As much as things change, they stay the same.

Posted on November 6, 2021January 16, 2022 by karinst8ler

I have changed teaching jobs several times. I started with 8th-grade physics and chemistry. Then, I switched to 6th-grade science for one year. Next, I taught 5th-grade social studies, science, and math for a few years. Most recently, I taught a 6th-8th grade STEM elective course that I got to design! Despite my love of change, my growth has been slow. Over the past 16 years, I improved my ability to plan, manage a classroom, and analyze student data. While I’ve grown a lot, I’ve only really grown within the limits of the system.

Why is change so slow?

“People who like this stuff like this stuff.” To me, that means that this imperfect system meets the needs of enough people – particularly people with a certain level of power and privilege – that it hasn’t quite reached the tipping point yet. YET. Apple provides the perfect example of keeping customers due to a commitment to a lifestyle over function. According to Seth’s Blog, Androids can be configured to do whatever you want, while iPhones are limited in what they can accomplish without Google, Word, or another Apple user or proprietary item. The problem with Android is that you have to configure it to do what you want. That doesn’t supply quite the same simplicity, efficiency, and integration as an iPhone. However, the options in an Android provide it open to be able to explore, grow, and continue as a more innovative counterpart to Apple.

As an aside, Seth’s Blog was written in 2014. An updated argument comparing Apple and Android gives a more recent POV regarding which is better: iPhone vs. Android: Which is better for you? Regardless of your preference, Android’s customization and innovation continue to ring true.

Why does this matter?

The argument from Seth’s blog isn’t really about Apple and Android. It’s really about making drastic changes to our current education system. Regarding the people who “like this stuff,” it’s working in their favor. According to Money, Race and Success: How Your School District Compares (Published 2016), “Sixth graders in the richest schools are four grade levels ahead of children in the poorest district.” It’s no secret that school is working fine just as it is for the most financially well-off in the U.S. So why would those same people want to change it?

Like Android to Apple, areas of nonconsumption exist, grow, and – in due time – will change the face of education.

How can we change?

How can we create intentional change? In People who like this stuff…like this stuff, Dr. Harapnuik suggests a pathway to change.

Start with Why.
Identify and enlist key influencers.
Install an effective execution strategy.
Enlist and empower self-differentiated leaders.

Like Dr. H says, “This is not an easy process but we owe it to our children and to the young men and women who are going to our universities and colleges with dreams of building a better world.”

Now is my opportunity to apply these concepts to my new role supporting Instructional Technology. In my post Winds of Change, I talk about how I’m moving the scope of my proposal from a small scope in which I’m the locus of control, to a wider scope that will require a team of district leaders to enact. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid. The part of my brain that wants things to stay the same says, “What if I can’t do this? What if they don’t listen?” This is bigger than me and my comfort with the status quo though. And, I’m enough to make it happen.

References

Godin, S. (2014, September 16). People who like this stuff… Seth’s Blog. Retrieved November 6, 2021, from https://seths.blog/2014/09/people-who-like-this-stuff/

Harapnuik, D. (2014, September 16). People who like this stuff… like this stuff. It’s About Learning. Retrieved November 6, 2021, from https://www.harapnuik.org/?p=5198

Palmer, J. (2021, November 4). iPhone vs. Android: Which is better for you? Tom’s Guide. Retrieved November 6, 2021, from https://www.tomsguide.com/face-off/iphone-vs-android

Rich, M., Cox, A., Bloch, M., & The New York Times. (2016, April 29). Money, Race and Success: How Your School District Compares. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-race-and-success-how-your-school-district-compares.html

Show and Tell Grows Up

Posted on November 3, 2021January 16, 2022 by karinst8ler

In my current job, I struggle with showing a “product” of my knowledge work. I end my day with a marked-out checklist, but not always much else. For example, I may research a help ticket for hours, but the only person who really knows that is me. Should I use my calendar, my daily checklist, or my solved help tickets as a reflection of my output? All of these paint an imperfect picture of my day-to-day accomplishments.

In Why Use an ePortfolio, I read several sources on the use of ePortfolios. Not only are they a fantastic way to show learning as a process. They are also a great way to capture thought work. They do this by 1) creating a context for learning, and 2) allowing for reflection and making the reflection visible to be tended to again and again.

Creating Context

The beauty of an ePortfolio is how effortlessly it can create a context for a learner through significant learning environments. In A New Culture of Learning – Douglas Thomas at TEDxUFM, I was intrigued by the 2014 video’s question on the meaning of expertise. Students’ view of teachers is different than when I was a child. The experts in my childhood were teachers and encyclopedias. Today’s students, however, are inundated with information and must create meaning from a multitude of sources. To them, teachers are not the experts. Teachers can harness this information overload, however, by providing students with context around it all. To do this, teachers should engage passion and imagination and provide opportunities for, “challenging creativity in the face of obstacles.” The ePortfolio captures learning in a significant learning environment through reflection.

Making Meaningful Connections

Reflection is the search for connections. As Dewey said, “We learn not from the experience, but from the reflection on the experience.” This occurs because of the cycle between practice and metacognition. This cycle includes Reflection → Planning → Action → Observing, back to Reflection. Humans create stories from our observations. We can continue to test and refine these stories, thereby deepening our learning. As Donald Schön said, “When we get into the habit of recording our stories, we can look at them again, attending to the meanings we have built into them and attending, as well, to our strategies of narrative description.” (Why Reflect? – Reflection4Learning)

ePortfolios for Thought Work

The product of the ePortfolio is a great way to show the process of learning. Without an ePortfolio, it’s easy to focus on output and miss out on the hours of valuable knowledge work. You miss out on the heart and soul of the creation. Because of this, my goal is to add more of my work to my ePortfolio. I will then reflect on my processes through a blog. I won’t use this for proof alone. It will also be a record of my own learning in my career as well as a way to return to my work for continued reflection.

References

Harapnuik, D. (2021, 5). Why Use an ePortfolio. It’s About Learning. http://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=6063

Reflection4Learning, Barrett, H., & Richter, J. (n.d.). Why Reflect? Reflection4Learning. Retrieved 11 2, 2021, from https://sites.google.com/site/reflection4learning/why-reflect

TEDxUFM & Thomas, D. (n.d.). A New Culture of Learning [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved 11 2, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM80GXlyX0U

Winds of Change

Posted on October 31, 2021January 16, 2022 by karinst8ler

It’s been obnoxiously windy in North Texas these past few days. I’m talking hair destroying, car veering, door slamming windy. My husband and I actually talked about how frustrating the wind was – pushing us in directions we didn’t want to go, picking up dust and detritus and moving it where it doesn’t belong, and causing general discontent.

The Original Plan

My original Innovation Project plan was very thorough. You can read more about it here, but I’ll give you the gist. I planned to focus on training administrative assistants. I saw them as an area of nonconsumption. My plan was detailed and forthright. Dr. H’s response to my plan wasn’t as congratulatory as I had hoped, so I scheduled a meeting with him to talk about where my plan could use a little bit of tweaking.

Caught in a Whirlwind

When I met with Dr. H, I was excited to hear his thoughts. I waited to get “feedback” on how I could pinch here and tuck there. But pinch and tuck he did not. Dr. H came to the meeting like the gust of cool air rushing Texas from Canada, creating the high winds we are experiencing. He asked me questions I didn’t know the answer to. He pushed me to think “Bigger Picture.” He called me out as someone who is, “Idealistic and wants to change the world.” I felt seen, but also confused. My plan with administrative assistants is okay, but not big enough picture. What is the purpose? What is my long-term goal? I know I didn’t answer these questions well because frankly, I wasn’t sure.

🤷‍♀️

Dr. H suggested I would e•mail him this weekend with a better idea – one that had a large enough scope.

Looking to the Horizon

I spent a lot of time this weekend worrying: Worrying about my plan, waiting for an idea to just “pop” into my brain like Dr. Harapnuik suggested it might.

I spent the bulk of my Friday afternoon reading the Horizon Report and taking copious notes. First, I read about how the Horizon Report is fallible to the point that it is kind of dismissed. Then, I learned about the implications of current technology use in higher education. Finally, the sections I enjoyed the most presented “fuzzy” futuristic possibilities about the direction of higher ed: One toward Growth, one toward Constraint, one toward Collapse, and one toward Transformation. In these current trends and futuristic potential outcomes, I saw some big picture opportunities:

Personalized degree paths
Learner agency
An aging population with low fertility
A much more diverse group of learners
Climate change
Assistive technology
Security

This list seems endless. Better yet, it gave me a much better idea of what Dr. H is looking for in my innovation proposal.

When I set goals, I think of a general idea I’m working toward. For example, my husband and I just purchased a small chunk of land in Missouri. We plan to spend the next 3 years building a second home. When we retire, we’ll move there full time. We will take everything we put into our paid-off home and move to Missouri. My Master’s Degree is a part of that plan as well. I could be a remote professor, a consultant, or work for a tech company like Canvas or Google remotely. Obviously, my general idea is to work remotely once I’m retired from education. When I look ahead to a general plan, the choices I make right now all point in that direction.

The same holds for my innovation proposal.

A Change in Focus

The windy weather died down Sunday. I didn’t feel so irritated, inhibited, and rushed. I felt calm, and I could tell that I trusted myself a lot more than I did earlier in the weekend.

Like my plan for my future, my plan for my innovation proposal needs a long-term, big-picture focus to drive it. I’m backing up a little, and have toyed with either the “Paper-light District,” or “Security,” as my plan. And I did in fact e•mail Dr. H, much to my surprise! While the deadline is coming quickly, I also try to remember that this is our first draft. We will change the details many times before our Master’s Program is over. At the same time, there will be other opportunities in which I feel uncomfortably stretched to understand a future that even the experts can’t easily predict.

But for now, I’m going to enjoy the cool fall breeze.

Brown, M., McCormack, M., Reeves, J., Brooks, D. C., & Grajek, S. (2020). Teaching and Learning Edition. 2020 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report. https://library.educause.edu/-/media/files/library/2020/3/2020_horizon_report_pdf.pdf?la=en&hash=08A92C17998E8113BCB15DCA7BA1F467F303BA80

Harapnuik, D. (n.d.). Change in Focus. It’s About Learning, CSLE. Retrieved 10 31, 2021, from https://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=7495

Growth Mindset: Useful Tool or Parlor Trick?

Posted on October 28, 2021January 16, 2022 by karinst8ler

Failing? Just have a growth mindset! Depressed? Just have a growth mindset! The concept of a growth mindset is good in theory. In practice, a growth mindset has to be intentionally modeled alongside best practices and within a system or classroom that actively practices authenticity. Otherwise, it comes across as flippant and could be considered toxic positivity.

Is competition a useful strategy within a team, organization, or classroom?

I’ve never liked competition. Well, I DO like it… when I’m winning. If I’m not winning, I’m not playing. It’s truly my one fatal flaw. I felt validated when Dr. Heffernan started talking about the “Super Flock,” in her TedTalk titled Why it’s Time to Forget the Pecking Order at Work. She said, “Individually productive chickens only achieved their success by suppressing the productivity of the rest.” And they did this by pecking one another to death. It didn’t matter that the chickens were all individually superstar chickens. They couldn’t handle the competition. This applies to humans on teams in a similar way. When teams are in a system that encourages competition, powerful individualism, and favoritism, those teams don’t function well together. The end result is, “aggression, dysfunction, and waste.”

How can you build trust in a team?

This begs the question of how to create a system of authenticity and cooperation. Dr. Heffernan suggests that “Rivalry has to be replaced by social capital.” Social capital is, “the reliance and interdependence that builds trust.” In Charles Feltman’s book, The Thin Book of Trust, he defines trust as, “Choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions.” So the opposite of an aggressive, dysfunctional, competitive environment is one full of vulnerability, trust, and cooperation. Feltman further suggests that “behaviors that are indicative of trust include: Cooperation, collaboration, conversation, dialog, listening, communication, support, sharing information, offering ideas, expecting the best, and being willing to examine [your] own actions.” It is that type of system in which teaching a growth mindset would allow classrooms and teams to flourish.

Now, how can a growth mindset be an asset in a well-arranged system/classroom?

Outside of an authentic, vulnerable system that encourages social capital, a growth mindset is but a parlor trick. But inside of a good system, the growth mindset is a useful tool. A growth mindset encourages people to think of skills and intelligence as malleable. For example, I am still struggling with WordPress. It is far more robust than any other website platform I’ve ever used. If I think about my skills with a fixed mindset, I might think, “I cannot create my website on this platform! It’s too hard! I’ll never learn it!” Using a growth mindset, I would flip the script. For example, “I cannot understand how to use WordPress, yet. I can google it though! And I know that one of my colleagues is using WordPress. I bet they could help me out when I get stuck.”

You can encourage a growth mindset in an authentic environment by:

Actively teaching people about the difference in growth and fixed mindset.
Reframing your praise to reflect stamina, grit, and the process a student/person uses rather than the product.
Modeling and coaching students/others to reframe their distorted thinking.

How can you restructure your classroom or team systems? How can you use the growth mindset as a tool within these systems?

I Love You, I Hate You: The Story of WordPress

Posted on October 28, 2021January 16, 2022 by karinst8ler

I chose Wix first. It was easy. It was attractive. I set up my site. I wrote my first blog. I was ready.

Did I mention that Wix was easy?

And then I met you…

WordPress. You sly devil. You were deep and complex. I could create my own domain name. You were rich and profound and you called to me like a siren from a boulder being pelted by harsh waves in a stormy sea. Your voice floated to me from afar. You sang of safety, of freedom, and of a depth and complexity unmatched by others. I fell in head first, lured by Dr. Harapnuik’s treasure map, How to Create Your ePortfolio. The map is sincere and bold. It provides a clear outline. There is a quaint comparison. And there is… DATA.

I was caught, hook, line and sinker. And I paid the price. LITERALLY.

And then I got to know you…

Early in our relationship, you were soft. You were kind. I copied and pasted my blog from Wix. It was so easy! And then, you judged me. Your SEO score and Readability statistics didn’t seem like huge red flags at first. “You’re helping me become better!” I thought. How naïve of me! You became progressively more aggressive throughout our time together.

Next, I selected a theme and started to create pages.

But I COULDN’T EDIT THE THEME. You held me hostage, WordPress! You hid your theme editing in a separate menu from page editing. After I found the theme menu, I was so excited to be able to delete the phone number! But it was a small victory – I couldn’t figure out how to change the stock picture with the irrelevant menu that plagued my Homepage. Out, damned spot!

Back to the drawing board

Days passed. I added pages. I deleted pages. I changed the homepage menu that plagued me so! I tried to create a drop-down menu. I tried again… and again… and again. I posted about menus in the Student Lounge. A kind fellow named Pedro had fantastic instructions that I couldn’t follow.

But tonight… I got the better of you

I did it! I created that menu. My Learning is documented in one place that drops down, that I may add pages and pages galore. I have pages, a drop-down menu, and a blog. And yet I wonder…

How else might you challenge me?

Passionately Pursuing Nonconsumption: Disruptive Innovation as a Catalyst for Change

Posted on October 21, 2021January 16, 2022 by karinst8ler

I love my job and I love my department. For starters, my boss believes we should, “follow our passions,” in our job. When I started my job as a Digital Learning Support Specialist with the Instructional Technology team, I quickly noticed gaps that needed to be filled with the skills and passions I possess. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was looking for areas of nonconsumption.

One area of nonconsumption

While my team is intentional in their work with teachers on campuses, one noticeable area of nonconsumption is the professional development of administrative assistants. Administrative assistants in our district often:

Have varying degrees of technological capabilities
Have varying levels of education
Only receive on-the-job training specific to their boss’s wants or needs
Don’t receive training aligned with our district’s technology goals

My most important observation? Admin assistants desperately want to learn and grow with technology use. Why not harness that natural desire to grow an underserved population?

Insourcing for professional development

Okay, I recognized the area of nonconsumption. Now what? I began to brainstorm how I can bring meaningful professional development to adult learners who are not in a traditional PD setting. I am not about to reinvent the wheel here. However, the Google for Education Certification is specifically designed with teachers in mind. I realized that I am going to have to be the primary resource for this audience.

Part 7 — Disrupting Higher Education explained insourcing professional development instead of outsourcing it. Specifically, the video mentioned that insourcing could provide:

Exactly what the intended audience needs to know
The precise moment that they need to know it
Customized training to their business
Flexible and responsive training opportunities

What is my role then?

As I think about this area of nonconsumption, I want to consider how I can use technology as a vehicle to insource in this area of nonconsumption. My goal is to connect the administrative assistants to rich, unique learning opportunities that fulfill this Job to Be Done. As I consider the most beneficial way to organize this opportunity, I think of what I learned in Disrupting Class – Part 3: Disruptive Innovation in Education. Considering the framework provided, I will:

Begin at the end. Define outcomes.
Make technology the slave to your strategy, not the other way around.
Harness the power of time, place, path, and pace for student personalization.
Personalize for [my] circumstances.

Questions

What do the admin assistants need to learn? How can I come by this information? Can I use the January 4th professional development day as an opportunity to pre-assess?

How can I test and assess and give real-time feedback?

What will the structure look like for this very non-traditional opportunity?

ePortfolios: Create and Maintain Your Organic Learning Profile

Posted on October 21, 2021January 16, 2022 by karinst8ler

An eportfolio is exactly what I imagined it to be based on the title: It is a learner’s digital evidence of meaningful connections. (Minimalist Definition of an Eportfolio) As I think about how I will create and maintain my eportfolio, I was pulled toward two specific foci:

Creating an eportfolio that is a reflection of me.

In Dr. H’s ePortfolio, I noticed the specifics of why, what, how, and regarding the effects of eportfolios as a reflection of learning. I must have an onus of the eportfolio – and therefore of my learning. It is also important that I reflect on my learning to make meaningful connections. I will demonstrate my learning through that reflection.

Thinking about how I will create something that is a reflection of me and my learning, I like Dr. Helen Barrett’s definition of a working portfolio compared to a presentation portfolio. A working portfolio documents the learning process. A presentation portfolio is, “organized around a set of learning outcomes, goals, and standards for specific purposes and audiences.” For graduate school, our goals, purposes, and audience are our professors. However, I prefer to consider my portfolio a working portfolio as it will be a more organic reflection of who I am and what I am learning that I may continue to use it to further my career.

Maintaining an eportfolio throughout my career.

My biggest takeaway regarding maintaining a portfolio comes back to onus. If I own the learning and the work, I am more likely to maintain the portfolio well into my career. In Dr. H’s How to Create Your ePortfolio, I notice that Dr. H truly believes that WordPress is a superior eportfolio choice for this purpose. To be clear, he is not that he is saying our web choice will determine our grade! He is simply saying that WordPress is a more widely used and more sophisticated technology for a long-term portfolio. He also suggests the pay option simply to maintain ownership of your domain from the start.

I initially created my eportfolio in Wix. After reading this information, I purchased a membership to WordPress. It has a much larger learning curve, but since I’ve paid for it I am moving ahead in this direction.

What are your thoughts?

Do you prefer a working portfolio or a presentation portfolio? Do you think that will change throughout your career? Which web service do you intend to use?

Already Dreaming of You…

Posted on October 20, 2021January 16, 2022 by karinst8ler

Last night, I had the strangest dreams.

I was the team leader of a church choir. We had our first official meeting digitally. The tension was immediate and palpable. A group of, “But we’ve always done it this way,” thinkers were aligned to depose me. Another group argued valiantly in my favor. A heated discussion led nowhere and after the meeting, I received feedback that was not surprising – those who wanted me to lead them gave me high marks, and those who didn’t would have given me negative marks if they could have. The dream ended chaotically, with missed meetings and the presence of unnerving clowns, and I woke well before my alarm.

It was the fitful time between sleep and wake that interested me the most. As I began to venture out of dreamland and away from the clowns, my mind started solving the problem I encountered in my dream. I thought, “Okay, obviously I’m a divisive choice for a leader. The problem is that this group has diverse needs. I think the best leader wouldn’t be one person, but a team of people with opposing viewpoints. This team should harness its diversity to increase the quantity and quality of ideas, thereby increasing participation in the choir!”

What does it all mean?

To say that I’m anxious about grad school is an understatement. But I also know that sleep is a time for creating memories, and there was some long-term learning occurring in my dream.

Begin with the end in mind

I was applying concepts from Chapter 3 in Horn and Staker’s book, Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools. On page 98, they state that “The most successful blended-learning programs… begin by identifying the problem to solve or the goal to achieve.” Notably, In my dream, I started with the problems to be solved. In this case, the problem was, well, ME. Another problem is one I intuited from my experiences in a church choir – garnering consistent members.

Teamwork makes the dream work

I was also applying concepts from Chapter 4 of the same text. I worked extremely hard to understand the 4 types of necessary teams. In the case of my dream, I applied a lightweight team to make sustaining changes with predictable roles. I also thought to employ a concept from heavyweight teams – involving skeptics. Horn and Staker state, “involving skeptics to hear their views… can be an important but tricky balancing act.” While there were many skeptics to change in my dream, I personally value diversity of thought in all that I do. As Rocío Lorenzo said in her TEDx talk, Innovation through Diversity, “Only in the group where you have more than 20% women in leadership do we see a clear jump in innovation revenue.” The more diverse viewpoints, the more likely transformation will occur.

Forward thinking

Our discussion in the Zoom about “Feedback vs. Feedforward” stood out glaringly in my dream. I was hurt and offended by the feedback, even though it wasn’t a bit surprising. What did I expect? In truth, it wasn’t the results of the feedback that were the problem, rather the use of feedback itself. As mentioned in our class discussion, feedback is inherently useless, as it doesn’t provide any actionable information.

Let it grow

Finally, I felt stunned that people perceived me as someone with a fixed mindset. I truly believed I was willing to listen to all ideas with an open mind. This is what led me to realize that I couldn’t be their leader in that time between sleep and wakefulness. In the end, their perception of me was one of division, regardless of what I thought.

I know that grad school will require hard work. I also know that I am capable of the work, that I enjoy a challenge, and that I love to learn. I can live with a little anxiety – I’ve done so my whole life!

Although, I’d still like to know how the clowns fit in.