping into a pool, it's both scary and makes others stand up and take notice. It's not the same thing over and over. They spoke at length about how difficult it can be to cannonball and how you can support people with cannonballing. I think I summed it up quite nicely in the following tweets:

What do you want to do? How will you do it and how can I support you? Let's check back in a couple of weeks - A good way to help someone achieve something #HiveSummit @TaraMartinEDU

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) August 5, 2018

There are times when you just have to run on the diving board and you just have to jump, even though you have no clue what's going to happen - but you know you know how to swim, so you just have to do it. @TaraMartinEDU #HiveSummit

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) August 5, 2018

There are times when you have to jump with them, and then later empower them to jump on their own - loving this metaphor of the cannonball! @TaraMartinEDU #HiveSummit

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) August 5, 2018

Another important and vital point that is brought up is that you shouldn't listen to the critics who aren't in the pool with you. No matter what you are trying to do, there will always be those people on the side of the pool - the critics and the dabblers - who are too afraid or proud to get in, but who will tell you all the mistakes you made and try to convince you not to cannonball anymore. Her advice: keep going with what you do, try to make big splashes so they get wet a little bit at a time. Eventually they will get soaked and want to come and join you in the pool. It's all about inspiring people to change, NOT forcing them. I think that's something relevant for everyone, especially myself going into a new role at a school that is due to open next year.

The final part of the talk delved into one of Tara's cannonball ideas: Booksnaps. When trying to understand why her son was always on Snap Chat and other things, she had an idea. She put the picture of the book on a Snap Chat (I think that's how it works, I've never actually used the app myself) and then annotated it with various things. At the time she had two twitter followers but still shared it there. The author commented on what she did, shared it himself and then everything just kind of snowballed from there. This is an amazing example of everything she had just talked about. She had a new idea, she jumped in with it, splashed the right person and now lots and lots of people are doing it - because it's a great idea!

And what's happened now? Thousands of other educators around the globe have started using them and adapting them, modifying them and increasing their utility. A lot of good has come from someone taking what seemed like a small idea and just throwing it out there. Does every idea grow like this? Of course not, but Michael asked a very pertinent question near the end of the talk:

Think about all the ideas we don't cannonball in on? @mrmatera @TaraMartinEDU #HiveSummit A very good point and one we need to share!

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) August 5, 2018 

And he's absolutely right! Could you imagine how quickly we would innovate if all of us were sharing our ideas and listening to each others' voices? There is a lot from this talk that can be related to the earlier talk from Michael Cohen. The more we share, the more we can be creative.

#HiveSummit Day Three - Rick Wormeli & Grading

Day three of the Hive Summit brought a very in depth discussion of grading and it's usefulness in the classroom with Rick Wormeli. Being in New Zealand, I do feel like we are slightly further along this journey than most, but Rick made it very obvious that there is still a ways to go - for me at least.

My first little issue though (and maybe this is just the difference in mindset) is that throughout the whole conversation, much of the language used centred around "grades" rather than "assessment." I think that in itself is a big mind shift, that maybe hasn't happened everywhere yet.

Rick opened his talk with a discussion about why grading is not only inaccurate, no helpful but often unethical. Most of us have probably been in a class where we're given quizzes and then tests. Many times these quiz scores are averaged out and then mixed in with the test scores to give a final grade. But the quizzes often test the same things as the tests, and if we're truly trying to measure learning, then why would we include our earlier, less competent versions of our work in our final grade. How is that an accurate assessment of what we've learned. He suggests going to a standards based way of assessing learning - ie are you able to do something or not. Often we get so caught up in trying to come up with a grade or mark (or level, in the case of NZ), we forget what the actual goal is. And sometimes teachers like to play 'Gotcha' or punish children with low grades for low effort.

Another point that was touched on was HOW to make the change towards a better way of assessing children. Though we want to move things forward, they are not things that happen overnight and can be fraught with lots of dangers on the way. The first step though, can be to fulfil the marking requirements of a school or district while still changing things enough so that the students' best interests are in mind. So for example, weighting things differently, or giving a minimum grade (say 50% is the lowest grade possible) so that actual progress or achievement is measured. The second thing is to start volunteering for committees that can make the changes needed. Stand up and be heard. A third thing to remember, is that if it comes down to causing political problems versus serving the students, you will have a tough choice. Rick says that his students' needs will win every time, and I applaud that.

As educators we need to focus on the positive, rather than counting errors and adding them up. What can a child do, and what do they need to learn how to do next? What could they improve upon and how can they do so? We need to help set goals alongside our learners and then celebrate when they achieve them.

In the end, with most things, it comes down to being a reflective practitioner. It means going out there, hearing different voices, seeing what people are trying, reflecting on what you're doing and why you're doing it. Ultimately we can only control what we do, so confronting others about their practice and backing them into a corner is no way to foster systemic change - in only creates resentment. Change is difficult and often it involves us feeling as if we've lost a part of ourselves. That's natural. But it doesn't mean that we should continue to do things that have negative consequences just so that we can feel good about ourselves and previous choices.

I probably have not done a very good job of summarizing this talk, so I suggest you go watch it yourself. There is great advice for everyone in there, no matter how far along you are in your journey to create authentic, accurate and useful assessment.

#HiveSummit Day Two - Carrie Baughcum & Sketchnoting

Day two of the Hive Summit included a talk about Sketchnoting by Carrie Baughcum. I was interested in this talk because I've slowly had my eyes opened with respect to Sketchnoting over the past few months and was keen to learn a bit more. And boy did I.

I used to think of Sketchnoting as something people would do to take notes during a conference. Then I started seeing notes everywhere and reading about people who had done them. But I never really thought much about them until recently, and I certainly hadn't really thought too hard about using them in the classroom as a tool.

In her talk, Baughcum told the story of how she accidentally became a Sketchnoter by drawing with her daughters at the kitchen table to running challenges on her YouTube Channel:

What was most interesting about the talk for me, though, were the discussions around 1) the benefits of Sketchnoting with respect to learning and 2) the idea that you don't need to be an artist to be a Sketchnoter.

Baughcum explains in the talk that as humans, we are very visual beings, and the visualization with the added kinesthetic boost from actually making the drawing helps us improve retention, comprehension and focus and also has a calming effect.  I shared this point on twitter and it started a conversation where the idea of people who don't or can't visualize came up:

I think we need to be flexible and allow for all modes of learning, but also help develop all modes of learning in every child.

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) August 3, 2018

The more ways we can get information into the brain the more meaningful and impactful it will be.

— Carrie Baughcum (@HeckAwesome) August 3, 2018

I think Carrie's response sums up the whole idea. The more ways we can get children to understand something, the better their understanding will be.

The second point brought up in the talk was that you don't need to worry about the quality of your Sketchnotes. Sketchnoting isn't about the end product and doesn't have to be neat and tidy. It's about the process our brain goes through. She stresses that if you want your learners to have very deep understanding, you need to sketchnote alongside them, failures and all. If you're not a great artist, it may in fact be better as you can model the real purpose of the sketchnotes and help the children feel less conscious about the quality of their icons.

On a meta level, here's a sketchnote that was made for this talk:

I know that the next time I have my own class (probably February, so a ways away) I'm going to introduce sketchnoting. Thank you Carrie!

It was a very interesting talk and I would encourage all educators if they have the time right now to sign up for the Hive (Summit (the link's above) and have a watch of this and the other sessions. There's one a day for several more days, but they won't be up forever.

#HiveSummit Day One - Rabbi Michael Cohen

A few weeks ago I signed up for the Hive Summit, an online summit that would include several speakers over a week or two. You still sign up for it on the site.

The first video came out yesterday and featured Michael Cohen (no, not the one that's making the news in the US right now - Rabbit Michael Cohen, who was a keynote at ISTE recently). He spoke at length about Creativity, Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship.

It was an amazing talk to start off the summit, and I hope that future videos are just as impactful and inspiring.

Cohen first talked about the nature of creativity. He says (and I've thought this for a long time) that creativity isn't invention, it's the taking of existing ideas and putting them together in combinations that no one else has done before. His example is of Steve Jobs, who took a lot of existing technologies and combined them to make an iPhone. Cohen (and cohost Michael Matera) also argues that creativity isn't an innate thing, but that it needs to be practiced to be improved.

In a discussion around the 30 Circles challenge (where the challenge is to use 30 circles to draw everyday items in 3 minutes) he brought up the idea of Functional Fixedness. That describes the idea that often we think that something only has one use and one use only. We don't always see the different way something can be used and therefore cannot think creatively. However, once we discover our limitations it opens up our minds to different ways of thinking. This activity can lead to very rich discussions about what creativity is and how it can be fine tuned.

The second part of Cohen's talk has to do with Design Thinking (DT). This is something near and dear to me and has been something I've been working on understanding and implementing for the past year now.  Most people who learn about DT know that it centres around empathy and finding ways to solve a problem for someone else, or as Cohen puts it:  "Let me understand you, so that I can help you solve the problem for yourself." He goes on to explain that DT helps us build better relationships. Despite the obviousness of his statement, I had never actually thought of this before. DT makes us think about someone else's needs and helps us work with them. This is definitely something which will help frame my interactions with DT in the future.

In the last part of his talk, Cohen discusses building an Entrepreneurial Spirit amongst our learners. That simply means that we want them to have that grit and resilience to keep going when things don't work. To keep on trying things and trying things until we get where we want to get. He says that big things happen due to years of effort, but that we only see the end part of that effort. We miss the failures and the late nights and all the sacrifices and think that making something new is all about being famous and reaping the rewards of the hard work that we never saw. I tweeted out a quote from this part of the discussion and I think it's so relevant to everyone, especially schools. My future school also needs to look at this and find our own path to success and not be blinded by the amazing schools we see.

Don't compare your beginning with someone else's beginning. That's their success; they've been slaving away at it for a long time @mrmatera @TheTechRabbi #HiveSummit #DesignThinking

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) August 1, 2018

This was an amazing talk and I recommend it for EVERYONE. Understanding the things Michael Cohen is saying is something that will help bring any school forward into the 22nd century and beyond. I am so excited to continue doing the things I was doing and adapting those new ideas he has given me.

Here's a sketchnote of  the talk (I didn't do it) that was included in the materials for the talk: 

If you haven't signed up already, I urge you to do so as this was an amazing talk! Watch this space for some more reactions to the talks that I watch.

Confessions of an Email Hoarder (or Taming My Inbox)

In the past week I've been lucky to have the opportunity to work with Manaiakalani in the implementation of their Digital Fluency Intensives to upskill their teachers. I've travelled to Northland and Otaki on back to back days, and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Participating in running these trainings has been a great experience and has included the side effect of me starting to do some of the things that I learned about years ago when I did my Google Level 1 course and exam.

You see, I have a problem. Those who know me and sit beside me at conferences or summits often get a glimpse into this dark side of mine which can best be summed up with the following picture, which was taken a few days ago:

And I'll let you in on a little secret: this was AFTER I cleared out almost 5000 unread emails. There was once a time when I tried to keep on top of things, but once the number of unread emails got to 1000, everything sort of fell apart. To be fair, I have opened almost all personal emails to me, and anything important. Most of the emails that I've cleared have been newsletters that I never read, emails from booths I've visited at conferences, or newsfeeds from sites I signed up for at one point. Lately, I've been getting bombarded by all the Google Trainer emails (and emails from ISTE).

So how am I attacking this problem now? A few ways:

1) Using labels and filters to sort out which emails are important and to group them for easier sorting and reading. It's a colourful way to keep track of what I need to keep track of, and a very quick way of getting rid of the junk as it comes in.

2) Clearing the ads and things that aren't important. This has been pretty easy. On any given day I get a few handfuls of emails that may be useful, but probably aren't. I'm getting into the habit of opening these when I look at my email and deleting them if they're not useful. If it's a particularly useless email (or something I signed up to to get a t-shirt or something at a conference), I'm unsubscribing to the email. That will help me in the future not get so many emails. And when I find something I unsubscribe to, I go back and delete all the other emails from that service. It's been a big reason I cut out 5000 emails.

3) Not saving my emails to read. This seems like an obvious thing, but I'm still struggling with it. Often I feel like I need to be in the right frame of mind to read some of the cool ideas I get through email (especially from the robotics companies or the Google Innovator or Trainer groups). I have been reading as many of these as I can these days, and it's much better than reading some of the things I've been reading during breakfast or during other down times. I think part of this is that it's hard to digest lots of information. I'm working on ways to collate these ideas for future reference (which is helped by the labels) so that I can get a glimpse into the good ideas but then not feel overwhelmed by them.

I have made some progress and can report that the current situation looks like this:

So that's something, right.

I'm actually pretty curious myself about what the actual end date (or beginning date) of my emails is. I guess I could check, but it's kind of like a game to see if I can get there. If you've made it this far in reading this, maybe you have a guess as to the date (not just the year) of the oldest email I haven't read. I can't say I have a prize, but everyone likes to win something right? So if you have a guess, put it in the comments and when I do get there, I'll have a followup post and reveal the winner.

ISTE 2018 Takeaways

It's been over a month since ISTE 2018 ended and I left Chicago (and over two months since I posted here!) and I finally feel like I have been able to digest a small part of what happened there. For me, there were three major pillars to the value that ISTE provided. Every year I go, and this is my fourth year, I've enjoyed a big jump in my outlook, skills, abilities and connections, and this year was perhaps the biggest jump for me - though it's still quite a task to figure things. I'll do my best to simplify a complex few days. If I wrote everything that comes to mind, you'd be reading a novel, not a blog post.

He Tangata, He Tangata, He Tangata
There is a Māori saying, asking what the most important thing is and the answer is the people, not once, not twice, but three times. By far the most important part of ISTE is the people, and if it weren't for the people, there would be no point in me going.

One of the difficult things about being an educator and trying to do innovative things is that not everyone is on board. Many people don't have trust in you and often work against progress. It is at events such as ISTE where I find my tribe. These are the people that give me the energy to fight for what I believe is best for the learners in my care. These are the people that inspire me to be a better me. These are the people who make me question the things I do and the practices I preach. They give meaning not only to my career, but also to my life. The five days I spent at ISTE each year help me through the tough times in the other 360.

This was my first year at ISTE as an Innovator and I was lucky to connect with a group of other Innovators, especially the ones from Canada.

Oh Canada! Love the preparation for the final work of art. #GoogleEI pic.twitter.com/J2RUSNymVv

— Sandra Chow (@watnunu) June 24, 2018

This group of people were so inspiring to me and took me under their wing, making the week so much more special. I also had the opportunity to connect with some friends from NZ:

Representing @OrmPS and @OSC_Ormiston in Chicago #iste2018 @michaelteacher pic.twitter.com/Bsy55hKmHA

— Subash Chandar K (@elsubash) June 26, 2018

To make a long story short, I felt at home amongst the people in Chicago and that is so important when you're trying to do great things.

The New(ish) Tools
I've put tools in the middle of my three takeaways as it's probably the least important, but it's also the most practical. The two main themes I noticed this year througout the week were Geo Tools and AR and what better way to show them, but talking about Tour Creator, which is a combination of the two. If you've ever wanted to create your own Google Expedition, this is how you do it. It's super simple and in the week I had to try this with children, almost all of them completed a short tour and every child was super engaged - especially when we pulled out the Google Cardboard to have a look at them. There are loads of other Geo Tools that can be used (and I've seen them around for a while and every conference or summit always has a steady diet of session on the topic), including Tour Builder (not the same thing, though easily confused), MyMaps, Expeditions (now with AR!) and others.

The other tool that I saw a lot was VR, and specifically I looked at CoSpaces (and Merge Cube) a bit. It's quite easy to fall down a rabbit hole when you start looking at VR creation, so be careful. I also learned a little bit about Unity, which, when I tried it with year 5 and 6 children was a bit tricky - though the accessibility of tools like this is promising and is definitely something to think about if you've got older children.

One of the small things that I saw was that there is now a chrome extension that will allow you to add audio to Google Slides! It's aptly called Audio Player for Slides. Definitely worth checking it out if you've ever wanted to add audio to a slide deck.

I have also developed quite a nice appreciation for sketchnoting, especially after taking a quick lesson from a couple of my new Canadian friends. I'm not really one for taking notes, either written or sketched, but I personally find the sketches much easier to follow and more fun. So I'm going to do my best to get more people doing them so that I can have access to more sketch notes. I don't think its too difficult though. I just want to get a device that can do it all (it's funny the things you don't know about).

This is what @sylviaduckworth & @VirtualGiff showed me how to do! #GoogleEI #ISTE18 #ISTE2018 pic.twitter.com/rIJbBzyy2G

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) June 23, 2018

Obviously there were more tools showcased (including a new Sphero, which I'm not sure if I'm even allowed to talk about here, but if you're going to get new Spheros, I'd wait a few months), but these were the biggest takeaways when it came to tools.

The Possibilities
ISTE fundamentally changed me this year. A byproduct of hanging out with a group of people who have done amazing things is that doing amazing things becomes the norm. When you hear people talk of writing their books, it becomes the normal thing to do. What I realized - and I mean really realized - is that there is practically no difference between myself and those people other than the fact that they've already done something really big.

How did this happen? Well, the Innovator program (and to a slightly lesser extent, the Trainer Program) has opened up many doors for me. I've probably been trying to go through more of them than I possibly could go through, but there was a convergence of a lot of these things at ISTE that made me feel empowered to do practically anything. The first was that I was given the opportunity to work at several booths in the Expo Hall and join in on other presentations. Spending time doing these things only helped further connections to others and plant a lot of seeds of ideas in my head. The Innovator Energizer, too was amazing. Just being in a room with so many inspiring people (and feeling Imposter Syndrome) was an amazing start, but then learning about Project Culture Shift (and joining in on the fun) was something else.

It was also a chance to start some conversations with people about collaborations, and things I've wanted to do for a while. But now those thing are starting to become a reality.

To put it simply: I've got plans. Lots of plans. Whether they come to fruition depends on how much time and effort I have and am willing to spend on them, and on getting others on board. Big things don't just happen on their own or by one person.

So here's to looking forward. Here's to new connections that haven't even been made yet. And here's to changing the world for better.

ISTE is an amazing experience for anyone, though I'm not sure if everyone takes advantage of its opportunities the way I have and will continue to do so. This is the start of something big. Watch this space for updates in the near and far future. But for now, my advice to anyone reading this: go to ISTE 2019. I'll see you there!

Book Review: Rosie Revere, Engineer

For a while I've been eying several books that would help support STEAM or Maker activities in the classroom. Rosie Revere, Engineer has been one that I've wanted to get for a while, so a few weeks ago, I ordered it off of The Book Depository. The story itself is a very nice tale of a shy girl who used to create a lot of creative and different inventions, but has been silenced because of the reaction of a family member. She learns later, from a family member that it's not about getting things perfect on the first go. This fits in perfectly with both the idea of Growth Mindset and the Design Thinking process.

There is a lot of potential for this book to lead into many different learning opportunities and ideas. It would be a great way to start a project where children build or create something.

But that's not all. There is also a companion book, Rosie Revere's Big Project Book for Bold Engineers, which gives an incredible amount of ideas to build upon the first book. You can find it at The Book Depository as well.

Though the book is primarily meant for individual children (it has many places for a child to draw or write) it can easily be adapted for a whole class to get them thinking in new and creative ways. As an adult, I was personally excited about the things in this book and potentially trying some of them on my own.

In the book there is a good deal of supporting information about engineers and engineering, as well as some advice about organizing your own "treasure" so that you can make your own inventions. There are also some step-by-step instructions to make a few different creative things (a small catapult and a solar oven).

The genius of this book does not end there though. There are also many real world challenges where the book asks readers to try to solve a specific problem in their own creative way. It also highlights the importance of "flops" and making mistakes.

At 94 pages this definitely is a recommended purchase for any classroom trying to bring out the creativity in children. It not only encourages children to build and invent things, but it gives them a few different methods and tons of inspiration.

There are a few other books in this series, so perhaps look for the reviews of those in the near future.