Comedy of the Commons

Is school technology a sham?

"Technology is all a sham." So said a colleague of mine who had just about had it with the effort it takes to live with logins.

It's an understandable position. But for information technology, as for great classroom teaching, design is everything. Some school people are still waiting to see technology's return on effort. iPads, beautifully designed to adapt to many environments, are pouring into schools, without proof yet that they will help students learn to make good decisions.

Trial and error, with access to information and freedom to change, is the best way to learn. Parents pay for a school to design--to give form to--the experiences that will provide that access to people who are not yet, er, formed.

Picture these steps:

1. Plan
2. Do
3. Check
4. Act
5. Repeat

This design cycle, which emphasizes the ability to "fail quickly," is also a good way to expose a sham.

1. Set a learning goal and plan a way to get there
2. Try the way
3. Check...how is your plan working?
4. List the efforts that turned out to be useless. (Here, look to see how big the pile is that you have to sweep away. Big pile = sham), and set a new learning goal
5. Start over.

I invite those teachers and administrators who think information technology is a sham to take the following steps:
1. Plan - Set a goal for students, and decide what resources you have to work with - including all the tools available
2. Do - Using these tools, build a scaffold to help students achieve that goal.
3. Check - Is your scaffold getting them there?
4. Act - Adjust your plan based your answer to step 3
5. Start over.

Teachers who involve information technology tools in this cycle can teach better, and reach more diverse abilities of students, more effectively than traditional school has ever done. Among other things, they can collaborate in ways that traditional classrooms have always forbidden.

If we dare apply this cycle to traditional classroom teaching, we'll uncover a whole lot of shams there, too. List the sham teachers you've had in your life, and you'll get a sense of what I mean, and you may be open to new ways of schooling.

We have not yet tested information technology this way, because we have not yet allowed it to reinvent the way schools are designed. Persisting in that course of obstinacy would indeed be a sham.

A Curriculum is a Promise

When people pay for an education, they are speculating. Tuition is money paid for a perceived value based on trust in the past, on the stories told by others who have been there, with the hope of increased value in the future. It's a risk.

Students or parents can visit your campus and talk to teachers, but they can't take a test drive or read product specifications or reviews that will tell the true story of what will happen once the child is enrolled. And I have not yet seen a school that offers an unconditional money-back guarantee.

Apart from reputation ("the bubble reputation," as Shakespeare said), a curriculum's scope and sequence are the most compelling promise you can make that your school is not just froth. Promising what sequence of events a child will experience, and delighting parents with the quality of your delivery on that promise, is a powerful way, if not the only way, to keep your tuition bubble from popping, and to make your school sustainable.

Ups and Downs of Hiring PhD's

American universities produce a surplus of PhD's. Should you hire one of these available, talented people? Here are a few general guidelines.

Upside:
1. Salary. A PhD has been trained not to associate the degree with a high salary, and may be hired for at least 40% less than you would pay for others with advanced degrees.
2. Drive. A typical PhD will work harder, for longer, than the typical knowledge worker, and will require less supervision.
3. Gadfly Factor. If your organization can stand it, the typical American PhD has been trained to identify patterns and point out opportunities for improvement.
4. Information management. PhD's in almost all disciplines have been trained to find, organize, and share complex information.
5. Technology. Usually the PhD has been exposed to next-generation technology at the university, and may see good alternatives to your current technologies.

Downside:
1. Spotlight. A PhD expects to be listened to, and at length, without first having to prove why.
2. Team. A PhD may have the habit of treating an organization as a resource provider and a necessary political evil, so a PhD may not understand how to work on a team.
3. Fault finder. PhD's are trained to find fault with others' work, and credentialed for doing so. In most organizations this habit may be perceived as negative, defeatist, or cynical.
4. Results. Approval of peers and citation by others is the definition of success for a PhD. You may need to work harder to train the PhD to focus on the results that matter for your organization.
5. Smarts. The PhD's intelligence and ability to think in abstractions can alienate others if the PhD fails to acknowledge the many other smart, non-academic ways to get things done.

In Praise of Despair

Breathe out. All the way. More.

How does that feel?

I've heard it said that our purpose is to exhale. Just before we draw breath again, we are at a peak. At that turning point, imagination is blank, all else has been yielded up, and all we have left is to draw breath.

I suggest a practice of exhaling deeply.

The millisecond just at the end of exhaling is a moment of despair. When we despair, we have heaved all hopes away. And that does not seem like a good thing, especially if you've felt despair lasting longer than a breath. But when we despair, we also let go of fixed ideas and pre-judgments that had shaped our hopes, and we make room to draw in new ways to live, unchoked by those fixed ideas and pre-judgments.