The Importance of Risk

There are times when I question my sanity. I have problems with the word "no" - I know this, but I embrace it because it leads me down roads I never dreamt I'd end up on.

On top of an already full plate of responsibilities I've added membership to the Pedagogical Licence (Advanced) community in a step towards attaining the third (and top) level of the Smart Classroom PD Framework. Looking at the course outline and sample portfolios over the weekend I have to say - I think I'm nuts.

This is going to be hard work. In this case a couple of things stand out as daunting:

• Deep reflection is always hard. It's draining and challenging. The self-awareness that comes from it is always worth it, but the process is one I squirm about. I've always been the kind of person/student who is an over achiever, I'm never happy with scond best and reflecting on my practice opens me up for criticism and judgement. I've overcome my fear of not being "the best" to a large degree (otherwise there's no way I'd be able to blog as I do :)) but the level of reflection and deconstruction of practice expected of me for this aspiration and the sheer calibre of some of the others working through the course alongside me has me scared I'm not going to meet the standard...

Which brings me to the other reason I'm nervous:

• Being in an environment of self-confessed over achievers is generally an intense situation, with a good dose of competition (friendly of course) thrown in. A number of names in the course I know from the network, from conferences, from rumours and hearsay (all good of course - in fact generally glowing about what they are doing in their different contexts). For someone already worried about meeting standards the idea of being compared to some of these people is downright terrifying.

So why do it?

Because it scares me. Because I know it's going to be challenging. Because I know that putting my practice under scrutiny I will become a better teacher (and leader). Afterall,

"If you risk nothing you gain nothing"
~ Bear Grylls ~

For me that's the key to learning - taking risks.

I take a risk everytime my Sabum (instructor) partners me with a different black belt for a spar - and every time I learn something. It might be how that particular person puts techniques together, or how to avoid, or their weakness...more often its about my weaknesses and the areas I need to "fix". I also try to take risks in my classroom. That can be hard, the business of education tends towards being low risk, and often doing something different can be considered too risky, "What if it fails?"

What we really need to be asking is - "What if it works?" That shift right there will give us all the power we need to really transform education.

Take a moment and think...

Something that concerns me with integrating digital tools into classrooms is making sure that they're used for more than "show". I hear a lot of stories about how awesome a tool is at engaging students...then disppointment strikes when the activity it's used for doesn't help students work towards learning objectives, it's an "add on", a carrot, a reward. There are times I have to admit that it's really hard to look the teacher in that situation in the eye and say "what a wasted opportunity."

As I take on more and more of a leadership role in terms of digital pedagogy in my school I've been looking at ways to ensure digital tools are being integrated authentically and to enrichen learning. I've found reflection tools to help educators measure how their planned activities fit in a scale of transformative learning and higher order thinking skills (one of my fav has to be the 'Technology Integration Matrix' from Florida).

But facilitating effective ICT rich learning experiences takes more planning and thinking then this. There's all sorts of things to 'manage' and admittedly, over the years some of these I didn't even know about until I was half way through an activity and something came up and surprised me. As I lead and support other teachers on their journeys I want to help make their journey a little less stressful and far less lonely than mine has been so far. So I want my colleagues to know about some of the "surprises" that have taken years off my life and damaged professional connections because of their timing and implications. Just being aware of things like relevant department policies, copyright (yours, mine, ours, theirs), digital citzenship concerns (cybersafety, data management) - to name a couple of things - puts a whole new level of thinking into my planning around the integration of digital tools. And now @shanetechteach and the comments on his post are opening a whole new layer of thinking and considerations..it's making me wonder if this is all worth it, I mean surely teachers think of this stuff...

That's what led me to start thinking about some sort of "risk assessment" scaffold for digital tools. It was my drama background and the management of physical activities (clowning's quite dangerous you know - and I won't even mention stage fighting) that made me think in those terms. Having come up with the idea I turned to a couple of my "gurus" and asked for their input, @shanetechteach has been my sounding board with a lot of this and it's been interesting to read the impact my questions and idea has had on his thinking, which he discusses in his latest blog entry here.

What I'm trying to develop isn't a "risk assessment" tool anymore, it's a thinking and planning tool. It's all well and good for teachers to find a fun tool they want to use in their classrooms, but they also need to ensure it's being used validly and in an informed way.

Ignorance is not an excuse, and the reality is that, as @cnapi5 points out in his reply to @shanetechteach's post, there is a murkier side to the internet and technology that we don't often discuss. My challenge at the moment is coming to terms with how I encourage my colleagues to integrate digital tools while also ensuring they've considered all aspects of authentic digital tools, digital citzenship, copyright, data management, and the complicated waters of conforming to departmental policy.

Honestly, at first I thought it would be easy - turns out it's not. I'm in version two at the moment (and two versions couldn't be much different and still orginate from the same idea if I tried) and I'm not content with it yet. I'm hung up on a couple of worries - how to shape it so that despite the seriousness of these concerns it doesn't just see teachers go "too hard, not doing it" (in relation to the tech or the document); how to give it the scope it needs (cause you can lay money on there being something I haven't even considered).

I admit there's also a degree of hesitation in putting forth the idea of a tool like this - I'm worried colleagues may see it as insulting to their professionalism, as though they don't plan effectively. It's not that, it's just that so many of us (and yep, I've done it) have no idea about some of this stuff, where do you even start thinking and planning for these things? I would like to give them a tool to help them start, to encourage them to pause for a moment and think about it...

Image: 'Pause and Think' by mabar @flickr.com