Summer 2015 reading this far

Eclectic reading so far...getting into using my Kindle and iPad so had so go online for some of these photos. 

So refreshing to read as much as I like to start my day everyday! 

Suggestions appreciated! Sport Illustrated every week is a given though :)

Teachers can't compete with smartphones

I admit it. For all the trying in the world, I still can't compete with a smartphone. And although a very technologically oriented person myself, I'm all for banning them entirely from my classroom.

I mean, I have a small love affair with my iPhone. I even have a smartwatch, for Pete's sake. I get it. I used to not bring the phone to class, ever. Then, I started bringing it to class since I thought I might be able to make a bigger impact by modelling for students that I can control when I look at it. When it sends me a notification and I'm in the middle of something, I can continue teaching or helping a student or the conversation I am having. Students interrupt and urgently say, "Ms. Barz, you got a message!" or,  "your phone just went off; shouldn't you check that?"

No, no, no, no and no.

These "no" statements are how I feel when I interact with students who are distracted - scratch that, rather, controlled - by cell phones. It's all NEGATIVE. In fact, with a handful of students, I can count on one hand how many times I've had a positive interaction with them in almost 90 school days this semester. And yet multiple times everyday, I ask them to put away their phones and get insolence, a snarky response, a lie ("it's my Mom," or "I'm not even on it!" or "I'm just checking the time, geez" or "I'm just changing the song.") or even a profanity for me having the gall to ask them to do what their supposed to be doing in class.

I thought I could try some humour to help the issue starting this past fall. My classroom door has had this sign on it for the entire school year:

It didn't work. Pretty sure that the students didn't even notice it. And, honestly, I do find phones a useful tool in a classroom when used for only the task at hand. In some classes, they are regularly used since computer labs and the change to newer technology has necessitated the move to support student and staff Bring-Your-Own-IT initiatives.

So, this semester, I started with a bin for cell phones with the label below.

That didn't last, either. I asked students to put them in the bin when they walked into class. Simple solution, right? Not so much.

Then I actually started to walk around the class with the bin and to prompt every student to put their phone in the bin, again prompting a negative interaction with nearly every student to start the day. Unfortunately, it also singled out the few kids who don't have phones, too, which added to the negativity as a whole. So I crossed that strategy off my list.

A suggestion that has come up several times is having a three strike rule. Given that many classes have 25 students in them, that would mean 75 reminders or negative interactions. To put the potential severity of this into perspective, this could mean that I would have one negative interaction for EVERY MINUTE of class, as 75 minute classes are the norm in Ontario. In short, I could basically do nothing but desperately plead with kids to put their phones away for the entire period and spend no time at all actually teaching to the curriculum, EQAO standardized testing or anything of any conceivable value. This seems woefully wasteful of both their time and mine.

Negativity goes against everything I stand for as a person and that I hope to encourage as a classroom teacher. My simple goal is to have a positive interaction with every student every day. After all, the research says that even a 20 minute conversation can make an impact with a student, no matter how trivial it may seem at the time. Those 20 minute conversations grow out of trust and positivity; I'm convinced of it.

Ask most people who know me well and they will say I'm definitely on the glass-half-full side of life...bordering on full-out, relentless positivity. So, I don't want to be the person who has to start my class three times each day with a negative interaction with almost every student. I do want students to be able to mature and grow into people who can focus when necessary and who can use phones at appropriate times that are agreed upon in our class. And, I do want the classroom to be as positive as possible. We're not perfect in this education system...but we can be better.

Any and all positive solutions welcome from all integral parts of the education trifecta - parents, students and school staff.

Thanks.

Books for Coaches - Book Review on Questions

A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger was a highlight of my reading in 2014!

Below is a copy of the notes I took on my iPhone - please excuse the grammatical errors and punctuation issues. The Notes app isn't all that helpful when trying to add different characters or linking information. I've tried to be consistent, however, I'm sure there will be many mistakes!

Chapter Two particularly resonated for me since the "Question Formulation Technique" has such potential for usage in any classroom. However, Chapter Five (questioning for life) also seems helpful for this time of year, when many want to take a closer look at daily routines.... I know there are a few provocative questions that I'll be looking at over the next few days! 

Introduction:

"always the beautiful answer

who asks a more beautiful question."

~ e.e. cummings

• a 4 yr old girls asks 390 questions a day

• Why-What If-How model

Chapter One: The Power of Inquiry

• a naive questioner can sometimes be the best questioner since they challenge status quo

"Questions are the engines of intellect - cerebral machines that convert curiosity into controlled inquiry." ~ David Hackett Fischer

• good questioners tend to be aware of, and quite comfortable with, their own ignorance.

• knowledge is a commodity - easily accessible - value of explicit information is dropping

• must be lifelong learners - become neotenous (biological term that describes the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood)

" Computers are useless - they can only give you answers." ~ Picasso

• the Why stage - first questioning, formulating, and framing the initial question that articulates the challenge at hand, and tries to gain some understanding of the context.

• basic formula is Q + A = I (innovation). Can also be Q - A = P (philosophy)

• Graham Wallace - wrote the classic process of creativity - Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, Implementation.

Chapter Two: Why We Stop Questioning

• a child asks 40 thousand questions between age 2 and 5

• creativity stops because children stop questioning

• Why are we sending kids to school in the first place?

Deborah Meier - Central Park East Schools:

- What might the potential for humans be if we really encouraged that spirit of questioning in children , instead of closing it down?

She developed five learning skills or habits of mind:

1. Evidence: how do we know what's true or false? What evidence counts?

2. Viewpoint: How might this look if we stepped into other shoes, or looked at it from a different direction?

3. Connection: Is there a pattern? Have we seen something like this before?

4. Conjecture: What if it were different?

5. Why does this matter?

• Dan Meyer - HS math teacher - TED talk - lesson on how long will it take to fill a water tank?

--he used a visual - video of a water tank filling up agonizingly slowly...students then wonder how long it's going to take...

• class structure determines who will ask questions...upper and middle ask more, lower asks next to none for fear of reprisal, discipline, sticking out, etc

• Right Question Institute's "Question Formulation Technique"

-- Ling Se Peet used this with her class for a lesson on torture. She stated, "Torture can be justified." 

-- this opening statement is known as a Q-focus because its purpose is to provide a focal point for generating questions from students.

-- each group's initial task was to come up with as many questions as possible, within a time limit, pertaining to the statement

-- after reviewing a set of rules (write each question down, don't debate or try to answer questions, just keep trying to think of more questions) students start to come at the premise from many angles

-- stage two: change open questions to closed questions and closed questions to open questions

--- ie, Why is torture effective? might be changed to "Is torture effective?"

-- the purpose of this step is to show that a question can be narrowed down in some cases or expanded in others.

-- the way you ask a question yields different results and can lead you in different directions

-- next, students are asked to prioritize their questions: to figure out which three were most important to the discussion to move forward

--- this is the convergent part of questioning - to question effectively, students must learn to analyze their own questions and zero in on ones they would like to pursue further

RQI question focus:

1. Teachers design Question Focus (ie Torture can be justified)

2. Students produce questions (no help from teacher, no answering or debating, write down everything, change statements to questions

3. Students improve their questions - usually asked to pick three favs

4. Students & teacher decide on next steps - for acting on the priorized questions

5. Students reflect on what they have learned

Questioning involves Divergent, Convergent and Metacognitive thinking - these are both subtle and complex...

Chapter Three: The Why, What If, and How of Innovative Questioning

Asking powerful why questions:

• step back

• notice what others miss

• challenge assumptions (including our own)

• gain a deeper understanding of the situation or problem at hand, through contextual inquiry

• question the questions we're asking

• take ownership of a particular question.

-- stepping back can be easier in a different place or situation

-- taking time to reflect and question is essential!

--Robert Burton writes about "the certainty epidemic" - the condition of thinking we know more than we do

-- we don't pay attention well

-- we make judgements in fractions of a second: THIS I'll pay attention to, everything else I'll ignore because (a) it doesn't concern/interest me or (b) I already know about it

• Questioning allows people to synthesize and simplify

• zen principle - shoshin - beginner's mind

• you can do this as an expert by detaching or observing yourself as I you were a third party

• try for vuja de - backwards déjà vu

- Most of us don't observe well or deeply enough, for example:

• 4X4 grid of squares - how many squares do you see? 

The easy answer is 16 - in addition there are nine 2x2 squares, four 3x3 squares and one large 4x4 squares...can even count 30 black squares and 30 white squares....

- point is, there is always another way of looking at it...

- challenger questions: 

"Why should we settle for what currently exists?"

"And why should I believe you when you tell me something can't be done?"

- these are challenger questions!!

Questioning the question:

"Why am I asking why?"

-- ie, the five whys

Open and close the question and vice versa

-- contextual inquiry is about asking questions up close and in context, relying on observation, listening and empathy to guide us toward a more intelligent, and therefore more effective, question.

- to do contextual questioning well you must LISTEN - listening informs questioning.

-- the difference between just asking a question or pursuing it is the difference between flirting with an idea or living with it -- it can be a productive obsession!

• What If?

--in order for our imagination to flourish, there must be an opportunity to see things as other than they are or appear to be. This begins with a simple question: What If? It is a process of introducing something strange and perhaps even demonstrably untrue in our current situation or perspective."

-- connective inquiry is what the What If question encourages

-- also encourages smart recombinations (is Pandora is radio station and search engine)

"A difficult question at night is resolved in the morning when the committee of sleep has worked on it." ~ John Steinbeck (couldn't agree more, John!).

- similarly, taking a walk, going to a museum, etc, is a good way to spark connective thinking

- question: "what if we could not fail?" 

- a what if technique is to create a prototype - a sketch, video, explanation, model, anything that can represent the idea in a preliminary form. 

- share ideas earlier, so others can help with the process!

- use these ideas to try a test-and-learn process BEFORE implementing a whole new idea

- find others who want to answer the same What If questions as you so that you can collaborate.

- don't hoard your beautiful question!

Chapter Four: Questioning in Business

Disruptive innovation - questions of purpose

"What if our company didn't exist?"

"What if we were kicked out of the company, what would the new CEO (coach) do?"

"What should we stop doing?"

What is your tennis ball? - the thing that pulls you as much as a dog chasing a tennis ball...

Often questions are better thought of alone...by some.

In "question storming" there are more possibilities - generating fifth to seventy-five questions is best. The group will usually briefly stall at 25 questions - push through this wall!

Then narrow to three (as before)

- HMW - the How Might We questioning framing idea

- rather than using "can we" or "should we", "might we" encourages creativity.

-- the HOW part assumes that there are solutions out there - it provides confidence. MIGHT says we can put ideas out there that might work or might not - either way, it's okay. And the WE  part says we're going to do it together and build on each other's ideas

- should mission statements be mission questions?

*how might we be the best program on the entire continent?

- keep questioning your question statement - does it still make sense?, are we living up to it?, it is growing and as we still moving forward?, are we all in this together?

-- another way of looking a this:

• What are we doing?

• why are we doing it?

• how might we do it better?

How might we create a culture of inquiry?

Be careful of encouraging people to ask questions and then dumping the solution on them, in addition to their regular duties...

Tell people to bring in questions as a part of the interview process 

Chapter Five: Questioning for Life

"Live the questions" ~ Rilke

"What is your sentence?" ~ Daniel Pink

"Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air, and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you." ~ David McCullough

• why am I climbing this mountain in the first place?

• what is waiting for me at the top?

• what am I going to do once I get there?

• am I enjoying the climb itself? Should I slow down, speed up?

• what am I leaving behind down below?

Why are you evading inquiry?

• questioning is seen as counter productive. It's the answers that most people are focussed on finding...because people think they will improve life

• the right time for asking fundamental questions never seems to present itself

• knowing the right questions to ask is difficult (so better not to ask at all)

• perhaps most significant: what if we find we have no good answers to the important questions we raise.

Process is key! You don't just need answers...

We have to construct meaning in our lives - better to ask "why should I do X?" "Is it worth my one and effort to do Y?" And even better , "when I look back in five years, which of these options will make the better story?"

If you force yourself to sit with a problem or topic and to try to think of questions you will come up with many. The challenge is to think ABOUT those questions - culling the best ones, improving them and figuring out how you might act on them.

 What if we step back or unplug?

Example of technology free Saturdays...just get to sit with a question rather than looking up an answer...

"Where is my place to withdraw and to think?"

"When is my tech Shabbat?"

Start with what you already have - not by asking questions about what you don't have.

Answer instead, "what am I grateful for?" 

Ask, "what did I love doing as a child?" - the things we loved doing then often still give us pleasure later in life or we can update those things to things we like today.

Ask, "what am I doing when I feel most beautiful?"

"What do I find myself doing?"

"When you're in a bookstore, what section are you drawn to?"

"Why do I seem to 'shine' when doing certain things? What is it about those activities/places that brings out the best in me?"

"What if I could find a way to incorporate those interests/activities, or some aspect of them, into my life more? And maybe even into my work?"

"How might I go about doing that?"

Make one small change - ask yourself, "what if I make one small change?"

- when you make one small change it can breed confidence for more changes.

Ask yourself, "what if you could not fail?"

- eliminates fear. We can also teach to embrace failure...it's like checking off a box...

Ask questions about failure...

Ie, "how do I distinguish between acceptable failure and unacceptable failure?"

Another question could ask, "what if I fail-how will I recover?"

Or alternatively:

If the worst happens, how could I cope?

What if I do nothing?

What if I succeed?

And

"What's truly worth doing, whether you fail or succeed?"

In life, ask questions that appeal to both parties of opposing viewpoints -  i.e, between gun owners and non-owners: do you care about gun violence? Are you for gun responsibility? - both parties answered yes to those questions. Perhaps questioning can find a common viewpoint rather than always separating into opposing sides. (reminiscent of using statistics to prove a point, perhaps we can use questioning to get people to agree on a commonality of a point...find at least 1% to agree on on a certain topic and then agree on it 100%). 

Follow someone you disagree with on Twitter :). Try asking questions of those with whom we disagree. Why might they see the issue this way? Why do I see it differently? What assumptions are we operating under?

What are the odds I'm wrong? *probably a very good question for an overly positive person...

How will you find your beautiful question? 

Articulating a bold personal question! 

Choosing a question - find the one that resonates....

"How do we continually find inspiration so we can inspire others?"

Authors referenced for question research (I do this so I can do more follow up on my own):

Dan Rothstein & Luz Santana of The Right Question Institute

Polly LaBarre -HBR

Ken Heilman - author

David Cooperrider - Case Western - theory of " appreciative inquiry"

Joichi Ito - director of MIT Media Lab

Stuart Firestein - author

John Seely Brown 

Gretchen Rubin - "The Happiness Project"

Min Basadur - Creative Problem Solving Institute of Buffalo, NY

Graham Wallas

Tiffany Schlain - film called "Brain Power: From Neurons to Networks"

Paul Harris - "Trusting What You're Told"

Dennie Palmer Wolf - education prof at Brown wrote "The Art of Questioning"

Robert Burton - "On Being Certain"

Paul Bennett - blog called The Curiosity Chronicles 

David Kord Murray - "Borrowing Brilliance"

Chen-Bo Zhong - UofT Rotman School - research on creative and associative thinking

- Christenson - The Innovator's Dilemma

- Sidney Parnes of creative problem solving institute in Buffalo

Tal Ben-Shahar - two books: Happier and Being Happy

Roko Belic - documentary called "Happy"

My own questions:

• what if we could develop a questioning place to think about deep, personal questions...is Quora cutting it?
• what if we could then share this "big think" somewhere?

Thanks to Warren Berger - I thoroughly enjoyed the fruits of your labours! Please, read the book. It is a lovely journey and will cause you to think so much!

#QWR secret of success

Just felt the need to share this again.

Slideshare posting...

After finishing up the last MOOC on Personal Branding for Educators, I thought I'd take a moment to share a few chunks of information online. It seems after many years of attending conferences, teaching classes, facilitating coaching course and, of course, coaching, I've got a lot of information accumulated on my hard drive. Might as well share that information, right? So, I started with Slideshare where I had previously shared one slide deck for my social media course last year.

Unfortunately, that first slide deck was really only labelled for the class (IDC4U) and certainly didn't have any information that would have generated any interest from a search engine or otherwise. So, I took it off the upload file...maybe I'll reupload the next time I teach the course....

This time, I decided to share some info on an area that is a particularly hot topic in sport across the world on Talent ID. There is a ton of quantitative information out there for individual sport Talent ID but not so much on Team Selection for team sport. This is an area I've been facilitating in the Canadian Sport Institute - Ontario for a few years and I had a (long) PowerPoint that I thought people might find interesting. So, I decided to give Slideshare another try and to upload that presentation, which I usually do over the course of an eight hour day.

In any case, I had no idea how much interest the Slideshare slide deck on Talent Identification and Selection in Elite Sport would generate. There have been 400 views in just over two days and this was definitely beyond the interest I'd expected. Really glad that there is so much interest in Talent ID and that for team sports that the selection is also an idea that carries significant weight. It was great even to get some verbal feedback from a coaching colleague yesterday! There are certainly a multitude of areas to consider as a coach and it's a great topic to discuss for a few hours.

I'm interested in feedback if you'd care to share - the slidedeck can be found at Talent Identification & Selection in Elite Sport. Comment here on the blog or below the presentation in the new window.

MOOC success!

The MOOC experiment was excellent. In fact, I've already signed up for two more. One I've just completed with Sidneyeve Matrix at Queen's University - it's called CDS605 Personal Branding for Educators. Sidneyeve is an incredibly connected social media guru who happens to have her ear to the ground on everything digital it seems. The other doesn't start until September (which is truly terrible timing), however, the course title certainly evokes connection to an area of passion in teaching; it's called "Sports and Society" with Dr. Orin Starn. I'm on the watchlist for this one and will connect as soon as enrolment permits.

Regarding the course with Cathy N. Davidson called "The History and Future of  (Mostly) Higher Education: Or, How We Can Unlearn Our Old Patterns and Relearn for a More Successful, Fruitful, Satisfying, Productive, Humane, Happy, Beautiful, Socially-conscious, Socially-Engaged Future." I thoroughly enjoyed it. Granted, I did think I was going to finish the course with all the assignments/discussions/annotations done. The optimist in me always thinks I'm going to get it all done; the realist in me really needs to give the optimist a kick to think a little more realistically...so, I didn't quite get things done to the level I would have liked but I did get everything I wanted out of the course. 

So, my thoughts to those who are taking a MOOC in future would be this. Make sure you set some minimum expectations for what you'd like to learn and accomplish during the course that may not be everything that will earn a certificate of completion. By all means, attempt to complete everything and enjoy what you do along the way. I did that for the first week and was able to take something out of each portion I completed or participated in. 

The second week started off reasonably well. Then some unexpected life news happened so I wasn't able to complete the rest as thoroughly as I had planned. However, having completed the first week's worth of work, I felt like I could prioritize the rest of the course and still feel like I was getting lots of new learning and good reminders out of it, too. 

Perhaps if you are unsure whether a MOOC is for you, it would be a good idea to try everything that is available in the first week and then to reevaluate the most important aspects based on the course content and life as it happens. Hope this is helpful!

My MOOC experiment

After many exposures to the concept of MOOCs and other knowledge sharing platforms, I thought it was time to do a MOOC myself. Major influences in this were Alec Courosa and Sidneyeve Matrix through her Twitter account and her online course CDS502 (Online Strategy) through Queen's University that I was fortunate enough to participate in last year. As well, teaching an interdisciplinary studies high school course on social media last year has very much piqued my curiousity about learning online and in trying to keep up with all the changes to digital literacies.

The MOOC that caught my interest was Cathy Davidson's course from Duke University - of course, the possibility of being connected to the Cameron Crazies was a ridiculous but fun idea - called The History and Future of  (Mostly) High Education: Or, How We Can Unlearn Our Old Patterns and Relearn for a More Successful, Fruitful, Satisfying, Productive, Humane, Happy, Beautiful, Socially-conscious, Socially-Engaged Future. Needless to say, the English teacher in me was immediately attracted to the title! The hashtag on Twitter is #FutureEd if you are interested in joining or following the conversation.

Six weeks is the length of the course and the video lecture style is both engaging and very well put together with animated "chalkboards" summarizing Prof Davidson's main points. For a visual learner like me who likes to take notes while I read, this has been excellent. In fact, I'd love to know what program they used to put the videos together to make them professional but (hopefully) not too onerous. In this course there is not necessarily an emphasis on assignments and achievement on those assignments - these can be done and one would assume that the learning would be more solidified through the course by completing the assignments. The assignments are purely voluntary which appealed to me since in Ontario we are just starting up a new semester and I still have my many other involvements in rugby to deal with in life as well. This was helpful as I want to complete the course but wasn't sure of the workload and balancing with these other commitments. The fact that a student can earn a certificate of achievement simply by completing quiz questions as they come up on each video was enough for me to be able to say I've completed this within reasonable expectations.

The question at the end of the first intro assignments leave multiple possibilities. I did the quiz which leads to the certificate - not sure if my motivation was to earn the certificate or to actually see what I had learned. Also, there is an essay assignment that will be peer reviewed on having to "unlearn" something. I'd like to do the assignment, however, I think that the time I've spent on this blog may preclude me from meeting the deadline. There are also other participatory assignments the most notable of which asks "who is your favourite teacher?"I do like this question, and I've answered it on numerous occasions in my coaching development education; only, I've done it on paper and not on video as the assignment suggests. In the MOOC, the best part is that I know I've done it and it doesn't matter if I submit the assignment. Even better since it just gives me a chance to solidify and remember the learning I've done and then mentally add to it with people who have influenced me since. And there are many! I am so lucky to work with people at school and in rugby who teach me by challenging, cajoling and straight up telling me to learn.

Anyone can be a teacher and anyone can be a learner. I LOVE that this course is encouraging teachers and anyone who wants to learn to learn. Learning for learning's sake is such a wonderful and laudable goal. Now, if only this course will help me discover the secret to making sure that others feel the same way!

More books for coaches or my reading list from 2014

A few more books for coaches and teachers that were part of 2013's reading pile:

Quiet - Susan Cain

Ever wondered how to connect with the introverts on your team? Or wondered why some people just aren't that into group work in a classroom? Or wondered if you have some introverted tendencies yourself as a coach or teacher? This is the book for you!

Quiet is illuminating in the sense that it give a powerful voice to those who don't always feel that using theirs is the most necessary idea. As an extrovert, it certainly helpful me understand about how to encourage the hard work, idea generation and focus that introverts bring to the table with others. We just need to shut up, give those introverts time to speak and then listen!

This was brought to my attention by a former athlete of ours at Queen's who self identifies as an introvert and it was on my list for a long time before I finally got to it. All of a sudden I feel more equipped to work with and to help introverts harness the strengths of their default operational mode. The world in general needs to recognize the creative ability and the depth of investigation that introverts can go to when given the opportunity!

And, if you're into TEDtalks - here's Cain's called "The Power of Introverts."

To Sell is Human - Daniel Pink

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Pink's writing and was thrilled to see him speak in Ottawa back in fall 2011. His latest book published in early 2013, To Sell is Human, is another winner. He claims that 8 of 10 of us workers are salespeople. It's true that teachers and coaches are salespeople in that we sell ideas, we sell and help build the concepts of self-confidence, passion for learning, dedication, teamwork and all those things that allow athletes and students to be the best people they can be once they leave our programs or schools.

Let's face it - we can't get buy in from our athletes and students if we can't sell the ideas or team culture that we create. Pink's book can help us do it more effectively.

Smarter Than You Think - Clive Thompson

My airport treat is a copy of Wired magazine whenever I am travelling. This is where I discovered Clive Thompson's clever and informative reading and was fortunate to receive the book as an unexpected Christmas gift.

Thompson's argument is that technology is making us smarter and may actually end up rewiring our brains to make us even "smarter." There are plenty of people who say that the information age and it's advancements will set us up for failure but Thompson makes the case for technology in all it's new and unknown ways. In a sense, the book doesn't seem to connect at all with coaching and might seem that there are lose links to teaching. However, for teachers, this book is a must-read and there is an entire chapter dedicated to the technology movements in schools. Also, it just asks readers to thoughtfully consider that change might just be a good thing...and that is what every teacher and coach should encourage.

Selling the Dream - Ken Campbell with Jim Parcells

While I didn't find the information in the book earth-shattering, Campbell does come up with some impressive numbers and statistics to support his ideas on hockey at a grassroots level in Canada. The message here is that we're in big trouble if we keep doing what we're doing. Money is what drives hockey development in Canada and mainly those middle to high income families will be the ones who can afford to help develop a raw but possibly talented teenager. Lower income families and those who are from outside major urban areas will be shut out of the development system. And some Canadian parents are making mind-boggling financial and life decisions around the minute possibility of their kids either getting a hockey scholarship or making the NHL or national teams. 

Honestly, I don't know if I would have finished it if I hadn't wanted to use the book as a part of my Sport & Society class at SHS. However, it would be a great primer for those just starting out in the hockey machine or those who may want to justify avoiding it (and putting their kids in mini-rugby instead). Oops, just can't help to advocate for fun, games and great LTAD!

The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg

I really enjoyed the organization of Duhigg's book and the research he put into each chapter. First, he starts with how some people have changed their own habits and then he explains exactly how his Cue-Reward-Routine concept makes it eas(ier) to make changes to habits. If only he talked about cookies less, I may have not craved them so much when I was reading!

And, there is a teacher's guide (thanks, Charles!). I'm working on putting this into our Grade 12 College English at SHS since the awareness about habits is not always as obvious for teenagers as one might think. We all have habits we enjoy and that we'd really rather change. Seems reasonable to talk about it in a classroom and maybe combine the use of technology into helping us make a positive beahviour change...maybe we can use both Thompson's and Duhigg's expertise at once. By the way, they are both highly engaged in Twitter and will have a chat if you have something interesting to comment on or to ask.

I think that's it - hope this is informative and that you can find something else interesting to read in the near future that helps to make you that much better in your chosen field.

New photoquote

Original photo information: Photo Credit: Raymond Larose via Compfight cc

This made me laugh...but only sort of...

SHS Rugby Clothing

Hi SHS Rugby ladies,

Here is an example of the SHS rugby clothing:

Forms are due on Monday next week (April 22).

Guest Post: A rant on Storify TOS

The following is a guest post by Jeff Lyons, a current student in my IDC4U class.

Recently, I was tasked with creating a page with “Storify” for a school assignment. Now, I'm always leery of signing up for new websites or services, as I highly value both my security and the amount of space in my inbox. Nevertheless, I signed up with Storify, handing out my email as requested, and began amassing the links and information required for my topic, despite the difficulties involved (my topic was DRM and Piracy in games, and the school board blocks most gaming news websites and blogs.) Everything was going along fine, until I signed off for the day and returned the next. When I went to edit and format my page, I was greeted with this:

Connect with my Twitter account? You mean the one I don't have? The one you never mentioned before? Well that's just...brilliant. I hope the dripping sarcasm is oozing through your monitor right now.

I realize, I'm the last of a dying breed, that most people have Twitter these days, and spend hours on end tweeting to their hearts content. Myself, I don't see the need. I'm just one person. I don't have news or updates to post concerning a product I'm working on. I don't need to inform people of what towns I'll be performing in, what times, and how much a T-shirt will cost. And I certainly don't have a group of staffers crafting my next political barb. If I want to stay in contact with those close to me, I'll contact them over Facebook, or give them a call, or gasp have a face-to-face conversation with them. But I digress. This isn't about me not needing to use Twitter. This is about Storify springing it on me. Not once in the account creation process, or in the terms of use, does it mention Twitter. Not once. And if it requires something, surely it should notify the user of that beforehand, shouldn't it? If I go out to buy a game, I can look up the minimum system requirements before forking over $60 (an overly high price, but that's for another day) for a game my computer can't run. If it's multiplayer, or runs on a content-delivery system such as Steam, or Origin, it'll mention that an internet connection is required, and that an account on those services is as well, for the latter.

So why are they telling me after I start using Storify that I need to also give them my Twitter information? Why do they require it in the first place? Is Twitter integration mandatory? Would they, if I made a Twitter account for them, tell me to give them my Facebook username and password at a later date? (You can choose to use your Facebook or Twitter accounts to sign up for Storify, but I prefer to keep my educational, work, and social lives as separate as humanly possible) And it's not just because I don't have or want a Twitter account. It's not just because they require one for use.

It's because they spring it on you like this. “Oh hi, there! We see you're enjoying our product! Now, if you want to continue using it, fork over your info!” I mean, if they do this now, what's next? My real-world address? My Social Insurance Number? They can't even say it was in the fine print. I checked. There is no fine print.

 

Okay, maybe there is. My mistake. But does it mention requiring other accounts anywhere? Nope. Not anywhere else in the TOS, either. Ctrl+F is quite useful in that regard.

You know, this is a really shady way of operating, this cutting the user off suddenly and demanding account information. It's basically holding the account for ransom. And I don't negotiate with terrorists. I guess it's a nice ironic twist that my chosen topic was DRM. Most current forms of DRM are really scummy too, and end up preventing legitimate customers from playing more than it does the pirates. Well, no matter. I have other options, other steps to complete the assignment.

And Storify? You just lost yourself a user.

Guest Post: Overview of Athletic Therapy

Hi everyone, my name is Steacy Huff and I am currently in Mrs. Barz's me and the meme technology class. For part of an assignment we are doing I wrote a blog on a brief overview of the profession of athletic therapy. I am an aspiring athletic therapy student and wanted to educate people on this profession as I think it is very interesting and something everyone should be educated about.

Many people are familiar with with the profession of physiotherapy. Often people attend physiotherapy  after obtaining an injury to get back into the sport or activity they were playing before. But what about the profession of athletic therapy? Many people are not quite as familiar with athletic therapy as they are with physiotherapy.  There are many similarities between the two professions that often people view them as the same thing. Carla Brash, who is a certified athletic therapist at Kingston Athletic Therapy Centre, describes athletic therapy as “finding the root of the cause and treating it therefore indirectly treating the injury.” For more information visit their website at http://www.kingstonatc.com/ or follow them on Twitter @KingstonATC.

Both athletic therapists and physiotherapists use similar methods to treat injuries but athletic therapy is a more hands on practice. Some athletic therapists use a technique called visceral treatment. When using this technique, the therapists releases the tension that is created within the organs of a person body caused from every day stresses. Many people are not aware that the organs within their body can become tight. Organs, such as the kidneys, attach to the spine through the viscera. The viscera with in your body can become tight due to everyday stresses, just as your muscles become tight after you workout for the fist time in a few weeks. Due to the visceral attachment on the spine, this can lead to low back pain if your kidneys and viscera become tight. Visceral treatment was developed by a french osteopath and physical therapist named Jean-Pierre Barral. For more information on visceral treatment visit his website as http://www.barralinstitute.com/about/vm.php.

If the athletic therapy interests you, I would encourage you to check out the Canadian Athletic Therapy Association website at http://www.athletictherapy.org/en/index.aspx where you can find information on the profession and find a certified athletic therapist near you.

Photoquote

The entire premise of my IDC3C Sport & Society course:

Orginal photo from: Photo Credit: Christian Bardenhorst via Compfight cc

It's not about fighting in hockey. It's about striving to improve as human beings; our qualities, our interactions and our abilities. Sport is just one small, wonderful area where we can do all of these big things.

When people ask me if I'm a teacher...

When people ask me if I'm a teacher, I'm usually happy to respond that I am. The recent political unrest has made me a bit more reticent to respond in the affirmative, however, most people seem to still realize that we're trying to do the right thing.

I realize I'm very fortunate to be a teacher. Thanks to those who share parts of their day with me everyday: students, all support staff and my teaching colleagues at SHS, our admin, those retirees who keep coming back to make Sydenham an even more vibrant place and the occasional parent who checks in.

As second semester is about to start and I'm madly preparing, I just wanted to take a moment to be thankful for all those people who make my job as great as it is!

Photo Credit: Krissy.Venosdale via Compfight cc

Marking...a rant?

I know, theoretically, that marking is a valuable exercise.

I sat in on a webinar last night hosted by Alec Couros where the guest speaker Dave Cormier (a prof from UPEI - @davecormier) was talking about MOOCs; yep, had to look it up, too - the acronym is Massive Open Online Course (thank you, Wikipedia). He shared an anecdote about running into a student that had been in a MOOC that he was teaching. The student mentioned that he was disappointed in the course because he hadn't finished it and hadn't received a final grade. Nevermind the fact that he didn't finish because he met another student in the same course and through the course of this meeting they went on to produce some other cool stuff as a direct result of their involvement in the course in the first place. The student could only focus on the fact that he hadn't finished the course due to the fact that he hadn't received a final grade.

So, that begs the question. Is it more important to create the environment where learning is a process and an exciting starting point? Or, is simply achieving the final objective, a final grade based on assessment through the course, enough?

I think most educators when asked theoretically would say that it is most important to create a learning environment that allows students to think, create and to be curious. However, at every semester's end I find myself frustrated with the fact that I am assessing only on the student's performance at mundane tasks that I have asked them to perform. In some cases, I've been able to allow students create their own mundane tasks or even to create a unit, however, everything always comes down to assessment, evaluation and a final mark.

And, man, that just burns me.

So, I'm going to try to figure out some other ways to address it. Anyone have any to share?

Waiting for game day

One of the most profound emotions I've felt this season has been impatience. Not with athletes or coaching staff or administration. They have all been exceptional - as usual. It's odd, since as a coach I've always felt like slowing things down was the best option since we usually want MORE time to work on strategies and tactics before the actual performance demands of a game.

No, this season has been different for many reasons. Not the least of which is because we're so darn excited to play! At times I think that it would be nice to slow things down and to savour the moments I treasure with players - a chat on the bus, the brillance of seeing a player be successful in the application of a new skill, the last pass before the try, the redshirts working their tails off so they can be on the field next year, an in-depth conversation about strategy with one of my coaching colleagues - and then I think of how far away game day is and just want to hit the fast forward button.

And, man...it's only Wednesday....

Learning Goals and Exit Cards

Learning goals seem to be the fastest growing classroom tool in our school board these days. I’ve used them at the beginning and end of PowerPoint presentations – particularly when the language is new and the concepts are dense – and I’ve tinkered with developing them along with students before completing a new reading or discussing a new concept. Students have also posed questions as learning goals on several occasions and that has worked quite successfully. However, I still thought that I wasn’t always hitting the mark when it came to using learning goals as effectively as I could with students.

The other day I was chatting on the phone at my colleague’s desk and I saw a chart that not only outlined learning goals but also allowed students to organize their thoughts correlated to each goal. It also created a ranking system for the students to circle what they believed was their level of understanding of the learning goal by the end of class. Conveniently, this formed a built-in exit card that required almost no extra work to set up.

Added to this, I had recently discovered a brief PowerPoint presentation online that outlined the changes in the Chinese sport policy since the Second World War. Since we are in the middle of a unit looking at the Olympics and international sport, there was a link here that could also support how we understand the changes in the Canadian sport system that have occurred through programs like Own the Podium and Quest for Gold and thereby lead to a focus on high performance and elite sport. The challenge was to make the information on the seemingly distant Chinese sport system accessible to Canadian students and to create some take away points for these students so the whole lesson was actually related to what we’ve been discussing. 

Fast forward to seeing the learning goals chart and then taking a stab at making my own chart, complete with the information I wanted them to be able to leave with by the end of class. I found the five key points that I felt were most important and created the goals around these points. These became the first column, then the second column was space for students to write supporting points on each of the key points and then a third column was added for a self-evaluation on a five point scale (1 for lowest and 5 for highest) of learning at the end of class.

It was a little awkward working from two documents – the slides from the PowerPoint and the learning goals chart – and overall I think we got a good result for this first time use. I continually asked questions about the information as we went through it like, “What learning goal could this fall under?” or “Does this meet any of our learning goal criteria?” which was a little more structured than I would have liked…however, I felt it necessary to help create the link between what we were learning and what the outcome goals were.

Finally, students were able to evaluate themselves on the “scale” of their learning – a sort of metacognitive measurement – in the last column of the learning goals chart. In a totally unplanned moment, I collected the learning goals sheets at the end of class and leafed through them afterwards. Almost all students had completed the sheet and had evaluated metacognitive portion on the strength of their understanding at the end of class. Voila, exit card! And, I was able to quickly see that the majority of students had comfortably grasped four of the five learning goals.

I handed back the learning goals sheets at the beginning of the next day, addressed the fuzzy fifth goal that most of the class rated as less understood and then went on to step into the next lesson. I definitely plan on using a learning goals chart again in the future as they helped me make some tough concepts seem simple in the class and made the learning more clear for the students.

One final thought is that this type of learning is exactly what I do when I’m coaching, although not with pen and paper. We start an activity, we define the goals that we need to achieve in order to be successful and then we evaluate ourselves on these goals through key points or indicators when we play during practice and in games. What I can’t figure out is why it took me so long to apply them in the classroom rather than just on the rugby pitch!

When game sense coaching doesn't make as much sense...

With the crazy change in the weather this week we've seen everything from snow, sleet, rain and some just generally miserable weather. Although I believe that coaching with a game sense approach is by far the best way to coach, I think I have found when it doesn't work as well, too.

We had to cancel a high school game yesterday since it snowed in the morning and the weather was at about 4 degrees Celsius for most of the day. The concern was that the athletes would be freezing after doing a full warm-up and then playing the game and that the field would be torn up if we played three rugby games on it in the day. Instead, we decided to do a short, one hour practice that would get the athletes out of the elements in only an hour and would be a high intensity and fast paced practice in order to stay warm.

Brilliantly, not a lot of the athletes dressed for the weather. One would assume, I think, that since the games were not postponed until after student arrived at school that morning that all the athletes would have brought their warm rugby clothing with them. However, that seemed not to be the case! We still have some work to do on that front.

In any case, I don't get a lot of opportunity to coach the guys at the school so we just held a practice for the boys teams. Many of the guys have had only moderate opportunity to actually play and therefore have fairly limited understanding of the game due to rugby being a late entry sport. We often think that telling athletes what to do is a better way for the athletes to learn the game and so far this approach was frustrating for a number of the athletes. However, we need to trust that the players will learn as they play (experiential learning) and that we as coaches must help them recall and highlight what they have learned.

Given the weather, we had to keep the practice moving at all times. I also wanted players to leave with a few key lessons from the time they spent on the field. The two strategies I used were to keep the game moving in the down times (ball out of bounds, knock on) by counting down and to keep the team questioning conversations to VERY brief time intervals (we really talked for 30-90 seconds before going back to the game). To keep the game moving, I had to be quite verbally involved in the practice so by counting down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and then saying 'go' the athletes weren't over-thinking what they needed to do, they were just doing it. They were also keeping (marginally) warmer!

When we wanted to make a point, we called the athletes together for a very brief questioning period where we highlighted a few skills throughout the practice. We looked at working together in support distance for offloads, working on when and how to kick strategically and how to maul effectively. All this in a 45 minute practice! That being said, I think that the learning would have been even more effective if we had had more time to question and demonstrate the parts of the whole that the players were missing.

In the whole-part-whole sense of games sense coaching, we were really only able to cover the 'whole' and really scratched the surface when it came to the 'part.' I would have preferred to have more time to repeat some of the learning in part before going back to the whole as the learning would have been more clear and solidified for the athletes.

All in all, practice was well done by all athletes even though they were fighting the distraction of the weather through the entire time. I hope that we'll be able to get some more time in better weather soon!

First practice of the season: 2011 vs 2012

One of my teaching and coaching colleagues made a sharp observation after our first practice with the high school team this spring. He said, "Wow, we're way further ahead from this first practice compared to last year's first practice."

That comment really stuck with me and I've been mulling it over for the last two weeks. Why was the first practice of the season so dramatically different between two years when I planned the practice in almost the exact same way?

Given my preference for games sense coaching, both of the practices were based on games sense. We did a warm up and then started immediately into games. The first game was the aptly named Endball - this is a game that is easily modified and uses the basic premise of getting the ball from one end to the other in a regular invasion-territory type of game. Players may use any type of pass in any direction and the ball changes possession when it is intercepted (or whenever you determine a change - for instance, on a dropped ball or in a tie up/jump ball situation where hands from both teams are on the ball).

My goal for the session, set in conjunction with the players, was to have them - loosely - playing rugby by the end of our hour in the gym. I believe we accomplished this goal as players were correctly lining up in defence and moving when the ball was moved to adhere to the offside laws - something we were able to underscore through questioning with the players - and in attack we were trying to gain depth from which to attack and all players got the hang of going forward with the ball in hand.

However, it did look better than the year prior. We have a large number of new players this year and I don't think that the returning players simply remembered the practice from 12 months before and just repeated what they had learned. Instead, over time I've gotten better at setting the conditions of the game in the game sense area of coaching. What I mean by this is, I didn't just roll out the ball and tell them to play rugby with a few rules thrown in haphazardly. Through the last few years, particularly the past year, I've been able to watch many other coaches use game sense coaching to help teach the athletes a better understanding of the game through creating the conditions that allow for both success and struggle in a new concept.

With the high school kids, the concept of moving forward as they catch the ball is challenging, as is trying to carry the ball and then to attack the defence. To try to encourage harder running and attacking, these were the conditions I set as I watched the game unfold. First, the players had to be calling for the ball and they could only do so if they were moving forward first. In other words, they were realizing that they were moving forward. And, even better, they were communicating that this was happening to the person passing them the ball. This started to improve several areas of the attack.

Then, the players were moving forward but then going directly into contact. So, the aim of the ball carrier become to move the defender that was in front of them. We split into two groups briefly and reviewed how to run 2on1s with a linear support attacker (ie, the non-ball carrying player or support player runs deeper than the ball carrier and directly behind them; when the ball carrier takes a hard step to the right or left the defender comes with them, and then the support player runs at the space that the defender just left. Finally, the ball carrier makes a short pass to the support player into the space the defender has just vacated. Sounds simple, and it is a difficult concept to grasp). Once we split into the two on ones and then talked about what worked and did not work, we put the same game back into play. The condition for the attackers now was that they needed to run with a buddy - their buddy would be supporting from directly behind the ball carrier AND both players needed to be moving forward when they received the pass.

The game continued and got a lot better! Since the players were moving forward and then trying to make the defender move, the support players got the ball more often and in a bit more space.

One other aspect that we added in the next practice was to slow the defenders down since they were doing an excellent job (a little too excellent actually) of moving forward to take away the attacking players space. Every time the ball when to into contact, the defenders had to hit hands and knees on the turf and then they could stand back up to realign - this took a bit longer and gave the attackers a tiny bit more time to see what was happening and to organize running with their buddies.

So, the conditions for success were added and the players responded very well. As a coach, I learned that observing what was happening and adjusting (quickly) accordingly is the key to success. We could continually identify what the end result was that we wanted by questioning the athletes. And then we developed the changes to how we played the game based on these answers and it worked out to be a huge difference from 2011 to 2012.

We'll see how the season starts and how the players apply the lessons we've learned...