Month: September 2022

@TisForTraining 320: Doodley Squat. Yeah that is the title.

Punya MishraTonight we were joined by Punya Mishra, who is the Associate Dean of Scholarship & Innovation & Professor at Arizona State University and a contributor to the Silver Lining for Learning podcast and blog. We jumped right in to talking about education technology.

Punya and Maurice Coleman noted that we’ve gotten away from thinking that education technology is sexy, and are focusing on the theory of learning, benefits of using technology, and the pitfalls. We wandered through related topics, including the work Punya is doing at ASU. He brings his background in design to this work.

The Silver Lining Podcast started early in the COVID pandemic to interview educators. The podcast grew out of the blog post “What If Schools Are Closed for More than a Year Due to the New Coronavirus (COVID-19)?” The podcast is focused on the potential and real silver linings of education during the pandemic. He noted that is we design the education system correctly, it will be resilient, and that is an important point regarding education during the pandemic.

Great quote, “a large part of education is about becoming.”

Another quote, “I want [students] to remember that they’re not alone; if they need to know something, they’re surrounded by people and resources who can help them.”

We had a fascinating conversation about how do you put more topics into a student’s education, which is often what educators are asked to do. Punya said we should ask students five years after the class what they remember. Do they remember what we want? Can we then design our courses and programs around 5+/- things we want them to learn? Then connect everything to those things.  Maurice summarized this as:

Capture > Remix > Release

Besides Punya and Maurice, also on the call tonight were Paul Signorelli, Tom Haymes, Diane Hackabay, Ruben Puentedura, and Jill Hurst-Wahl.

Resources
Upcoming Episodes (The host messed up some dates)
  • Show 321 – October 6
  • Show 322 – October 20
  • Show 323 – November 3rd (Updated date)
  • Show 324 -November 17th (Updated date)
  • Show 325 -December 1st (Updated date)
  • Show 326 -December 15 (Updated date)
  • Show 327  –January 12th 2023! (Updated date)

@TisForTraining 319: No Messiahs

Ruben PuenteduraTonight the crew – Diane Huckabay, Jill Hurst-Wahl, Paul Signorelli, Tom Haymes, and Maurice Coleman – was joined by Dr. Ruben Puentedura. Ruben “is the Founder and President of Hippasus, a consulting firm based in Western Massachusetts, focusing on transformative applications of information technologies to education.”

Ruben started by giving us an overview of his work.  He has worked around the world and through that work has seen different patterns emerge as he has worked with different educational institutions. In an overview of his work and what he has been hearing, he mentioned anti-fragility, learn from learning, learn from what you have experienced, credentialing processes used in academia, and exploration of new paths into existing planning.  He then discussed the lack of portable water in Jackson, MS, and how that situation could benefit from what people are doing/learning in other countries. His final examples – before we began Q&A – was to talk about the change in student test scores during the COVID pandemic. Ruben is focused on how people think through these situations. While we cannot transfer what one group did to another situation, we can learn from how people think in specific situations.

And after a very interesting introduction to all this (above) from Ruben, the group began to discuss and ask questions. During our conversation we noted that data is boring and so telling stories is important. Our stories need to be data informed. As Diane said, “The stories contribute meaning.” Metaphors are important.

How do we teach organizations to be failure tolerant and take risks? We need cultures that are willing to try new things, create communities of practice, and learn from what they are doing. Success organizations are willing to talk about what works and doesn’t work, and learn from that. The organizations must have innovation as a shared value.

You can listen to this episode on TalkShoe or wherever you get your podcast episodes.

Resources

Nassim Nicholas Nicholas Taleb. (2014) Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. (paid link)

Tom Haymes. (2021) Designing Antifragile Learning Systems.

Tom Haymes. (2021) Making Our Learning Networks Antifragile.