Get Specific: A Love Story

I took my girlfriend for a walk across our college campus on a warm November day. We walked in relative silence until we got to the park that butts up against the Cedar River. As we were walking, I kept one hand buried in my pocket protecting the reason for the walk.

I built up the courage and stopped her. I pulled her close to me and looked her in the eyes.

"I love you, Becky."

She told me the same.

"You make me a better man," I said, moving along mentally to the next part of my speech.

"How do you mean?" she asked. "Like what, specifically?"

I wasn't ready to get specific. I hadn't prepared for this. She just makes me better man, that's all. I'm better because of her. Not perfect, but the opposite of worse.

I hadn't prepared. So it came from the heart.

.....

President Obama gave a speech about education this morning. He used some magical words: reform, accountability, results. The kind of words people who have more time to think education than do education use.

I'm sure, if given the right materials or notice or warning, he'd be ready with a specific definition of what he means by reform, accountability, and results. I'd just like to see him challenged to come up with his definitions from the heart.

I understand that a speech is not the time for specifics. It's the traditional time for empty words that everyone can rally behind, because everyone has a different idea of what they mean.

A proposal is not the time for specifics, either.

What do you really want from us, Mr. President? In no uncertain terms. Get specific.

On an island

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We've got four cats. With cats come cat hair.

We've got one five-month-old son. With infants come drool.

In a perfect world, never the twain shall meet.

In our world, if he gets off the blanket we put on the carpet for him, he ends up with hand- and mouth-fulls of cat hair.

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What's your blanket? What's your cat hair? Who's your baby?

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ISTEunplugged session: Technology has been around forever. Is 1:1 enough?

Matt and I led a session at ISTEunplugged on June 28. The recording of the Elluminate session is now up.

Thanks to Chris Ludwig, Ann Leaness, Liz Becker, Karl Fisch, and others for joining us "in studio" and for contributing so much to the session.

Title: Technology has been around forever. Is 1:1 enough?


Description: Many schools in Iowa are implementing 1:1 initiatives. Is placing a computer in every students' hand the end? What next? Bring your thoughts to this forum.
Presenter: Matt Townsley, Solon Community Schools, and Russ Goerend, Waukee Community Schools

Recording link: https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2010-06-28.0652.M.C460D235B14F6598E3CC02CAE42D45.vcr&sid=2008350

My ineptitude as a fantasy baseball owner as an analogy for my teaching

Welcome to my inner geek.

I follow the advice of many fantasy baseball writers who say "Don't pay for saves." I don't draft top-tier closers. I don't trade for closers. I generally don't think about closers.

I took that thinking to an extreme this year.

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I think the save is the second worst stat in baseball. Three reasons:

1. In a game a few seasons ago where team won 30-3, a save was awarded. 30-3. Save. 30-...yeah.
2. A pitcher can record a save by coming into a 3-run game and throwing 1 pitch to end the game.
3. A pitcher who comes into a 1-run game in the 8th inning can record a blown save by giving up a run, but if that pitcher holds the lead and someone else comes to finish the game in the 9th inning, that pitcher who pitched the 8th inning cannot record a save. So he can blow a save, without a chance to record a save.

</tangent>

So, when draft day rolled around, it's not that I was missing a list of closers to draft. It's that I chose to wait and wait and wait on closers to draft players I thought brought me more value.

I ended up punting saves. For the uninitiated, a typical fantasy baseball league has 10 categories -- 5 batting, 5 pitching. If the league has 12 teams, each team can get a max of 12 points in each category. So, if I have the most saves -- I don't -- I get 12 points. The team with the second-most saves gets 11 points and so on. Down to me. I have 1 point in the saves category. Punting is a strategy an owner gives up on one strategy in order to beef up his or her chances at dominating the other categories.

At first it worked out because instead of a closer I put relief pitchers who strike guys out into my lineup, and, as luck would have it, these guys ended up picking up wins and pitching really well, which helped me out in the four other categories besides saves.

I thought I had a chance at showing that this idea of punting a category could really work. There are 12 possible points in each of 5 pitching categories, so I figured I'd be at or near the top of the other categories and my 1 point in saves wouldn't be that big of a deal.

The lesson I learned is one that I've been thinking about a lot lately: balance. I'm sitting in 8th place, within 5 or 6 points of 5th place, really in the thick of it. What could I have done differently to pick up those precious few points? If I would have drafted a couple of closers early in the draft, what contributors would I be missing now?

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Is there anything in my teaching that I've been punting? Have I figured something will just take care of itself? Or maybe if I just ramp up what I'm doing in one area -- technology, perhaps? -- the other stuff -- teaching -- will take care of itself?


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Data are not just numbers

Keith Law is a baseball writer who used to work in the Blue Jays' front office. He hosts a weekly chat. Here is one of the questions from this morning and his answer:

Let's break this Q&A down.

Do you, dear reader, know who "Boesch" is? I know one of you (assuming Kax is reading) does, but it would genuinely surprise me if anyone else who reads me does.  So who is he? It really doesn't matter. You're welcome to Google him for more information, but this is all the context you need: He's a major league baseball player who's been hitting the ball really well since being called up from the minors earlier this year.

Onto the answer and the reason I'm writing a post about it.

Think about data. Whether your school subscribes to IDM, DDDM, or just being "data-driven," have you taken the time to define what data is are? That will be one of the questions I push my PLC to answer this year. Data is a word we use, but I'm not sure we all agree on the definition. It could be that we do, but at this point, we don't know if we do. (I'm really hoping I can just bring up the question, find out everyone shares a common definition, and move on.)

Baseball is a data-driven business. What made me read Keith's answer twice was not the way he presented the data to back up his claim that Boesch is fluky, but the data he used to support his claim.

Data are not just numbers!

As someone who has studied the game well enough to have worked in the front office of a major league baseball team and now as a full-time writer for the Worldwide Leader in Sports™, Keith shows that his own professional opinion fits neatly in with the statistics he uses to assert his claim.

Just something to think about.

I'm more interested in your teaching than your technology

"quality teaching trumps quality technology" - Matt Townsley

Matt and I led a session at ISTEunplugged on Monday morning. First ISTEunplugged session of the conference. ISTEunplugged is a spot carved out in a hallway with a Promethean board (turns out it's not exactly a touchscreen, who knew?), a computer, and a microphone. Kim Case came to run Elluminate so the session could be streamed live to the world. Matt and I sat on cubes and asked questions. 9 people generously donated their time to sit and converse with us.

Matt and I realized that we've got a bit of a traveling road show going with this gig. It started at the Iowa 1:1 Institute in April at the unconference room. We had been roaming the halls and decided to start a session. We just wanted to ask a simple question to start a conversation.

Is 1:1 enough?

That's the question we asked at the Iowa 1:1 Institute. It's the question we started with at ISTEunplugged. It's the question we'll put forth at the Iowa Technology and Education Connection (ITEC) conference next fall (if we're accepted :fingers crossed:).

We just can't get enough of this question.

It's not even that great of a question.

It's got an obvious answer.

Right?

Right??

So what's the answer?

Well, what's the rest of the question?

Is 1:1 enough...to change a teacher?

Is 1:1 enough...to change a classroom?

Is 1:1 enough...to change a school?

Is 1:1 enough...to engage/empower/enlighten students?

Is 1:1 enough...to get politicians off our backs?

Is 1:1 enough...to move education into the 21st century?

I started this post with a quote from Matt. He tweeted it out the last night we were at the conference. If you're looking for my takeaway from ISTE 2010, that's it. The few minutes I spent in the exhibit hall made my skin crawl. It was like a carnival. A scary, lonely carnival. So many screens and eduinfomercials and freebies for giving away access to my inbox.

Technology is not a silver bullet. It's a piece to the puzzle, but this is a puzzle that's not like most puzzles. Some pieces are more important than others.

You may have answered yes to some or all of those questions. That's great. Maybe you were yelling "No!" at your screen. That's great too.  Matt and I want you to come to the conversation. I want to find out why you feel that way. I want to know what it is that you're doing that we can learn from.

We want to know if it's you -- quality teacher providing quality instruction in the context of a 1:1 or 1:2 or 1:20 program -- that is enough.