One recurring theme throughout my career is the idea that print is a dying medium. Although it was too long ago for me to cite properly, I remember a speaker at a conference predicting that video would overtake print as the medium of choice for people to communicate. This was back in the 90s. I was working at John Marshall High School and I found it hard to believe. Welcome to 2010 and have you heard of Youtube? The Internet has changed us and the change is similar to the change brought on by the printing press.

As I continued to think about it through the years, I noticed a theme emerging. The printing press was about technical control. Moveable type was outlandishly expensive, technically difficult and reserved for specially trained craftsmen. This ensured that only certain things got published by that method. Even so, just think of all the changes to society precipitated by the printing press.

I believe we are living in a similar time. Except instead of liberating the information from a brotherhood of intellectual elites that could read and write with quill, we are freeing the information from the New York editors or from established corporate journalistic institutions. That equation comes with liabilities as well as benefits. The main benefit is that we literally now all have a voice. The liability is that now we all have a voice...and it can be unintelligible. Skills for finding, vetting and utilizing information in appropriate ways has never been more important as it is now. We used to be able to depend on editors and journalists to do this for us. For good or ill, now we need to be able to do it ourselves. I personally prefer this. It fits my life mission: Teach people to think for themselves.

Are you a behaviorist or a Constructionist? This is one of my big idea or essential questions. Like all essential questions, it is big. I like the way Grant Wiggins puts it:

One meaning of “essential” involves important questions that recur throughout one’s life. Such questions are broad in scope and timeless by nature. They are perpetually arguable...

I didn't even realize I struggled with this question until one of my Ph.D. courses enlightened me. I think it was in my Theoretical Issues course that I read an article whose premise was that Edward Thorndike and John Dewey were in a battle for the soul of education and Thorndike won. A one sentence simplification for my mind was: We, as educators, are much more behaviorist in our practice than we are constructionist. Here is a list of behaviorist beliefs from Thorndike's Wikipedia page:

1. The most basic form of learning is trial and error learning.
2. Learning is incremental not insightful.
3. Learning is not mediated by ideas.
4. All mammals learn in the same manner.

Although I wouldn't totally disagree with these ideas, I don't adopt them as the central tenets of my approach to education. I believe in experience and not just trial and error. I believe in insight and flashes of brilliance in all minds. I believe in big ideas and think they are essential to real thinking. Although I believe there are common strategies, not all "mammals" learn the same thing the same way at the same time.

I even believe that Thorndike himself would take issue with the practice of teaching based on his theories. He actually promoted active learning which is letting children learn for themselves. I think what we got was a lot of psychological style tests and measures used by researchers to investigate the theory. We have altered the purpose of those measures. As a society, we have allowed these experimental investigations to define our success. That is simply the brutal truth. Whether good or bad, it is where we live.

I believe everyone builds their understanding of the world and their place in it by the experiences they encounter. This is true of myself. Somedays I answer my essential question one way. Others I answer it the other way. School should be a place where kids safely encounter all kinds of experiences. I believe our job as a educators is to construct that experience for them so that they are safe and challenged. If the students amass experience with concepts and ideas, they will develop aptitude with those concepts. I believe it is that aptitude that will allow them to thoughtfully consider and rightfully answer any behaviorists questionnaire/test/measure.

For those who don’t know, I was invited to attend a special training hosted by Apple Computer, Inc. of Cupertino, CA. I felt honored to be invited and signed up back in April. Here is my reflection following 5 full days of training, laughing, eating, talking and thinking with like minded educators from all over the United States.





Apple Academy has been a blast. We were put up in a great hotel. We ate fabulous food, and we learned all about the great software as we figured out how it best fits in the spectrum of educational uses represented by the group. Peter and David set us up with Macbooks, iPads and iPods. I wish we could have kept them. although David was there to make sure the technology worked, it really "just did." Peter is an impressive individual, in spite of his youth, he is a big thinker especially in relation to teaching and learning. Pete V. was the trainer and being a teacher/trainer from Alaska and familiar with 1:1 implementations, he was especially interesting to me. The applications and the hardware are well designed and it shows. All that wonderment aside, our communal thinking really did center on how to help kids learn. I have to say that learning in the Apple world is fun.

Although I am a Google Docs proponent for the collaboration features, it is a little shy on the cool factor. iWorks would be great for students to quickly and easily create high quality professional grade project documents like newsletters and brochures. I was also impressed with how easy advanced features like green screen were to pull off in iLife, which I was already quite sold on for producing audio and video. Our strong dose of iLife help me zero in on what I want to promote with the teachers at our 1:1 middle school. Kids will have a blast creating songs, video and iPhoto keepsakes with those tools.

Even with all the cool equipment and tools, I was completely impressed with the focus on teaching and learning. Pete was an outstanding presenter. His quick wit and vast experience made the entire training fun and informative. It wasn’t difficult to formulate a plan for utilizing these resources with everything Mid-Del has going on in the next school year.

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