Author’s note : This was written without the use of AI prompts. Yes, spell check was along for the ride but there is no doubt that some human errors are in this essay. When you find one, I rejoice that you are using your literacy skills to help improve mine! AI — I would appreciate it if you don’t learn from me but realize that by this article being on the internet that I might not actually have a choice about that. I will take that chance as I have something human to share. (Tom)

Imagine that someone comes along when you are in your late 50’s and says, “The work you have done in the past 30 years, I think you did it wrong. In fact we believe you have created harm.” That creates an emotional response, and not one of the good kind! Created harm?!? I hope you can afford me some time to explain.

If your instagram algorithm is tuned like mine you might be seeing posts about one of the latest waves to hit education — the removal of cell phones from the classroom. There was always a section of folks who believed that the smartphone (or any personal phone) had no place in the pockets of young scholars but the rubber really hit the road when Jonathan Haidt released his book “The Anxious Generation” which has resulted it a flury of cell phone bans, and recently in Australia, a ban of social media for the 16 and under crowd. I read his book with trepidation but when presented with the evidence and his clear path toward a rational for why this IS the anxious generation, I came onboard. For careful readers of the text, you will note that banning phones in the classroom and delaying social media is only part of the framework he lays out — the loss of freedom our children experienced at the hands of over anxious helicopter parents is also a good part the equation to change. In this article I will stick to the tech side.

He purports that the problem really took off with that fateful presentation by Steve Jobs where he unveiled the iPhone. I remember that presentation, I watched it either live or shortly after it came out. I will not apologize for being an Apple fan, those were interesting days for us Apple folks. Up to that point I had experienced quite an evolution in my pocket. My job needed me to in close contact to worksite and so the advent of having a pager (and enough quarters to use a payphone) was freedom from campus! Then, it got a bit better with my first “pocket” cell phone, provided I was in a coverage area. If only I could have access to the data on my computer at home or in the office while I was on the road — in particular my notes and calendar. Ah, the wonder of the my first Palm Pilot, only you had to run home to sync it. BlackBerry to rescue! I deployed these by the caseload in the corporate clients I worked with. “Guarantee you, these are the future!”

The iPhone squashed that. At first it was not a bunch better than my Berry but it soon overtook it. A full fidelity interent browser in your pocket was the genesis. The promise of having all my data fully connected, synced without friction was information freedom. Enter a phrase that I would continue to use as the litmus test for technology — any device, anytime, anywhere. While 2010’s tech did not pass the test, the march toward it began with the iPhone and the race to connect anything and everything to the internet.

In 2010 I was still managing technology implementations for small businesses and when the opportunity arose was working with schools to do the same. As the credentialed educator in the company I was tapped to do corporate training and internal tech training for our staff. When a school was looking for technology help I jumped at the chance. What better a place to help ‘fix’ the technology skills gap I continually saw in business than make sure that future employees and business leaders were more fluent in technology. Imagine if we could teach kids how this stuff works better! Finally we would have folks who knew that using the space bar to center a word on the page wasn’t the right strategy.

Schools always have problems deploying tech. We could tease them all apart (and I’m working on a book about that!) but let’s focus on the cost. When a business is convinced that they need to upgrade their workstations, servers, software and put everyone through some training to use it, they look to their accountant who says. “What’s the return on investment (ROI)?” The sales pitch will answer that in a heartbeat and if done right the corporation shells out the dollars AND turns around to recoup the funds from a more efficient work flow. Let’s be honest it most likely comes from just charging their customers some more money. Mr. Salesperson please, the ROI for a school? Tech is the future, you teach the future so you better do this! So, schools get labs, rolling mobile carts (if the funding bonus comes through), smartboards, computers for the teachers and the admin team. Schools have always used some form of “educational technology”, the digitization of the chalk and slate resulted in a slick name for this new movement, edTech.

I became the provider of edTech. I pitched schools on how best to spend their limited budgets on the new devices. I configured the servers, the labs, the smartboards. I provided teacher inservice and professional development (not the same by the way — again the book) I taught kids in digitally connected classrooms. I cringed inside when a teacher used their spacebar to center a title or hit return 10 times to make a new page. I was patient, I showed them how to use the features in a word processor and I celebrated when in every school that I worked with a new tech evangelist would emerge from the teaching force who would pick up and run with the ideas and skills I presented in the workshops. They inevitably would outpace the tech we had the funds to deploy and lament why couldn’t we have this or that new bright shiny object.

Any device, anytime, anywhere? Microsoft and Apple were fighting it out for the personal computer market. That fight seemed to be won by Microsoft in the corporate world (well unless you were a digital media geek) and it spilled into education. Apple had some compelling impelentations with their focus on education. I got my start in computing on the only Apple II my junior high had (ok we just went way back, sorry — also in the book). I got a chance to work in both ecosystems in the schools I supported. Anyone who has done this will remember how much fun it was trying to get data to pass between Apple and Microsoft. At the heart of the challenge was the fact that when students wanted to use a computer, they had to go to the lab. That had to be booked, they maybe sat a computer they didn’t use last time and they needed access to their data — oh roaming profiles how much fun that was! We constructed some pretty technical solutions to deal with these challenges. I had a stopwatch (on my smartphone) to see how much time would be consumed from the moment students arrive in the lab to time they were ‘productive’ — the results were never stellar. Never mind the fact that you had to really plan your technology use — forget about spontaneously telling everyone to research their project on the Internet. There was a lot of friction to deploying the future to the students of the early 2000’s. Most schools didn’t have the money to adequately reduce this friction. But the corporations tried their best to flog new versions of products to reduce the friction. Were they really interested in preparing the young minds for the future or was it to become repeat consumers of tech at home and advocates for tech spending at their future job?

But in mid 2011 a new kid on the block arrived, the ChromeBook. Google, the king of search had something new to beta on the world. An ecosystem designed entirely on the interent, inside of a browser. The device was significantly less expensive and required a lot less technical infrastructure. Honestly, my first look at this new ecosystem and I said “Ok, that gets us closer to any device, anytime, anywhere; but at the expense of fidelity and functionality. Google Docs is not MS Word!” But, I tinkered with it as I do with technology and I quickly came around to Google’s way of thinking for the classroom. The limited budget to maintain the constant upgrading of the school device infrastructure was unsustainable if we were going to close bring technology to the center of learning in the classroom. The holy grail for edTech was 1 device, 1 kid or as it’s affectionally know as 1:1. If they could pick up a device and just get to work that would convince educators that this technology would work to enhance learning. We were not going to get there with either Microsoft based laptops or Apple devices — only the lucky few districts with deeper pockets could attempt this.

Now while the battle for the K-12 space continued to rage amoung the edTech firms. Parents put something new into the mix. They were sending kids to school with smartphones. The WAVE and mix of devices that arrived in the pockets of the students would completely upend the careful technology ecosystem that edTech was constructing. I have to hold back here again and focus on one aspect of this brave new world. It DID give kids the ability to have an ‘answer machine’ in their pocket. We could indeed be spontaneous and do research on the internet. Doing an essay on that tiny screen was an art that some of them developed BUT more often than not this device and it’s many bright shinny non education objects became a new and deep distraction in the classroom. edTech corporations always keen to seize an opportunity released a slew of ‘apps’ that could potentially have educational purpose and for awhile it convinced educators that; The smartphone is the future, our kids need to know how to use it correctly and who better than their teacher to take up the challenge!

I sang that song in professional development when teachers expressed their tech challenges and frustration and the phone came up as a big one. I was about reducing the friction AND what a gift the smartphone was. A device the school doesn’t have to pay for and manage? We just need to teach you all how to better use this opportunity. I always seek to bring an ‘embedded’ engagement to my professional development and worked alongside teachers in the classroom. I am always up to demo teach ing their class using the tech … and it became abundantly clear that using phones in the a lesson while ‘cool and novel’ quickly turned into a game of managing the distractions. Equity in what everyone’s phones could and couldn’t do was also an issue. The ‘any device’ part wasn’t really true yet. The school’s WIFI wasn’t up to the challenge and most students didn’t have the data plan that would cover the amount of data they needed. Friction still abounded. But the real beast lurking in the room was the attention stealing power of these devices.

Ok, so the phone wasn’t going to be the fix. So tell them to leave them in their pockets — lets give them something that will work. The Chromebook continued to evolve and on the next purchasing cycle it allowed many schools to buy more devices than in their current infrastructure. The devices could be deployed in a cart (we get another much needed classroom space back — good bye lab!). We decomission servers and spend the money on wifi in every corner of campus. Some schools even get real close to 1:1! The HOLY GRAIL — and now technology can any device, anytime, anywhere. Kids could pick up any Chromebook and be opening a document in less than a minute. Put away the stopwatch!

Connecting the classroom to the cloud was the best thing to happen for edTech vendors. They all raced to offer a plethora of software as a service to the classroom. No more buying one thing and done — now you have a subscription to a service that just gets paid every year. As an edTech consultant, now that the friction was really reduced, NOW we could see the gains by delivering technology to the hands of our eager learners. Again, I spent time in the trenches and showed teachers how to teach using these devices. The tech was a tool that we could inject into your teaching practice to make lessons come alive AND we were preparing them for the future they would encounter in their future careers.

“When the wires, devices and apps disappear into the background, allowing YOU to be creative, productive and reach your objectives – then I believe I’ve made a difference!” (www.lumined.ca)

Is it wrong to quote yourself? That is from my own website. This is what I thought I was doing in the schools where these ChromeBooks got deployed. I led several districtwide initiatives to flip their technology onto the web and get us to the point where the tech just disappears. Participants of my professional development may remember my favorite quote from Arthur C. Clark, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” and my frequent use of that is just ‘automagic’ when teaching how easy this stuff is getting.

But something has always been nagging at me. It happened when I went to my first ISTE conference and stepped on the floor of the trade show. Football fields long and wide, it was the ‘hall of bright shinny objects’ where many edTech budgets went to die. I could not help but wonder — is this right? When you see it physically in front of you, you realize just how big this edTech business is. My job pivoted from helping design adequate technology infrastructure to making sure that the classroom teacher was not overwhelmed by this tsunami of tech aimed at education. We now have an infrastructure in place and the ability for students to have quick access to a technology tool, lets not burden the teachers to have to figure out which of these 1000’s of tools is right for their room. I doubled down on embedded PD — teachers left empowered and introduced tools that appeared to be tuned to educational needs. But scaling this model is tough and I advocated that schools need to have edTech curriculum consultants as part of the divisional teams. In fact, better still, their curriculum and instructional coaching team needs to ensure that technology awareness should be integrated into all they do. (Sad side note — these coaches are no longer in most school districts, budget cuts)

And now? The computer lab is gone. The ChromeBook is accessible as the scribbler. Logging on gets you access to Google classroom (a digital workflow) and Google applications are at the ready for the children to command. A collection of cloud based services ranging from creative tools to digital tutors are a click of the LOGIN with GOOGLE away. The internet is at their disposal for any research topic, no library trip needed. Want to know how to do something, anything — google it and watch the YouTube Video. We have arrived; any device, anytime, anywhere.

I should be ecstatic; this is what I was hoping to bring to the classroom. But what about the Anxious Generation? Anecdotally, I knew a lot of what this book revealed through careful study. Kids were distracted in the classroom, teachers were frustrated about so many aspects of technology. But, managing the smartphone use and competing with social media in the classroom was completely debilitating. Teachers who intrinsically knew this ‘banned’ the device in their room only to have to constantly become the smartphone police. Teacher was pitted against teacher in the school in the application of the ‘rules.’ It’s not the device, it IS what the device can do. Cigarettes in a package aren’t dangerous — it’s when you light up that you introduce a problem. Social media, communication applications, and games can not compete with any learning agenda -analogue or tech based. So, schools, districts and governments waded in and provided direction. But lets be clear — you need to go all the way — BELL to BELL with no cell. You can not give it back during breaks or you will fight the effects in the next class and the sneaking around and policing of the device continues to be a struggle — legislation or not. Jonanthan’s rational for this key component to reversing the anxious generation is compellingly clear. (If you school/district needs convincing I am more than happy to present and lead you through the change!)

The effects of doing this in a school are amazing — and as long as you begin to re-introduce the activities that kids used to do before they had access to the apps in their pocket you will notice a marked difference in school culture and teachers will report that they can finally begin ‘teaching’ again. BUT, doing this action reveals another challenge lurking — The ChromeBook. While it rides on a more controlled environment than phone each student brought to school (And now checks into the ‘cell hotel’ each morning upon arrival) it is still a device that can lead to distraction and fragment the learning. School networks can block access to social media and other ‘game’ sites but students are masters at finding creative ways to get where they need to go. They can just google “Hapara how do I play a game” (good grammar is not required on google) and they will get all sorts of advice. For edTech this is a wack-a-mole game that we are not winning. I always tell teachers — it is your room, if a student finds a way to pick the basic locks we set up, take the device away. But, for teachers who have moved their learning workflow onto Google Classroom that’s tough and more work.

Enter Jared Cooney Horvath and his new book “The Digital Delusion.” Jared has answered that feeling in my gut that I had on the trade show floor many years ago and takes on question — Is all this technology actually making a difference in the classroom? Jared’s work is extensive and the scientific proof that he brings to the table is intense. It shook my core, “Am I part of the problem? Did I do harm?” To be clear he frames the discussion as not being anti-tech but pro-learning. I am one who has been known to skip ‘forwards’ in books to get at the meat — DON’T do that on this one. But in case you do — hear this, “This isn’t a book about resisting devices; it’s a book about reclaiming education as a deeply human endeavor. It isn’t about moving away from screens; it’s about moving toward deep thought and real understanding. It isn’t about scrapping computers from schools; it’s about restoring rigor to the classroom” (Horvath, p. xxii, emphasis added)

Yes, I was wrong. Wrong that just having any device, anytime, anywhere and the holy grail of 1:1 deployments positions students to learn with technology. I was right too, without knowing why, I was always challenging teachers to only implement technology where it fits. I just don’t think I had a good grasp on where the fit always is! I would say, Don’t use tech for the sake of tech; but I think it got away on us. Don’t get me started on AI (yes — the book in progress will have much, much more to say about that!) Jared, thank you — I now have some solid SCIENCE to back me up. The work I have to do is to help protect and “reclaim education as a human endeavor.” But now it’s been spoken out loud and this becomes my new theme! This might mean a digital detox in the school — I’ve already started this with strongly discouraging screens now K-3. Grade 4 and up, you can close the lids — and get out the pens and paper again. It means reconnecting students to the learning we knew all along works. It’s far easier to look for ways to put FRICTION back in and reintroduce the magic when students have the fundamentals and fluency that allows them to use the tech with much more discernment. I was wrong — but I think I am well positioned to make IT right again.

Arriving in Jasper after a long drive from Edmonton has always meant — you can rest and reset, you can get ready to do something fun. Our family has spent countless weekends camping, exploring the hiking trails and in the winter skiing. Using either the hotels or campgrounds of the Jasper area as a home away from home. Jasper is special. It’s a quieter mountain town than it’s southern cousins, Banff and Canmore. It has small town vibes, small businesses and a family atmosphere.

In the weeks ahead we will no doubt hear from experts and from politicians all trying to ‘explain’ what happened and perhaps even pointing the finger at each other for not doing enough. If you know the land around Jasper you know these things. First it is surrounded by a mature forest that for years has been under stress from pine beatle infestations and recently from low moisture both in summer and winter. Second, you know that the landscape of thick forest is not it’s ‘original’ state — the valley used to be more open with more frequent small fires. This characteristic was more common to many Rocky Mountain valleys. Colonial arrival on the land meant that fires were suppressed and the forests grew fast and thick. Third, you combine this with a changing climate and you have a recipe for fire with intensity.

Great efforts were made around the Jasper area to mitigate some of these factors. Many people were critical about the amount of tree removal and ‘changing of the landscape’ done by Parks Canada — aren’t we supposed to let nature be in a park? But, when you put a town at the confluence of three mountain valleys you can’t just let nature be … nature would have used fire long ago to thin out the fuel load. Indigenous peoples know all about the balance of fire and would often light or steward fast and frequent burns of the underbrush. Simulating these efforts through thinning and cleaning of the forests are designed to change the behavior of fire when and if arrives at the doorstep … but a ranging wind powered inferno is not easy to stop. Experts can weigh in here, but nothing short of a landscape devoid of fuel for a few km’s would be able to stop this. The fire triangle is FUEL, HEAT and OXYGEN — you need to remove one of the three to stop the fire. Easy said, not easy done.

Everyone one we talked to on our holidays this summer comments on the number of fires, the smoke in the air by saying “I don’t remember this when I was a kid” and while this isn’t a scientific way of diagnosing the trouble, it is true. In our short recorded history, there have never been so many intense fires, so many wild swings in weather (floods and also been a factor in the last few years). Something is different. The climate … across the world … is different. It is tough to look in the mirror and realize that it’s my influence, my way of living that is contributing to the problem. What started 100 years ago is vibrating through our world now. More, faster, bigger, better all have contributed to becoming dependant on a consumer society. Our appetite for these things is fueled by energy — particularly energy that is unlocked by the combustion of fossil fuels. Unlocking the energy puts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, a ‘greenhouse gas’ that helps to keep heat in — it’s this heat that contributes to changes in the environment. You know this as ‘Global Warming’ but really the better descriptor is climate CHANGE.

I am currently on a trip … a trip that uses the energy mentioned — I am fully aware that I am a participant in the process. The trip has taken us through the Okanagan, a place where another climate change has affected livelihoods and landscape. Climate changes in the winter are resulting in extreme cold temperatures in areas that normally are moderate. The result, no grapes, no stone fruit. The area ‘looks’ ok- plants are green but bear no fruit. The fruitstands have a few peaches and apricots (from Georgia in the US) … trying to maintain the illusion that, it’s ok — nothing wrong here.

We have also seen the power of water … the hiways that we cross have evidence of past washouts from extreme rain events. And now we see smoke just about everywhere we go. The fire danger is extreme right across the province, even on the coast a fire is out of control a valley over from where I am staying.

What are we to do? Buy an electric car? Switch to solar? How about wind, hydrogen? The change required is not a consumer based, just use THIS instead. I think it’s more a complete shift in what is important — bigger, better, more, faster all has to be dismantled. I am currently staying at a VRBO that is off the grid. I have to admit I choose the location for the view and for the distance from the city. No connection to power — solar with some storage and a generator for the really ‘dark’ periods. But really what this means is you work to use less. I imagine if you live here you need to plan a bit — make those trips to get grocery’s count. You also think twice about what you flick on.

We can not ‘technology’ our way out of this — we need to slow down and figure out a different way. Seven generations from now is counting on having a planet to live on … will we be remembered as the “ones who changed when fire came to town?”

I love bookstores. In January, I discovered a cool one in Victoria, BC (Munro’s Books!). I love to wander the isles and be drawn into thumbing through books based on their title, cover and genre. I may not ‘judge’ a book by its cover but the art on the cover, title, and tagline entices me to pick it up-doing this ‘digitally’ at Amazon isn’t the same.

On this particular day, a small volume in bright orange caught my eye The New Silk Roads — The New Asia and the Remaking of the World Order by Peter Frankopan. I picked it up and flipped it over to read the back cover. I am a history nut, love current events and politics, so reading about the “Remaking of the World Order” intrigued me. I quickly realized this is a follow-up book to a much larger volume, The Silk Roads — A New History of the World. I now remembered that I had thumbed through it on a previous visit to the store. It’s a VOLUME, to be sure. If the orange book is coming home with me, the ‘prequel’ should too. Luckily, the original volume was in the “NOW REDUCED” bin! I got them both (full price on the orange book, and I don’t mind, the author deserves to eat too!)

I finished Silk Roads — A New History of the WORLD last night. It took me two months reading on and off to accomplish it. It is heavy. It is intellectual, thoroughly researched (my goodness, the endnotes are 100+ pages!) and delivered what it promised. In the acknowledgements, Peter reflected on the days spent in libraries with knowledgeable staff assisting him in finding reference material, oftentimes original documents to support his narrative. What deep thinking went into crafting this. I feel like I embarked in a three-semester history course but only scratched the surface. I can not remember a time in university when I finished the entire text cover to cover. I am primed for the next book, the one that lured me in.

I am not prepared to sit the exam; I shudder at the papers I may have to write. I sense that google searching will not be adequate research. To attempt a synopsis for you may be equally challenging.

Is it really all about STUFF? The Silk Road is the connection between east and west — linking Asia with Europe (and by extension North America). In this overview of world history, the narrative is the unfolding of the human drama along this road. The ebb and flow of control of the regions it passes through. If I can be so bold as to summarize its existence, it is to facilitate trade — trade of stuff. While political and theological motivations run high in the narrative, we often see convictions put aside to ease the movement of goods. Sometimes the goods consist of essentials but frequently, they are ‘bright shiny objects’ — luxury items. In the last 100 years, the ‘item’ has been energy — oil. So often, the trade of these items often serves to line the pockets of the few, which sparks discontent and wars.

The deep thinking that went into authoring this book translated into deep reading and has caused me to ponder a lot. I am disquieted. While it may seem simple to distill it all down to ‘It’s just about stuff!’ — that realization does not make for simple solutions. It is clear that our current culture of tweets, likes and shares does not help provide context for the events they seek to highlight. To understand the crisis in Ukraine, you NEED to understand the history of the people involved and the importance of the land and location. Closer to home, to know that it’s time to fight for freedom, you need to understand the lack of freedom. To live and act in a democracy, you need to learn the history — and it’s not going to be absorbed in a 5000 years in 5 minutes YouTube video. Education is the cornerstone of democracy; lack of it is a leading cause of a civilization’s collapse. We see the power of filling the void of knowledge with soundbites, clips of video and rabbit holes of disinformation. People grasps these tidbits of learning and turn them into the gospel.

Those who control and seek to control the ‘stuff’ know these things and are all happy to satisfy our hunger for knowledge with a quick fix that supports their desires. Politicians and clerics alike motivate support for their ideology by providing just ‘enough’ carefully crafted context to convince the folk to join their cause. Folk that want stuff.

I like stuff too. I like my bright, shinny objects. I have spent a lot of time and effort acquiring and curating my stuff. But I see now that my relationship with it has to change. I need to seek to reorient myself and focus on relationships — relationship with my creator and relationships with others. There is more than enough ‘stuff’ to go around. When we realize that and work harder to resist the desire to control it, we may truly be in a new world order.

In the meantime, the quest for knowledge continues; The New Silk Road awaits me now.

I am JUST starting a puzzle now, and it’s December. The Covid experience is a little different for me. It turns out I didn’t have more time than tasks. I also didn’t have time for all that blogging! But that is for a different story. This one is about puzzles, or at least it will start that way. You see for the past three weeks I have been staying with my parents. Covid season was perfect timing for the medical system to decide that it was my Dad’s turn for a new knee. Since he does most of the “heavy lifting” to keep the parental household going and I live some distance away, the only solution we came up with was for me to move in for a bit while he recovers. And that, is also another story.

I am doing a puzzle now — 1000 pieces. I gave my parents this puzzle a few Christmas’ ago in the ever searching quest to give my Mom something to do. I discovered it was still in shrink-wrap in a closet. While watching my Mom sit and re-read the same books day after day, I resolved to do two things. I went to the library and got her some different books, AND I suggested, “Mom, let’s dump this thing out and try it.” Mom spent about 10 minutes finding the edge pieces and has decided that puzzling isn’t for her. At least she is reading new books.

So the puzzle is strewn all over the dining room table. I can tell you that after sitting in the evening and listening to Dad complain about how long it takes to recover from knee surgery (he’s 84 now and up to this point hasn’t spent a night in the hospital — this recovery thing is a bit new). Mom’s focus is on her books; I have come up with two choices. Work some more (thanks, I did tons of online work during the day) OR do the puzzle. It turns out you can be in the same room as other folks while everyone does their thing, and it’s quite an excellent way to pass the time — an odd but comforting sense of togetherness.

By now, you are wondering — “Where are the nuggets of edTech truths in this article? Tom usually writes about those.” Correct, and we will get there. Patience, puzzling is something that requires TONS of patience (there we are getting started!) My Dad can build model train layouts, but he insists he would have thrown those silly puzzle pieces to the floor by now. Ok, so puzzling takes a certain kind of patience.

Yesterday I held some ‘office hours’ online for teachers I coach. Like those teachers who also hold office hours for their students, I thought I might be staring into the Google MEET abyss for the entire 2 1/2 hours I set aside for it until DIG DONG — someone “rang the door,” and I let them in. We had a great chat about how things were going, and this teacher asked some timely questions, to which I hope I gave her some good advice. We had no fixed agenda; the meeting was relaxed and natural. She left with some concrete ideas to try. I had some excellent ideas about what to focus on in an upcoming webinar for her team! A perfect example of “Office Hours.” There are several reasons why this half-hour interaction was fruitful — let’s unpack a few.

1. I have a relationship with this teacher. I have worked with her district for many years and helped develop the technology ecosystem they use. She has been to several of my face-to-face workshops. I know her strengths and the context in which she teaches.
2. I am experienced in my craft. I have a vast pool of ideas. I spend a lot of time trying this and that. I have a feel for what works and what does not. I read A LOT within my field to stay on top of what others are experiencing. When someone I am coaching is backing into a corner, I can point out options to get out.
3. I am working on being a better listener. Note; I said, “working at.” It is tough because I am a problem solver and like to jump in with the solution — most of the time, when people ask an IT question, they are looking for a quick answer. I am also working at letting people talk and provide a bit of space and time to unpack what is said — practicing the old teacher trick to discovering that they have the answer!

What does this have to do with puzzling? It isn’t about the picture on the box after all. The process of going through and looking for the pieces that fit is the zen of this endeavour. Yes, there is an absolute satisfaction of seeing the picture come to life, and I suppose if you don’t like the picture, you are working so hard to make it happen won’t be as rewarding. To puzzle, you need to put in the time. You need to get to know all the pieces; you need to try things out and be prepared to put them back on the table. You need to have patience and take a break. Stop do something else and come back to the table later on. You won’t finish 1000 pieces in one sitting — if you do I suggest you need more pieces or a 3D puzzle or one with just water!

Mom asked me — “…so how do you puzzle?” That was an interesting question. Beyond giving her the task to find the edge pieces, I wasn’t exactly sure what advice to give. My primary puzzle experience is with preschoolers, and my “strategy” there is pretty straight forward. I was SOOO tempted to GOOGLE “how to do a puzzle?” but I resisted and just started in on it. At first, it was a ton of moving pieces here and there.

Teaching online is like puzzling. It turns out you won’t figure it out in the first, second, third … (4 months later) GOOGLE MEET. To teach kids online, you need the same ingredients that I discovered have worked for ‘office hours’ or the PLC’s I am leading, and it turns out these same strategies are practiced during puzzling.

1. You need to leverage previous relationships, OR you need to take time to build new ones. After you have spent some time with a puzzle, each return to the table is more fruitful; you’ve seen this piece or that — things fall together much better.
2. “No relationship” means teaching content will be challenging. Trying to get content through right off the hop will only work if the learner on the other side is exceedingly motivated. For this learner, a squirrel could be teaching it, and they would still listen. Not the reality in most online classrooms. (I would watch a squirrel teach geometry, though — even if I don’t know her) Again, trying to create the picture on the box cover in one sitting usually results in a frustrating experience.
3. You need to look around and see what fits. This doesn’t mean you flit from tool to tool trying to keep the kiddos entertained. It would help if you had a base strategy and you bring in the right resource when you see it will fit. You need to listen and recognize when something isn’t working, and another method or tool might work better here. You develop a strategy and a rhythm as you return to the puzzle table. Sometimes you work on this area, and sometimes you pull back and go somewhere else. Upon returning all of a sudden, the pieces fit!

Puzzling has only been going on for me for the past three nights. It’s been a peaceful activity that I can do in the room with my parents, and everyone is ok just hanging out in the same space. It has given me time to ‘think’ not just about the puzzle but about how to solve other problems. It is teaching me patience and rewarding me with little glimpses of the big picture. (Oh my goodness, I am practicing MINDFULNESS!) It helped me realize that it’s about the journey and not the end, like most things.

Teachers take heart. You are working in an ecosystem for which most of you are not prepared. The government may have well told you ‘teach under water tomorrow.’ Our leaders didn’t have many options, and in the mad scramble to figure it out, they dumped out a box of tech pieces asking you just to push harder to make them fit. STOP doing that! Instead, lay them all out, pick them up and ponder what part of the picture is this. Oh — and they also forgot to give you the box lid; we don’t know what the picture is. Let me help draw that for you — it starts by building (or rebuilding) the relationships online. Doing so is ‘similar’ to the way you do in the classroom, but different enough to mean you need to develop some new strategies. You can GOOGLE “How to teach online,” but that will not replace putting in the time to create your style — that will reveal to you that there are 1000’s of pieces to this picture. It would help if you were a participant in some online learning — watch what works and what doesn’t. It would be best if you lurked in each other’s classes online. STOP trying to replicate the school day and your physical classroom (that’s a different puzzle box and not one for these pieces!) START holding smaller ‘sessions’ where people can pause, take a break and return to the ‘table.’ These are parts of what the puzzle box of online learning would have on the lid. I don’t have the full picture yet, but I am working on sketching it out, so I have a better idea of where the pieces fit.

Puzzled about Teaching Online? was originally published in edTech-coach on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve used technology to meet “face to face” with people who I usually would have texted, called on the phone or sent an email to. We are physically distant, but socially, we are connected — more than we’ve been in a while. A common set of sentiments this week could be summed up in this paraphrase. “We should do this FaceTime thing more often — and wow, you can turn the phone horizontal for a better view of the folks on the other end?? I am learning so much about meeting online!”

Distant yes! Are you socially connected? For the moment, perhaps more purposeful than ever.

A month ago, a meeting of educators discussing technology would have no doubt involved a discussion about how much screen time is too much. I often begin my workshops with an article that challenges teachers to reflect on how technology is rewiring their students’ brains or how directly deploying a tech tool isn’t going to solve a pedagogical challenge necessarily. My aim in using these articles is to highlight that technology needs to be seen as a helper and a tool in a complex process, a process that they need to continue to be vigilant over and that needs THEM and their expertise to make good choices. It is with this frame of mind that we then dive into learning some new technology tools. The desired outcome is for them to find the most appropriate fit for the technology they are learning with me. So, would this workshop now change? Would I put those articles away and dive headfirst into a long list of APPS designed to fill the gap in our students’ learning that they will miss while not in school? NO — I would not.

None of my reasons for using these as opening discussion thoughts have changed. Technology should not replace the teacher. Distance learning isn’t a ‘switch’ you can flip. Distance learning is HARD WORK. It’s hard to develop meaningful lessons online, it’s hard to evaluate student progress and it requires motivation and dedication on the part of the learner to want to dig in and learn something new without the teacher in the room gently prodding them on. I am a true believer that distance learning should be part of a BLENDED approach. Students need a social connection to their teacher and to classmates. That connection is more comfortable to achieve and maintain in a classroom. The Fins have relationship entrenched in their education system. All master educators that I know realize how vital building relationship is and that without it motivating students to learn is a monumental task.

Why in this crisis is the focus on building curriculum packages and helping the parents of our scholars turn their homes into distance learning pods? I have seen edTech companies falling over each other in my email to offer schools FREE access to their learning platforms. I have witnessed teachers sharing lengthy lists of websites for parents to choose from to help their little ones learn to read. I have been asked how best to construct an online delivery environment, and what the new things are that we need to purchase to get this going fast. I have NEVER seen the desire to learn how to use conferencing software burn so furiously as in the past week! All this miracle tech has been around for a long time. We in edTech have been trying to get you to see how to integrate it into your learning toolset. Ironically it takes a ‘virus’ to motivate people to learn the platform. But please take a PAUSE and don’t just roll it out to fulfill the mandate of “learning now must be rolled out at a distance.”

I believe that now is not the time to push new curricular goals forward. This physical distance will end, and when classrooms resume, this experience will change them. What will not change however, is that learning in a room with peers and a skilled teacher is indeed the best environment for many. The key to leveraging this social connection is strong relationships. So, in this time of physical distance, we need to find ways to nurture those relationships.

The online learning you need to build must work at keeping that connection alive. We are lucky that this didn’t happen at the beginning of the year! Call up a random person on FaceTime and instantly strike up a socially connected conversation with them. Now, do the same thing with a person who you’ve known for years. I am willing to bet the ‘social’ connection is markedly different. Your online conversations will be more profound with the people you know. You can more easily talk about the past, the present and project to the future with someone with whom you are connected. Your students are not that excited about your LA worksheets or math games. They want to feel connected and know you are still there for them. You have the luxury of already having some social connection with them — leverage it.

This doesn’t have to be overly complicated. You don’t have to try and replicate your classroom environment online and get everyone in a ZOOM call. You can just record a video of you being real. Read something to them, show them how to bake buns, take them for one of your lonely walks and show them some pictures of things you haven’t really noticed before in your neighbourhood. Encourage them to send back ‘evidence’ of them finding cool ways to wait out this period of staying home. Take some time to write, record or create something personal to each student. Never before have you had the luxury of time to do that. Your digital notes could include gentle encouragement and a curated list of selected suggestions of online things they might consider exploring. You are the teacher — don’t flood them with options; instead, give them a specific set of supplies and a roadmap to start them on their adventure. Challenge them to share a learning journey back to you in a way that works for them.

We are distant. But we are not asked to stop being social. We have exciting technology options to maintain our connections. The real “education” piece we can develop is figuring out how to maintain our relationships. I challenge you to be creative with the form that this takes. It’s ok if it takes time — you’ve got a bit on your hands now.

Distance “Education” was originally published in edTech-coach on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Monday marks the start of new work week. A chance to define those to do’s and to tackle that project. An entire week is ahead, it’s open for possibilities. Today we in the western world are waking up to a new normal. This Monday is defined by the past week of uncertainty, of what it means to be in the thick of a pandemic. Today a lot of people will wake up, make coffee and go to work — at home.

We are told that in varying degrees we need to be prepared for a new normal. Nothing that we do as we go about our day will be untouched. Working, going to school, shopping, socializing, visiting loved ones, traveling — all our daily activities and interactions are now different. All have a new element of personal and public safety in mind. But before this feels ‘normal’ it's going to feel off.

Remember your first day of school, of post secondary, of work, of marriage of any routine changing event? Were you completely settled from the moment it began? I seriously doubt it. Sure, sometimes there is an excitement of how new this is and how it challenges you. But the honeymoon phase (or the panic phase) doesn’t last forever. There are ups and downs as you adjust. The difference between these events and now? The fact that SO much is changing at once.

Just work from home. All classes are now online. Stop greeting each other with handshakes and hugs. No matter if it's a small habit or an all day activity, it takes time to adjust. While there are certain habits that require immediate change to ensure that we flatten the curve and keep everyone safe — other habits should be given some time and space. If the only ‘work from home’ or ‘distance learning’ you have done has been sporadic and done as an add-on to your day, doing it as a regular routine is going to take time. Give yourself some time to figure out how this is going to work.

Begin by establishing a space within your home that is a place of work. Creating this physical boundary will help your subconscious realize that this is ‘work’ time. It also helps others who are going to be home with you see that you are working. Define your tasks. Bring some of the normal from before into your new routine. Pick small workflows to accomplish in a similar manner. The home workflow is going to be different but the idea is to help normalize by being able to do things you do at work. Review your email, make some calls or work on a project document. Next you need to work on connecting with others at work.

If you are used to getting up and meeting at the coffee machine or chatting with people in the hallway, you need to find a new way to do that. Don’t try to replace this with texting or instant messaging. Pick up the phone or even better try video calls. The change here is that you don’t want to encourage everyone to spontaneously barge in on you. In the workplace there were cues that you were busy (sometimes people ignored those too) but now when we are in seperate locations people don’t have much of a clue. Tell them — or together plan to meet at certain times. If you lead a team, make this an agenda item.

Oh, and then there is the issue of tech. The tech you have at home may not be the same as the tech you have at work. While a lot of workflow is in the cloud — some of it is still ‘on premise’ and may not be able to be done without some other sort of remote access technology. Go easy on your IT team — they are no doubt scrambling to bring applications and scaling the network. However, don’t try to ‘go it alone’ without involving your IT folks. The temptation might be to sign up for all sorts of ‘free’ conferencing offers and try out new ways of doing projects. You could be opening yourself up to all sorts of new security challenges and end up scattering your work all over the place. This might be a time to try out new online tools — but this isn’t an urgent switch. Part of what you and your team might do this week is ‘meet’ (online) to build some of these new work habits. Reach out to those of us who’s normal it is to work remotely or from home. We are willing to help!

The new normal will take time to become … normal. Many have speculated that with so many shifts happening at once we will come out on the other side of this with a changed society. Old habits die hard. But change can be good. Together we will get through this — we might even discover that we can be more compassionate and connected even though we are maintaining some distance.

The New Normal? was originally published in edTech-coach on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Since you are reading this article on some device, I am sure you have experienced the distraction of notifications. From the ‘ding’ that you have received a new message to the bright red dot with a number in it informing you of how many unread items await enticing you to click the APP. Smartphones are the worst offenders of this — they have a plethora of ways to nudge you into distraction. You start out wanting to send someone a message and a half an hour later you realize that Instagram and Facebook have hijacked that task. You are now reading ten articles, ‘liking’ photos, messaging with three friends and have replied to four work emails even though it’s 7PM … “Wait — to whom did I want to send an email ?”

Distraction doesn’t have to take the form of a notification. I often witness the ‘distraction of choice’ at work in a classroom. Forget the fact that smartphones in their pocket have huge distraction potential for a moment and focus on the school provided device. From the moment students logon, they know how to find the thing that they are not supposed to do. Job #1 is often to find the desktop background of the day — or an app that changes the user interface to one that makes it hard for anyone to help them when it comes to guiding them to the learning they are supposed to be doing. Then it’s off to some streaming media or social networking site. Once they finally arrive at the assignment, they often have the residual of the other activities poised in their browser tabs ready to flit back and forth between work and entertainment. Now you add in the device in the pocket that vibrates or dings to add more fuel to the distraction fire and well … you now have a recipe for brain meltdown.

It is proven multitasking is not a thing — it’s switch tasking, and it comes with a cognitive toll. When young brains have to do too much of it, the lack of focus results in mediocre work. Students who have been easily lured by multiple media-rich distractions lack the resilience to stick with tasks that require deep thought — they look for the easy win. Now granted students have always been looking for the path of least resistance. “What do I need to get a good mark? How many words does this need to be? If I fill in the blanks, is that enough?” Technology though amps up the game — now there are dozens of things to make it look like I am learning. The distracted student of the past was staring out the window or playing with their pencil — today this same student surfs the web. Surely it must be better to drink from the never-ending spring of information on the internet than to watch a leaf fall off the tree outside the window?

WRONG … staring out the window is just what the brain needs. Research shows us that creativity and deep thinking comes from times of boredom. Staring at the blank page and contemplating your next written move is precisely the cognitive calm that is needed to nestle into focused learning. You might be expecting me now to say that it’s time to get the pen and paper out and power off the devices. While that might be the most straightforward approach, I advocate that the teacher in the room or the parent in the house has a responsibility to model to the youngster before them. So, you need to ensure that your lesson utilizes a guided path approach. Before students log on you should spend time modelling what tech tools you want students to use. Set boundaries and be prepared to enforce them — there are technology tools that you can use the help establish the learning path and still allow for individual discovery opportunities. It’s ok to say — “The only tabs you should have open are <> and that smartphone should not see the light of day right during the next half hour.”

I know how distracted I can be and so I leverage the technology in my devices to help me decide how distracted I should be.
- I often turn all sound notifications OFF (on the iphone that’s the switch on the top left) Annoying to the people who want me to reply right now or call me when I am teaching, but essential to give me the peace I need to focus on the tasks at hand.
- I have my phone set to “do not disturb” from 9 PM to 7:30 AM — no notifications at all. I decide if something needs to ‘be checked’ during that time.

Even so, I know that I get squirrelled by the distractions on my device. I have to work at being purposeful in picking it up and focusing on one app. Now I am reviewing and triaging email; now I am going to check in with FaceBook and see what’s in the feed. I do switch task — I sometimes have a few conversations on the go and click to the notification of that news note that popped up — but I realize the cognitive load that switching can be and I try to purposefully limit that when it’s time to do some more in-depth work. It’s harder than it used to be — and it’s not something that comes naturally to me OR to the generation who is growing up in this age. Despite what some say — the digital native is not better at multitasking (or more correctly — switch tasking) and therefore programmed to handle it. More than ever, the digital native needs guidance in learning to manage the distraction that unlimited access to information can be.

Ding was originally published in edTech-coach on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Managing technology in the classroom

I was in Grade 2 and Grade 4 classrooms yesterday and the eager students were awaiting their new devices and APPS. I completed some primary care and feeding orientation on how to treat these new devices and finished giving them a lesson on choosing a memorable and safe password — then we handed them out! The students dived in and configured their password and reached the desktop background. “Where are the GAMES?” asked one eager scholar. I pleasantly replied that we are not going to use these to ‘play games’ — you could hear his heart sink.

To be fair though I did ‘gamify’ the next step of the lesson. We used a popular website “Kahoot” to play a game that I used to help me determine how well students were able to navigate the keyboard and trackpad functions. There was math, geography and science all peppered into the ‘game’ that we played and we often stopped to talk about the correct answers to the quiz questions my Kahoot presented. The lesson is also designed to help the teacher see how they can take what I have seen many teachers use as ‘eduTainment’ and use it as a real learning activity. After the Kahoot we embarked on a writing project and then got into some keyboarding drills — the hunting and pecking in the room was enough to make my typing teacher cringe and run for the hills! (More on this in another blog)

“But teacher — can I download a real game?” — Sorry no. The entertainment factor of technology is addictive. So much so that real “work” software also includes gamified elements in the hopes that the developers can lure you into using their tools. Education isn’t immune to this — many of the apps have serious game elements in them to keep the young ones amused as they learn. Earn stars, and level up are all tactics used in the name of engagement. The jury is out on whether this methodology is a useful learning pedagogy. I am confident that someone can comment that they have a study that proves it isn’t, followed closely by the post of the research that shows it does — either way, I am using my ‘teacher’ senses to help prove or disprove this right in the classroom.

I advocate that NONE of these apps should be used to keep kids ‘busy’ until the teacher is ready to move on to the next lesson. The deployment of tech in the classroom should have a purpose, meaning and should be treated like any other learning objective. The primary question should always be “Does using this APP help move the student forward in their learning journey?” Screen time in the classroom is ‘precious’ learning time not to be wasted by playing another round of Bejewelled or watching that YouTube video of people smashing into walls for the 100th time. I help educators control the tech in their room. iPads only have the APPS on them that the teacher wants the students to use and we use management tools to help guide student learning on their Chromebooks. It may sound a little “Orwellian” and it invites the cries of “where are the games??” but these tools help teachers do what teachers have always been in charge of — maintaining a guided learning environment.

Where are the games? I am sure that they are on your device at home (or in your pocket!), but here in the classroom, the tech we use is here to help you learn. Sometimes they might feel like a game, and sometimes the app you are using is just a means for you to tell me a story or paint me a picture. I value the screen time you have here at school, and therefore I will choose to make sure its used wisely.

Where are the Games? was originally published in edTech-coach on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

… is very similar to my old Iphone

It’s been a couple of years, and as frequently happens in that time span I started to get the ‘itch.’ That inner tech angel is tapping me on the shoulder— “Probably time to upgrade — the X has been out for a bit, and they have mostly like worked out the bleeding edge bugs. The battery life on this current phone is starting to suck. That new portrait function looks so cool!”

So what’s a guy to do? Yesterday I killed two birds with one stone. Renewed my carrier plan, and got a good deal trading in my 7 for Xs. Twelve hours in I can say that the new phone is pretty cool and oh so familiar. All my stuff is there and works picked up right where it left off. Sure a few passwords needed to entering and some data had to be delivered from its cloud hiding place, but overall the experience of switching devices is downright comfortable and makes an IT guy nervous for sure. I remember migrating users from one machine to another back in the day, and it was a process fraught with danger and usually resulted in the end user freaking out — “WHERE is the START BUTTON? or What do you mean there is no floppy drive on this computer? Where did my icons go? My files are missing!” All this after you took a screenshot of their old system and tried to rearrange everything just so — settle in for some orientation sessions.

Even learning the ‘new’ features of face recognition and the loss of that ‘belly button’ to get you out of trouble and back to the home screen didn’t take more than a swipe here and a swipe there. Logging on to this device doesn’t even feel like logging on — it just works! I had to get a few family members to pick it up and prove to myself that it indeed is checking to see who’s got my iPhone in their hand. As expected, the device is responsive, and the display is remarkable. I haven’t taken a portrait yet — but I plan to soon!
Here’s the rub — Isn’t upgrading supposed to be an occasion? Shouldn’t the latest innovations wow you? I used to think that should be the case. Upgrading and spending the bucks was matched by the gnashing of teeth and struggling to big “ah-ha! I figured that out now” moments. If you moved from Windows XP to Windows 10 in all one, go you more than likely are still enjoying an experience similar to this. But with my Apple upgrades in the past few years and the one that is but twelve hours fresh — not so much. They are incremental, subtle and for the most part, don’t want to interrupt your day except with the occasional nudge to take the 8 step tour. That is what tech update should be.

Some people genuinely enjoy the hunt to figure out how to use that new thing. I was one of those folks, but I have moved past that. I have things to do, and I want the latest tech to help me do it more efficiently. Do I feel ‘ripped off’ if my new device isn’t that much different from the old one? Nope — I expect it to do its thing with efficiency. I will come looking for new features when they are needed. I am pleasantly surprised by the performance gains in the course of utilizing my familiar tools. At this stage in my walk with tech I don’t need to start over learning a new OS or such from scratch or trying to figure out how this input device is going to work now. The marketing folks at Apple have tapped into that, and I drink the kool-aid. I know this device won’t be my ‘last iPhone’ and that one day yesterday’s journey will repeat itself. I am cool with that, and I expect the next iOS or macOS update to be similar — a subtle change forward and one that allows me to enjoy the fruits of faster hardware and lets me get on with the business of the day. Technology is an extension of what I do; I don’t need it to stop me in my tracks.

My new Iphone was originally published in edTech-coach on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.