28 Days of Writing Archives - Page 2 of 7

My Reflection on #28daysofwriting

Tom28 Days of Writing, BloggingFebruary 28, 2015June 28, 20154 Comments

It was in about early January when I began to mull over the idea of getting back into a writing habit. I wanted to renew the discussion and connectedness I enjoyed through my blog and get myself writing regularly again. The #28daysofwriting idea sprang from that desire.

I have managed a post every day – in case you missed any, here are my 28 blog posts (using OneTab). Here is the link to the #28daysofwriting blog category.

It has been a fascinating experience to be sharing it with over 100 other writers, educators and bloggers from around the world. Some of those who signed up didn’t manage to stick at it and others didn’t post everyday. But it doesn’t matter. To begin with there was lots of “I am not sure if that is breaking the rules” type comments, which made me smile.

However you participated and I am grateful to everyone, whether writer, reader or commenter, who took part, I just hope the challenge has made you think about what professional or personal writing means to you and you have learned something along the way. Here are some of my reflections.

Writing as Thinking

For me I have learned that this is a vital part of the way I think and the way I work. The month has challenged me to write and publish more frequently, and the effort has only strengthened my belief that writing is core part of my life. It is vital to me and I have enjoyed every moment. It has helped me share ideas that were swimming around and has proved the cathartic process I knew it was.

Forming the Habit

This challenge was a very personal endeavour to write more frequently and regularly, to dispel the blog guilt and begin to form a habit of publishing. I still think time will tell. This spike in activity will not continue for me and I will fall into a more mellow rhythm of posting I suspect. I have learned that I can find the time to do it. One of the reasons for this is that I value it. I have been able to find the time because writing is important to me.

Reading and Commenting

In the future I am keen to turn my attention to reading and commenting (#28daysofcommenting is all set for March) as the natural parallel to maintaining a blog. This month has been about writing, but for our education communities to remain strong we need habits of reading, commenting and discussion. If you are looking back on a month of writing like me, perhaps you will consider a month of commenting and discussion.

I maintain that it is a fading part of our professional communities and the longer form discussion is being replaced by micro engagements that barely scratch the surface of what is possible. Let’s rally round and show our support for those brave enough to share by leaving an encouraging comment or challenging question. Let’s show the community we are not just lurking but there with them. Let’s increase the frequency, depth and quality of educational blog comments and discussions.

Being Accountable to My Network

I stated I was embarking on this challenge for February to tens of thousands of people. It is quite a clarifying experience being accountable to that. Scott Belsky refers to it in his book Making Ideas Happen. It has been even better to share the month long writing experience with so many others also having a go. As I have already said, I am so very grateful to everyone who accepted the challenge and followed my crazy idea.

A Wise Crowd

I have been able to learn so much from the sharing of others. Throughout the month I have been able to read blogs from connections I made years ago as well as teachers I have not had the chance to meet with yet. It has been so refreshing to see blogging and professional writing alive and well and to share in the wisdom within these special networks. I have always advocated for this particular type of professional sharing and I hope it inspires more people to start a blog and begin to share.

What is Different and Next Steps

From the experience this month I am more confident about the structure of my writing, I know how long I need for certain types of posts, I know when I write best and in what conditions. I have a better sense of the types of posts I want to write about and the core topics I will be exploring in the future. I spent a lot of time this month studying the way content is being published online nowadays and I have better understanding of the technical requirements of generating great writing.

#28daysofwriting continues. There are many who will be still writing and posting so keep tabs on the hashtag. Another round starts for some in March and although I am not blogging I will be maintaining the mailing list I set up for those who signed up. I will be sharing more tips and ideas on writing, and general curiosities about professional blogging.

#28daysofcommenting begins in March. Please consider joining this challenge to complement the success in February with your own writing. Just comment on other people’s blogs, you can do one a day or 28 minutes of commenting each day – whatever you like. Tweet and share your comments using the hashtag.

Thanks again for your support and whatever you do, keep writing.

Convene your Classroom Creative Council

Tom28 Days of Writing, CreativityFebruary 26, 20153 Comments

During some research on Thomas Edison I stumbled on the fact that he deliberately surrounded himself with a diverse range of expertise in order to generate new thinking and ideas, a creative council. In a recent post I referred to the concept of “casting widely” to make creative connections, Edison gathered people into his creative council to accelerate this. It is a practice that has been replicated by many visionaries, inventors and, more recently, innovative companies.

Classroom Creative Council

Andrew Carnegie called this creative council a “mastermind group alliance” a gathering of people towards a common creative goal. I was struck by this lovely idea, not so much in the sense of connecting classrooms with a varied external expertise, but the idea that you could convene an imaginary Classroom Creative Council.

Encouraging a creative mindset and learning about what this actually means can be done through creative inquiry processes such as design thinking. They emphasise the imperative of thinking and connecting deeply with a topic and developing a range of dispositions. But one hugely important element within an experience of creative inquiry is the modelling from peers, adults and who we might learn about.

Just picture an imaginary Classroom Creative Council of visionaries, inventors and innovators from our past and present, who epitomise the mindsets and dispositions we all want to uphold. A Creative Council filled with members that everyone in the class has learned about and who we recognise for their individual strengths.

Who Would Have A Seat?

You might plan for literacy, science and history lessons about these characters as they are introduced, or indeed offer the opportunity for the class to put forward their own recommendations for the council. The reason you would have such a reference group would be as Wily Walnut puts it, to:

“tune in” to the vibration, to the morphic field, to the archetypal meme, perhaps to the very soul of that person in order to share in their wisdom, insight and ways of thinking, acting and being.

With one of the members of the Creative Council in mind we might ask a series of questions and provocations to establish a new point of view about a project or idea. Imagine if Edison or Da Vinci, or any number of creative visionaries, were the subject of the following prompts:

What would…think?
How would … approach this problem?
What historical precedent or example can inform us about what to do next?
Who would be smiling about what we are doing and why?
What would … say are the biggest challenges to this approach?
What actions would … take next?
What would … say we had forgotten and why?
Would … be proud of us?

In order to answer these questions well, with a depth and authority that allows a new perspective to contribute to our work, we would need to better understand the people involved. The members of our council should be familiar to us, we would need to know their mindset and approach to work and life. Equipped with a deeper knowledge of these role models, we might be able to gain insight from their imaginary mentorship.

I am always inspired myself by historical figures who are beacons of creative light for us to follow and in some future posts I will outline some of the elements we might look for in those figureheads.

In the meantime why not make a suggestion in the comments as to who would be in your Creative Council. Who inspires you? Who would you like as a virtual mentor contributing to your ideas? Who would have a seat in your Creative Council chambers? I would be fascinated to learn who you would nominate.

pic – Portrait of Ada by British painter Margaret Sarah Carpenter (1836)

Education Suffers from a Lack of Knowledge Urgency

Tom28 Days of Writing, Learning, TwitterFebruary 25, 20152 Comments

Dave Binks, a headteacher you would happily call a leader, was one of the first principals I worked with. He gave me the space and time to enjoy my teaching, to innovate and explore the untrodden path. To take risks and to fail.

Many years later I moved on and became a deputy headteacher myself and I really struggled. I had some of the hardest most challenging times in my working life. I struggled to find that balance between management and teaching and was having to compromise the quality of what I was doing – just to get it done!

I didn’t have access to the knowledge and ideas I needed in those moments when I needed it the most. How I wished I could have browsed Dave’s brain.

A Lack of Knowledge Urgency

We have a lack of knowledge urgency in our profession – we don’t feel the sting of wasted ideas or the importance of capturing and sharing our knowledge and experience, it simply is not in the front of our minds. There are over 430,000 teachers in the UK and in Australia just over 250,000 according to 2011 figures. But only a tiny fraction share ideas using Twitter.

On average in England over the last 25 years there have been around 15,000 teachers retiring from the profession every year. People like Dave who take their expertise and skill with them. That equates to nearly 525,000 years worth of teaching experience laying quiet and dormant on the back 9 of golf courses and between the aisles of garden centres. This saddens me.

This great body of latent knowledge going missing, but also the lack of urgency from current teachers to capture and share what they know. Let me give you an example of what I mean by knowledge urgency:

In 1972 the Imperial War Museum established the Department for Sound Records and began in earnest to archive and collate oral histories of those involved in conflicts and especially those involved in the First and Second world wars. It is a striking and extensive archive of over 56,000 hours worth of historical records. The urgency to capture this knowledge is clearly linked to the passing of the generations involved.

These pieces of knowledge are lengthy to produce and take time and deep thought to capture. Social technology has begun to reshape the timeframe needed to share our expertise all we need is a simple device and we can tweet and blog our experiences on the go.

Ross Selkirk Taylor was a British Army driver during the second world war and his pocket diary was his record of his experiences. Since then his grandson has begun tweeting his written diary entries, but in 1940 they were private to him and had no immediate impact on those around him. The postal service was often the sole means with which to share his experiences whilst away from home and that was heavily censored. The ranks of other army drivers could not learn from his published experiences and connect with him to learn. (Despite some hunting the original @DriverRoss account is no longer active.)

Twitter perfectly encapsulates the fragmentation of our knowledge and I think it has a direct impact on the frequency of sharing – the likelihood that people, teachers, openly share an idea or publish their thinking is increased if the scale is smaller.

Share What You Know

As teachers we need to be more open about our work and quickly realise that the whole profession can benefit from our collective expertise – we mustn’t become silos of knowledge ourselves. Nor do we want our knowledge and experience, our stories and ideas to lie dormant, our knowledge needs to live on and impact those around us, to be contextual and be flexible enough to improve the lives of as many people we can.

The phrase “Pearls of wisdom” is often attributed to this poem by James Russell Lowell.

These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.

I love the delicate description of the pearls of thought – “softly lucent as a rounded moon” – we need to ensure we treasure the jewels of knowledge we have – and continue to pluck them from their seabed and do more to share them with other teachers, display and publish them, string them on threads, and help everyone bathe in their moonlit glow.

My EDtalk Interview from ULearn14

Tom28 Days of Writing, Conference, Curiosity, Design ThinkingFebruary 24, 2015July 12, 2021Leave a Comment

During my trip to New Zealand last October I was contributing some sessions on design thinking for learning to the impressive ULearn conference in Rotorua. Strangely it was the first time I had spent any time in New Zealand running workshops or working with teachers.

It was a memorable week for lots of reasons and the following film was crafted for Core Education‘s Edtalks, in which I outline some ideas around design thinking for learning in our schools.

Tom Barrett from EDtalks on Vimeo.

Tom Barrett of NoTosh in Australia believes there is a place in schools for rigorous creative processes that are built on a similar set of values in the pedagogy we use. He explains Design Thinking, which allows learners to engage with an approach based on curiosity and creativity, and to have an impact on the world around them.
Tom talks about the way technology can speed up “the finding out” – the move from unknown to known, and he challenges teachers to find ways to protract the uncertainty. If children can “stay in the question” for longer, we will allow the inquiry and creative process to begin.

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I hope you enjoy the little snippet of my actual voice and not just my writing voice – feel free to drop a comment below if you have any questions about what I share. If you are interested in learning more about my work with schools on design thinking for learning you can also check out NoTosh.

Learning in Perpetual Beta

Tom28 Days of Writing, Learning, MindsetFebruary 23, 2015March 9, 20181 Comment

For today’s post I thought I would explore a little more deeply the themes and overlapping thinking surrounding my previous post about a Mindset of Failing. In particular I’d like to unpack this concept that learning is and always should remain in perpetual beta.

It is actually a considerable challenge to get perspective on the completeness of our work with students. I am not referring to when projects end or when we have finished that piece of artwork with them – the year long (sometimes much longer) development of learning relationships is often hard to wrap ourselves around. Since leaving the classroom I have experienced quite finite projects that have a short timeline and stuff you have to get done. I still find this refreshing.

Perpetual Beta = Prototyping Disposition

vIn an earlier post this month I referred to the mindset we need to take towards the things we create and the way we learn. It is not just about junk modelling or computer aided design or 3D printing or physical building – a disposition towards prototyping means we:

Are committed to the expertise and ideas we might gain from others and don’t just simply rely on our own perspective.
Believe in the value of feedback and how critique can move our ideas forward.
Engineer as many opportunities for feedback as we can as, early as we can.
Are willing to share what we create when it is extremely, painfully incomplete.

When a piece of software is being developed it has various stages it goes through, depending on the scale of the product of course. Beta is a time for testing, as defined below:

Beta, named after the second letter of the Greek alphabet, is the software development phase following alpha. It generally begins when the software is feature complete. Software in the beta phase will generally have many more bugs in it than completed software, as well as speed/performance issues and may still cause crashes or data loss. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing. The process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release and this is typically the first time that the software is available outside of the organization that developed it.

Perpetual beta is when this state is extended, sometimes indefinitely, a web service or software product remains in constant development with feedback and testing driving new feature releases. A product remains in perpetual beta.

What does learning in perpetual beta mean?

The links here with the way we think about learning and feedback in particular are quite strong. In my post about the Mindset of Failing I pondered on the mental resilience of tennis players compared to other athletes. Losing points is regular and failing is part of the back and forth of a tennis match, very different to other sports. The post was commented on by Pam Hernandez who remarked that:

This made me think about how we traditionally provide feedback on student learning which is not unlike the analogy to football. I’m thinking American football in this case and getting an A on assignment is much like scoring a touchdown. It’s not uncommon to see teachers use sports analogies and comment “Homerun” or “Touchdown” on good work. I like the idea of rewarding effort along the way and making it okay to make mistakes along the way and be rewarded for the learning. It’s a different mindset for parents, teachers and students. (Pam Hernandez)

And it is here that we have the biggest opportunity to shift the way people are thinking about failure and failing. It is no small feat mind you. There are cultural and ethical stances people have that influence their perception of mistakes and failure in learning. We need to help the whole learning community appreciate this positive prototyping disposition. Learning in perpetual beta is all about continuous improvement with an emphasis on engineering as many opportunities for feedback as we can.

Take a look through some of these other posts from my this blog about assessment and feedback and plan to take some action:

Pic: failure is cool by Steffi Reichert

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