How I got fired...again

 8 years ago I got fired. By me. You can read that story here.

Well, I've gone and done it again.

For the last 10 years I have been the driving force behind the founding of the very first online Christian school in Ontario: Nimbus Christian Education.

It's been a long and hard journey. There were so many times that we thought it would fail. We came close to closing the doors time and time again. But God always came through and we always kept working.

It has been an honour and a privilege to be called to this task. 

For the last 10 years if I had quit, Nimbus would have folded. But now, it has grown to the point that I am no longer necessary to its survival.

This past year I took a long hard look at the work I was doing, the way I was doing it, and what was best for Nimbus Christian Education. 

It became clear to me that it was time for a change. I had done good work and had established an excellent start for Nimbus. But now it was time for someone new, with new skills and new ideas to take the reigns.

And so I fired me. Again.

It is an honour.

 Today I printed 11 paychecks. 

I've never experienced this before. It is such an honour and a privilege to be able to create jobs for people. 

For the last 10 years I have invested my heart and soul into the idea that Christian Education needs to move online. (No, it isn't the entire solution to what our children need, but it is a piece of the puzzle.) And it is finally happening. 

This year there are 15 people working for the online Christian school that God has allowed us to create. While their jobs aren't very big yet, it is a start. Not only are we providing highly flexible and adaptable online learning experiences for students, we are also providing highly flexible and adaptable jobs for people.

And I get to lead them. 

I'm writing this post from a place of joy and thanksgiving. Joy and thanksgiving because we get to make a difference in people's lives.

Which is what I think God put us here for.

White Privilege

 I am a white, middle aged male. I have two parents who raised me with a love of learning. I had plenty of good food and medical care. I went to private schools for almost my entire education. I live in Canada. I've got almost every advantage that could fit under the umbrella of "White Privilege".

When I look at the systemic racism that exists in our society I have no idea how to fix it. I know that changed is needed, but I don't know what to do.

But I'd like to start.

So I'll say,

#Black Lives Matter

The difference between Emergency Remote and Online Learning in one word: Time

Ever since schools started scrambling to head online in light of the mandated school closures, I’ve been wrestling with language. How do we articulate the significant differences between Emergency Remote Learning and Online Learning? I also want to honour the incredible work that so many teachers have done in the emergency. Good learning happened. (Shout out to TDChristian and the great work their team has done for my son’s learning experience!) But as we start looking ahead to September, how can we prepare to create even better learning experiences?

In the end I came up with one word to describe the differences that I see. Time.

Time to think for teachers:
There are known best practices for online learning. Plenty of research exists about what makes for good learning experiences online and what doesn’t. It takes time to study and learn what the best practices are. Most teachers had to move online in a week or even less. There just wasn’t enough time.

Time to prepare:
High quality online courses take time to prepare. In my experience it can take 6 months to 2 years of development work. Unlike in the bricks and mortar classroom it is best if the entire learning experience has been uploaded and prepared online before any students enter the classroom. Of course, teachers adapt and change the experience while students go through it; that is the nature of learning, after all. Trying to build a high quality online learning experience while students are in the middle of the course is very difficult, although not impossible.

Time in class:
What does time in class online mean? So much of our bricks and mortar learning experience has been built around seat time. Periods and classes have set amounts of time. Students need to listen to bells and be on time. None of those things should apply in online learning. The best online learning experiences are flexible when it comes to time. Asynchronous learning provides students with the voice and choice as to when they learn. Now, that is not to say that all synchronous online learning is bad; in fact, the very best online courses use asynchronous and synchronous learning experiences.

Time to complete work:
In the best online learning experiences students can complete just as much work as a bricks and mortar class in half the time. Or in double the time. The flexibility of online learning gives those students who can finish quickly the ability to do so and also lets those students who need more time to have it.

Time for students to think:
Often, in the bricks and mortar classroom, the quickest thinking students are the ones who participate best in discussions and team tasks. But in the online space, students who need more time to think and process can often do so--if the course is designed for it. This allows more students to be more engaged in the learning experience.

Time for the future:
Teaching a course the second time is always easier. But in the online space this is amplified. Once a course has been developed and had students complete it, it is much easier to run a second time. Even more, it is possible to replicate that course and have other teachers teach it with far less time spent on preparation than in a bricks and mortar classroom.

Now, here we are looking ahead to September. We don’t have a lot of time, but we have some. How will we spend it?

What's next for Christian education?

I don’t know what’s coming next either.

Buses? Class sizes? Cleaning? PPE? Enrollment? Staffing? Budget?

But there is one piece I do know something about.

The Digital must become part of our learning space. Of course, I am rather biased on this topic. I have spent the last decade preparing for this.

Let me share a few thoughts I have.

I see two major red flags the moment we start thinking about online learning in September.

1. You and your staff are fighting to reach the finish line. When you get there in June you and your team will be exhausted. 
2. We have only 2 months to prepare. All of my experience tells me that it takes 6 months to 2 years to create a high quality online learning experience. (And remember that what you’ve done since March is emergency remote learning, NOT online learning.)

I see four ways forward. These approaches are not mutually exclusive, in fact I think that the answer will need to be a mix of them.

• CREATE. Your staff, your school goes and creates the online experience from scratch.
• COLLABORATE. Team up with other schools and teachers and work together to create.
• CURATE. There are a great many free options available on the internet. Find them,
• CONTRACT. 
• Purchase online curriculum/tools/platforms and have your teachers use it.
• Pay another school or organisation to run your online learning for you.

The reality is that none of these four will work in isolation.

To CREATE you would need a pool of experienced and skilled staff who have a deep understanding of what quality online learning is and enough time to do the work. You don’t have either. Yet.

To COLLABORATE will require someone to organize and make decisions. What platform, what pedagogy, who owns the IP, who will pay?

To CURATE you would need to find resources that match your vision and mission for Christian education. Finding that for free will not be easy.

To CONTRACT you will have to give up some level of control over your curriculum and perhaps even the teaching itself as well as spend money. And you are still going to have a hard time finding alignment with your vision and mission.

THE WAY FORWARD

Here’s what I think.

We are going to have to COLLABORATE across multiple schools to get ready. The job is too big for any of us. For September we should CURATE and CONTRACT as much as we can in order to reduce the workload on our staff. The long term goal over the next 2 to 5 years is to give us the breathing room to build the capacity and platforms so that we can CREATE our own uniquely Christian learning experience that will meet each local community’s needs.

What’s next? Let’s go find out!

Yes, you are exhausted, but it's not Zoom's fault!

There are plenty of articles being written right now about "Zoom Fatigue". Like this one.

Don't be so quick to point a finger at Zoom. (Or Teams, or Meet, or House party, or....)

Do you remember your first year of teaching? (Or your first day on the job for those of you who are not teachers.) I do, because I went through it twice. And now so are you.

Remember when you arrived in your first classroom and all the things you had studied in teacher's college had barely prepared you for the reality? (Redeemer, you did a great job!)

• You don't even have that right now! How many of the courses you took in teacher's college prepared you to be a fully virtual teacher?

Then, remember how hard it was in that first year? How overwhelmed you were? How so many of your ideas just didn't work? Remember when that colleague from down the hall stepped in and gave you a hand, and what a difference that made? (Thanks Pauline and Faith, I wouldn't be here without you!)

• Where exactly in your school are the highly experienced teachers with years of teaching online who you can lean on? Wait, you're all first year teachers!

Remember when you were lost in the staff meeting, or forgot about your yard duty, or had a difficult meeting with a parent? Remember that experienced principal who leaned in and gave you a tool, some advice, or just plain took care of it for you? (Thanks George and Marianne! I never would have made it without you!)

• None of your principals know how to do this either!

So, you are experiencing your first year of teaching all over again. Only this time it was sprung on you as a surprise, you only had days to prepare, and you have none of the supports you would normally have.

Of course you are exhausted!

Is Zoom hard to get used to? Yes, but I don't think that's why teachers are exhausted.

I was wrong: It takes longer!

Early on in this crisis a group of High School principals from across North America asked me to share some of my experiences with online learning since they were anticipating being shut down and were considering moving online. I've been teaching online for years and I am the principal of a fairly new online Christian school so I've got some knowledge of the field. I figured that I could help.

Somewhere in that conversation I said that a student in online learning can do the work in half the time it takes in the classroom.

But I was wrong.

You see, these schools aren't doing online learning. They are doing emergency distance learning, or emergency remote learning, or emergency at home learning or whatever you want to call it. Whatever it is, it isn't online learning.

So my experience about how long it takes students to do the work is quite wrong.

These students are attempting to do the work in a crisis. Their mental health is under attack, they are busy learning entirely new modes of learning, and trying to do this in a new location for learning. They do not have their normal capacity to do work. (Neither do we!)

In this situation it is taking students at least twice as long to do the work they would do in a bricks and mortar classroom.

We must take this into account in what we are doing right now. Student work and expectations must be reduced.

But we must also take this into account after this crisis is over. When our heads come up from the crisis and we are able to start thinking about the future we will need to realize that there is a difference between the emergency learning we are doing now and what online learning can look like.

Mandatory eLearning: What are you afraid of?

For those of you who aren't from Ontario, not that long ago the provincial government here announced that they were going to require that high school students complete a number of online courses as part of the graduation requirement. If you haven't read their announcement it may be worth your time to check it out. 

This has touched off a bit of a furor. There are a great many people reacting with strong feelings to this announcement.

Now don't get me wrong there are some significant hurdles to implementing this well:

• High quality internet connection is not available everywhere.
• Not all students have access to devices especially those in lower income brackets.
• Online courses aren't going to work well for all students. (But then the regular classroom doesn't work well for all students either.)

But the level of reaction to this announcement suggests to me that there might be more going on. 

So what makes eLearning or online courses scary? 

What is it about eLearning or online courses that raises so many concerns?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Wikipedia is Evil!

I have an assignment in which students are to research some basic facts about common chemicals using Wikipedia.

I was startled by the reaction from my students. They've been told by previous teachers that Wikipedia is "unreliable" and they should never use it.

I've gotten the same reaction from them when I tell them to Google an answer to a question instead of asking me.

I don't believe that Wikipedia or Google are perfect. They each have weaknesses that we must be aware of. But they are useful and powerful. We should be teaching our students how to use them properly instead of just banning them.

For instance:

Wikipedia lessons:

• Teach students how to find the "Simple English" language page as this is often much easier to read when dealing with complex topics.
• Have students attempt to write articles on Wikipedia and they will discover how difficult it actually is. (The first article I ever wrote lasted all of 10 seconds. It took 5 or more revisions before it actually passed the criteria to be a Wikipedia article. It still has warnings on it and is only a quarter of the size of the original article. You can see it here if you want.)
• Have students find errors on Wikipedia and correct them. (If they can!)

Google lessons

• Teach students Boolean logic (Or just to use the advanced search tools!)
• Show students examples of the sponsored links that are paid for so that they arrive at the top of searches.
• Take them to fake websites to see if they can tell fact from fiction. (This one is my favourite!)

I think it is far more important to teach our students how to use these tools well than to hide from them.

I'm afraid you are wrong. Community can be built online. And it can be amazing!

Time and time again I hear people say that you can't build relationships online.

I'm afraid these people are soooo wrong.

And they are missing out on something that can be amazing!

Go read this story.

Which is followed up by this.

You'll miss a bunch of the context since you probably aren't part of the community, the relationship that is built around the webcomic that Baldur has created over the last bunch of years, but I hope you can see how relationship exists and it's because of the digital medium. (If you are a wargamer that enjoys turn based games, you'll like his comic http://www.erfworld.com. If you aren't it'll make no sense to you.)

So, what does this mean for us?