Tag Archives: learning

Reexamining the term FAILURE

Six years ago in Philadelphia I ran a session at Educon on Failure. Bill Ferriter came to the session and after the interactive presentation he created this image:

This was the premise I was working from,

When is failure really a success? When we engage students in EPIC projects and challenges, the journey to success is often fraught with failures that can prove to be amazing learning opportunities. 

Do we need to reexamine the use of the term ‘Failure’?

Our present education system is built around always finding the ‘right’ answer, but when can the wrong answer be valuable? How can we provide rich, meaningful opportunities for students to make mistakes, iterate, persevere and develop alternative approaches to problems relevant to what they are learning?

4 years before this presentation I created this image:

I shared an acronym that I came up with:

F ailure
A lways
I nvites
L earning

I share in an accompanying post,

Think of this: If students (regardless of skills and abilities) have only ever met success, and accomplished every task, assignment and project they have needed to do for school, then they weren’t pushed hard enough. In this case, it is the program that is the failure, because the students were not challenged as much as they should have been.

The learning potential of failure is significant. If the work is meaningful enough, there can be more learned from an epic failure, than a marginal success, where the measure for success was set too low.

We talk a lot about ‘learning through failure’ in education, but we don’t really mean failure. Because when a student takes lessons from something not working, then it’s a learning opportunity and not actually a failure.

When you think about it, lack of knowledge is where the learning begins. If you give students the knowledge, they don’t really learn, you actually rob students of their learning. You want them to struggle and to find the learning challenging. And if the challenge is authentic, if it’s really a challenge, then it’s not something they’ll get on the first try. So hitting the ‘failure point’ is part of learning. Trying to achieve too much needs to be part of the process… and so bumping into failure is an essential part of learning.

So a failure is only a failure if the challenge lacks reflection, resources, support, or effort. If these things are provided (by the teacher and more-so by the learner) then the learner didn’t actually fail. They may not achieve their original goal, but they invited learning into the attempt… and learning is achieved. That is not a failure.

The idea of learning through failure is actually not a failure at all. It is accepting that there are opportunities for learning in not achieving the intended goal but still identifying that there was learning to be acquired and often the struggle is something that makes this kind of learning stick.

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Related: This Ignite presentation on Transforming Our Learning Metaphors:

The learning cliff

Whenever I am talking to new or potentially new employees of our online school I share the idea of a learning cliff. We all know about a learning curve… when you are learning something new, there is an effort you have to exert as you gain knowledge and learn how to use new systems and tools available to you. There’s a slow uphill climb to learn the new job. But some jobs have a few too many systems to learn just by doing things once. I call this the learning cliff.

In a new position you’ll inevitably get to a point where you don’t know how to do something and you need to ask for help: This is true for both the learning curve and the learning cliff… With the learning curve , you ask, you learn, and you don’t need to ask again. But in an organization where too many things are new, you try to absorb so much information at once that you don’t actually remember the help you got the next time you have to deal with the same situation… You asked, you got the help you needed, but you didn’t actually learn because your brain was taxed with too much new information to retain one more thing. So a few hours, days, or weeks later you have to ask the same question again.

You’ve left the learning curve and hit the learning cliff. I tell my new employees that with so many new systems to learn, we have all hit those cliffs and every one of us knows you will too. So, ask again. Ask a third time. We won’t judge. We remember hitting the cliff ourselves. We know you feel bad having to ask again when you feel you should know. We know you can’t, just like we couldn’t, remember everything and need to ask again. We expect it and want to assist you.

A learning cliff is not a scalable slope without help, so let us help you over the edge, and when you come back to the same issue, or a new one, and it’s still not a traversable slope… ask again. We are expecting it and happy to help.

You can’t police it

I said Chat GPT is a game changer in education in my post Fear of Disruptive Technology. Then I started to see more and more social media posts sharing that Artificial Intelligence (AI) detectors can identify passages written by AI. But that doesn’t mean a person can’t use a tool like Chat GPT and then do some of their own editing. Or, as seen here: just input the AI written text into CopyGenius.io and ‘rephrase’, and then AI detectors can’t recognize the text as written by AI.

The first instinct with combating new technology is to ban and/or police it: No cell phones in class, leave them in your lockers; You can’t use Wikipedia as a source; Block Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok on the school wifi. These are all gut reactions to new technologies that frame the problem as policeable… Teachers are not teachers, they aren’t teaching, when they are being police.

Read that last sentence again. Let it sink in. We aren’t going to police away student use of AI writing tools, so maybe we should embrace these tools and help manage how they are used. We can teach students how to use AI appropriately and effectively. Teach rather than police.

Fear of Disruptive Technology

There is a lot of fear around how the Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool Chat GPT is going to disrupt teaching and learning. I’ve already written about this chatbot:

Next level artificial intelligence

And,

Teaching in an era of AI

And,

The future is now.

To get an understanding of the disruption that is upon us, in the second post, Teaching in an era of AI, I had Chat GPT write an essay for me. Then I noted:

“This is a game changer for teaching. The question won’t be how do we stop students from using this, but rather how do we teach students to use this well? Mike Bouliane said in a comment on yesterday’s post, “Interesting post Dave. It seems we need to get better at asking questions, and in articulating them more precisely, just like in real life with people.

Indeed. The AI isn’t going away, it’s just going to get better.”

And that’s the thing about disruptive technology, it can’t be blocked, it can’t be avoided, it needs to be embraced. Yet I’ve seen conversations online where people are trying to block it in schools. I haven’t seen this kind of ‘filter and hide from students’ philosophy since computers and then phones started to be used in schools. It reminds me of a blog post I wrote in 2010, Warning! We Filter Websites at School, where I shared this tongue-in-cheek poster for educators in highly filtered districts to put up on their doors:

Well now the fervour is back and much of the talk is about how to block Chat GPT, and how to detect its use. And while there are some conversations about how to use it effectively, this means disrupting what most teachers assign to students, and this also disrupts assessment practices. Nobody likes so much disruption to their daily practice happening all at once. So, the block and filter and policing (catching cheaters) discussions begin.

Here is a teacher of Senior AP Literature that uses Chat GPT to improve her students’ critical thinking and writing. Note how she doesn’t use the tool for the whole process. Appropriate, not continuous use of the tool:

@gibsonishere on TikTok

Again going all the way back to 2010, I said in Transformative or just flashy educational tools?,

“A tool is just a tool! I can use a hammer to build a house and I can use the same hammer on a human skull. It’s not the tool, but how you use it that matters.”

And here is something really important to note:

The. Technology. Is. Not. Going. Away.

In fact, AI is only going to get better… and be more disruptive.

Employers are not going to pretend that it doesn’t exist. Imagine an employer saying, “Yes, I know we have power drivers but to test your skill we want you to screw in this 3-inch screw with a handheld screwdriver… and then not letting the new employee use his power tools in their daily work.

Chat GPT is very good at writing code, and many employers test their employee candidates by asking them to write code for them. Are they just going to pretend that Chat GPT can’t write the same code much faster? I can see a performance test for new programmers looking something like this in the future: “We asked Chat GPT to write the code to perform ‘X’, and this is the code it produced. How would you improve this code to make it more effective and eloquent?”

Just like the Tiktok teacher above, employers will expect the tool to be used and will want their employees to know how to use the tool critically and effectively to produce better work than if they didn’t use the tool.

I’m reminded of this carton I created back in 2009:

The title of the accompanying post asks, Is the tool an obstacle or an opportunity? The reality is that AI tools like Chat GPT are going to be very disruptive, and we will be far better off looking at these tools as opportunities rather than obstacles… Because if we choose to see these tools as obstacles then we are the actual obstacles getting in the way of progress.

Leadership Storytelling

I had the opportunity to be one of 6 Principals and Vice Principals to speak at a series for teachers called Building Leadership Capacity. The theme was Storytelling and so I decided to share a fable:

THE MOUSE TRAP

A mouse looked through a crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package. What food might it contain? He was aghast to discover that it was a mouse trap. Retreating to the farmyard the mouse proclaimed the warning: “There is a mouse trap in the house, a mouse trap in the house! “The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.”

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mouse trap in the house, a mouse trap in the house!” “I am so very sorry Mr. Mouse,” sympathized the pig, “but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured that you are in my prayers.”

The mouse turned to the cow. She said,”Like wow, Mr. Mouse. A mouse trap. Like I am in grave danger. Duh…NOT!” So the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer’s mouse trap alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house, like the sound of a mouse trap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see that it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer’s wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital. She returned home with a fever.

Now everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient. His wife’s sickness continued so that friends and neighbours came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer’s wife did not get well and a few days later she passed away. So many people came for her funeral, that the farmer had the cow slaughtered, to provide meat for all of them to eat.

I shared this from memory so it differed in a few details, and I ended here. The fable continues with this:

So the next time you hear that someone is facing a problem and think that it does not concern you, remember that when there is a mouse trap in the house, the whole farmyard is at risk.

What I said instead was that Good Leadership is organizing the volunteers that came to help the farmers wife, and being stoic and organizing the funeral, and supporting the grieving friends. And Great Leadership is addressing the concerns of the mouse. But then I gave a disclosure that in this school year alone I could think of two occasions where I had to do my best to be a Good Leader because only in hindsight could I them when you don’t identify the concern as being as big a concern as the other person. I shared how important it is to really listen, and understand your staff, and not just look at things from your perspective.

I was asked, ‘How do you know when you’ve got it right?’ And I said that our egos tend to make us believe we’ve always got it right and so it’s when you get it wrong that is important to identify and try to fix before it becomes a bigger problem. The example I gave here was when I was in my first role as a Vice Principal. A teacher sent a kid to the office and when I asked him what he did, I didn’t believe him. The reason he was sent to the office was trivial and something that I would never have sent a kid to the office for.

So, I had him rehearse an apology to the teacher and frame how he would change his behaviour, I had him practice a few times on me and sent him back to his class. Five minutes later he was back at my office and when I looked at him in surprise he said, “Mr Truss I did exactly what you told me to do.” So I took him down to the teacher and we resolved the issue together, and he went back to class.

And that was the moment I realized that just because I came from a school where teachers handled most situations on their own, and just because I only sent 2 kids to the office in a decade of teaching, it doesn’t mean every teacher is like that. I learned that I had to appreciate the concerns of the teacher as well as the student, and if the student was going to be successful in getting back into the class I had to really understand the teacher’s perspective and not just the student’s behaviour.

Being a Good Leader isn’t that challenging for the people that choose to go to a series like Building Leadership Capacity, they would already be leaders in their building. Being a Great Leader is hard for everyone. It involves building strong relationships with your staff, really knowing them, and understanding how to support them in ways that are different from each other and yet still bring the team together… and sometimes the best you can do is be good at handling the aftermath when you don’t realize how threatening the little mouse traps are.

Defining the Unconventional

Inquiry Hub is a very different school than a conventional high school. Students get a lot less direct instruction, they do a lot more group work and presentations, and they get time in their day to work on passion projects. These passion projects serve as their elective courses, and they get credit for doing them. And while we can’t offer the amazing array of electives courses students get in a large high school, students get to go in-depth on topics of interest in a way that they just don’t normally get to in a ‘regular’ high school.

Despite our grads moving on to programs like engineering and computer science, and despite acceptance to UBC, SFU, Emily Carr, BCIT, Waterloo, McGill, and other universities, colleges, and technical schools, we still get parents concerned that somehow their kids will be disadvantaged by going to our school.

Our kids transition to university very well, and do not struggle in their first year, unlike 12-15% of grads across the province that graduate high school successfully then don’t make it through their first year of university. But incoming parents are still worried that their kids won’t be prepared for university. The skills they learn in our school to self advocate, self-direct, and structure their own learning are exactly the skills student don’t get in far more scripted learning environments where the teacher tends to determine what students are doing for almost the entire day in a traditional block schedule.

Skills learned at Inquiry Hub not only help students when they get to university, but these skills also help students be more entrepreneurial, more innovative, and more prepared to be productive in a knowledge economy. Our students will prepare presentations for a midpoint in a project that would blow away what a team would do for a final project in another school, or even what a marketing team would do for a client pitch. Guests in our school are continually blown away by the confidence and professionalism of student presentations.

We are still iterating, we are still learning, we are still figuring out how to help students who struggle… but that’s part of what makes the school great. The environment is dynamic, flexible, and responsive. And students learn that learning is a process. They learn to share their learning in meaningful ways. And they learn to be productive members of a learning community. If that’s considered unconventional, we’ll just keep being unconventional.

Lack of Resourcefulness

Working with kids, I sometimes see a pattern where students who struggle would avoid their own struggles by trying to help others. They can’t get their own struggles in order so they try to become the helper and healers of others. It’s easier to be the saviour than the person needing saving. The endorphins from being needed masks the depressed feelings of needing help and feeling helpless.

But when this happens, the kid doing the helping and avoiding their own work that needs to be done is not resourceful enough to actually help the other kid. They are just helpful enough to create a dependency, to build a mutual reliance on each other, with the co-dependent relationship being the only real benefit.

Now you’ve got two kids that both need help, but they look to each other for that help, rather than looking to someone that can really help them. Furthermore they are now both avoiding the work they need to do for themselves.

This is why students having at least one adult on the building that they have a positive relationship with is so important. Because kids don’t always have the resourcefulness to help other kids, and adults need to intervene when students are hindering growth by trying to help each other. But an intervening adult who doesn’t have a good relationship with the kid or both kids can actually embolden the unhealthy relationship between the kids.

This is one of the most challenging things to deal with in a school, when un-resourceful kids are trying to help each other in order to avoid doing the things they need to do to become more resourceful. It’s a cycle that needs to be broken or it can spread to even more kids. In the end, it’s about providing support and helping build resourcefulness rather than allowing un-resourceful kids try to help each other.

The shallows vs the deep

When you meet some people, you instantly like them. They are friendly, personable, and genuine. Some people take a while to grow on you. There isn’t that quick assessment, and you need time to figure them out and have them figure you out. They can easily be as genuine as the people you like instantly, but you don’t immediately know.

Then there are the ones you instantly dislike or mistrust. There are those that seek to complain, and are quick to annoy you or to be easily annoyed themselves.

Isn’t interesting how much time and thought we spend on these different kinds of people? Those that have a depth of quality, we appreciate and want to know, but we don’t necessarily think or talk about them when they aren’t around. But those that annoy and frustrate us consume more of our thought and attention than they deserve.

We spend too much time focused in on the shallow end of this continuum and not enough time going deep with those that deserve more of our attention. We play and replay scenarios dealing with shallow people instead of doing the work to let go of petty things and investing time with those that lift us up in body, mind, and spirit.

Sometimes I’m surprised by my inability to move beyond the shallow end. I try to convince myself that I’m not interested in playing in the shallows, but I allow small conversations and interactions to consume too much of my thoughts. And then I wonder why I don’t have the time or energy for more intellectual endeavours?

This is why I seek people to converse with one-on-one. I create the opportunities to go deep, to invest time with people that are intelligent, forthcoming, insightful, and enjoyable to be around. I create time away from from the shallow end, where conversations can go deep. We might still splash around in shallow conversations but these are enjoyable rather than taxing, playful rather than confrontational… and always open to going deeper.

Teaching in an era of AI

Yesterday I wrote about Next level artificial intelligence and since then I’ve learned quite a bit about ChatGPT capabilities. It’s an amazing tool and people are catching on, with over 1 million users trying it out in just 6 days. The implications for teaching are huge. Students can use this AI to have original work created for them that will not show up in a Google search if a teacher suspects plagiarism.

For years now I’ve heard the mantra that teachers need to ask questions that you can’t find the answer to on Google. But those questions could be uniquely answered by Chat GPT with no way of a teacher knowing it wasn’t done by a student… other than the fact that the writing might be of a higher quality than usual.

I don’t see Chat GPT completely doing all the work, but it will be a tool students use to build on. For instance, I asked this AI to do the following:

Write a 5 paragraph essay that compares and contrasts Winston Smith in George Orwell’s novel 1984 with Bernard Marx in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World.

This is what it came up with in about 5 seconds:

Winston Smith and Bernard Marx are both characters in dystopian novels, but they have some significant differences. In George Orwell’s 1984, Winston is a rebellious member of a totalitarian society who secretly resists the oppressive government. In contrast, Bernard Marx in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a member of a highly technologically advanced society where the government has complete control over its citizens.

One of the main differences between the two characters is their relationship with their respective governments. Winston is actively opposed to the government, and he goes to great lengths to avoid detection and to resist their control. Bernard, on the other hand, is more accepting of the government’s authority, and he is content to live within the strict societal boundaries set by the ruling class.

Another significant difference is their social status. Winston is a low-ranking member of society who works in the Ministry of Truth. He is not well-liked and is considered an outsider by many of his coworkers. Bernard, on the other hand, is a high-ranking member of society and is considered to be one of the ruling elite. He is well-liked and respected by his peers, and he has access to privileges and luxuries that are not available to the lower classes.

Additionally, the two characters have different views on love and relationships. In 1984, love is considered to be a dangerous emotion that must be suppressed. Winston, however, longs for intimacy and connection, and he ultimately falls in love with Julia despite the risks. In Brave New World, love is viewed as a primitive and outdated concept. Bernard, like many other members of society, is content with superficial relationships and casual sex.

Overall, Winston Smith and Bernard Marx are two characters who live in vastly different societies, and they have different attitudes towards the government and their own social status. While Winston is a rebellious outsider who longs for love and connection, Bernard is a conformist member of the ruling class who is content with the superficial relationships of his society.

Now I don’t think this is a great piece of literature, but I will tell you that the comparing and contrasting that was done offers insights I might not have made if I was writing this essay on my own. This would be a great starting point to a more comprehensive essay… which I could further get Chat GPT to assist me with.

This is a game changer for teaching. The question won’t be how do we stop students from using this, but rather how do we teach students to use this well? Mike Bouliane said in a comment on yesterday’s post, “Interesting post Dave. It seems we need to get better at asking questions, and in articulating them more precisely, just like in real life with people.“

Indeed. The AI isn’t going away, it’s just going to get better. When I asked the question above, I didn’t ask the AI to give specific examples as evidence. That was my first and only attempt. What happens if I iterate a bit more? Add more detail? Put the result back into the AI and ask it to make improvements?

We aren’t going to be able to teach around this tool, so we are probably going to have to teach students when and how to use it. Teaching in the age of very articulate AI is going to have to look different than teaching just a few years ago.

Been there, done that

No you haven’t.

I don’t know why, but I can’t seem to link to this Nov. 12, 2017 post by Alec Couros, or my response on Facebook, so I’ll just share them here. Alec said:

‪”Every “new” revolution or trend in education is inevitably accompanied by the critics who wisely note “We tried this back in the x0’s.

‪If you want change to happen and to stick, engage your historians to better understand why things failed the first time around.”

And I responded:

“When I read this I think of Dweck and growth vs fixed mindset. Yes some things ‘come back’, but there can be innovation (and research) since the last time.

For example, much of the ‘learn at your own pace’ of 20 years ago meant ‘here is the (printed) package of work so that you can move ahead’ (on your own). Now with online resources, discussion forums, YouTube, access to research and experts… that ‘own pace’ can be far more collaborative and richly supported. Even more so in a learning environment that focuses on competencies & skills, rather than content.

So in this, and many other examples, it’s not like ‘we did this back in the day’… it’s fundamentally different. It still warrants critique & criticism when it’s due, but it doesn’t warrant dismissal because ‘we’ve already tried it’.

This is the difference between using old tools and tools that are transformative, tools that allow you to engage differently than you could before. A blog isn’t just a digital version of a paper journal. A blog lets you edit more easily, it lets you spellcheck as you go, it allows you to link to sources and other content. It exposes the writing to more than just the teacher, it invites comments and further conversation. It makes the writer a publisher, who as a result tends to care more about editing and presenting better work.

Back in the days of my high school English classes the only audience my journal writing had were my teachers, except for a poem I had published in our yearbook one year… and I can’t exactly find that in a Google search today.

The next time you try something new and someone says, “We tried this back in the x0’s,” or “Been there, done that,” take a moment to think about what’s different this time before dismissing it as something already tried and abandoned… it might just be significantly different this time around.

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Here is the list of 6 suggestions I shared in my post, ‘Transformative or just flashy educational tools?‘ which I linked to above:

So what makes a tool great? Or, a better question than that: What should we do with tools to make them great? Here are some thoughts and feadback is appreciated, this is not an exclusive list!

1.Give students choice.

We don’t assess the tool, we assess the criteria, and we want students to meet specific learning outcomes.We can provide students with a choice of tools or even a choice of projects, and not every student in the class needs to meet the same outcomes in the same way.

2. Give students a voice.

Classroom discussions are great, but how else can we provide students with an opportunity to share? What venues can we provide for them to be heard?

3. Give students an audience.

So often we give students an audience of one… the teacher who marks their work. As a teacher, I told students ‘write to your audience’ but I never truly understood those words until I started blogging. If you want students to write to their audience, then give them a legitimate audience.

4. Give students a place to collaborate.

This comes with a caution: A place to collaborate does not in and of itself create good collaboration. You might be using a great collaboration tool, but do your students know how to collaborate effectively? Do they have specific roles to play? Do they have the skills to learn cooperatively?

5. Give students a place to lead.

Whether it be by choosing a tool, or teaching you a tool, or simply choosing their own topic to study, let your students be the lead learner and even the teacher as often as possible.

6. Give students a digital space to learn.

I’ve talked about blogs as learning spaces. Stephen Downes says, ‘To teach is to model and demonstrate, to learn is to practice and reflect.’Give students a space to practice and reflect that is not limited to the confines of a classroom or notebook, and one that helps them build a community, or rather a network, of teachers and learners.

A tool is just a tool! It’s not the tool, but how you use it that matters.