My mind is reeling with everything I’m learning with the technology we already have.  Given that next week we’ll have a 1:1 student to device ratio, my brain better get used to all those (extra?) synapses firing.  Every day my mind is filled with dozens of ideas.  I wish I could stop in mid-thought to blog each day, but in addition to thinking, I’m also teaching.  So, here I am finally, sitting down to blog about a few things. 

My class is 100% online.  Students read, write, submit writing, homework, everything online.  I’ve heard many people, in and out of education, discuss the quite natural concern about leaving actual discourse, class discussion, teacher actual availability behind in such a classroom.   The other day, one of my classes enlightened me on the subject when I made a goofy joke about how students could get help during class.  I asked, as always, “What do you do if you need help?”  The answers:

1.   Email the teacher

2.   Look at the class chat

3.   Google the answer

4.   Use the comment feature on their document to chat with me.

Yup.  You see what’s missing.  No one said they could actually come ask me a question.  So, I made a big joke about how there was this new thing in education that I liked to call “Face time in real time.”  I made a big show about how it works, how you don’t need computers or devices or screens.  I showed them how to walk up to my desk, where to find my desk and how they could sit in that chair, right next to mine. 

I got a lot of giggles and enthusiasm for the concept of calling talking to the teacher as “Face time in Real time.” 

The giggles were elucidating.  My students knew how absurd it was to even consider that approaching me was a foreign concept.  They are excited to be the leaders as we roll-out lots of technology, and they love sharing ideas about how their world is changing. 

They also gave me insight into how they really think and work now.  Talking to me was a given, but all the new emailing and chatting were things they loved to have in the “how to get help” repertoire. 

I have no end of ideas about things we can do with having the world at our fingertips, and we, my students and me, have a lot of discussion about how much more responsibility this is on them.  They’re pretty proud to be considered worthy of that.

So, our new class vocabulary is “Face time in Real time,”  and the students love to approach me two at a time with a request for “a split screen conference.” 

A bunch of students have ideas for turning the humorous hyperbole of that into a series of commercials, perhaps reaching out to Apple. 

Up next:  The serendipity of losing Wifi for half the day.

Growing up, unless my parents were telling me exactly what to do (eat your peas, clean your room, take out the trash), they consciously chose to tell me nothing.  If I asked what kind of a degree was needed to become an advertising writer in New York (I went through the whole slew of possible futures starting with princess), my mother would say, “What am I, an encyclopedia?  You have a library card, and two legs to get you there.”  So, I learned not to ask questions, and I made frequent trips to the library.  I don’t know if I believed all adults were not there for answers, or if I was just shy, but I never asked anyone anything at the library.  I used the card catalogue and the Dewey Decimal system, and I got very good at key words and cross-referencing.  Now, that was all long before computers.  I was a ravenous learner, and I spent almost as much time in the library as I did raiding the cupboards.  I was fiercely independent about my research.  Of course, sometimes I was curious about things that were natural to be curious about but even more natural to be embarrassed about being curious about such things.  Thank God for the library.

When I first started writing historical romances, the internet was accessible…not to me.  It took me forever to look up everything I needed to know about horseguard uniform colors, indoor plumbing features and how often servants polished the silverware.  I mostly just wrote and cross- referenced with every Jane Austen book. 

Then, the internet became accessible.   I could not believe how much information was just there.   I had to schedule time for “research” because the wealth of information was addictive. 

I am really quite happy for how my parents raised me.  They raised me to be an independent learner, and they raised me to be intrepid in my quest for knowledge.  They taught me that I was limited only by my attitude. 

For the first fifteen years of my teaching career, I struggled to instill that sense in my students, that if they had a question, big or small, they could find the answer if only they remained undaunted. 

It worked.  Sometimes. 

Now, for the past…not really even a year, maybe just months, now that my students have unlimited access to the chrome books in my classroom, it is suddenly not a struggle.  They have unlimited access to anything.  We became a STEM school last year, and we're exploring so much.  

I’m excited by how much is possible now.  My mind whirls daily with all the possibilities that I am just beginning to understand, and that is only the possibilities that I can comprehend, right now. There are the possibilities that my colleagues and leaders will bring, but the real potential lies within the students. 

And that is why I am not afraid.  This is an opportunity for them to explore not just knowledge, but hopes and dreams.   I do not need to understand every aspect of the tools.  I only need to understand how to help them access what they need, and that is not in the mechanics of the tool.  It is in the process.

Learning is not an end result.  If we’re to develop critical thinkers, then our focus must be on allowing not just them, but us, struggle through the questions.  Already, I see such changes in my classroom.  Differentiated instruction is much easier, natural and authentic with students able to choose topics, modalities….I could go on. 

I wonder what I would have become, as a person, citizen, employee, if I had not made all of those trips to the library, if I didn’t grow up knowing learning was up to me.  This might be the time to say that I was a horrible student in Junior high and high school.  I just didn’t do what I was supposed to do.  I was too busy with all of my library books and my own questions.  

And a little about love.  I love my job!