The Innovative Educator Podcast

Ken currently holds an M.A. in Education with a specialization in Educational Technology as well as New Media Design and Production. He has worked as an Educator for over 14 years and most recently taught technology at the Middle School level. As a part of his active involvement within the Educational Technology community, Ken is an Apple Distinguished Educator and a Google Certified Innovator. Ken has worked extensively at the policy level and was named to the California State Superintendent of Public Instruction’s Education Technology Task Force. Ken regularly gives keynotes, presentations, and leads workshops, many of which are hands-on, covering a wide variety of Educational Technology, Technology Integration, Equity and Inclusion, Multimedia Literacy, Visual Learning, Visual Storytelling, and Instructional Design topics. Ken is the ISTE Digital Equity PLN 2018 Excellence Award winner.

Raymond McDermott

Professor Emeritus

Dr. McDermott takes a broad interest in the analysis of human communication, the organization of school success and failure, and the history and use of various literacies around the world. His work includes studies of inner-city public schools, after-school classrooms, and the function of information technologies in different cultures. At present, he is working on the intellectual history of ideas like genius, intelligence, race, and capital.

Possible Questions (not all asked in the interview):

First maybe tell me who you are, where you’re from and what you do.

* You’ve been designing school buildings since 1996 (is that right?), what got you into that?

* What did you think you were going to be when you grew up?

* Tell me about how you got into your line of work.

* Who has been the most important person in your life? Can you tell me about him or her? What lessons did that person teach you?

What do you do differently than most in your everyday life that you feel others should do? / Your best investment every day/week or month (of time or money). 

What does it mean to value the lines that make no sense?

Create lots of stuff you throw away is a sentence I’ve heard you say. What is the last thing you threw away? And how does that help with the creative process?

Do you have any favourite stories from your work life?

We can’t go and talk about your work life without mentioning the Sandy Hook Redesign. After the shooting in December 2012, which took the lives of 20 students and six adults. The old school, a simple, flat-roofed, brick square constructed in 1956 and configured around a grassy courtyard, was cordoned off. It was a crime scene. The surviving students were sent to a borrowed school building in the nearby town of Monroe. By May 2013, Newtown decided it was best to demolish the Sandy Hook school and erect a new building on the same property. (https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/sandy-hook-rebuilds_o)

* Your firm (Svigals + Partners) was chosen to design the new school building to replace the old building and I understand that you said to the people of Newtown, in effect, “I can’t decide how this new school should look. You should decide.” Why was it important to include the community in the design and what came of that?

* What were the key theme in your new design of Sandy Hook?

* At first, the architects didn’t ask about the design of the school or even its programmatic requirements. “The questions we asked at the very beginning were crucial in setting context,” One of the first questions they asked was, “What do you love about your community?”“At the very first meeting you sat down and went to each person individually, in front of everybody, and said, ‘What did this school represent to you? What does this town represent to you?’ Why?

* https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/sandy-hook-rebuilds_o

* Tell me about ‘Compassionate listening’ and how you learned that.

* What do you think every school building should have, that most are missing?

* What about every classroom… What should every classroom have?

* Can you tell me about the treehouses at Sandy Hook?

Students designed with you and drew the school they wanted. Community members to. 

Design thinking

Stage 1: Empathize—Research Your Users’ Needs.

Stage 2: Define—State Your Users’ Needs and Problems.

Stage 3: Ideate—Challenge Assumptions and Create Ideas.

Stage 4: Prototype—Start to Create Solutions.

Stage 5: Test—Try Your Solutions Out.

I want to ask you about security because I know that was a concern. How were security concerns factored into the building’s design? How did you meet the challenge of integrating the elements of security into this other vision you had of healing through nature?

To enter the school you have to cross one of three footbridges, a device that also ensures that everyone is forced to approach the building along one of three well-watched pathways.

The classroom doors also lock, whole wings of the school can be isolated,

About:

Dr. Langer-Osuna’s research focuses on the nature of student identity and engagement during collaborative mathematical activity, and the ways in which authority and influence are constructed in interaction. 

Recent work has focused on developing theoretical and analytic tools to capture the construction of marginalization and privilege in patterns of student engagement, and the spread of ideas in student-led collaborative work. 

 

Research Interests

Collaborative Learning | Curriculum and Instruction | Diversity and Identity | Elementary Education | Equity in education | Gender Issues | Math Education | Professional Development | Race and Ethnicity | Research Methods | Standards | Teachers and Teaching | Technology and Education

 

Can off-task be on-track?: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0031721719846892

 

Possible topics to explore:

Active, inquiry mathematics classrooms.

Identity development in the classroom

Group discussions around math problems instead of just worksheets…

 

Possible Questions:

Tell me about your environment growing up (If your childhood had a smell, what would it be?)

Was there a teacher or teachers who had a particularly strong influence on your life? Tell me about them.

What is obvious to you (about education, teaching or learning) but many others don’t see/understand?

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Tell me a little about your research and how you got interested in that.

Identity and math classrooms

Why is identity important to you?

 

Especially math identity?

 

The interactive math classroom… what is that? How is it different?

What kind of classrooms are enabling students to see their identity as strong mathematicians?

What hinders that? 

How do good math classrooms look and feel different from the bad ones?

What are the best math teachers doing differently from the average ateacher?

Can off-task be on-track?

Collaboration in math… that’s cheating right?

How can off-task be on-track?

 

Some research suggests that off-task talk can support collaboration by alleviating boredom, supporting emotional regulation, negotiating status within-group, or extending work in new directions. -2019

 

When should teachers intervene off-task conversations?

When should they allow them to go on?

Future

What excites you now? What is next?

https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/gsolanof

https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/sgoldman

https://dloft.stanford.edu/

Taking Design Thinking to School 1st Edition

You can find the full radio show at Modern Education on Apple Podcasts.

Host is: Ben Woodford @BenWoodFord1 on Twitter

Syrian Refugee Crisis

http://www.21stcenturyschools.com/campfires.html#