Chapter 7: Knowing, Making, and Playing
Quote
“A lifelong ability to learn has given human beings all kinds of evolutionary advantages over other animals...homo sapiens, homo faber, and homo ludens—or humans who know, humans who make (things), and humans who play”
By explaining that play has given humans an “evolutionary advantage,” Thomas and Brown validate play as more than meaningless activity done by children and recreational breaks taken by adults.  It also leads the reader to believe that play can lead to success.  

Question
“Whatever one accomplishes through play, the activity is never about achieving a particular goal, even if a game has a defined endpoint or end state. It is always about finding the next challenge or becoming more fully immersed in the state of play.”
What types of challenges should educators create?  Is gamification and badging enough?  

Connection
“In a world where images, text, and meaning can be manipulated for nearly any purpose, an awareness of the play of context and the ability to reshape it become incredibly important parts of decision making.”
In my previous MA program, I explored research transliteracy. At the time, the term was being used among librarians and focused on helping students comprehend multiple forms of media, such as videos, websites, and audio files.  It was an appropriate issue to discuss at the time, but the term transliteracy has now been replaced with digital literacy.  Thomas and Brown extend upon the concept of literacy by explaining that students need to be able to do more than comprehended digital media-they need to be able to communicate using these mediums.  

Epiphany
“Learning content through making is a very different exercise from learning through shaping context.”
Making resonates more than shaping content.  Consider the questions “What did you make today?” Followed by, “What did you learn while making that?”  These are much different than a simple, “What did you learn today?”

Chapter 8: Hanging Around, Messing Around, and Geeking Out
Quote
“Geeking out provides an experiential, embodied sense of learning within a rich social context of peer interaction, feedback, and knowledge construction enabled by a technological infrastructure that promotes “intense, autonomous, interest driven” learning.”
When people “geek out,” they become the “lifelong learners” educators have been striving to create for the past few decades.  The social connections, tools, and access to information provided by technology enable learners to “geek out.”

Question 
“In essence, hanging out is a social, not merely technological, activity. It is about developing a social identity.”
Our students are already building these identities, but so many educators just look the other way. How can create and encourage hanging out experiences for adults? Is Facebook enough?

Connection 
“Experimenting with the familiar in terms of content and tools is apt to open up a gap between this first unfocused form of play and the potential that emerges because of it. The gap is between the way something could be—what a person begins to imagine she can accomplish—and the way it is.”
“I have an idea.  Hang on.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a surprise. Let me go try to make it. BRB”
This conversation regularly occurs between my cohort mate Jake Bowker (@jbowker88) and I.  We often share tools and discuss our learning, but sometimes he just completely disappears to immerse himself in play.  He will spend hours teaching himself how to use tools he already knows and/or discovering new tools needed to create his project.  Often, his vision of “way something could be” ends up evolving along the way as it is shaped by the learning that occurs as through play. This play leads to an increase his learning and the quality of his product.      

Epiphany 
“Ito and her team constructed a typology of practices to describe the way young people participate with new media: hanging out, messing around, and geeking out. We believe that these three practices could frame a progression of learning that is endemic to digital networks.”
Okay, Jeff! Of course, as soon I read the title to this chapter, I could hear Jeff Heil’s (@jehil5) proud chuckle.  The three badges we are earning in this class are named after these three practices.  Additionally prior to any exposure to this text, I already used the term “geeking out” in a way that aligned with this meaning. I often say that I “geek out” when I spend hours on my laptop building an invented project.  Lately my “geekiness” has been enhanced as I share and collaborate with my peers.  

Chapter 9: The New Culture of Learning for a World of Constant Change
Quote
“And where imaginations play, learning happens.”
In preschools, imaginative play is a part of the daily routine and integrated into many lessons.  As a result, the young children in these environments spend their days immersed in learning and chose to engage in imaginative play during free time, such as playground time.  This applies to the students in our classrooms and people in general.  The best way to encourage learning is to provide opportunities for students’ to play.

Question
“Only when we care about experimentation, play, and questions more than efficiency, outcomes, and answers do we have a space that is truly open to the imagination.”
Why do all of the academic examples focus on colleges and universities?  Are primary and secondary institutions really that far off?  What about schools like High Tech High?

Connection
“The team relies on everyone to understand that their success as individuals creates something that amounts to more than the sum of its parts.”
In my roles as ASB adviser, yearbook adviser, and volleyball coach, I support teams of students as they work together to create or accomplish something that is greater than what any individual student--or I-- could produce.  Even with all of this experiences, it is still challenging to provide similar learning opportunities in classroom lessons.

Epiphany 
“Maybe members of the new collective will provide an existing piece of information that makes the problem solvable. Or maybe they will inspire a player to find a new, unique solution to the problem and share it with the collective in turn.”
This is why we need more people in the edtech community!  Currently many vocal and visible leaders, or “educelebrities,” exist among this group, but many questions and challenges still exist.  By bringing new educators into the conversation, we may be able to find “unique solutions” that will benefit all of our students.

Works Cited
Thomas, D., & Brown, J. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, Ky.: [CreateSpace?].

Two weeks ago, I made my first conference presentation. I presented Writing from the Ground Up with Google Drive at the EdTechTeam Google Apps for Education (GAFE) Summit Riverside.  When the session began, I was excited.  The room was packed with almost fifty eager-to-learn participants.  I pushed them to begin with an activity instead of just sitting idly and taking notes. I sensed their reluctance, but they jumped right in and began exploring a shared Google Drive folder containing writing process templates and samples.  

Then, it all blew up.  

Suddenly, the template folder was missing and copies of documents began popping up by the dozen.  I attempted to just fix the problem by using revision history by identifying the folder thief and restoring the folder.  This worked, but as soon as I moved the templates folder back to the shared folder another participant took the resources folder!  And copies just kept appearing!  It was a mess. I kept my cool.  I smiled.  I enlisted the support of a colleague who was in the session along with a few of the more experienced participants.  But, it was too big of a mess to fix within a few minutes. And, every time I looked up someone was walking out the door!

I took a deep breath. I abandoned my hands-on session that followed an inquiry model.  I sat on a desk. I thanked the twenty remaining educators for their patience and began telling them how I use Google Drive to support the writing process. I showed examples and student work.  A few actually seemed relieved to learn by simply listening and watching instead of creating their own documents.  They were friendly and praised the tools and process I shared.  I promised to locate the stolen folders and send an email containing new folder and instructions guiding them to make individual copies.

I smiled as they left.  But, behind the smile, I was frantically thought about how I knew better. I have been using Google Drive since before it was even called Drive. I knew shared folders were messy. I knew I should have used file>make a copy, but instead I decided to try something new in an attempt to have my participants collaborate and share their work.  What was I thinking? Also, I hadn’t considered that many GAFE participants are complete beginners--even though I had labeled my session #beginner and #intermediate.  I failed. My presentation was a flop. (I was secretly grateful these beginning GAFE users were also not very active on Twitter!)

If this presentation had occurred a year and a half ago, it would have devastated me.  I may have even begun crying or become visibly frustrated. I may not have been able to salvage the session.  Even if I had pulled through, I would have been incredibly embarrassed. My mind and mouth would have been filled with frustrated criticisms and complaints. I would have felt like I was not good enough to present. I would have given up.  At that time, I had what Carol Dweck, the author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, explains is a fixed  mindset; I fell into the practice of “Believing that...qualities are carved in stone” (2008).  At the time of the presentation, I was halfway through Dweck’s book, but I had already been unintentionally transitioning from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset for more than a year. The growth mindset, according to Dweck, follows “the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts” (2008).  I  have already had a year and a half of change due to a growth mindset.  The growth began with small things like changing my eating habits, domestic routines, and exercise practices and intentionally returning to abandoned hobbies.  As I began to have small successes in these areas, my confidence grew.  I allowed myself to listen to the part of me that knew I was capable of growth.  This led to even larger changes, including decreasing my commitment to extracurricular activities at school, ending a long-term relationship, purging hundreds of items from my home, closing my eBay business,  and enrolling in a masters program.   Reading Dweck's book has helped me to realize that I have a growth mindset.

But, the way I handled this presentation flop showed more than just my willingness to learn.  I allowed myself to fail without being hurt.  As Dweck explains, “Even in the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from” (2008).  The pages of Mindset was not my first exposure to the idea that failures create opportunities for learning.  One of my close friends, Hunter Gluam (who has never even heard of Mindset) encourages growth mindset thinking.  When I discuss a challenging situation or relationship with him, he says, “But, what are you learning from this experience? What is this person teaching you?  If it hurts, identify the cause of the pain and be grateful for the pain.  How is it changing you?”  Without realizing it, Hunter has been encouraging me to seek challenges and take risks.  Additionally, I recently read Kevin Brookhouser’s book The 20Time Project: How Educators and Parents Can Launch Google’s Formula for Future-Ready Innovation.  Brookhouser encourages teachers to “set your students up to fail” because “Every student is counting on us to teach them failure so they can learn to persist, to get dirty, to take risks, to fail without giving up, to dust themselves off, and to keep making and producing no matter what.   Additionally, the idea of providing opportunities for failure in classrooms is currently trending among the edtech community on Twitter.  Because I have allowed myself to listen to the voices supporting a growth mindset, I was able to walk out of the session giggling as I sent a selfie to my friends to amuse them with news of  my “epic fail.”  

At lunch, instead of pouting or complaining, I began debriefing the experience with my friends. My colleague, Cheryl Lynch (@clynchjccs), who was also presenting for the first time and I decided that we will need to  practice presenting at small conferences before presenting at a larger local conference. We began immediately researching future conferences.  My colleague and current professor, Jeff Heil (@jheil65), laughed at the story about my presentation and said, “Didn’t I tell you?  Never share a folder. That’s like presenting rule number one.  Always use file>make a copy.  Next time.”  Instead of being mad, I just laughed and harassed him for not telling me sooner.  Later, an experienced presenter who I had just met that weekend, Jesse Lubinksy (@jlubinsky), advised, “You just need reps.  It takes awhile.  I was even nervous today as I began my large session today. Keep presenting.”  I did not completely realize that day, but the people I chose to spend my time with also posses the growth mindset; they were able to see my story as a learning experience--not a definition of my ability.  

As I drove home from the conference, I excitedly decided that I would apply to present at the next available GAFESummit.  I knew that preparation and time commitment would add to my busy schedule, but I wanted to push myself to improve.  As Dweck states, “People in a growth mindset don’t just seek challenge, they thrive on it” (2008).  I agree. My application to the GAFESummit Orange County was accepted.  I will present Writing from the Ground Up with Google Drive again. And, this time, I will use file>make a copy.

Works Cited
Brookhouser, Kevin (2015-01-25). The 20Time Project: How educators and parents can launch Google’s formula for future-ready innovation. Kindle Edition.

Dweck, Carol (2006-02-28). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Chapter 2: A Tale of Two Cultures
Quote
“The primary difference between the teaching-based approach to education and the learning-based approach is that in the first case the culture is the environment, while in the second case, the culture emerges from the environment--and grows along with it.”
Thomas and Brown use the two definitions of culture to frame their explanation of the way education is changing.  They contrast the social science definition with the natural science definition.  This figurative comparison helps me to link the growth of a culture in a petri dish to the learning of a student in a classroom.

Question 
“Learning should be viewed in terms of an environment--combined with the rich resources provided by the digital information network--where the context in which learning happens, the boundaries that define it, and the students, teachers, and information within it all coexist and shape each other in a mutually reinforcing way.” 
What about teachers who have not yet utilized “the digital information network” as a learner? 

Connection 
“The second difference is that the teaching-based approach focuses on teaching us about the world, while the new culture of learning focuses on learning through engagement within the world.”
This aligns with the skills that are taught through project-based learning units.  This focus on skills rather than content also aligns with Common Core State Standards,National Council of Teachers of English’s 21st Century Literacies, and National Educational Technology Standards.  By teaching students skills instead of just content, we are preparing them to actively participate in the world.  

Epiphany 
“If we change the vocabulary and consider schools as learning environments, however, it makes no sense to talk about them being broken because environments don’t break.”
Honestly, over the past few months, I have engaged in many conversations about my school being “broken.” But, following Thomas and Browns’ perspective, I can see that my school may just be going through a bit of a drought. 

Chapter 3: Embracing Change
Quote
“If the twentieth century was about creating a sense of stability to buttress against change and then trying to adapt to it, then the twenty-first century is about embracing change, not fighting it.  Embracing change means looking forward to what will come next.  It means viewing the future as a set of new possibilities, rather than something that forces us to adjust.” 
Thomas and Brown begin to prepare the reader for their arguments explaining how education by putting it in a broader context.  It’s not just education that is changing--the whole world is changing. 

Question
“Yet while people in other adult learning cultures, such as amateur hobbyists, are innovating like crazy, workplaces have become relatively moribund.”
How can teachers be given opportunities to observe and understand innovative workplaces? 

Connection
“What happens, then, when you are dealing with change on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis?”
This reminds me of the popular explanation of the old industrial model of education in which teachers and schools did not adjust to their students--much less changes to content and tools.  At this time, it was possible to simply reuse the same classroom behavior expectations, routines, and curriculum year after year. The social culture and environment did not change.  Currently, educators are challenged to respond to constant changes.  

Epiphany 
“And therein lies the major pitfall of the twenty-first century’s teaching model--namely, the belief that most of what we know will remain relatively unchanged for a long enough period of time to be worth the effort of transferring it.” 
Textbooks are filled with knowledge believed to be “worth the effort of transferring.”  I have heard many discussions around textbooks becoming outdated, but this statement deepens the conversation by explaining knowledge is changing instead of just updating.  

Works Cited
Thomas, D., & Brown, J. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, Ky.: [CreateSpace?].