photographs - part one

The folks at Kodak want me to pass out the cameras and "let kids explore."  I'm imagining plumes of smoke in my room, so I take it cautiously on the instructions.  Yet, first I want students to think philosophically about the new medium.

I ask them to write a plog post answering the question, "What holds more power: words or pictures?"  To my surprise, the students do not all agree.  I assume that with the novelty of the photograph, students would write about picture power.

"A picture can tell you what is empirically real while words can write about reality that we cannot express in a photographic form.  Show me a picture of love.  Show me a picture of hope," a student writes.

One student writes, "Photographs are more permanent.  They are more objective. They capture the truth without having to be reinterpreted.  There are less layers of communication to go through.You can't edit a picture."

Another student disagrees, "Pictures are more emotional and more subjective.  It's because there are no words.  There is no context.  The photographer has deliberately framed a scene, just one scene, and you're stuck with it."

I begin with this concept of more powerful and we more into: Which captures reality better?  Which captures the truth better?  Most students tend to believe that a person can change words, but that pictures are undoctored.  So, I show them the famous Lincoln picture with the body of John Calhoun.  They're floored.

A girl asks, "How do you know what's real if you can just manufacture truth by changing pictures?"

"Isn't that what we do with words?" a boy asks.

"What if all truth is manufactured?  We keep asking 'does the photograph capture truth' and it's not something out there that we capture.  It's something we make up as we go along."

when books go social

"I hate when students underline their books with those ridiculous pencils," a teacher begins.

"Why does it spark such a strong reaction?"

"A page should be fresh each time one reads it.  Let a student start with a pure page, free of the viewpoints of other readers.  Whether you like it or not, reading is a solitary endeavor and I'd like to keep it that way."

"Yes, but reading only became solitary with the advent of the printing press.  Before that, when the resources were scarce, reading had to be social.  So, people shared books, read books aloud, listened intently and spoke together.  It has been a communal endeavor more often than individual."

"But we progressed toward individuality. Students now have access to books through our library.  They share, but it's sharing on an individual level," she answers just like that, with thick italics.

"So, what if pencil is another form of progress?  What if the pencil enables reading to be both social and individual?  What if students can now read a book but also interact with it and share in an asynchronous dialog with past readers?  What if they learn more from a book by the writing in the margins?"

"Or what if the social aspects of reading simply distract?  What if they're too distracted by all forms of social media - from the loud phonograph to the emerging motion picture industry to the pen pal networks and the instant information on the telegraph?  What if learning needs a little loneliness?  What if solitude is good for the mind?"

We're at an impasse, both realizing that arguments are not games to be won, but neither of us humble enough to admit it.  So we wait in silence and I finally ask, "Is that egg salad?  It looks delicious."

nothing is temporary and nothing is permanent

My wife wrote me a love letter.  For Victorian Times, it was pretty steamy.  Hell, for any time period it was pretty steamy.  She slipped it into my sports coat this morning as I was preparing to ride to work.  My horse was sick, so I had to walk.  Sometimes I wonder if maybe a horseless carriage might end up being best after all.  Technology is predictable.  It's not as if the engine will just shut down out of nowhere. Or maybe I just need a mustang.  (Or does that require a midlife crisis first?)

So, here's the thing: She wrote it out on pencil. I know it doesn't seem like much, but it bothered me.  Pencil is temporary.  Pencil is gray.  Pencil is movement.  Pencil is modern.  The graphite letters leave a soot behind that matches the dull gray cloud in this urban landscape, leaving its ugly erasure marks on the ever-changing steel cage neighborhood that I've learned to call home.

Don't get me wrong, I love the letter.  It's just that the medium didn't fit.

In fact, it's not the letter itself that bothers me.  It's the pencil.  It's in this middle zone of being more permanent than speech and more temporary than ink.  We say "pencil me in," when we want commitment without commitment. Sometimes it seems as if relationships, community, our most sacred social institutions have adopted a "pencil me in" mentality.

We confuse novelty for innovation and it's all at the cost of long-term public memory.  We can't remember anything.  No shared stories when they are spliced up into bits and sent via telegraph.  No common voice when it's compressed into a phonograph.

So, I walk, with letter in hand, to my factory-styled school, questioning if the pencils are even worth it, wondering if we are penciling in a shady world where nothing is temporary and nothing is permanent.

a call to story-telling

A Note from the Author:

I'm a geek.  Part Luddite geek, part techno-geek, but a geek nonetheless.  I grew up with comic books (Or graphic novels.  I suppose there is nothing all that comical about saving the world, aside from the tights.)  I am surprised, then, by how few stories I hear in the realm of educational technology.

Don't get me wrong.  We need lists of new gadgets.  We need theoretical debates.  We need loud calls for transforming the system.  We need TED Talks and conferences and workshops and all of that.  But I know very few people who go out and try educational technology after reading lists or debates.  

We need honest stories, human narratives that delve deeper than the latest gadget.  We need humor and satire and the sometimes insane hurdle teachers face every time they attempt to use new technology.  We need conversations that reflect not simply the ideal "what if" but the reality of what it's like on the inside.  I'm not saying those stories aren't out there.  It's just that the true stories are often so honest, so painful and so bizarre that they are difficult to tell.

I began this blog as an attempt to think through my own story.  I chose the nineteenth century, because it removes me from the constant need for the cutting edge.  That, and I'm wired for metaphor.  I chose fiction, because I have a freedom to tell the truth by not telling the truth.

I almost gave up several times, because there isn't a solid story arc.  But then again, my own journey hasn't fit well within a story arc.  It's been much closer to a postmodern narrative where the twists are found in the subtleties of life.

I'd love to see more story-telling in educational technology.  Not necessarily PR stuff, either.  I'd love to see honest stories about the human side of educational technology.  I am not naturally a story-teller, but I have found that stories, even corny nineteenth-century, semi-satirical ones provoke discussion in a way that prose cannot. This blog is much more popular than I ever thought it would be.  I have a hunch it has to do with the narrative format more than anything else.  

you can't let them bring their own pencils

"It's an issue of equity, Tom," explains the district office representative.

"I'm not seeing where you are coming from."

"You allow students to bring in pencils from home.  Students who have inferior pencils will feel inferior.  We need everyone on the same page," he adds.

"On the same page.  I'm curious, do you use that reasoning with all learning items or just pencils?  I mean, you said the same page and it had me thinking about reading.  My students aren't on the same page.  They're not even on the same book.  And get this, some of them actually bring in books from home."

"That's different.  You don't require them to bring in books from home."

"But I do require them to read and some of them use the library, others borrow from friends and still others bring in books from home.  To me, that's the real issue of equity.  Does every child have access to books?"

"Yes, but pencils are used in the same learning activity.  So, really, it is not the same thing."

"Can I ask a question?"

"You just did," he adds with a chuckle.  Oh, the hilarity of the district office! Why, I'm hoping they start an improv group soon.  Really, I am.
to
"Do you require all students to eat the cafeteria food?"

"No, many of them bring lunch from home."

"And it's not all the same food?  What if Charles gets jealous of Gertrude's lunch?"

He says nothing.  "What about slide rules?  Not every child brings the same slide rule.  Is that an issue of equity, too?"

"Kids will pick on other students who have cheap pencils.  It's a reality you can't see, Mr. Johnson."

"When I walk on campus, I see students tease one another about the clothes they wear.  That seems to be a bigger status symbol.  Yet, parents would be up in arms if we required every child to wear the same brand of clothes."

"Look, we'll look into it.  Right now we don't have a procedure for assessing this issue, so I'm going to have to  stick with the rule about banning pencils.  We just don't know all of the liability involved."

So, we're left with rules over reason, uniformity over equality and liability management over leadership.  Take note of this, politicians and pundits and parents: the real issue isn't the access to pencils.  The real issue is the lack of access to innovation.

getting a phone: part three

"How's the phone working?" Mrs. Jackson asks.

"It's working out really well.  I mean, there are moments I didn't anticipate.  Some kids get scared if they are talking and the room is silent and then others have a hard time hearing if the class is even remotely engaged in task that requires any noise.  I hadn't thought of the human side of it."

"That makes sense.  But is it a tool you think you will use in the future."

"I think so.  Here's the thing though: the power isn't in the tool.  The power is in the problem-solving.  See, they're doing a project where they look at an issue in our community.  They work with students in another school across town and they create a solution to the problem.  Part of the research on the solution is actually going out and doing community service."

"Very nice, but what happens when they don't create a solution?"

I get really sarcastic here, "Well, it shows up on the rubric.  I have a whole category for it.  The boxes are really cute.  I made it myself using paper and pencil and . . . "

"No, what happens if there isn't a solution?"

"I'm not sure where you're coming from."

"What if the solution is a mystery or a paradox?  What if it has no solution?  Or if the solution causes more damage?"

"I didn't think about that."

"I just fear that you're beginning with the wrong question.  Instead of asking them why they love their community or how they would serve it, you are starting with how they would change it."

I get really quiet here, feeling ashamed of how excited I had felt just minutes before.

"Tom, I'm stealing your idea and doing it in my classroom, too."

"What about all the questions you just asked me?"

"I'll ask my students the same questions.  I want critical thinkers and problem-solvers.  I also want students who are humble and recognize complexity and mystery.  This is the kind of project where I can bring in both ideas."

getting a phone: part two

Midway through the project, I ask students what they think of communicating via telephone.

"I think it's better," a girl explains.  "We aren't confined by our own classroom walls.  We can go anywhere that the operator allows.  It's like being two places at once."

"I don't know how I feel about that," another girl points out.  "I don't always feel present when I'm physically here.  I wonder if it's a good thing to let my voice travel over the wires and into some other place.  I'm not sure we're meant to be that way," she adds.

"I find myself making gestures at the phone. It's like I forget that our interaction isn't real. I mean, I could stick my middle finger out and the other person wouldn't see it."

"It's not real.  I feels like pretend compared to the classroom," a boy responds.

"This class doesn't feel all that real, either.  I mean think about it for a minute.  They pack us together into the smallest space in a building designed like a prison.  Maybe phones aren't natural, but neither is this room."

"It's not that phones aren't real.  It's just a different kind of reality.  I wonder if the physical separation actually allows me to listen better . . . or not better, just more intently."

I bring up mythology here and it gets dangerous.  Not really dangerous.  Pretend dangerous.  Like war games or fire drills.  We talk about the Babel babble of ongoing talk, unceasingly speaking across the globe, promising that we can solve the problems with a higher tower and more cooperation when the tower itself is preventing us to know to one another from our front porches.

We talk about siren calls and the intoxication media promising a relationship while silently dehumanizing us.  We get into Prometheus and debate whether or not it is right to steal fire from the gods.

When it's over, the girl who first claimed telephones were better laments, "I liked this conversation and I feel conflicted.  I wish this could have happened with my friends who are outside these walls.  Yet I wonder if a telephone can allow for that type of interaction.  Do we have to have close proximity to have depth?"

As I walk into the staff lounge, a teacher tells me, "I wouldn't get a phone in my classroom.  They're too dangerous."

"I know.  My students just had a great conversation of the implications of audio-only communication."

"Did a kid call the police or something?"

It has me thinking that in our push to be relevant and practical, we miss the larger philosophical dangers of technology.  When it is simply about the immediate liability management, educators are less likely to see the long-term dangers.  It's like focussing on the need to avoid choking on one's food while ignoring the clogged arteries that will someday lead to a heart attack.