What's The One Thing You Can Do To Be Amazing?

(This post the third in a series commenting on Kathy Sierra's presentation about creating passionate users.) 

Have you ever attended one of those workshops where so many things are covered that you don't know where to start? Or, have you ever visited on of those sites that describe 100 Web 2.0 tools? Many professional developers seem to think that value comes from the quantity of tools, tips, slides, lesson ideas, etc. that they can cram into an hour, half-day, or whole day.

That seems contrary to Kathy's statement that we can help our "users" by giving them the one thing they can do to be amazing.  I didn't take that statement to mean that we should tell teachers we work with exactly which tool they should use and in which particular lesson. In fact, struggling to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of certain tools in certain situations may be the most important "problem" we can lead teachers to consider. Instead, Kathy's statement reminded me that we need to think very carefully about the number and order of tools, tips, activities, etc. we do present. Will they make the teachers (really, their students) amazing, or will they distract them from what's most important/beneficial/amazing? Would you rather have a teacher that has thought carefully about when and how to creatively and thoughtfully use one tool like a wiki throughout the year in their subject(s), or a teacher who has mastered a dozen tools, but can't achieve rigor or relevance with them? Less is probably more if teachers develop a nuanced understanding of their tool(s) and how they best fit with their pedagogy and subject. They can always add another tool later in the year or the next year.

Practice Eating Your Own Dog Food

(This post the second in a series commenting on Kathy Sierra's presentation about creating passionate users.)  

I know it sounds funny, but when Kathy mentioned practicing all the time, it connected with Guy Kawasaki's rule to "Eat Your Own Dog Food." Guy meant that statement in regards to technology developers using their own products. I connected Kathy's appeal to practice all the time and Guy's rule to use your own products to the typical paradox of professional development where new pedagogical methods are "taught" using old pedagogical methods. I realize there are many reasons that occurs, but this is why teachers need to use the same tools we want them using with their students. (I am definitely not advocating they need to use them so that they know them better than their students or before they let their students use them!) Teachers don't need to use the tools to complete the exact same sort of projects as the students. They need to use them in an authentic way for their own learning. When using the tools for their own learning, their understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the tools will grow as will the range of possible uses for these tools in learning activities. With time, the teachers will develop an intuitive feel for the tool.

Stuck in Program Mode

(This post the second in a series commenting on Kathy Sierra's presentation about creating passionate users.) 

One metaphor Kathy briefly made was having your camera stuck in Program Mode. Thinking about teachers, I took that equivalent of teaching the lesson as the textbook says to or if it is a lesson or project designed by the teacher, teaching it the same way every year. Getting the teachers out of P Mode means getting them to reflect on their lessons. They need to reflect on the TPC of the lesson, and who their students are so that they can modify it (or ditch it) for greater success.

One way curriculum designers can encourage this reflection is to design lessons with optional activities. I don't mean optional in take it or leave it, I mean optional as in a flow chart or a football option play, where depending on what is observed/experienced, the teacher makes a choice. If we add in reasons why they might choose different options, the teacher can make better choices, but also "hear" an expert's thinking. Who knows, they may even internalize it with time. Otherwise, we have merely created a new textbook for teachers to teach from.

A second way professional development and curriculum facilitators could lead teachers away from only using Program Mode, would be to build up their understanding of a wide variety of activity types. This would need to be accompanied by discussions of the affordances and constraints of these activity types as well as how each of those might be modified depending on the technology used to accomplish them. Teachers would then have myriad choices and a better feel for when to select one activity type or technology over another.