Is Education a Noun or Verb?

Standby for RANT.

Face it. How we categorize something affects what we do with it. This is true in every facet of our lives, and no less in education. Just what "IS" education?

Right now, in South Dakota, as is happening in many other states, the underlying debate is whether education is a noun or a verb. Let me explain.

If education is a noun, it then becomes "…a person, place, or thing." It is something we can legislate, quantify, measure, buy, sell, manipulate, categorize, and normalize. We attempt to put it on an assembly line and push out a product - all the same - all measurable (or should that be miserable?) - and we create methods to assess whether the product is good, mediocre, or bad. They should come out, one after another, in development for years and years, and having been worked on by dozens of different people in numerous environments - finally to be released into the world in a perfect and finished state.

How do we measure this success? Let's test students and let them set the standards for how their teachers did - I'm sure they will be unbiased in grading their teachers, won't they?

Wait a minute. Numerous environments? Different people? Let's FIX that - we'll put in place a standard method of "assessing" the teachers (technicians, now…) who are creating the products. We want to make them all the same, so everyone gets the same "advantage."

The ones who produce the best products are awarded in some fashion, and that would usually translate into money in their pocket. If we incentive this production, we'll certainly get a better product! Let's pay the most productive - as determined by the afore mentioned flawed assessment process - $XX dollars for their hard work. This makes "education" better! (Oh, really?) How can actively fostering competition among staff members within a building or district help create an environment the improves the educational process? It instead does just the opposite - it stifles communication and sharing between teachers who are competing for the same dollars!

Let's instead consider education as a verb - something that's alive and precious and worthy of tending - only then can we make it what it needs to be.

Verbs convey action - change - movement - progression - something that's constantly growing and getting better. That's what is required in education. It is not something that can be captured and cloned, but rather an entity that needs nurturing, like feeding and watering a plant. There is growth and maturity and "greening" all along the way. Will repeated watering and feeding and pruning be required? Certainly - that's the only way to get the best result.

How do we nurture education? We need to take it out of the hands of the lawmakers and put it back with the schools, allowing it to be fine-tuned by people who have been trained to teach students, who have years and years of experience in classrooms and hallways and lunchrooms - those places where teachers and administrators meet, teach, and care for (dare I say love?) the students.

Wrestle this beast away from the legislators who have made a career of being elected and keeping constituents happy. I hold legislators in high regard for the awesome responsibility they have in shaping our state and nation. But being an elected official in no way qualifies them to define or create a workable educational environment. Make these same legislators come down to teach a class in an over-crowded room with all levels of ability and conduct. Ask them to sit in a meeting with parents, or observe the lunchroom, or monitor a detention session to find out what really goes on.

Maybe then, they would stop setting up competitions and races and such that create road blocks to the educational process, and instead put those same dollars into making things work instead of actively trying to break them.

Maybe then we could begin to create groups (teams, Professional learning networks, etc) who share best practice and learn from each other.

Maybe then they would put their hearts and souls into it like teachers and school staff do each and every day, to do everything we can to give education life.

That should do it!

Google Forms & an iPod Touch

As a Technology Integrator for our Middle School, I've been "playing" (isn't that what us GEEKS do?) with an iPod Touch and Google Docs to see how they can support each other. Most of all, I'm trying to see how the "forms" part of the spreadsheet can help in a classroom.

Here's what I've come up with so far - First tried forms with a simple survey to the teachers about what type of computer they want when the capital outlay process rolls out next year - desktop or laptop, and any special considerations for that machine. Initial experience very promising, but not perfect. Biggest mistake was that, not wanting to send it from my gmail account, I mailed the form to myself and then distributed from there on my school account. The form was in the forwarded email, so after staff filled out the form, but when they "submitted," it took them to the "real" form on the web, so they had to do it all again. Next time, I'll simply include the link and save them some time and effort. Glad it was a simple form.

Next experiment is with classroom observation and the iPod Touch. Created a form for observing student posture in 6th keyboarding class, and sent it to myself on my gmail account, which comes up on my "Touch." What I wanted was to walk around the room, enter info into the form and have it automatically fill out the spreadsheet with my observations. Then, enter grades at the end of the class, print for documentation, and be done with it.

The first form had "drop down" choices which, in theory, are good, but don't play well with a "Touch" because it will automatically submit the form before you are ready. So I went back and changed to check boxes with one required box that simply says "done." That gave me control of when it actually was submitted. That worked well, except that I had to keep going back to the email, click the link, and go to the form each time. Haven't tried embedding in a webpage yet - that's still to come. That may make it easier.

Note to Google Docs folks - Don't bury the published form so far into the document - make the finished form come up as maybe a subset of the document itself so it will show up on mobile sync applications for easy access. Or, maybe an application specifically for forms that support a Google Doc. This would really help.

If you have any suggestions for me, please chime in. I'd love to hear them. Thanks.