Robin's Interesting Thoughts

The Hour of Code website offers this tip for teachers: “It’s okay to respond: ‘I don’t know. Let’s figure this out together.'”

Read that again. “I don’t know. Let’s figure this out together.” How many times did your high school teachers say that?

There is a slowly growing recognition that technology and culture are changing much too quickly for teachers to have all the answers. The answers are typically found on the internet. In contrast, the teacher is there to provide the many other intangibles that are a prerequisite for learning, such as connecting with students on a personal level; nurturing curiosity and integrity; creating a space where students can fail safely along the way to mastery; and many others.

So many aspects of teaching have been intertwined for decades in the single profession of teacher. But software technology is starting to allow a much greater degree of specialization, and the various strands of the profession are gradually being untied and examined individually.

I know many teachers will miss their wide-ranging traditional roles. But specialization is also the best route I can fathom to cope with the increasingly urgent need to update the curriculum to keep up with the times. Code.org is “basically training existing math and science teachers […] to become computer science teachers.” [link] Computer science didn’t exist a few decades ago. Social media studies didn’t exist five years ago. The next world-changing technology is being developed right now. How can teachers keep up?

By not trying to do everything themselves — such as developing their own lesson plans, or knowing all the answers. Fantastic curriculum is increasingly available for free online (often with built-in quizzes and other feedback) — developed by teachers who are specializing in those subject areas. Can classroom teachers take advantage of those resources to focus on other strands like student engagement and motivation?

From another perspective, the teacher without all the answers is practicing a type of “growth mindset.” It’s hard to expect a student to understand the value of lifelong learning if their teachers do not model it. From this perspective, the accelerating pace of technological change has the byproduct of reinforcing the need for lifelong learning across all walks of life. Teachers have the dual challenge of preparing students for this changing world and coping with it themselves.

“We’re basically training existing math and science teachers […] to become computer science teachers. The beauty of training those existing teachers is that the school doesn’t need to hire anybody new; there’s no budget change for the school; the existing staff can offer this course.”

-Hadi Partovi, Code.org [video ~ 33:00 mark]

“In Washington State, each graduate in computer science is met with 27 open computer science jobs. [Nationally, the ratio is 3 jobs per graduate.]”

-Hadi Partovi, Code.org [video ~20:30 mark]

“To [the younger] generation, it seems slow, purposeless even to go from website to website in a single, sub-par Web browser environment when they can get rich app experiences right from their [mobile] home screen.”

– Owen Williams, TNW

“The way these creative individuals confront life suggests that it is possible to be both extroverted and introverted at the same time. In fact, expressing the full range from inner- to outer-directedness might be the normal way of being human. What is abnormal is to get boxed in at one of the ends of this continuum, and experience life only as a gregarious, or only as a solitary being.”

-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow

“In the absence of information, people make it up.”

-Anonymous

Robert Brunner, director of Apple’s Industrial Design group in the 1990’s, recruited Jony Ive to his team. Some of his thoughts on how he did this are recorded in Jony Ive by Leander Kahney.

Creating a work space:

“[The studio] was essential to recruiting talent. I can’t have people working in cubicle hell. They won’t do it. I have to have an open studio with high ceilings and cool shit going on. That’s just really important. It’s important for the quality of the work. It’s important for getting people to do it.” -Robert Brunner

Getting the word out:

Talented, ambitious designers were more inclined to go to firms with a strong creative history like the Bay Area’s IDEO.

To help with recruiting, Brunner […] started promoting his work through design magazines. He created mock-ups of fantastical Apple products and ran big glossy photos of them on the back of I.D. magazine, the international design bible. One was a gigantic bicycle navigation computer that showed maps and local landmarks. Another was a chunky wristwatch computer the size of a cantaloupe.

“They were concepts, not real products,” said Brunner. “They started to get attention. It was totally recruiting. No other reason. They were sketchy, information appliance models. A little bit tongue in cheek.”

“A particular subculture, dominated by computer engineers, is influencing the world of education to favor those school students who are most like that subculture.”

-Seymour Papert, Mindstorms (1980, p. 35)

“[To be a great manager,] you have to reconcile responsibilities that, at first sight, appear contradictory. You have to be able to set consistent expectations for all your people yet at the same time treat each person differently. You have to be able to make each person feel as though he is in a role that uses his talents, while simultaneously challenging him to grow. You have to care about each person, praise each person, and, if necessary, terminate a person you have cared about and praised.”

-Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
First, Break All The Rules

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has listed nine contradictory traits that are frequently present in the dozens of creative people he has studied. The seeming contradictions make creative people hard to understand. I identify with all of these except number 5.

Some of my favorite seeming contradictions:

• smart and naive
• playful and productive (responsibility and irresponsibility)
• attentive to real detail yet fluent in imagination and fantasy
• genuinely humble yet displaying a strong sense of pride
• rebellious and conservative
• very passionate about their work, but extremely objective about it