We’ve all done it- finishing some online shopping and then life gets in the way or you get bored or frustrated and you close the window without finishing the transaction and you’ve left a few items in your cart. Some time later, you’ll usually get an email from the company saying something like “You left this tie-dye double-walled tumbler in your cart. Come back and check it out!”, or something to that end. Sometimes in the user experience (U/X) world, an abandoned cart is viewed as poor website or U/X design. Sometimes we just get distracted or just weren’t committed to the purchase. Either way, the abandoned cart email is a great tool built into the digital commerce experience.

From design to education: How can we re-engage our students with something that they’ve left in their learning shopping cart the day, week, or month before? How do we know they had the idea or question and left it there in the first place and how can we ease or automate the reminder/re-engagement process?

I’m usually ‘more questions, less answers’, but I thought I’d throw a few tools into this one. Quick note: remember there are plenty of no-tech and low-tech solutions as well, like jotting down into a notebook the questions that students ask but you don’t have time to dive deeper on or keeping a running parking lot in your classroom. Here are a few more technology-driven solutions as we navigate emergency remote learning hurdles today.

• Backchannel tools (Mentimeter)
• LMS or LMS-light (Canvas, Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams)
• Email
• Digital bulletin board (Flipgrid, Padlet, Wakelet, Google Keep)

After three nudges over the last few months, I dove deep back into writing after not feeling very ‘creative’.

Nudge #1: Freakonomics podcast about creativity where the discussion surrounded the basic premise that people we view as great creators and creative types generally put a LOT of failures out there into the world as well. There are scores of examples out there, but this was just nudge #1, so no movement yet.

Nudge #2: Reading the book Originals by Adam Grant where the author quotes psychologist Dean Simonton, “The odds of producing an influential or successful idea are a positive function of the total number of ideas generated.” Noted, Dr. Grant and Dr. Simonton, noted.

Nudge #3: While still reading Originals, I was also thumbing through Tribe of Mentors or Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss and the idea came at me for a third time (and second time within three days) and I couldn’t ignore it anymore. While I can’t find the original quote now, the punchline was the same as the first two.

And now, I’m back to writing. Publishing at least one post a day, but probably writing 4 or 5. Thirty or so drafts in various stages of completion and varying quality. Must… keep… writing.

Personal/Professional Growth, YouTube, and the Zone of Proximal Development

Anyone who has been through an education prep program or studied cognitive psychology has most likely heard of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), thanks to Lev Vygotsky. It is most often seen when applied to students and their education. The basic premise is that there are things you don’t know or can’t do even with guidance and support, there are things you know or can do alone, and there are things that you can’t do alone, but can do with guidance and support. The latter is your ZPD. It’s one of my favorite nuggets from cognitive psych.

Here’s the twist: it’s most often used for students in school, but this certainly applies to those of us who have long since matriculated.

When beginning a new project at the house, there are things that I already know how to do effectively (e.g., hang a picture, replace a light fixture); things that I cannot do at this time even with guidance and support (e.g., install a pool, find a leak in a pipe below the slab); and things that I cannot do alone, but can do with guidance and support (e.g., hang a fan, complete moderate woodworking projects). Those last few items are within my home repair ZPD. If you back up more than a decade, you would have needed someone there to guide you through those projects, had a repair/project manual, or at least had someone on the phone trying to walk you through. To complete the final group of examples today, I’m usually leveraging a tool that many of us have access to in our home- YouTube. In essence, we’ve been able to remove the need to have a more knowledgeable party within our social group to lean on. YouTube has become the facilitator of our ZPD activities.

For our own personal and professional growth, we regularly leverage tools like YouTube or Lynda.com or Instructables to drive our learning and bridge our knowledge gaps through our ZPD without needing to find a more knowledgeable party waiting in the wings.

Coming full circle to education: instead of only teaching students by being the ‘more knowledgeable party’ and creating a social and cognitive dependence, let’s teach our students how to effectively navigate and curate the world of resources that they have at their fingertips as well as those in the world around them.

When a student fails a required course, they are placed into credit recovery. The fact that we call it credit recovery shows what we truly value about a course. It’s not about the learning, it’s about the credit.

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This was a short one, but if you want to dive deeper into assessing what’s important through the lens of accuracy and precision, hop over to THIS POST. It’s one of my favorites in the archive.

This quote by Mitch Resnick so perfectly sums up my current views on education in general.

“What we need to do is focus more on trying to assess the things we value, rather than value the things that are most easily assessed.” – Mitch Resnick (as heard on Freakonomics podcast) – MIT Media Lab

This quote by Kentaro Toyama is my go-to when kicking off a conversation about technology in the classroom.

“Technology’s primary effect is to amplify human forces, so in education, technologies amplify whatever pedagogical capacity is already there.” – Kentaro Toyama (as read in The Atlantic) – University of Michigan

Many people talk about not having enough time to write a book, go to the gym, or complete a project…the list goes on.

It would be better phrased to say, “I don’t have the drive to prioritize [aspirational idea] right now.”

Let’s stop confusing ‘time’ with ‘priorities and drive’.

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While writing, I was reminded of a great article that was a catalyst into me prioritizing reading this year. Check out this beauty in the Harvard Business Review by Neil Pasricha on having ‘enough time’ to read more.

Beyond mentorship or a strong leader, who is on your personal board of directors (PBoD)?

Just as a board of directors acts to advise a corporation, your PBoD should act as your advisory council. Since you want unbiased advice, it’s probably best to leave your mom (and other direct family members) off your board. They are too heavily invested and supportive of your path and ideas to give you the straight talk you need. This is a group designed to be advisers to you as you journey through your career, so while some of them need to have knowledge of your field, it’s not vital that they all do. Your PBoD should be available to you when you need them, so make sure you have access to the members if they are truly going to be on your board. Diversify your PBoD as well, try to make sure you have members from different companies, fields, areas of your life, and roles within their organization. Here are a few roles you may want to include as you build out your personal board of directors:

• Role Model: Someone whom you admire and leads by example. Given the opportunity, you would want to follow in their footsteps. You value the role they play and the steps they took to get there.
• The Yin to your Yang: If opposing forces counterbalance, than you need to figure out your strengths and find someone who has opposite strengths (but is still in your corner!) to help you see a side of things invisible to you.
• Accountability Partner: Here is someone who is willing (and maybe a little TOO enthusiastic) about holding you accountable for the projects and career goals you set your mind to.
• The Wise Owl: This is someone preferably from a generation above you that has had significant experiences which they can pull from to advise you.
• The Young Gun: Experience isn’t the only valuable trait on your board. Also seek someone who is newer in their career who may not have been as heavily influenced by the industry and can provide a fresh, new perspective.
• The Sponsor: When you need someone in your corner who has some clout, this is who you turn to. This may also be the most intimidating person to approach to be on your board.

This is not an exhaustive list, but a starting point. Ideally you’ll have a handful of people who you can go to when you need guidance, so you’re not a burden on any one of them. Anywhere between 4 and 8 is a great ‘sweet spot’ for your board. Remember that this doesn’t need to be a formal structure and you certainly don’t need to hold board meetings, but just know who you can go to when you need specific kinds of support.

If you want to dive deeper into research about PBoDs, just search “Personal Board of Directors” and have at it, there’s plenty of reading material out there to keep you busy!

I read an interesting article this morning in The Atlantic about the two different uses for masks during the COVID-19 pandemic and it got me thinking about communication and interpretation. The two main uses of masks are to protect the wearer from particles present in the air (ingress) and to prevent particles being put into the air by the wearer (egress). Ingress protection requires medical-grade masks and are most appropriate for those in occupations and areas most heavily impacted like medical workers. Egress protection is a much smaller lift, as a simple cotton cloth mask can reduce egress by up to 99%. The masks are filters designed to operate for different uses and in different directions.

Turning this to communication: it’s much easier for us to be careful and deliberate about what we put out into the world (egress), than to control what happens when people start to interpret what we’ve shared (ingress). So you may have the ability and the right to share whatever message you’d like, but when it comes to interpretation and ingestion of your message you are at the mercy of the other person’s lived experiences and their lens of understanding. It’s much easier for us to filter our message at the source than to expect others to have the same medical-grade filters for interpretation.

This is a message for teachers, parents, and students about ‘summer slide’, ‘COVID slide’, or whatever we will call the next version of learning loss over periods of time. Let’s tell it like it is and deliver two important messages to our students:

1. It’s normal for us to forget things over time while we are not using them. That is literally how the brain works, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not a slide or a backslide.
2. You’ve worked hard and need time to recharge your batteries and reset. Just because you struggle to learn or retain does not mean you have to go to school all year while others are able to connect with friends and family. We can pick it back up when you return to school. No pressure. Unless we all have a year-round school year, we have designed the system to work that way!

I was driving down the turnpike and I noticed that there were two different areas where new exits were being built, which also means that there were new on-ramps being added to get onto the turnpike. The scale of that type of project is impressive. The number of workers and the amount of heavy equipment and the length of the projects are impressive. That made me think about accessibility and schools.

When do we decide to build a new on-ramp for our students? For roads, it may be through traffic analysis and the determination. Often times in education, we build new on-ramps when we have a special case that requires some new attention to detail or a method we haven’t used before, but if we are paying close enough attention to ALL of our students, we should be able to be dynamically building on ramps in the moments our students need them. The benefit of on-ramps in education for building skills and gaining knowledge is that the costs are low and the timeframe is short.

There are three main ways to prep a piece of land before you build a house. You can try to get the property as barren and flat as possible by clearing and leveling the land- wiping out most of the natural features and beauty in the process. Think of this as that new suburban development going in where the goal is consistency, speed, and keeping costs low.

You can fully embrace the natural landscape, keeping all the trees, water, hills, and boulders where they are- incorporating all the features into the design. Think of this as one of those unreal tree houses that you’ve seen on Discovery Channel or Animal Planet. The goal here is customization, so consistency, speed, and low costs are out the window.

Finally, you can work somewhere in between- keep some of the distinguishing features of the property while clearing/leveling enough to provide a strong foundation on which build the house.

In education, our students don’t come to us as a clear, flat piece of property on which to build. While that might be the most efficient place to start, we cannot strip away all that makes them unique before laying the foundation. The goal of education should not be consistency, speed, and keeping costs low. On the other hand, some teachers address 200 students per day so they can’t provide the full ‘Treehouse Masters’ experience for everyone. Instead they’ve got to take some time to assess the natural landscape, keep those important distinguishing features in place, clear out a few areas or misconceptions, and then use that knowledge to find the best location to lay the foundation before they start to build. This takes time, but is worth the effort. Let’s think of this before we push teachers to dive into content and building before they’ve had the time to assess the property.

Do people come to you as their sounding board?

Do they bring you their plan with no intent for input, just using you as their rubber stamp?

Do they come to you with a fully formed plan looking for your support because you’re their sponsor or cheerleader?

Do they bring you in at the onset of an idea because of your ability to brainstorm as their divergent thinking partner?

Do people bring you a mess with the hopes that you can be their organizer and taskmaster?

The point at which people engage you in the problem-solving, idea-generating, or general work processes should tell you a lot about how you are perceived and ‘what you are’ to those that surround you. Sometimes we are seeking feedback or input, but if we really analyze what we are being asked to do, when, and by whom, we can get a really good idea of the person we are.

Elementary Strategies, Secondary Programs

From my experience before the pandemic and the shift to distance learning; elementary level teachers tend to look for new STRATEGIES and TECHNIQUES to use as an intervention. At secondary, the first ask is for a new PROGRAM or TOOL to address shortcomings and gaps.

One thing that works at all levels and in all situations is to dive deeper into RELATIONSHIPS and HOME LIFE as an academic or behavioral intervention. When my teachers wrote repeat referrals on the same students, I asked them to tell me something about that student’s life outside of school or about their life at home. If there was no deeper knowledge, I knew that’s where we needed to put in some work before we would really find any success.

Being able to cover MORE standards and complete MORE assignments and learn MORE in class is only positive if the standards are authentic and useful, the assignments drive inquiry and spark curiosity, and the learning is meaningful to the learner. More is not always better.

What do you think we should be doing MORE of in education? Tag me on Twitter @dkonopelko.

I set a goal to read more books and do more writing in 2020.

Here is what I’ve read so far… it’s definitely been much more fiction heavy than I originally thought it would be, but I’ve really been getting lost in a good story lately. Must reads are tagged with **.

White Fragility – Robin DiAngelo
The Poet X – Elizabeth Acevedo
Draft No. 4 – John McPhee
Every Tool’s a Hammer – Adam Savage ** (if you’re into making stuff)
Teach Boldly – Jen Williams **
Ready Player One – Ernest Cline **
Thinking in Bets – Annie Duke
The Martian – Andy Weir
Move your Bus – Ron Clark
The Elements of User Experience – Jesse James Garrett
The Long Walk to Water – Linda Sue Park **
1984 – George Orwell

In what ways did we teach the soft skills that computer science and coding is lauded for teaching before using computer science and coding?

If learning computer programming isn’t really about the language, but about problem-solving, critical thinking, recognizing and interpreting patterns, and building algorithmic processes, then what else can we do that elicits that same skill building with a lower bar and less of a hesitation from teachers?

Paper airplanes as a child is one example that comes to mind. Building 20 different paper airplanes is a great low-stakes, low barrier for entry into this world:

1. You can start with the process for building a plane. (creativity)
2. If the plane flies well, you can still make gradual changes to the features and shapes. (iteration)
3. You may research some successful designs and see how they vary from yours and make appropriate changes. (research)
4. If your plane doesn’t fly, you check the basic folds to see if you made a mistake along the way. (debugging)

What other low- or no-tech ways can you engage in the thought processes of computer science and coding?

When traveling, we often notice the changes in pronunciation, inflection, use of idioms and colloquialisms, as well as body language and other non-verbal communication. This is very evident in natural or spoken/written language, but does it exist in math or artificial languages like those in computer programming? Is there a way to tell who wrote a computer program just based on the syntax and patterns and ideas in the code? Are there colloquialisms? What is the non-verbal equivalent within C++ or Python? What is the body language equivalent in math?

In practice, these variations exist not just from region to region, but person to person. They are built into the experience of living in an area and learning language as we grow.

The experience in school tends to be so much different. I loved languages in middle/high school. However, in 6 years of French, 3 of Spanish, and 1 semester of Russian (Cyrillic alphabet blew my mind), I don’t remember spending any time on this. Reflecting back, >90% of the time in these classes, we were hearing one natural English speaker who was fluent in another language teach us that other language. But it was mostly vocabulary and phrases of limited practicality.

Whether we are learning a language for practicality and utility, or for empathy, how do we draw on these nuances without living in an area?

What do you value?

Stop reading. Don’t go to the next sentence until you’ve really answered this. If that means you don’t read the rest of this for a week, that’s fine. I’ll wait. And don’t respond with the “I work with kids, so I better say it’s all about the kids” line.

What do you think your values are?
What do your WORDS indicate about your values?
What do your ACTIONS indicate about your values?
What do you value in the long-term?
What do you value in the short-term?
If asked, what would others think that your values are?
What do you wish that you valued, but you just don’t?

Are your answers aligned?

If you can’t be brutally honest with yourself about your values, how can you make long-term plans that support them?

Seven-year-old students should NOT be getting prepared for the workforce. They SHOULD be playing and building relationships and getting dirty and occasionally getting hurt. These activities build a great foundation on which to build character. Solutions and activities that are sometimes discredited from education because they ‘don’t exist in the real world’ are still important in learning and development. Additionally, some ideas and work that students engage in is not developmentally appropriate from a cognitive and social-emotional standpoint. Just because the standard has been spiraled down to its purest form doesn’t address the idea of whether or not a 6-year old is able to think at an abstract level pursuant to the expected work. Get outside and get messy! Tomorrow, we can teach you how to sit in and contribute to a meeting.

Let’s increase the impact of our teaching about digital citizenship by teaching rather than presenting.

Teach students how to protect themselves online- walk them through the process of reporting and blocking someone who is harassing them online on the actual platforms they have access to.

Teach students the difference in style and tone when writing private messages and public posts- allow them to publish work online, comment appropriately, use teachable moments to drive discussion, create and send actual emails, and practice the skills we want them to possess.

Only use simulations, models, presentations, and modules when absolutely necessary.

If you don’t know how to teach that particular topic, be honest with yourself and the students, learn alongside the group, or research and learn it a few days before the kids like you did the first year you were assigned four sections of physical science.

It’s easy to label yourself as one of these and we see them thrown around a LOT these days, but it’s difficult to truly earn them. Are any missing from the list?

Change-maker
Innovator
Disruptor
Mover and Shaker
Influencer
Thought Leader
Transformation Specialists
Accelerator
Change Agent

I’ve got a love-hate relationship with sentence stems in the classroom. I understand their role with cognitively complex ideas and activities like socratic seminars, meta-cognition, and reflective tasks. I also think they are used as a crutch rather thank making thinking visible. We can discus that these tasks or ideas are difficult for anyone to put into words and require deep thought. They can’t really be boiled down to a few words put at the beginning or end of each sentence you say. No discussion or conversation ever sounded natural or professional or authentic when everyone in the room was speaking using sentence stems. I’ve yet to work on a project at the college leveled or any job where sentence stems were effectively employed.

What are some other ways to guide people into deeper conversations and more metacognitive thought without using sentence stems?

Tag me @dkonopelko in a response on Twitter!

Someone will always misinterpret what you type or write regardless of how thoughtfully and carefully you craft your message and construct your sentences. It is viewed through their lens and experiences, and you miss being able to deliver the verbal and non-verbal clues to your meaning. Maybe it’s time that we introduce some new rules or punctuation usage to indicate sarcasm as opposed to genuine thought, different degrees of excitement, and of course bring back the interrobang (‽).

::Sure, just what we need- more punctuation to misuse and misinterpret!::