Bill Ferriter

The Tempered Radical

Bill Ferriter

Bill Ferriter teaches 6th grade language arts in Wake County, NC, where he was named Teacher of the Year for 2005-2006.

Recent Posts:

Watch This: Gordon Brown on Global Ethic

Gordon Brown's Ted talk explaining how digital connections are leading to the development of a set of global ethics that are fundamentally changing the way that politicians do business remains one of my favorites because he's right.

Using just a few digital tools, citizens of any nation can join together and elevate their voices---and elevating voices means gaining influence.  Policymakers can't ignore---or control---the messages that we create together online.  

That's an important lesson, isn't it?  Shouldn't we be actively teaching our students how to use digital tools to join together?  Isn't learning to influence through electronic media an essential skill for successful participation in tomorrow's society?

Infographic: Cell Phones in Schools

I spent the better part of the day yesterday exploring infographics on the Digital Buzz blog (see here and here), and in the process, I decided that I wanted to start making infographics.

Here's my first:



Download Infographic_CellphonesinSchools  

Whaddya' think?  It's simple--but that's the whole point of an infographic, right? 

I chose to use PowerPoint when making this simply because it's a tool I know I'll have access to in school--so if I can figure out how to make good looking infographics with PowerPoint, I'll be able to show my kids how to do it, too.

Looking forward to your feedback---and I hope you can use this slide somewhere in your work.

Reflections on Teaching for Tomorrow

You know, every time I host a Voicethread conversation here on the Radical, I walk away professionally refreshed.  There’s something incredibly satisfying about joining together with like minds for three days of thought!

And our recent conversation on Teaching the iGeneration was certainly no exception.  Brilliant thoughts were shared, y’all, and if you didn’t have time to stop by, be sure to check out the daily summaries posted here, here and here.

But now, it’s time to take action.  Good conversations are meaningless if they don’t result in change at the classroom, school and/or district level. 

For me, those action steps will include:

Continuing to encourage teachers and principals to focus on teaching instead of technology:  One of my favorite comments in our entire conversation came from Dan Greenberg, who wondered whether conversations about tools are actually preventing us from having conversations about good teaching.

My answer would be a resounding yes!  Principals talk about wanting Interactive Whiteboards.  Teachers talk about wanting sets of student responders.  Policymakers promise to put computers in the hands of every student.

Outside of the edusphere, though, those conversations rarely include any real articulation about the specific learning goals and/or behaviors that new tools are supposed to encourage and support—and that’s sad. 

The result are classrooms filled with technology that is being used to reinforce the kinds of instructional practices that teachers are comfortable with.  (Note to teachers and principals:  Showing students how to insert music into a PowerPoint ain’t exactly revolutionary!)

The solution is a simple one:  Anyone interested in seeing our schools become institutions that are effectively teaching for tomorrow needs to have constant conversations about what that looks like in practice. 

We need to rethink the flow of information in our classrooms—a point Adam Garry made in our conversation.  We need to rethink what “control” looks like in our classrooms—a point Meg Ormiston made in our conversation.  We need to start by focusing on the kinds of topics—instead of the kinds of tools—that engage today’s students, a point that I like to make all the time.

Only then should we start to talk about tools. 

 

Continuing to encourage teachers to be digitally resilient:  One of the most powerful strands in our T4T conversation was about the fear of failure that teachers carry around each day—a fear that increases exponentially when working with technology.

And while those fears are understandable—no one wants to have lessons bomb, especially when they’re being evaluated by bosses—those fears are also preventing real change from coming to our schools.

Teachers—and the principals who are evaluating them—need to be comfortably persistent when working with new tools and techniques.  Techno-hiccups are inevitable, and without a willingness to move forward even when things don’t go right, we’ll never see our classrooms become the kinds of student-centered places that we dream of. 

 

Continuing to argue for more responsible assessments—of both teachers and students:  There should be no more disturbing comment to policymakers and school principals than this one, added by my good friend Paul Cancellieri:

I find myself constantly feeling pressure to abandon attempts to reinforce "21st century skills" (even though many of them have been critical for decades) because my effectiveness is measured by a different yardstick. 

How do we motivate teachers to teach in this new way without new assessments?

Here’s a guy who is super intelligent openly admitting that he’s drifting away from responsible instruction because it isn’t something that he—or his students—is held accountable for. 

The tension that Paul is feeling doesn’t surprise me, though, because it’s a tension that I feel all the time. 

There is literally no motivation to make information management, collaboration, communication, visual literacy or problem solving a more important part of my classroom instruction because none of those skills—despite being trumpeted by outside organizations—appears in the tools used to evaluate me or the exams used to evaluate my students.

Until we start assessing students and evaluating teachers differently—efforts that will require training for administrators and commitment on the part of policymakers—nothing is going to change in the vast majority of American classrooms.

For teachers, that means transparently documenting the learning that is happening in our classrooms—and the impact that policies are having on our instructional choices.

For principals, that means spending more time in progressive classrooms noticing differences between the traditional practices that we’ve grown so comfortable with and the new kinds of skills and behaviors that children must master to successfully participate in a borderless, knowledge driven world.

For parents, that means putting the squeeze on policymakers.  There is no more influential group in conversations about change in schools than moms and dads—who also happen to be voters.  Ask your child’s teacher about the impact that standardized testing has had on their classroom—and your child.  Then, call up your legislator and make some noise.

And for policymakers, that means turning away from the simplistic view that we can learn all that we need to know about teachers and students from one test given in June.  Y’all have GOT to know better by now. 

Take a stand, would ya?  Push back against your peers that are creating the kinds of policies that prevent  our schools from moving forward.

 

Whew…Can you tell that this conversation has changed who I am as a thinker?  All I can say is thank you for participating. 

Y’all mean a lot to me, and I’m jazzed that you’re willing to help to shape and to polish what I know about Teaching the iGeneration.

T4T Conversation SummaryDay 3

It’s hard to believe, but our focused three-day conversation with Adam Garry and Meg Ormiston—authors of Teaching the iGeneration and Creating a Digital Rich Classroom respectively—is quickly coming to an end.

The end result is a conversation that will challenge your thinking!  Take a few minutes exploring the summaries from the first and second days of our conversation and then poke through our thread online. 

You might also be interested in the comments that I found most interesting today:


On slide 2, Dan Greenberg—who has started a ton of interesting strands in this conversation—talks about all of the devices that today’s students typically own but that we don't allow them to use in our schools. 

Dan’s point was echoed on slide 4 by Renee Moore, who works in a system that struggles to meet the hardware needs of its schools.  Easing restrictions prohibiting students from using their own tools in schools, Renee believes, might just help schools integrate technology in tough budget times.

For me, Dan and Renee’s points resonate:  As mobile devices—cell phones, iPods, iTouches—become more and more widely available, shouldn’t we find ways to incorporate those tools into the work we’re doing with students? 

What message do we send to students about our respect for their learning styles when we ban the devices that they’ve adopted from our buildings? 

Also, how do we start conversations that might just convince skeptics that the tools our kids have embraced have learning potential in the classroom?

On slide 5, Dan Greenberg and Matt Townsely work together to make the distinction between "the effective use of digital tools" and "the use of technology in the classroom." 

While that may seem like a subtle semantic distinction, it's actually a huge shift in thinking, isn't it?  I wonder how many teachers, administrators and district level leaders can really tell the difference. 

My guess is that in the majority schools, using technology in the classroom—whether or not that use is effective—is celebrated and given priority simply because so few people can define just what “effective use” looks like in action. 

Maybe that’s the first step that school leaders need to begin taking.  Providing opportunities for teachers to see progressive lessons in action and then spotlighting the differences with traditional practices could build systemic awareness of responsible instruction.

Also on slide 5, Mark Clemente—a good friend and TLN colleague who is working as a teacher on loan with the National Institute of Aerospace this year—wondered about the consequences of our desire to have control in our classrooms when he wrote:

When a tech lesson fails, (the common perception is that) control has been lost and the teacher has demonstrated that they don't know it all.  I don't agree with either idea but I think it is still a prevalent mindset in K12 education.

Interesting point, isn’t it?  For whatever reason, the “we’ve-got-to-be-in-charge-all-the-time” mindset still has a firm grip on our collective teaching minds.

What would it take for teachers to feel comfortable with the "loss of control" that defines the best student-centered classrooms?  What's keeping us from feeling comfortable in situations where we're not in charge?

Eric Townsely—a middle school principal from Iowa—introduced us to something he calls the “umbrella effect” on slide 7. 

As Eric explains it, that’s the tendency in most schools for teachers to expect that once one teacher gets a new tool—an IWB, a set of student responders, laptops and data projectors—ALL teachers will be given the same tools.

While I think there's real value in the argument that providing technology is the first step towards seeing our teachers use digital tools to create new learning opportunities, I wonder if school and/or district-wide rollouts leave us limited.

Shouldn't we hold back some of our tech budgets, spending that cash on high quality PD and/or release time for teachers to document their work with digital solutions instead of providing everyone with the same hardware or software solutions? 

Would we have a greater impact if we invested strategically in a handful of teachers in our district or school and used them as models of what could be?

Interesting stuff, huh?  And questions that any school working towards teaching for tomorrow are going to have to wrestle with at some point or another! 

Now, our conversation is officially over, but I’ll leave it open for commenting until the end of the day tomorrow.  That way, you can sneak in to leave any final thoughts that you want to share.  Meg and Adam will be stopping by once more as well, so if you’ve got specific questions for them, get ‘em up quick!

Hope this all makes sense to you---and thank you for being a part of my professional growth.  I love listening to and learning from y’all.

New Slide: World Class Education?

I'm not sure if I've ever shared this slide with you, but I think it's a good one for starting conversations on what exactly we should see happening in progressive schools and/or classrooms. 

Hope you can use it in your work somehow:

 

Download Worldclasseducation

T4T Conversation SummaryDay 2

So we’ve made it through Day 2 of our conversation on teaching for tomorrow with digital change experts Adam Garry and Meg Ormiston, authors of Teaching the iGeneration and Creating a Digital Rich Classroom respectively, and I’m loving the time that we’re spending together!

Every time that I stop by the conversation, I have my own thinking challenged, that’s for sure.  And that’s what I love the most about the Web 2.0 world:  I get to learn from people that I’ve never even met.

Too cool.

If you haven’t had a chance to join us in Voicethread yet and you’re looking for a way to catch up on the conversation quickly, consider checking out this summary of yesterday’s interactions. 

Also, here are some highlights from today’s discussion:

Steve Kabachia—a teacher of English Language Arts and Humanities in Central Alberta—started an interesting strand on the very first slide of our presentation when he asked how teachers working with Web 2.0 and mobile technologies in the classroom can best deal with the support and/or interference from stakeholders. 

That’s an interesting question, isn’t it?  In my experiences as a teacher using technology, the only given is that there is ALWAYS going to be support AND interference from stakeholders! 

Sometimes that’s the well-intentioned principal who spends a ton of money on the wrong tool and other times that’s the parent who refuses to embrace the potential in lessons built from digital opportunities. 

So what lessons do y’all have for Steve?  What steps do you take to build both awareness and support for new teaching practices in your buildings?

Paul—otherwise known as Mr. Monkey—started one of the most important strands in our entire conversation on the second slide when he argues that the biggest difference that he sees in his classroom today as compared to his classroom yesterday is between the ability levels of high and low performing students. 

He wonders how we can use technology to improve the basic literacy skills that so many of our students are currently lacking.  Our worry shouldn't be with those who are already academically successful, but instead with those who are struggling to succeed. 

Does your school get that balance right when they’re talking about teaching for tomorrow?

So often, our conversations are full of AMAZING activities that would extend the learning of even our highest achieving students—but will the same opportunities improve the skills and abilities of students who our schools have traditionally failed to reach?

 

On slide four, Hether—an art teacher working with digital tools—raises a point that can’t be emphasized enough in conversations about teaching with technology:  The key is finding the right technology tool to go along with the right content and the right learning outcomes. 

When people make poor tool-centric choices—trying to use Skype to collaborate with classes too many time zones away, trying to use blogs for ongoing collaborative conversations between kids—their projects are disasters. 

Her ideas are extended on slide five by Dan Greenberg—a PD provider in Houston—who goes as far as to argue that conversations about new tools might just be hindering our efforts to rethink teaching and learning in our classrooms when he writes, “Are the tools not allowing us to have conversations about effective teaching?”

Great points, aren’t they?  And important reminders for anyone wanting to be digital change agents in their buildings.

So often,  we forget that tools and technology haven't changed the fundamental skills and behaviors that help a teacher to be successful.  Why hasn't that message gotten across to more people?  Why do you think tools remain at the center of so many conversations about teaching for tomorrow?


The strand of the day, however, was started on slide seven by my TLN hero Renee Moore—a remarkably passionate educator who has spent her entire career working in the high needs schools of the Mississippi Delta—who wondered whether our principals had the kinds of specific skills and training to effectively spot good teaching in the 21st Century when she wrote:

Highly engaged student learning activities do look messy, and sometimes the evaluator has to be de-briefed by the teacher to really understand what s/he just saw!

Unfortunately, not all teachers get that opportunity, and some have been unfairly chastised, even punished which then intimidates others from even trying. Is better or more specific training of administrators the answer?


Her thoughts were echoed on slide eight by Mr. Monkey, who wrote:

I find myself constantly feeling pressure to abandon attempts to reinforce "21st century skills" (even though many of them have been critical for decades) because my effectiveness is measured by a different yardstick. 

How do we motivate teachers to teach in this new way without new assessments?

Great points, huh?  And points that really have me worried.  There’s such dissonance between what we’re SAYING we want students to know and be able to do and what we’re EXPECTING kids to know and be able to do at the end of the school year.

Has anyone had any luck in bridging this saying/expecting gap in your schools, districts or states?  What actions can we take in our own little worlds to push for more responsible evaluation of both teachers and students?

 

If you haven't stopped by our conversation yet, you should!  Here's the direct link.  I guarantee that you'll learn something.

If you have stopped by already, here's your day three challenge:  Rather than posting something new to the conversation today, go in and find a comment made by another participant to respond to.  It could be something that made you think.  It could be something you completely disagree with.  It could be something that you want to know more about.

Make tomorrow a day of interaction by interacting with an existing participant.  After all, that's what good collaborative dialogue looks like in action, right?

T4T Conversation Summary: Day 1

Our iGeneration Voicethread is off to a great start, y'all! Your comments---which are coming from everyone from classroom teachers to professional development providers and principals---are all fantastic and will definitely spark thinking
and conversation. 

Keep it up, huh?  By Saturday afternoon, we'll all have a better understanding of the possibilities and pitfalls of teaching for tomorrow. 


If you're interested in finding interesting strands quickly, try these:

Becky Goerend starts an interesting strand
on slide one when she points out that students in rural communities don't often have
an awareness of what's possible with digital tools simply because their lives haven't been as heavily influenced by opportunities to reach beyond
the local community. 

That makes me wonder how effective digital change
efforts in rural communities differ from digital change efforts in urban
or suburban communities. 

There are constant conversations about the urgency of
introducing economically disadvantaged students to technology.  Do we
need the same urgency in introducing rural students to technology?

Matt Townsley starts another interesting strand on slide one when
he points out that novelty wears off quickly for students using
technology.  My question is do teachers and schools over-rely on novelty
when introducing new technologies? 

Are we somehow hoping that novelty
will lead to results?  And better yet, what is the solution to pushing
novelty to the background and placing the focus of our change efforts
where they belong:  On sound pedagogy and interesting content? 

On Slide 2, Adam Garry and Paul Cancellieri---better
known as Mister Monkey in our Voicethread---both talk about the idea
that schools as they currently exist are going to be obsolete before
long.  Teaching students to connect beyond the walls of our classrooms
is the greatest need for our schools and for our kids. 

My question is a
simple one:  What are the barriers to pulling off this outward
orientation in every classroom----and what practical strategies can
schools take to address those barriers?

Meg Ormiston makes an important point on slide five
when she explains that classroom management isn't a issue when students
have choice over the products that they create because motivation
levels are high.  That got me wondering whether students should have
some choice over the content that they learn as well.  

I'm also curious
about the factors that make student choice---either in products or in
content---so rare in our instructional practices? Is anyone successfully
incorporating elements of student choice into your classrooms?  How?

Probably my favorite thought posted during the first day of the conversation comes from Adam Garry.  On slide six, Adam recommends
changing the way that information flows in a classroom. 

In traditional
classrooms, he explains, information flows from the teacher to the
student.  In student centered classrooms, however, information flows
from teacher to student, student to teacher, students to other students,
and students to those beyond the room. 

By that definition, I wonder
how many student centered classrooms we really have in our schools.  I'm
also curious about the impact that the incredible breadth in our
curricula has on the ability for information to flow in multiple
directions in the typical classroom. 


A pointer for participants:  Many users
have asked whether it is possible for one person to leave more than one
comment on each slide.  The answer is yes---and I hope you will! 
Ongoing dialogue between participants around one concept is what makes a
conversation healthy.

When you do, though, you won't see a new
icon added around our focusing quote.  In order to keep a slide from
getting cluttered with icons, whenever a participant adds a second
comment to a slide, Voicethread adds the comment to the conversation
without adding a new icon. 

Other participants will know that
you've added a second comment by looking at the timeline found beneath
each slide, where they will see a new yellow comment tab.  They will
also see a yellow box---and a groovy yellow speech bubble---surrounding
your icon.

Here's to hoping that you'll take the time to stop by our conversation before it ends on Saturday!  Not only will you learn a ton....we'll learn a ton from you!

Conversation on Teaching for Tomorrow Starts Today

Here
it is, Radical Nation: The first day in our three-day conversation on teaching for tomorrow with digital change experts Adam Garry---my Teaching the iGeneration coauthor---and Meg Ormiston, author of Creating a Digital Rich Classroom, a title due to be published by Solution Tree in September.

Interested in joining the conversation?

Then click this link: Enter Teaching for Tomorrow 


You might also be interested in this set of directions on how to make digital conversations work for you and this set of directions about how to sign up for a Voicethread account. 

Something to know about navigating Voicethread conversations:

While working in a Voicethread conversation, participants can choose to hit the "Play"
button at the bottom of any particular slide and watch the conversation
around that slide from beginning to end.  That's probably the best
strategy the first time you stop by our conversation with Adam and Meg because you'll get to hear my opening questions, Adam and Meg's
initial responses, and the thinking of other participants.

As you revisit pages, however----something you should do once or
twice over the course of the week to see how conversations are
developing----you can click on new icons surrounding the quotes that you are interested in to hear new comments that have been added.  You can also click on individual comments in the "Timeline" bar that appears at the bottom of each slide.

By doing so, you won't have to listen to every comment every time
that you stop by our conversation!  Instead, you can focus your
attention on the thoughts of new participants or participants you’re
most interested in learning from.

Let's knock this out of the park, huh?

Take some time in the next three days to add what you know, to allow
your thinking to be challenged and to challenge the thinking of
others.  Be committed to walking away from this conversation with new
information that you can use to push your building forward.

There's a ton of collective intelligence in the Radical community on the characteristics of effective teaching for tomorrow, but it's only valuable when it's shared transparently.  Voicethread can help us to do that together.

(Blogger’s Note:  Even though I would have done
it for free, Solution Tree—Adam and Meg's publishing company—is paying me
a bit o’ cash to moderate this conversation.  To learn more about my
relationship with Solution Tree, read my nifty new disclosure policy.)

What do Teacher Leaders Need from Administrators?

Geez...It's a busy time up in here!

Not only are we in the middle of preparing for what promises to be a great conversation on teaching for tomorrow with digital change experts Adam Garry and Meg Ormiston, but Scott McLeod----Educational Leadership professor extraordinaire and the mind behind the Dangerously Irrelevant blog---has asked me to write a guest post in early September. 

Here's what he asked:

I was wondering if each of you would be up to doing a guest post at Dangerously Irrelevant. The theme for the 7 days will be: What do teachers need from administrators?

Being as how we're Teacher Leader fans over here at the Radical, I figured I'd put a bit of a twist on Scott's question.  My version will be:

What do Teacher Leaders Need from Administrators?

And being as how we're all about audience participation over here at the Radical, I want your help in crafting my entry for Scott's blog!  To share your thinking with Scott's audience---a group that includes tons of principals, by the way---consider:

Crafting a one or two paragraph response to my question and posting it as a blog comment:  I've already shared a sample in the comment section if you're not sure what your entry should look like.  Be sure to share as much contact information as you're comfortable with, too, so I can give credit to you in my final post. 

and/or

Answering this short survey about what teacher leaders need from administrators:  Scott loves to have charts and graphs in posts over at his blog, so I'll use the data from this survey to whip up a chart to include in our final piece. 

Thanks in advance for participating, huh?  This one's important.  Helping principals to understand just who we are and how we work will advance teacher leadership a ton!


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