I'm in Sir Ken Robinson's book Creative Schools!

For the last 10 years, I have worked hard to make my classroom a better place for students to learn. My transformation required that I re-think many features of my teaching such as discipline, homework, lesson planning, accountability, standardization and assessment.

Changing school is no easy task. The last 10 years have been rigorous and vigorous, filled with set-backs and progress. 

My students' success has offered the most powerful proof that I am on to something. I have found validation and support by sharing my work through my blog, twitter and other publications.

In 2011, Alfie Kohn cited my work with rethinking assessment in his article The Case Against Grades.

Most recently, I am excited to see my work cited in Sir Ken Robinson's most recent book Creative School: The Grassroots Revolution That's Transforming Education. 

In chapter seven titled Testing, Testing, Sir Ken Robinson writes:

Some teachers have always used a range of assessment methods in class. The rise of testing has made that more difficult, but some teachers are pushing back in their own classrooms. There are challenges, but there can be enormous benefits too. For example, Joe Bower is a science and language arts teacher in Alberta, Canada, who, six years into his teaching career, decided that he could no longer abide by using grades as his primary form of assessment. 

"I have come to see grades as schools' drug of choice, and we are all addicted... Grades were originally tools used by teachers, but today teachers are tools used by grades." 

What Bower discovered was that the reliance on grading made him less effective as a teacher and had a negative effect on students. He points out that when many students are asked what they got out of a class, they'll respond with something like, "I got an A." While his school insisted that he give grades on report cards, he abolished all other grades in his classroom and delivered the report card grade only after asking his students to assess their own work and recommend the grade they should receive. The students' suggestions usually aligned with his, and there were far more cases where students would have recommended a lower grade than a higher one. The result of doing away with grading was that he eased the pressure on his students and allowed them to focus on the content of their assignments and their classwork rather than on the rubric to score them. 

"When we try to reduce something that is as magnificently messy as real learning, we always conceal far more than we ever reveal. Ultimately, grading gets assessment wrong because assessment is not a spreadsheet -- it is a conversation. I am a very active teacher who assesses students every day, but I threw out my grade book years ago. If we are to find our way and make learning, not grading, the primary focus of school, then we need to abandon our mania for reducing learning and people to numbers."

From Detesting to De-Testing

This post was featured in Cathy Rubin's The Global Search for Education: Our Top 12 Teacher Blogs.

How do you balance preparation for high stakes assessments with teaching and learning in your classroom?


In my classroom, I have replaced tests and grades with projects and performances collected in portfolios. It’s been 10 years since I used a multiple choice test to assess my students, so it’s safe to say that I do not agree with having to administer a standardized multiple choice test for the government at the end of an entire year of making learning visible via blogging.

Teachers are repeatedly told that the best way to prepare students for standardized tests is to teach the curriculum, but this is at best misleading. We know that multiple choice tests require a certain amount of test taking skills, and that students who have a better understanding for the nuances of multiple choice tests can score well without having learned what the tests claim to be measuring.

So how do I live with myself when I have an obligation to administer standardized tests that I don’t support?

In his article Fighting the Tests: A Practical Guide to Rescuing Our Schools, Alfie Kohn writes:

Whenever something in the schools is amiss, it makes sense for us to work on two tracks at once. We must do our best in the short term to protect students from the worst effects of a given policy, but we must also work to change or eliminate that policy. If we overlook the former – the need to minimize the harm of what is currently taking place, to devise effective coping strategies — then we do a disservice to children in the here and now. But (and this is by far the more common error) if we overlook the latter – the need to alter the current reality — then we are condemning our children’s children to having to make the best of the same unacceptable situation because it will still exist.

In the short term, I teach the curriculum the best I can, and I waste as little time as possible preparing students to fill in bubbles. However, as test day approaches we do a practice test in small groups to reduce anxiety and increase familiarity. The best teachers act less like conduits for the tests and more like a buffer that protects students from the harmful effects of testing, so I also assure students and parents that I do not use the standardized test as a part of their report card.

In the long term, I tweet, blog, write articles and talk with anyone and everyone about how and why standardized tests are broken and how and why the alternatives to the tests are far more authentic. I go out of my way to make the alternatives to standardized tests so obviously better that parents and students see the tests as an unfortunate distraction from real learning.

To advocate for authentic alternatives to standardized tests I actively work with my Alberta Teachers’ Association to create local public events with speakers such as Sir Ken Robinson, Alfie Kohn, Pasi Sahlberg, Yong Zhao and Andy Hargreaves. I’ve joined a political party in Alberta and influenced their education policies. I wrote Telling Time with a Broken Clock: the trouble with standardized testing and co-edited De-Testing and De-Grading Schools: Authentic Alternatives to Standardization and Accountability.

Together parents, students and teachers join together to opt-out of testing.

Classroom Technology: Nightmare or Dream?

Technological advances in our schools in the last 10 years have been remarkable, and there is no doubt that technology will continue to disrupt our schools in both helpful and harmful ways. To be clear, I love technology and use it every single day. I teach with it and learn with it. It's important to remember, however, that technology cannot be allowed to have a monopoly on innovation in our schools. If public education is to survive the next 10 years, we need to see how technology and personalization can be read as either a dream or a nightmare, depending on who is writing the story.

If Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Arne Duncan, and Michelle Rhee are writing the plot, then personalization in learning is about using technology for union busting, test score analytics and the marketization of our children's minds. In this story, the rich get a computer and a teacher but the poor get just a computer. Herein, technology and personalization isn't about learning – it’s about money. In this story’s final chapter technology functions as a Trojan horse, sneakily shouldering an army of economists and shadow industries that have been stalking public education for a very long time, waiting for an in.

If Sir Ken Robinson, Pasi Sahlberg, Alfie Kohn, Yong Zhao, Linda Darling-Hammond, Will Richardson and Diane Ravitch are writing the plot, then personalization is about student excitement, creativity, intrinsic motivation, curiosity and citizenship. In this story, all children are given computers and teachers, even when it’s cheaper to deny some students the latter. Herein, personalization and technology is used for the purposes of universal education not subordinated to the interests of big business.

Personalization and technology can be about collaborating to discover our passions (the dream) but it can also be about competing over profits (the nightmare). Worse still, personalization can turn into a kind of hyper-personalization, where computers are given to students with zero facilitation from real life teachers. This is akin to pilotless flying and surgeonless surgery and yet this is precisely the vision of many in power, a vision where technology uses the learner, instead of the learner using the technology. However, this can only become a reality if good people remain silent. Classroom innovators and public educators must speak out against the nightmare narrative of technological implementation (of Gates and Murdoch) so that technology and personalization can assist the dream of learning for all.

Sir Ken Robinson: How to Change Education

Sir Ken Robinson wants education to get back to basics -- but his definition for "basics" may not be what you think. Take 24 minutes to ponder.



Here's my favourite quote from this video:

How to escape education's death valley

Here are my favorite parts:

• To understand the legislation No Child Left Behind is to understand irony.
• No Child Left Behind should have been named Many Children Left Behind.
• In some parts of the country the drop out rate is 60%. In the Native American communities it is 80%.
• If we could half the drop out rate, some say that it would create a net-gain to the US economy over ten years of nearly a trillion dollars. 
• Some kids are physical absent from school while others are physically present but have mentally already dropped out.
• Too often teachers end up labouring and students end up enduring a culture of education that contradicts how human life flourishes.
• Human beings are naturally different and diverse.
• We have a very narrow definition of education.
• The basics are necessary but not sufficient. 
• Does ADHD exist? Maybe. Is it an epidemic? Probably not.
• If you sit kids down, hour after hour, doing low-grade clerical work, don't be surprised if they start to fidget.
• Too often we mistake childhood for a psychological disorder.
• Kids prosper best with a broad curriculum that celebrates their various talents. 
• The arts aren't important just because they increase math scores. They are important because they speak to parts of children's being which are otherwise untouched.
• Children are natural leaners.
• It's a real achievement to snuff out a child's natural tendency to be curious.
• Curiosity is the engine of achievement.
• There is a popular movement to de-professionalize teachers.
• Teaching is a creative profession. Teaching properly conceived is not a delivery system.
• Great teachers mentor, stimulate, engage.
• People can spend an awful lot of time discussing education without ever discussing learning.
• You can be engaged in an activity and not really achieving or doing anything.
• If you are teaching but the students aren't learning, are you really teaching?
• The dominant culture of education does not concern itself with teaching and learning but with testing.
• Standardized tests should be diagnostic. 
• Human life is inherently creative.
• We create and re-create our lives.
• Schools have  adopted a culture of standardization but it doesn't have to be that way.
• It's not just about what's on the test but what's not on the test.
• We have a lot to learn from Finland.
• Spending money on teacher professional development is not an expense -- it's an investment.
• In Finland, they spend six times more every year on teacher professional development than on student assessment and testing.
• Education policies must empower schools to get the job done -- not departments of education and not individual teachers.
• Centralizing education with command and control policies is folly.
• If you remove the discretion of teachers and students and place the power in the hands of distant authorities, education stops working.
• The best teachers are sailing into a headwind, every single day.
• Education is not a mechanical system -- it's a human system. It's about people.
• If we are to save mainstream public education, we are going to need to make it look more like many alternative education programs.
• If we made public education more like alternative education, we wouldn't need alternative education.
• Change the environment and you give life a chance.
• The real challenge for educational leadership is not command and control -- rather, it should be climate control where we create the conditions where real learning and good teaching are most likely to flourish.

Education doesn't need to be reformed...

Risk

And then the day came,

when the risk

to remain tight

in a bud

was more painful

than the risk

it took

to Blossom. 

by Anais Nin

Sir Ken Robinson cites this poem and talks about how revolutions never need ask for permission. He talks about how the children of the old model often cling to it tenaciously and say that its the only way to save ourselves - to reinstate the old model and keep it straight, and that the problem is that we just aren't doing it properly. We just need to do it better than we used to.

Robinson explains that the future always lies within those who see alternatives and move towards them. 

When I talk about abolishing testsandgrades and rethinking homework, standardization and discipline, I am often met by resistance made of people who are desperately clinging to a model of school that is done to children.

The future of education will lie within students, teachers and parents who stand up and refuse their cooperation with schooling that is done to them and demand a far more progressive and democratic model of education that is done by them and with them.

Sir Ken Robinson: Building a Culture of Innovation

Sir Ken Robinson: Building a Culture of Innovation from AERO - Education Revolution on Vimeo.

Here are some highlights:

• If you understand No Child Left Behind then you understand irony.
• If we are to have a learning revolution, we need to think differently about ourselves and our children and then we have to act differently.
• Being good at something you don't really care for is often fruitless. 
• If you love something you are good at, you never work again.
• Education has got to cherish the diversity of individual talent but our current focus on uniformity is stifling teachers and students.
• Creativity is the natural mode of humanity.
• Imagination is the ability to bring to mind things that aren't present.
• It's only when we suppress empathy that we are capable of doing things to each other that are literally unimaginable.
• Creativity is putting your imagination to work. Creativity is applied imagination.
• We can't afford schools that suppress creativity and diversity.
• In place of creativity, in most schools we have a culture of compliance.
• Supply and demand thinking can't be done successfully in schools.
• Life is not linear, it's organic. Schools are nothing if not linear. See the problem?
• No one gets their resume with their birth certificate.
• Most people's resumes are a work of fiction.
• We openly and actively lie to ourselves and others when we try and hide the chaos we are actually living.
• Everyone's life is unique because of the choices we make, the circumstances we've responded to, and the paths that we've taken.
• We are educating children to lose control of their own biographies.
• We need make school more personalized and customized and less impersonal and uniform.
• Most curricula is desperately narrow and rigid.
• Great teachers know that their job is not to teach disciplines or subjects but students.
• Pedagogy gets lost in a standardized curriculum where the art of teaching is replaced by the dead language of delivery.

Being creative is a better way of doing everything

Creativity is not an "add-on" but calls for radical change in our schools from Music Center IC on Vimeo.


Here are some highlights from Sir Ken Robinson on creativity:

• Creativity is a natural capacity in all of us.
• Poverty is not lead to an absence of creativity, but it does inhibit the opportunities children have to further develop and grow their creativity.
• Creativity is not an "add-on". You don't develop creativity by having a "creativity hour".
• If you take creativity seriously, that's a different sort of education and will require radical change on most fronts.
• If the current system were working, there would be no need to change it - depending on where you look, there is currently a 30% to 50% drop out rate.
• The school-to-prison pipeline is growing. We are failing our children more than they could fail us.
• When you have a 30% drop out rate, you can no longer blame the kids. This is a systems problem, not a kid problem.
• Focusing on creativity & imagination might be the best way to engage learners.
• A narrow curriculum helps learners figure out what they are not good at -- a broad curriculum encourages engagement and standards go up.
• Standardized tests have become the culture of public education.
• Children have become fodder for test scores.
• All the successful programs that re-engage learners into education are personal in nature -- we should do this in the first place.
• Finland has one of the most successful education systems and they have a very broad curriculum.
• Finland has high standards not because they focus on them remorselessly and exclusively but because they don't.
• Being creative is a way of doing everything more effectively.

Two tales of personalization and technology

Personalization and technology can be read as a dream or a nightmare -- it all depends on who is telling the story.

If Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Arne Duncan or Michelle Rhee are perpetrating the plot then personalization is about using technology for union busting, test score analytics and the marketization of our children's minds. In this story, the poor get a computer, while the rich get a computer and a teacher. Technology is a trojan horse that carries an army of economists and shadow industries who have been stalking public education for a very long time. In this story, technology and personalization isn't about learning -- it's about money.

If Sir Ken Robinson, Alfie Kohn, Yong Zhao, Linda Darling-Hammond or Diane Ravitch are the narrators, then personalization is about student excitement, creativity, intrinsic motivation, curiosity and citizenship. In this story, even when supplying children with their own computer becomes cheaper than providing them with a teacher, we have the courage to give all kids both. Ultimately, personalization isn't about technology -- it's about learning.

Personalization and technology can be about collaborating to discover our passions but it can also be about competing over profits. Some versions of (hyper) personalization can be about pilotless flying, surgeonless surgery and teacherless teaching -- this version of hyper-personalization is less about how a learner uses technology and more about how the technology uses the learner. Communications expert Marshall McLuhan told us this in 1964 when he said, "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us."

Seymour Papert, an expert on children and computing, may have summarized the two stories of personalization via technology with this:

I am no Pollyanna about technology. The record of how society took up earlier technologies is frighteningly bad. We first made automobiles in the hundreds of millions and then worried about how to mend the damage done by deforming our cities, polluting our atmosphere and changing the lives of our teenage children. Why should we as a society do better this time? 

I don’t know whether digital technology can hurt the atmosphere. But I do know that it could make a dramatic difference for the better or for the worse in the lives of children, and that there is no guarantee that it will be for the good. Quite the contrary, if one goes by what one sees happening today, it is almost guaranteed that the technology will be used mindlessly or for the profit of corporations rather than for the benefit of children.

In which story of personalization and technology are you a character?

ADHD: Fictitious Epidemic?

I, like Sir Ken Robinson, am not qualified to determine whether ADHD is such a thing or not. I am not a health care professional - I'm an educator.

The purpose of this post is not to end the discussion because I've come to a conclusion which we must all adopt; rather, I simply want to continue this very important dialogue that affects a great deal of our children.

The first ten years of my teaching career were spent in middle school, but I've recently changed my teaching assignment - rather drastically, actually. I now teach in a "one-room school house" inside of the local hospital for children under the age of 18 who present a wide range of mental health related difficulties; ADHD is a popular one.

So now I have a question:

What kind of learning environment should I provide these students?

At first this question might seem benign: one might be quick to answer "whatever is best for the child's needs"... but it might not be that simple.

Here's what I mean: let's be honest, if everything was peachy with these kids at home and school, they might not be in the hospital in the first place. So while they are with me, we are trying to figure out how to help them so they can experience success in the world that they came from.

If I provide them with the traditional sit-and-get, in your desk, in your row, remain seated, raise your hand, be quiet, do your worksheet, study for and write your test - kind of education, I will end up providing far different observations and assessments than if I provided the students with a more differentiated and engaging education that more appropriately meets their needs.

But if I provide a differentiated learning environment that broadens the definition of real learning and achievement (beyond just getting kids to do whatever it is we want them to do), might it be possible that these students would need less medication? And yet, might it be possible that these students would need more medication in order to "properly" fit into their traditional sit-and-get schooling?

At the very least, could it be possible that school needs to change at least as much as the kids? To take this further, could it be that our current, narrow definition of school is at least as much of the problem (if not more) as the kids?

I fear that at the end of their stay, many of these children will return to a school that will want to know if the child has changed enough to properly fit the system's needs when it might be more appropriate for the school to ask how the system will change to meet the child's needs.

What do you think?

Is changing school an act of unprofessionalism?

Sir Ken Robinson has said countless times that "schools kill creativity."

Alberta's Minister of Education Dave Hancock said recently "the current [Alberta] School Act is out of step with today's reality."

The purpose of this post is not to question whether Minister Hancock or Sir Ken Robinson are right or wrong (for the record, I think they are both right).

Rather, the purpose of this post is to ask:

If Minister Hancock or Sir Ken Robinson were teachers and they continued to make this kind of publicly critical commentary related to education and education policy, could their comments be interpreted as undermining confidence in the teaching profession and therefore in breech of the Alberta Teachers Code of Conduct?

Could it be argued their statements are critical of teachers and ultimately not upholding the noble profession of teaching? Are Minister Hancock and Sir Ken Robinson undermining the confidence of the teaching profession?

What if a teacher were to question and challenge school? What if a teacher openly and actively engaged in a dialogue around rethinking school? Would that teacher be undermining their colleagues? Would that teacher be in breach of their fidelity to their employer?

Needless to say, these questions and their corresponding answers carry enormous ramifications for educators who choose to speak up and lobby for change.

Sir Ken Robinson video

Here's the video I created for the Sir Ken Robinson event that took place in Red Deer, Alberta, in March 2011.

Standardization: it will fill you up but with nothing good

I know an awful lot of teachers who see consistency and standardization as a good thing.

It reminds me of the old sports joke where one spectator asks another "what did you think of the officiating?" and the other says "it was consistent... consistently awful... but it was consistent."

You can walk into a McDonald's anywhere in the world, order a meal and be "guaranteed" to get exactly what you expect... it will fill you up, but with nothing good. Sure, you could get by living off this standardized guarantee, but who would want to?

Sir Ken Robinson continues the fast-food metaphor for standardization in his book The Element:

Education is being strangled persistently by the culture of standardized testing. The irony is that these tests are not raising standards except in some very particular areas, and at the expense of most of what really matters in education. 

To get a perspective on this, compare the process of quality assurance in education with those in an entirely different field - catering. In the restaurant business, there are two distinct models of quality assurance. The first is the fast-food model. In this model, the quality of the food is guaranteed, because it's standardized. The fast-food chains specify exactly what should be on the menu in all of their outlets. They specify exactly what should be done in the burger or nuggets, the oil in which they should be fried, the exact bun in which they should be served, how the fries should be made, what should be in the drinks, and exactly how they should be served. They specify how the room should be decorated and what the staff should wear. Everything is standardized. It's often dreadful and bad for you. Some forms of fast food are contributing to the massive explosion of obesity and diabetes across the world. But at least the quality is guaranteed. 

The other model of quality assurance in catering is the Michelin guide. In this model, the guides establish specific criteria for excellence, but they do not say how the particular restaurants should meet these criteria. They don't say what should be on the menu, what the staff should wear, or how the rooms should be decorated. All of that is at the discretion of the individual restaurant to meet them in whatever way they see best. They are then judged not to some impersonal standard, but by the assessment of experts who know what they are looking for and what a great restaurant is actually like. The result is that every Michelin restaurant is terrific. And they are all unique and different from each other.

One of the essential problems for education is that most countries subject their schools to the fast-food model of quality assurance when they should be adopting the Michelin model instead. The future of education is not in standardizing but in customizing; not in promoting groupthink and "de-individuation" but in cultivating the real depth and dynamism of human abilities of every sort.

Just as standardization ensures that a real cook will never be employed by a fast-food chain, education reforms that mandate highly prescribed, content-bloated curriculums and standardized tests are working hard to ensure that real teachers need not work in schools again.

Why preschool shouldn't be like school

"'College begins in kindergarten.' No it doesn't. Kindergarten begins in kindergarten."

-Sir Ken Robinson

If you are a fan of direct instruction and the banking metaphor of education, you might find it interesting to read Alison Gopnik's Why Preschool Shouldn't Be Like School. The article features two experiments:

In the first study, MIT professor Laura Schulz, her graduate student Elizabeth Bonawitz, and their colleagues looked at how 4-year-olds learned about a new toy with four tubes. Each tube could do something interesting: If you pulled on one tube it squeaked, if you looked inside another tube you found a hidden mirror, and so on. For one group of children, the experimenter said: "I just found this toy!" As she brought out the toy, she pulled the first tube, as if by accident, and it squeaked. She acted surprised ("Huh! Did you see that? Let me try to do that!") and pulled the tube again to make it squeak a second time. With the other children, the experimenter acted more like a teacher. She said, "I'm going to show you how my toy works. Watch this!" and deliberately made the tube squeak. Then she left both groups of children alone to play with the toy. 

All of the children pulled the first tube to make it squeak. The question was whether they would also learn about the other things the toy could do. The children from the first group played with the toy longer and discovered more of its "hidden" features than those in the second group. In other words, direct instruction made the children less curious and less likely to discover new information.

Does direct teaching also make children less likely to draw new conclusions—or, put another way, does it make them less creative? To answer this question, Daphna Buchsbaum, Tom Griffiths, Patrick Shafto, and I gave another group of 4-year-old children a new toy.* This time, though, we demonstrated sequences of three actions on the toy, some of which caused the toy to play music, some of which did not. For example, Daphna might start by squishing the toy, then pressing a pad on its top, then pulling a ring on its side, at which point the toy would play music. Then she might try a different series of three actions, and it would play music again. Not every sequence she demonstrated worked, however: Only the ones that ended with the same two actions made the music play. After showing the children five successful sequences interspersed with four unsuccessful ones, she gave them the toy and told them to "make it go." 

Daphna ran through the same nine sequences with all the children, but with one group, she acted as if she were clueless about the toy. ("Wow, look at this toy. I wonder how it works? Let's try this," she said.) With the other group, she acted like a teacher. ("Here's how my toy works.") When she acted clueless, many of the children figured out the most intelligent way of getting the toy to play music (performing just the two key actions, something Daphna had not demonstrated). But when Daphna acted like a teacher, the children imitated her exactly, rather than discovering the more intelligent and more novel two-action solution.

All this brings new life to an old quote from Seymour Papert:

The scandal of education is that every time you teach something, you deprive a child of the pleasure and benefit of discovery.

But if this is true then perhaps it's not just preschool that shouldn't be like school. Perhaps all learners would be better off if every level of education was a little less like school.

Reflecting on Sir Ken

Ron Heinrichs is a Parkland School Board Trustee in Alberta. Here is his contribution to the Sir Ken Robinson Blogathon which was inspired by the Sir Ken Robinson event in Red Deer.

by Ron Heinrichs

Wow!

I was one of the lucky 700 (400 on the waiting list) able to obtain tickets to a public dialogue with Sir Ken Robinson in Red Deer at Westerner Park.

As a former teacher, principal and newly elected Trustee, it was a privilege and quite refreshing to hear a world class leading thinker on creativity and education. A noted author, speaker and international advisor, Sir Ken was able to use his humorous, stimulating and continuously thought provoking approach to challenge the educational status quo and belief systems that stifle creativity of our children.

In his words, “Creativity is as important now as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” It is clear, that increasingly, many students are unable to find and develop their true talents due to the constraints imposed by the present educational system. There can be little question that this leads to disinterest, low motivation and subsequent high dropout rates.

In his two hour talk and dialogue, Sir Ken, eloquently illustrated the kinds of changes that can lead to a blossoming of student creativity and subsequent learning. One memorable example he gave was the effects of a regular pairing of senior citizens with a class of young elementary students where reading was the prime focus. This lead to highly beneficial results for both groups - it was noticed that the seniors started to dramatically reduce their need for medication and the children’s reading ability and scores soared beyond any expectation. This, along with other illustrative examples, will undoubtedly have caused the many students, educators, and parents in the audience to question many facets of present day education delivery systems.

It should be noted that Alberta’s present day Education Minister, the Honourable Dave Hancock, was a member of the audience. Given the potential positive changes that a new and progressive Education Act might deliver, there may be some hope for a movement towards recognition and development of the true abilities and talents of all of our students.

In responding to audience questions, Sir Ken was quick to recognize that the need for change at all levels - from the governing policies to the classroom teaching strategies – is paramount. In the end, it was reassuring to hear someone, who understands the significance of many of the newer technologies, such as social media in student life and learning, also realize their limitations and their inability to replace the meaningful interactions that occur every day in the classroom.

This very well organized event was, without any doubt, a positive and much needed timely dialogue.

Changing the classroom

Barbara Gregory is a teacher in Alberta, and here is her contribution to the Sir Ken Robinson Blogathon.

I haven't blogged or have a blog but I always have something to say.

During our recent coaching session, we were asked to draw our dream classroom. It was a difficult task for me because I don't think of the physical classroom and items within as being in need of change but rather how we group and work with kids. 

Though I never taught in or attended a one-room-schoolhouse, the principles within appeal to me. There were groups of students using projects to guide their understanding of concepts, according to Dewey. Groups of students were using what they'd learned to build or experiment or design. There were pairs of learners, teaching and helping each other through guided questioning (reciprocal teaching) and individuals moving toward understanding on their own. 

As we develop a "smartlearning" and "Galileo" space here in our school, I believe the space itself isn't what we should focus on but rather the outcomes and how we can combine learners in meaningful ways. If the space facilitates the learning, then whoo-hoo! But if the space-planning detracts from real learning and engaged learners, then it's just a space.

Lend a hand

I think it's fantastic that Sir Ken Robinson is using his influence through social media to share a fantastic blog post by Seth Godin. It's a post that educators and parents could learn from...

I just wish Seth Godin, and others like him who celebrate widespread notoriety in the business world, would would use their influence to help make the world known to education experts such as Linda Darling-Hammond, Deborah Meier, Alfie Kohn, Yong Zhao, Diane Ravitch, Monty Neil, Pasi Sahlberg, and so many more.

While I'm sure Seth Godin would appreciate the Tweet from Sir Ken Robinson, which was retweeted about 100 times, Godin's post was tweeted almost 2000 times without Sir Ken's help.

I'd like us all to challenge those like Seth Godin to use their voice to promote the voices of others who need to be heard. I know too many brilliant blog posts that should get as much or more attention than Godin but go largely unnoticed.

Hey, that's Ken Robin

I was watching a Sir Ken Robinson TEDtalk with my 3.5 year old daughter Kayley. She said, "Hey, that's Ken Robin".

So I said, "yes, that's Sir Ken Robinson. He has a lot of good ideas about making school better."

She asked, "for who?"

I said, "for kids."

She asked, "which kids."

I said, "all kids."

She said, "that's nice."

We went back to watching.

Calling all Bloggers: Sir Ken Robinson Blogathon

I am putting out a call for people to participate in a Sir Ken Robinson Blogathon.

This blogathon is in response to the Sir Ken Robinson Public Dialogue that is taking place in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada on February 9 and 10.

Rather than have Sir Ken Robinson simply show up and talk for a couple hours just so we can all go back to work the next day like nothing happened, I really wish to encourage us all to participate in a public blogathon. This way, Sir Ken Robinson's talk will act as a catalyst for others to talk and learn. 

What is a blogathon?

• A blogathon is just a bunch of people who want to write about something and then collect all the links in one, easily accessible place for all to see. It's a way of starting and continuing an important conversation.

How to participate:

• Between now and February 20, blog about something related to education and Sir Ken Robinson. 
• Write as few or as many posts as you like.
• You don't have to attend the Red Deer event to participate. Anyone and everyone is welcome to give this a go.
• If you have your own blog or website, go ahead and publish your post. To ensure that I find your post, please fill out this online participation form. This will allow me to collect and link to your post when I do up the summary for this event. If you want to link back to this post or leave a link to yours in the comment area, that would be groovy!
• If you do not have a place to publish your thoughts, you can e-mail me, and I will share your post here on my blog and at www.learningourway.ca. My e-mail is joe.bower.teacher@gmail.com
• See that picture at the top of the post? You can use it as a badge to go with your post.
• If you are on Twitter, share your post by using the hashtag #sirken
• If you are a blogger, I challenge you to find a colleague who does not blog and get them to participate.

Prompts to spark your thinking:

• What elements of Sir Ken Robinson's work inspires you?
• What role should creativity play in education?
• In what ways does school need to change?
• How can school broaden its definition of achievement?
• How can school do a better job of encouraging all children to find their passion?
• What needs to happen so that school is something to be enjoyed rather than simply endured?

If you don't know much about Sir Ken Robinson, you could read his books The Element and Out of Our Minds, or you could watch these videos.

Now, go do that voodoo that you do!