onted – Page 12 – Mechanical Sympathy

Hostage Situation

I’m being held hostage by an authoritarian government. These fascists (they certainly don’t believe in democracy) have demanded that I surrender my rights and work under their terms. In this impossible environment the people who speak for me have begun a legal battle on this government’s attack on my fundamental Charter freedoms. The process of overturning that legislation will take time, but it will eventually be overturned and will result in the end of this nasty, self-serving government and their illegal legislation.

My rep has also tried to bargain a deal to protect me in the meantime. The bargain was made with a Bill 115 Magnum aimed at our heads, so a fair deal wasn’t exactly the result of the process.

There was no negotiation, it was more like begging for our lives. This government was happy to turn the public against us in order to further their agenda.

If you’re held hostage you look for the basics, you don’t start asking for more than you had. It’s a moment of desperation.

If we don’t take the deal our rep has scraped together for us, this authoritarian regime will put us in an even worse situation because it has legislated our rights away. In either case we will no longer have anything like we had. We either lose a lot and keep a bit because our rep got some concessions out of the regime, or we end up in their even worse MoU prison, either way, we lose.

When someone has a gun to your head, do you start moralizing with them?

So do we vote for a contract that strips us of years of concessions because this government would rather flush money down poorly managed ehealth experiments, semi-privatized air ambulances, quarrelsomeness wind power and on again/off again power plants, or do we go to the wall and burn it all down because this is just wrong?

If we don’t vote for this, something even worse is imposed on us anyway. This is divisive no matter how you play it. Junior teachers lose their grid increases, senior teachers (who are the majority) don’t lose their retirement sick-day payouts. Some boards may OK this, others may not. This isn’t going to create labour peace, it’s going to create an uneven mess across the province.

In the meantime that fight to overturn the regime continues. In a year and a half, we could very well be standing over the ruins of Bill115 (and the Ontario Liberal dream of being the government) and be able to bargain a fair deal under Canadian law; we can’t do that right now. Whether we vote for this or not, our agreements will be in tatters because the Ontario Liberals and their Tea-party-Hudak lapdogs have pushed through this ridiculous, undemocratic legislation.

Do you go along with what you know is wrong hoping to protect you and your family as best you can or do you say, “NO, this is wrong, I will not be a party to it”? This isn’t an easy decision.

The lack of clarity, both moral and professional in this makes this a very uncertain, difficult decision to make. Unfortunately I’m a bloody minded kind of fellow; I fear I’ll vote for what’s right, whatever the cost, politics be damned.

PRIVATE TEACHER, PUBLIC JOB

The Tyranny of Paper

Students in my board collect over 17,000 sheets of paper in handouts in their k-12 school careers. Most Canadian schools are probably similar…

Every piece of finished paper has measurable environmental costs: http://bit.ly/p9wpqq

We burn a 60 watt light bulb continuously for 159.1 years so that we can hand out those handouts, one for each student… we burn plutonium to keep them in handouts.

We put 76.5 kilos of carbon into the atmosphere for each student who goes through our system… just so we can give them handouts.

Each student consumes almost one whole tree in paper in handouts from k-12. Think of the tens of thousands of students going through the system. We deforest just to give them handouts.

At 6 cents per copy that’s $1020 per student during their k-12 career. Over one thousand dollars spent on EACH student, just so we can give them handouts.

That’s all end-product related. The paper industry is one of the most polluting industrial processes we maintain, even giving oil a run for its money: paper pollution.

Last year, the wood/pulp/paper industry produced more particulate pollution than oil production in Canada. Only stone and metal based heavy industry were worse polluters.

In addition to all those handouts, I haven’t even gotten into the millions of dollars we spend on the tons of paper in text books, all supporting that polluting paper pulp industry.

I don’t doubt an electronic solution has its own problems, but I can’t believe that with some intelligent design, we couldn’t come up with a dependable, tough tablet device that would take paper and the massive polluting industry out of our schools. A simple reading and data entry device along the lines of a Kobo or Kindle would end the tyranny of paper; we’re close to this technologically now.

Individualizing technology in education isn’t just more efficient, it’s cheaper and more ecological too.

Learning Without A Safety Net

As a learner I tend to have problems following curriculum (I have trouble following it as a teacher too). For me, learning is a challenging, self-directed, non-linear activity. It’s a delight when you have that eureka moment and frustrating when you’re can’t grasp a concept because you don’t have enough context around it. I don’t want it to be easy, and I don’t want it to be fail-proof. Classes that are unfailable are pointless in my eyes; difficulties in learning are what make it empowering! Success shouldn’t be assured, if it is, you’ve sacrificed any real sense of accomplishment.

If a teacher, closely following set curriculum, spoon feeds me a lesson, I don’t feel that I’ve learned it, so much as learned the wrong thing (being told how to do it rather than figuring out how to do it). When students ask me to resolve a problem for them, I point them in the right direction, I don’t fix it for them. They aren’t in class to learn how to ask someone to correct their grammar, operate Adobe Flash or build a computer, they are in class to learn how to do these things for themselves. If they’re miles from figuring it out for themselves, I simply try and close that gap, but never take the last step, they need to do that themselves, or they won’t own their learning. To quote the mighty Morpheus, ” I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it. ”

I set up my classrooms as research centres and each assignment as a project. The environment should quickly and easily provide the tools needed to learn in a hands-on way. Failures aren’t failures, the only way to fail is to do nothing (which an increasing number of students seem to be doing once they realize how hard it is to fail in the current system). I encourage experimentation, and the opportunities found in resolving your own misunderstandings. Most of all, I make it very clear that the only way to fail is to make no attempt. Once students are engaged, they inevitably find success in a supportive learning environment.

I did this in English and it often caused conflict with the force-feeders who feel that you’re not teaching unless you’re talking at the class. Those force-feeders are as often students as they are teachers; the expectation of most academic students are that the teacher will give you information, you’ll repeat it back, and see high grades. Giving them room to fail makes them very nervous. Seeing that the technology curriculum is actually based on this idea of broad based, project focused learning, I’m looking forward to teaching a subject built upon this open, student centred approach. I loved teaching art for the same reason; project based, hands-on learning with lots of time for me to work one on one with students as they develop tangible skills.

In a tightly restricted, curriculum based classroom, I feel like I’m trying to dance in a straight jacket (both as a teacher, and as a student). I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be some focus, but the moment you dictate the entire process of learning, you effectively kill any personal meaning or satisfaction in it.

The State of Educational Hashtags, FEB 2012

I’ve become quite habitual in my use of hashtags, and haven’t really been exploring the edges. At conferences I’m diligent about following and using the correct hastag, but when it comes to topic specific ideas, I tend to resort to the basics (#edchat #edtech).

I thought it time to look into the current state of edu-hashtags and try and dig up some new resources for them.

An interesting post on the reach of various Education hashtags. Personal favs from those lists: #edchat #edtech

Twitter U: lists of Education hashtags with explanations. Hashtags of interest:

#TUfuture: future trends… sounds interesting (and up my alley)
#TUtin: tech integration in specific teaching areas

EDUDEMIC hashtag listings:

#mlearning: mobile learning using mobile tech
#vitalcpd: effective use of tech in the classroom
#elearning: dedicated to… fish! No, just kidding, it’s about elearning

Supercool School hashtags list.

Hashonomy: the science of hashtags (in beta right now).

Some Canadian specific hashtags… #cdned: general Canadian education tag. There are some BC ones that I don’t follow too much, such as #bced, though I should.

Anyone got any Ontario educational hashtags or other Canadian specific ones? Not that I get that wound up about geographically specific tags – they tend to not get the point of the internet (common interests matter more that geographical proximity).

Reply with any I missed! I want to poach your hashtag knowhow!

No Heroes & Distractions

Originally published on Dusty World in June of 2014

I suspect the general public thinks that teaching is easy. I’m not talking about classroom management, that everyone agrees is difficult, but teaching, the process of enabling learning, is generally seen as easy. Anyone can tell someone else what to think, right? Pretty much everyone has been through school, so they all know what it is and how it works.

I’ve talked about the terrifyingly vast concept of pedagogy before, but most lay-people have never heard the term and so don’t know or care about its complexities. Strangely, few teachers or administrators seem to want to talk about it either, but that’s for another post. The process of creating a rich learning environment is subtle, ever changing and very difficult; reflection is a good teacher’s best defence against this challenge. By constantly reflecting on our teaching, we hope to cull bad habits and maximize the learning environment around us. Honest reflection isn’t something that seems to come up much in PD either.

Normally pedagogy would be my focus, one of the joys of my job is how intellectually challenging it is. I use this blog mainly to try and tackle the challenges of pedagogy in a rapidly changing technological situation, but for the past month I and many teachers I know in Ontario have been distracted by politics. We have to be because the circus that is modern politics oversees our profession, and we are one of their favourite whipping boys.

Unlike heroic police officers, firefighters and doctors, teachers don’t get a halo. If the internet doesn’t convince you of the banality of teaching turn on the TV. How many heroic teacher shows do you see on there? Emergency services are protected by their halo, and since we’re all public servants it’s pretty obvious who is going to get thrown under the austerity bus. Whenever the political class decides to vilify public servants to collect some vapid public support we know it’ll be us, hence the distraction.

The public perception is that teachers are overpaid, under-worked and largely clerical in what we do. Unlike those men (and women, but let’s face it, the hero professions have a male face to them) of action, teachers are presented publicly as female, supportive and administrative rather than as action heroes. Any time a government wants to take a swipe at public servants teachers make an easy target, like last year when teachers across the province had their wages and benefits illegally stripped even as the OPP enjoyed big year on year raises; it’s a financial emergency, but not for everybody.

In a climate like this our unions urged us to carefully consider our votes in strategic terms because the Ontario Progressive (sic) Conservative party had adopted tea-party American ideologies and was prepared to cut Ontario to pieces while following Michigan and the rust belt down the rabbit hole. That urge to strategically vote worked very well encouraging many public servants to participate in this election, it also unified and focused non-conservative votes. The result deposited the morally bankrupt Liberal party into a four year majority. This was the same party that stripped contracts and forced work conditions through illegal legislation. It’s also the same party that will do what Hudak and the PCs promised, they just won’t do it on an election year.

It begs the question, is it better to be stabbed in the front or in the back?

Teachers seem to be relieved by the Liberal win, but our profession with its poor public perception will be the first (again) to be thrown under the bus by Wynne and the Liberals. It’s ironic that the meritocratic Liberals are going to throw a world-class education system under the bus because of optics. If we do our difficult job well it won’t matter because ignorant people think we’re lazy and poll chasing politicians can use that. The social and political environment we’ve been draped in for the past two years makes basic positivity difficult, let alone cultivating an attitude of improvement, and improvement is where we have to be if we want to maintain our excellence and keep up with the technological revolution happening all around us.

There are a lot of ways we could make education more efficient in Ontario rather than just cutting people’s wages and benefits and worsening their work environment. When I first started teaching there was a guy who ran the Simpsons in his class and then sat in the English office eating his lunch at 10am. He later got suspended for over a year while they reviewed claims that he’d slept with a grade 11 student. They are a small minority in the system, but there are teachers who are incompetent or simply unsuited for the profession, and the system as it stands makes it almost impossible to remove them. As a Liberal (that’s a large L Liberal who believes in the values of liberalism rather than blindly voting for a political party) I’d be all for making the removal of incompetent teachers easier, though not if it’s done by administrators who haven’t been teaching for years or pencil pushers who have never taught a class in their lives. Peer review by a group of experienced, working teachers would be a fair way of doing this, but if it ever does happen it’ll be forced on us, probably by illegal legislation that punishes us for political advantage. It would be nice to work in a system focused on excellence instead of political gain.

Then there is the whole weird duality of the Ontario public school system, but no one will touch that… the optics are bad, and you’ll never pry a publicly funded private religious system out of the hands of a majority, even if the UN does object. It’s hard to consider hack and slash politics like Bill 115 fair when the system protects incompetent teachers and encourages very one sided religious favouritism.

There is a storm ahead for educators in Ontario and it’s going to be hard to focus on the complexities of pedagogy, the challenges of technological change and all that social work that we do as people with little or no understanding of education make decisions based on optics rather than reason or fact.

Doctors and nurses won’t be expected to justify their profession, police officers and firefighters will continue to produce heroic television, and I’ll be painted as a lazy clerical worker doing a job that anyone could do. While all that’s going on I’ll do everything I can to prepare my students to hack a technocratic neo-liberal future that makes it harder and harder for young people to find good work and become independent. The same thing stepping on our profession is stepping on our students.

Learning Curves

Following up on the ‘just tell me the answer‘ post last week, I’ve been trying to find ways to articulate what I’m attempting to do with students so that they don’t become frustrated. It’s said that familiarity breeds contempt, but what I’m hoping is that familiarity breeds confidence and a willingness to experiment and push the boundaries of student knowledge.

The germination of self-directed learning should be the goal of instruction in any teaching. A student who is forever dependent upon a teacher is a poor student indeed. With that goal in mind I’m working out the process of developing self directed learning in students using Prezi to map out how familiarity breeds confidence and self direction.

Some brilliant Google+ sharing by Liz Krane &
Carmelyne Thompson via Josh Kaufman

Explaining this to my senior computer engineers I tried to stress that this process is what I’m looking at, not necessarily what you know. Even though the seniors are supposed to have previous experience many don’t so the course needs to be flexible in how it approaches a wide range of abilities. If I see steady growth in familiarity through guided instruction the inevitable result should be the formation of self-directed learning demonstrated through experimentation, collaboration and troubleshooting. Looking for what a student knows is much less important than looking for where a student is in this learning process towards mastery. Mastery itself is really just another word for a person who knows enough to error correct and self direct their learning – expertise never came at a teacher’s hand, mastery is always self taught.

Josh Kaufman’s TEDtalk on how 20 hours takes you through the initial steep climb (humbling and intensely rewarding) when picking up a new skills is telling:

We fail to do a lot of these things in school. Distractions in the form of bells, announcements, lousy chairs and tables, large classes, and dozens of other interferences break focus. I like to say, “stop learning now, you have to leave” to students when the bell goes and students who were lost in what they were doing are jarred back into the present.

Kaufman’s learning curve,
seems perfectly sensible…

On top of school itself we now have digital technology which is most effective at monetizing us if we ‘surf’ rather than focus. The habits we develop while being consumers online plague educational technology as students who are used to being digitally shallow out of school bring the same lack of focus to their learning. That we ignore digital habits and corporate influence in educational technology will probably be the reason it never does what it promises it might do.

Beyond industrialized settings and digital distractions education systems fail to recognize the basic process of learning and in doing so spend a lot of time and money producing under-performing students. When 50% is a pass even a perfect pass rate isn’t saying much. If our learning happens on a curve as Kaufman suggests, then we are doing this wrong in just about every possible way.

About a year ago I took a weekend course in order to begin riding a motorcycle. Difficult and uncompromising it demanded my full attention both in the classroom and for hours in the saddle. Not paying attention resulted in possible injury (and several people were). That weekend course might seem too short but it just happens to be about twenty hours long (what Kaufman suggests you need to get over the steepest part of the learning curve). With the right kind of support (small class size with a 1:4 instructor/student ratio and everything we needed to learn the skill including bikes, space, etc) and an expectation of focused learning, that twenty hours got me over the hump and able to continue developing expertise in a complex skill set that I had no previous experience in. I’d have to say, anecdotally, that Kaufman’s 20 hours seems right on the money.

We don’t think about learning curves in school. We don’t consider how students feel when they are picking up a new skill and feel inadequate; feelings aren’t in the curriculum. Worse, we consider learning to be a twelve year long marathon in school rather than a series of short sprints. Student goals aren’t always clear or consistent, failure isn’t considered an option and learning itself is less a focus than are irrelevant personal details like your age. We’d rather bunch students by age than where they are in their learning process. We lose sight of the possibilities and challenges inherent in the first twenty hours of new learning in favour of decade long statistical growth.

Can you imagine a school guided by Kaufman’s logic? Students are given focused learning to get them into a self correcting phase and then are expected to self-direct their learning. There would be classrooms with very high student:teacher ratios where the focus is on early learning. There may be other times and spaces where students are entirely independent and producing their own directed learning. Instead of a blanket approach our classrooms and schedules would reflect our variable learning curves; our schools would be responsive to how we learn instead of the other way round.

Digital technology would lend itself to this kind of learning by offering information, collaboration and communication to students on a profoundly personalized level. If we don’t begin taking the training of digital tools seriously the consumerist habits developed by everybody (students and staff) outside of school won’t allow us to de-industrialize education and adapt it to how we learn.

Why Blog? Lisa’s Meme

via Lisa Neale’s Never Ever Stop Learning:

I get the sense that a number of educators are recommitting to blogging in the new year. This can only be a good thing. A blogging educator not only reaches out to other teachers with a blog, but they also reach out to the general public, who seem to harbour a number of misconceptions about the profession. Blogging is a wonderful way for individual educators to bridge that gap.

I’ve written for paper publication and find it tiresome. The constant editorial revision waters down any edge in your writing and can make even the most acerbic argument seem bland. The worry over saying anything that someone else may have already said and the resulting over-citation also takes any joy out of writing (or thinking for that matter). I understand why many people would back away from old-school publication, it’s a miserable experience. Blogging is a way to refine your writer’s craft while still enjoying the benefits of an audience.

My favourite part of blogging is that there is no captive audience, no circulation. If people want to read it, they can, if they don’t, they won’t. It’s publication with none of the overhead (advertising, editors, space limitations, etc). Blogging is an opportunity to write without having to carry a pile of other people with your words.

Lisa mentions Dean Shareski’s ‘excuse to write’. With blogging you don’t need an excuse, just write! If you find you want to write about different subjects, then do that too, it’s easy enough to create interest specific blogs, and it’s a great way to enter the online community of your new interest. The more you write, the easier it gets (like most things). The trick is not to get all wound up with what you’re writing, it’ll get better over time.

With that all said, here is Lisa’s dare:

Nominating blogger: Lisa Neale
11 random facts about myself: Facts? How tedious… look me up online, it’s all there if you want facts. The fictions are far more interesting though, and much harder to find.
List 11 bloggers? I enjoy many of the staff writers on WIRED. Quinn Norton is a genius. If I had to pick a local edu-blogger, it would have to be Jamie Raeburn-Weir. She’s a writer’s writer, a direct, honest voice. Andrew Campbell is another one I enjoy reading. He writes how he talks, which probably gets him into a lot of fights.

Lisa’s Questions:

favourite mode of transport: motorcycles! The more minimal and visceral the better…

Random piece of advice: luck is like everything else, you need to practice it to get good at it. If you never test your luck you’ll atrophy it. Virgil understood this when he said, “fortune favours the bold.” We’re all less lucky (and compassionate) than we once were because of the nanny-state and insurance.

Favourite hobby: Reading? writing? photography? art? riding? mechanics? Whatever lets me express myself most completely in any given moment.

How do I like my eggs: sunny side up and runny.

Something I think differently about: it’s not how long you’re here, it’s how you’re here that matters.

Must watch movie: anything by Guillermo del Toro, dude’s a genius.

When nothing is pressing: take a long ride on my motorbike. It is meditation in the wind, you’re completely in the moment.

Preferred hot beverage: loose leaf black tea

How do you say 2014? 11111011110

First job: delivering newspapers, refing minor sports (hockey, soccer)

Lesson learned from relationships: nobody owns anyone

I think that’s it… I’ve been told I haven’t done this properly, but I’m ok with that.

Changing My Mind About PD

OISE’s Senior Computer Tech AQ

I’m about to head into the senior part of my computer technology AQ with the University of Toronto. My instructor is an outstanding fellow, we’re in a new school with a fantastic lab and if it’s anything like last year I’ll expand my knowledge in a subject I really enjoy both professionally and personally.

I’ve found myself at times falling in to the negativity that many teachers feel around PD, but it’s easy to get excited about this course. I could get all long in the face about how much it’s costing me, how many weeks of my summer I’ve got to spend doing it, why I have to take an AQ in this subject when I see so many other teachers with no background or qualifications in the subjects they teach not doing it. I could wallow in the negativity, but I won’t because I don’t want it to spoil the learning opportunity. Learning dynamics are so closely tied to the emotional approach of the student that I’m making a conscious choice not to. This has left me wondering at all those teachers who hate on PD.

I work with a number of teachers who don’t do the AQ thing. They think it’s a waste of time and money, they think it’s just a money grab with no real value. These teachers often end up teaching subjects they have no background in. Over time they learn how to teach the subject because they are smart, capable people who want to do the job well, but they consider teacher training to be beneath them.

I first came across this attitude in educators in teacher’s college and I found it demoralizing and unhelpful. I didn’t sign up for teacher’s college to go through the motions just to get an empty qualification. As I began teaching I found that cynical negativity surrounding professional development. PD was treated by a surprising number of teachers as a waste of their time, something beneath them.

Teaching is one of those jobs that demands a degree of arrogance in order to survive. If you’re timid or unsure you’ll get eaten up by a difficult class. Confidence, even over-confidence, is an important survival tool. The spill-over into our own learning is distressing though. Teaching is a challenging discipline, if anyone thinks they’ve got it all figured out they are kidding themselves. By turning that self-defensive cockiness on our own learning we effectively limit our ability to perform our work well.

I’m not a fan of mindless optimism. An accurate assessment of what is going on is more important than mindless positivity. I see a lot of management types who do this and it drives me nuts. The easiest way to lose me as a team member is to ignore facts in favor blind positivity, but that doesn’t mean blind cynicism is any better, in fact it’s worse.

A teacher who won’t be taught is about as useful as a mechanic who can’t drive or a doctor who ignores health; in both cases these are people are can’t make use of what they claim to be experts in. A negative approach to learning affects a teacher’s ability to teach. Beyond the professional problems, teachers who are bad students are hypocrites; they berate a student in class for doing what they themselves do at PD. Unless you’re able to model productive learning you aren’t showing your students what you’d like them to do, and you probably don’t have a good grasp on what it is you’re supposed to be doing in a classroom.

Those teachers who don’t make productive use of professional development, including taking AQs, do themselves and their profession a disservice. Those administrators that trivialize teaching by ignoring qualifications aren’t the kind of educators I enjoy working with. There is something to be said for objectively taught professional designations. They certainly have more credence than someone simply giving a teacher a class because they like them or think them capable.

So, tomorrow I begin a two hour daily commute and eight hours a day in class for three weeks to study a subject I worked in professionally for years before I became a teacher. I could turn my nose up at it, trivialize the experience, make it less than it could be, or I could approach it the way I’d like a student to approach my own class, with curiosity, humility, positivity and integrity.

Next time you find yourself dismissing professional development, consider how changing your mind might make you a better learner and teacher. And if you’re avoiding an AQ because you think it beneath you, perhaps you shouldn’t be teaching that subject in the first place. It’s hard to argue for teaching as a profession if it doesn’t have credible, valuable training that is a requirement for the job. It’s even harder to understand a teacher who refuses to be taught anything.

Corporate Shills

This is one hot potato on a Sunday morning. #ontsm trended nationally yesterday and attracted a lot of attention, which I suspect was the point. The fact that the attention has a life of its own is probably a concern to people who are used to controlling the message. Ironically, it’s trending again today, driven in large part by people who objected to it for various reasons.

I heard the term shill a couple of times this weekend. It’s not a commonly used piece of language. My favorite moment was when another one of the attendees (and one of the smartest guys I know) said, “yeah Tim, you gotta be careful we don’t turn into corporate shills.” He said it with a glint in his eye, knowing that we were all at a paid for event the week after I’d been criticizing another corporate event; nothing like some tasty irony.

If you want an idea of the conversation around what some are calling a controversy, me writing at you won’t present it well. Go over to the twitter feed and enjoy the diversity of opinion. Some are worried that this is dividing the PLN. The PLN isn’t a single group with a single approach. What you’ll see on the twitter feed (and in other blog posts) are what complex discussion and disagreement could look like online. It doesn’t have to be modeled on a fifteen year old’s idea of flaming. I’ve disagreed with a number of colleagues on there, and that is fine. I still respect them as professionals, and even if we end up agreeing to disagree, I’m still OK with that. Online communication can be deep, nuanced and even contrary without becoming personally inflammatory It’s all good, and I’d much rather the disagreements get aired in public than kept in, or hidden.

This will be resolved, as it was started, transparently and publicly online; the best kind of modelling for a new communication medium I can think of.

Ghostly Distractions & Digital Doppelgängers

Cyborgs are all around us now, and they have trouble finishing a thought

If you popped into a current classroom from any time before the last five years you’d think your students had gone mad, or were in need of an exorcist. Being unfamiliar with the rapid miniaturization and personalization of electronics, you’d be left wondering what it is they are fiddling with on their navels, why they seem to be constantly thinking about something else, and why when you walk into your next class the students there already know what happened to pretty much everyone else in the school (and the ones who skipped) last period.

I was talking to a colleague the other night about this sense of personal dislocation in students, though digital vertigo isn’t a student only issue. The teacher in question won’t even make a Facebook account because he believes (perhaps rightly) that it means the internets will know where he is all the time. He was telling me about a difficult student who was giving him a hard time in class. This teacher has a great rapport with students so many other students leapt in and argued his point for him. Afterwards the difficult student in question seemed overly despondent and would not re-engage in discussion. I suggested that the disagreement in class may not have ended in the classroom but had become virtualized. The idea that invisible forces were emanating from and reflecting back into the classroom was quite upsetting to this teacher.

The fluidity with which teens pass back and forth between physical and virtual space make them very hard to read, at many moments in their day they are literally in two places at once. That uncommunicative student may still be getting hammered on Facebook long after the physical confrontation is over; digital echoes of a verbal disagreement. The moods so common in teens anyway are amplified by these invisible, always on, invasive connections; their volatile minds are wired to always-on drama.

There was a time when you could read a class by the students you had in it. Relationships were obvious and management challenging but straightforward. If you had the nitro and the glycerin in the room you could separate them, you can’t do that any more. You can’t do that if you move them to a different class… or a different school. I’ve had students who moved up to our small town to get out of the GTA and away from a bad influence only to be intimately connected with them on Facebook the moment anyone’s back is turned. Always on, always connected, always being emotionally amplified – that is the modern, connected high school student.

This creates some interesting new psychology in the classroom. That student who used to feel isolated for their poor behavior in class might be experiencing any number of unseen influences. Instead of being able to modify poor behavior by moving a student, or placing them in classes where their bad influences are not, they are always connected. Many of those connections may very well be morally supporting or even inciting them; they never feel isolated in their bad attitude and are always supported in their beliefs, even if it is hurting them. In that sense you might argue for a lack of emotional growth because you never have a chance to get free of a clique or bad influence. In the other direction you’ve got the example above where a group of students may easily create an ad hoc digital mob and go after someone. This can happen so quickly and quietly that it’s almost impossible to consider let alone manage.

Working with the emotionality of high school students is challenging at the best of times, but with the drama-net of Facebook fully embedded in every student’s mind, administration struggles with the more obvious cyber-bullying while the subtle ghostly influences go unnoticed, thought every teacher faces them daily.

As students migrate to Twitter without realizing the very public nature of it (many think it similar to texting), coercive social media becomes even more widely broadcast than just between Facebook friends. Suddenly we have social media as means of large scale slander, creating influence well beyond the intent of the ignorant person thinking their tweets are private.

This is a new social situation that affects early adopters while others remain entirely ignorant. Many teachers don’t consider it at all because they have no experience with social media yet it increasingly influences the students in their classrooms. Kids whose minds are in many places at once, constantly being emotionally tweaked and influenced by social media inputs, not knowing how to manage this pervasive influence in an effective way.

Digital literacy considers media fluency, collaboration and critical thinking, but the extent to which digital media is influencing the minds of our students isn’t really on the table. Their inability to manage their own access (watch a student, they are Pavlovian in their use of social media, they can’t self manage) is only one part of the problem. In the emotionally charged world of high school, social media pours gasoline on that fire, making teaching a challenge in ways that it never was before.

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had to add a wee update. It’s Monday morning and the internet meme from the weekend that all the grade 10s are talking about is of a girl and her feminine hygiene product on youtube. It sets new (low) standards on what teens are willing to do to get seen online.

This race to the bottom in terms what teens are able to subject themselves to is radically changing how they approach both sexuality and social norms in general. Teens nowadays have seen things that would have been virtually impossible for them to see even a decade ago, and this is entirely a digitized influence.

You really don’t want even think about what teens do for truth or dare nowadays, they’ve seen things that will make you ill, they dare each other to. The entire nasty world is available to them and influencing them moment to moment. Yet another way that online influence creates a classroom unlike any before.