“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” – Teach Different with Aldous Huxley

Transcript

Dan (00:10)

Welcome everybody to the Teach Different podcast. We’re totally excited today to have yet another representative from our spring pilot of the Teach Different certification program, which was our official rollout where we had teachers go through a six to eight week experience learning the method. And Chris Johnson was one of those teachers from Rochester, Illinois is where he teaches. I’m going to have him introduce himself in a moment. And then, you know, once he talks a little bit about his background and how he got into teaching and what he teaches and so on, we will roll into the quote. We have Aldous Huxley. I hope I’m pronouncing that right, that first name, Aldous Huxley. A quote. This is the first one, Steve, from this figure. So, very exciting to do this one. It’s going to be on technology and progress, something that is quite prescient. I think given what’s going on today with artificial intelligence and so on. Without further ado though, let me just bring Chris in here. Chris, thanks again for being a part of the pilot in the spring. We hope you enjoyed your experience and maybe you could reference a little bit about that throughout the podcast, what you learned and so on. And thanks for coming back for the podcast. Welcome.

 

Chris J (01:28)

Yeah, thanks guys. Yeah, the pilot was a great experience. I had a lot of fun. And I think I learned some good, I would say tools to put on my teaching toolbox here.

 

Dan (01:39)

And then if you could just kind of maybe just give a little bit of background on what your teaching journey and what you’re currently up to now.

 

Chris J (01:46)

Yeah, so I currently teach at Rochester Junior High, primarily eighth, a bit of seventh grade in there as well. I’m a history teacher and have taught middle school my entire career, now over 20 years. I also coach and cross country and I am in charge of our student morning news that we do. We do a video broadcast of morning announcements and stuff like that times a week that’s written, run, produced, everything by students. I teach a digital media class that helps kids learn how to use technology to do all kinds of different stuff, mostly video editing. We’ve done a little bit of AI photo image or image generation, photography basics, stuff like that. This year we’re gonna gear it a little bit more towards the production of like school related video media stuff. starting with our morning announcements there. So that’s kind of like one of my hobbies. You know, I’ve coached e-sports in my past, which was a blast. We talked about an emerging technology opportunity for some of our kids. But when it comes down to it, I just love teaching history and government and getting kids to think about and look at the past and talk about it and think critically about it, using those like historical skills. It’s kind of, I can’t imagine doing anything else.

 

Dan (03:10)

What a nice blend with the technology and the history. Often they don’t live together. Sometimes social science teachers rebel a little bit about the new technologies. So that’s really cool that you found a home for both of those inside yourself. That’s great. Why middle school? What is the fascination with middle school? I love asking middle school teachers this.

 

Chris J (03:21)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, you know, I just love them. You know, my first job that I got was eighth grade US history. I’ve never let go of it since then, even when we moved here from the Springfield area to Rochester. You know, I had a hard time applying for jobs when we were looking at, you know, at our next place to live. I had a hard time applying for jobs that didn’t include middle school. So there’s just something fun about that age group. I think the kids are creative. They’ve still got some of that like kid creativity. They are generally willing to just dive in and do stuff, know, like trying, you know, a little bit of out of the box activities. So they’re great group to pilot stuff with and to try new activities with. It doesn’t work. mean, whatever, you know, it’s not a big deal. And I just kind of like the freedom of not being like walked into that focus on the GPA, the way that high school students are. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve taught high school, I taught AP Gov, which was my hands down favorite individual thing I’ve ever taught. But just there’s some, I don’t know, there’s just this like fun. freedom of teaching middle school students and working with middle school staff that or junior high stuff, whatever you want to call them. It’s just a great, it’s a lot of fun. I just like, it’s hard to imagine not being involved at that age level.

 

Steve (05:00)

They are fun. It’s for light-spirited people. Like you’re saying, they’re immature still, creative, maybe a little bit more likely to step out and take a chance and act the fool. They don’t have peer groups yet as much as high school. I’m just kind of speaking a little bit of my experience. I’ve had some middle school kids as well, but that’s we need really good middle school teachers. Every high school teacher will tell you. But that’s great. for and go ahead. Yeah.

 

Chris J (05:33)

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, oh, no, I was just gonna say they’re just a lot of fun. And I’ve enjoyed, like, as I’ve grown as a teacher, getting to try and work through and implement some really cool stuff with middle schoolers. And then, you know, when you sit down and talk about to people about the things you do, you know, you always get that like, do that with middle school kids like, yeah, you do that with middle school kids, they, they’re almost like the best group of kids to to try stuff with because they’ve just got that little, they’ve got that fun kind of creative willingness to try it out and go for it. And so I just like it. It’s been a blast.

 

Dan (06:17)

And that would include hopefully the method. Some people are like, no, this method can only go for older students. And we always say, we have elementary teachers using this with third, fourth, and fifth graders. So to your point.

 

Chris J (06:31)

Yeah, no, for sure. I’ve always, you know when I talk to people about teaching, you know, I’m the person who say like, hey, you give them hard stuff to do, them challenging things. And, you know, I think a lot of times kids impress us or surprise us with their willingness and their ability to meet those challenging standards that we set. So do hard things and, you know, they’re going to surprise you.

 

Steve (07:00)

I love that. And that word challenging, Chris, do this. Since you are now pretty much an expert at claim, counterclaim, essential question. You know what the Teach Different Method is. What’s the most challenging part of it, would you say, to students? Maybe when they first get exposed to it, what’s the biggest lift for them?

 

Chris J (07:26)

I think it’s that moving into you moving from the claim counterclaim, I think that’s a pretty standard, I would say intellectual thing that we do in the classroom. It’s moving beyond that and kind of connecting it down to personal experience. which we know is like, that’s the big win is when you get them to apply these big historical famous, you know, stuff to their daily life. That’s when you really have got it. So but that’s the tough part. And I think that’s why you you know, as teachers, we need things like this skills or activities like this in our keep referring to like, as our toolbox, right, that we can pull out that’ll get kids to engage with the content, but also try and connect it down to the personal level. You can’t use the same one every day. It’s like you gotta mix it up and you gotta try some different stuff. But that’s the big challenge for them, I think, is going beyond that initial claim and counterclaim to the next step.

 

Steve (08:23)

connecting it to their real experiences and, you know, taking pretty deep concepts. Some of these quotes are deep, but being able to see how that actually fits in your life requires you to understand what, what, what the claim is, what the counterclaim is. You won’t even have an opinion if you don’t understand. And maybe that’s the challenge. You know, we,

 

Chris J (08:33)

Mm-hmm.

 

Steve (08:52)

We ask kids to conceptually think about this or that, and people can get away with a lot and not really, really understand it. But if you’re in a conversation and you need to illustrate a point and you need to draw on something that happened to you to illustrate the point, hey, you can’t get away from really understanding it. And it hopefully pushes you forward, right? That’s the idea, at least.

 

Chris J (09:21)

Yeah, yeah. Well, one of the things I really like about this method is that it also gives students a little bit of range of activity. know, like they can engage with the quote in the discussion on a couple of different levels, because not every student is going to make that big leap into that kind of like target zone every single time, every single day with every single quote, you know. And even having done this, the handful of times I did it, there’d be days that the kid who had that really insightful comment on last week’s quote didn’t quite make it there this week. And that’s OK. And I think that’s something that works is that there isn’t a right or wrong answer, but also you don’t even have to. You’ve got some range in your ability to engage with the quote and the discussion, and that’s good. It doesn’t always, it’s not the perfect quote for every kid every time and that’s okay too.

 

Steve (10:22)

So unpredictable.

 

Dan (10:24)

So great, so great. It’s so true, Chris. I mean, the second you were saying that, I’m thinking about, I use it, you know, so many times during the year and some kids will just shine in certain discussions and then other times they struggle coming up with a personal experience that connects or the theme doesn’t speak to them. But, you know, as I think you’re saying, we have to look at the big picture, the holistic picture, not one specific event, but the whole thing over time and how they grow over time.

 

Chris J (10:54)

Yeah. Well, and you know, it’s, like with reading, you know, like there are books that I pick up and I cannot put down because it like, it works for me. Right. That doesn’t mean every book is going to be that way. That’s, and it’s not even going to be the same with you. You know, I may say like, this is a great book. And you may pick it up and be like, okay, it’s fine. I think, you know, when we engage with our content, it’s kind of the same way, you know, some kids really gravitate towards one piece of content. Others, you know,

 

Dan (10:55)

Yeah.

 

Chris J (11:21)

comply and complete the tasks that we’re giving them, but it doesn’t work for them. And, you know, I think that’s, that’s gotta be okay. And I think, you know, looking at my background, you know, I’m an individual sport person, you know, I’ve been involved as a track athlete my whole life and I’ve coached it for, you know, forever. And so I think part of me is like, kind of works with that individual approach to learning and success, you know, like you got to figure out what works for you. And that’s, again, that’s something I like about this method is we’ve got a lot of options for kids to engage with content and connect with it. you know.

 

Dan (11:59)

So you see a class almost like a track team where everybody’s doing individual events, but as a group you’re moving towards the same destination. I like that. That’s a good analogy.

 

Chris J (12:07)

Mm-hmm.

 

Steve (12:09)

Speaking

 

Chris J (12:10)

Yeah, I think,

 

Steve (12:10)

of which, Chris, did you get the job?

 

Chris J (12:15)

No, not really. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Steve (12:16)

Really? That’s okay. It was possible, right? But you were trying for a track job and we were gonna hopefully get it, but we’ll see.

 

Chris J (12:26)

Yeah. Yeah. So no. But yeah, it’s, I think it’s that growth and individual learning is really important for us to keep in mind. When we’re looking at a whole classroom and six of them, I’ve got what five or six eighth grade classes coming up this year, we’re all going to kind of like progress through things, different paces with different groups of students and sometimes even different classes, you you may make it to one part of the activity with one class because that’s where they’re ready for. And then the other class, you need to spend more time on a different part of the activity because that’s where that’s what their needs are at the moment. you know, I think, yeah, individual growth is, we can’t lose track of that in kind of the, you know, the whole big picture of things.

 

Steve (13:14)

It’s so hard to find activities for a toolbox that I think the fancy word is universally designed. They’re able to adapt to different kids with different skill levels, different motivational levels, different touch points, different motivational triggers. But the more better the strategy, the more it does kind of serve as something that can fit in different contexts. It’s a go-to, it becomes a go-to. That’s what we’ve always hoped conversations are, right? Like if you have a little conversation every day, that’s a good thing. They don’t have to be 25 minutes, but it’s something that, I don’t know, that’s the part I appreciate most about it.

 

Dan (14:06)

Yeah. All right. Well, ready to dive in? Aldous Huxley. Let’s get the quote. I’ll say it twice, Chris, and then we’ll give you, our guest, the first crack at the claim. Just kind of, you know, put your own words and we’re off and it’ll be as unpredictable on this podcast as it is in our own classrooms. We don’t know what’s going to happen. So here we go. Aldous Huxley. Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. All right, what do we got here, Chris? What speaks to you?

 

Chris J (14:53)

Yeah, I love this quote. And as we’ve already kind of established, I love technology, but I don’t love technology unless it’s the right tool for the job. And I think where I kind of hear what he’s saying here is that… Too much technology is not progress. Just because we can do something more efficiently or in a technological way, it doesn’t mean it actually is moving us forward just because it’s on your phone instead of on a sheet of paper. That doesn’t make it better. It, in some ways, is worse because ride a school bus or… go into a lunch room at a school and, you know, if you’re at a place where they’re allowed to have, you know, unlimited access to their phones, it’s a very quiet place because they’re engaged in their cell phone, you know, that nice shiny piece of technology that we have where, you know, think back to when we were all in school, you know, the lunch room or the school bus was like barely contained chaos, right? Because people were talking and loud and engaging with each other. And so, you know, I love my cell phone and I love the things that we can do with the technology that we’ve got. But also that doesn’t mean that we all need to be on that piece of technology all the time. You know, we need to make sure that we’re not using technology to remove the good way of doing things and replace it with the high-tech way. That’s kind of what I hear in this is, know, high tech isn’t always better. Sometimes, sometimes it is, you know. But sometimes it’s not better.

 

Steve (16:38)

Artificial intelligence is the elephant in the room. You ask the question. It does make things more efficient, but it is it always good in every case? What are we losing with it? And in what context do you want to answer that question? That’s a, that’s the big question. I don’t know if this is an essential question yet, but that’s what’s coming up in my mind because it’s every day now. things that we used to do, we can do now quickly and without thought as much. Not that thought is always fun. And this is probably why we are moving to technology in some cases, because it’s lessening the burden that we have of spending our energy thinking about certain things that we used to just think we had to think about. Anyway, I’m AI is what is in my head right now.

 

Dan (17:39)

Yeah, you always have to think as you’re eliminating burdens with technological progress, what new burdens are being created? It’s not like you’re eliminating all burdens. You’re just shifting the burden from one thing to another. And to use a different example from AI, I’m sure your school, Chris, has different fancy technological means of managing student data on behavior, on grades, on feedback, on assessments. And I’ve always been frustrated. I mean, this is my final year of teaching, classroom teaching. I’ve always been somewhat frustrated that we spend a lot of time coming up with very fancy data tools to measure student activity. But in doing so, it’s almost like we miss the forest because of the trees. Like we’re not interacting with them personally as much. We’re just looking at charts and making decisions based on numerical quantitative things. And I feel like there’s a human touch that is a casualty of that. I don’t know if you have a similar way of thinking.

 

Chris J (18:54)

Yeah, well, I I would say, again, kind of going back to my background, you know, my experience as a runner and as a running coach, you know, you’ve, you can see that there, you know, we’ve got all these tools to measure things like max speed and VO2 max and heart rate zones and everything. And, I can collect all of that kind of data and I can predict all of this kind of stuff about my student athletes performance. But does that actually really replace like me standing and watching them run and running the stopwatch and seeing like, how do they perform in this setting in this way? And how, you know, what is the right tool to motivate them? Like, great. can say like, according to the calculator, you should be able to run a, you know, 106, 400. That’s great. But to try and coach the whole team like that for the whole season, it’s, that’s very impersonal and you wouldn’t get. You wouldn’t get the results that you want. I mean, is there some value in being able to say to a kid like, Hey, based on what I’ve seen, here’s what your, your ability is today. Here’s what you can do potentially. That’s not a bad conversation to have, but you got to have, there’s got to be a human element in it. It can’t be just straight, straight numerical data from some device or machine or piece of technology. But when tech can be a tool to augment that, you know, to help us figure things out, I could. can be a great tool.

 

Steve (20:21)

I’m glad you brought up track because track is measured by time and distance, which are actually pretty quantitative measures if you compare them to say, gymnastics or something that’s measured through judging in some way. Think of classrooms and education.

 

Chris J (20:39)

Mm-hmm.

 

Steve (20:49)

What is education? This is, Dan, we’ve talked about this a lot. One of the reasons that I get frustrated with the way that education is measured quote unquote Is I don’t think that people have a shared definition of what education is. We have test scores. We have benchmarks. We have other attempts at putting numbers to knowledge, I guess and saying, okay, this student has advanced, this student has achieved, this student is falling behind, they need to be remediated. But again, are you looking the student in the eye? Are you having a conversation with them? What are you picking up on about their motivational level for just education in general? I’ve always thought that school’s purpose should be to get people to just get excited and to know how to get excited about ideas. And then what they end up doing with that is going to be completely different. So anyway, I’m gonna get off the soapbox, but I love the fact that you’re a track coach and you also see value in non-quantitative, whatever data, whatever you wanna call it.

 

Dan (22:11)

Yeah, our cousin is the head track and field coach at University of Tennessee, Penn State. I think she’s at Yukon right now, men and women, the head. And when I remember talking to her once about this and she said that so much of what you do as a coach is not the numbers. It’s not, is finding that spirit within the athlete that moves them to achieve. beyond what they could ever think that they could achieve, which again, has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with human interaction.

 

Chris J (22:48)

Yeah, but so like, let’s bring it back to the classroom, right? You know, there is great value in knowing a student’s lexile range and their reading ability. So as I’m assigning a text that I want my students to read and I want to challenge them. So I always want them to read something that’s just a little bit hard. You know, I don’t want them reading something that’s too easy. I want to push them just outside of that comfort zone, knowing the student’s score. Flexible reading helps me tailor that text to that individual student or that group of students, usually as we do it, right? Like here’s, you know, here’s a group of students. They’ll read this range of texts in the same way that, you know, when I group my athletes, you know, I group them into these ranges, like you’re all going to run roughly at the same pace. So we’re going to target, you know, and I think technology can be a great tool to help us figure out how to do that. And then how to tailor that, you know, think of all the AI tools that You know, I can upload a text and say, Hey, produce this for me at, you know, the eighth, ninth, and fourth grade level, or even more importantly, translate this into this language so that my student who’s an ELL student can engage in the text in the same way that a native English speaker can. That’s, and I think maybe we’re getting into our counter claim here a little bit, right? But that’s where technology pushes us forward, where if I just sit and I assign, you know, an Ed puzzle video where the kids spend the whole class period watching a video and answering questions like that’s not moving us forward in terms of technology. That’s a high tech way for me to deliver a lecture, but that’s not, that’s technology pulling us backwards.

 

Dan (24:30)

That’s great. That’s great. If I could jump on the counter plane bus with you, Chris, I had some Ukrainian students a couple of years ago. If I did not have my phone and the immediate translation technology, I could not have communicated with them in class, period. End of story. And then also with AI, I used a tool last year, school AI, which we no longer have. Unfortunately, we went to a different one despite my objections, but whatever. That’s fine.

 

Chris J (24:44)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Dan (25:00)

It was amazing. I could on my screen, real time, watch as each individual student prompted AI to explore concepts and vocabulary that they were still confused about under the five units of AP government. And I saw it unfold in front, on my interface. And as the kids were struggling, a kid was struggling, I could look at their dialogue with AI, get out of my seat, walk over and say, Mary, I understand you were struggling with the term delegate. Let’s talk about that. So to your point, that is progress. And I don’t think you could argue against that.

 

Chris J (25:47)

Yeah, well, and as a, so I’ll often describe myself as a recovering AP Gov teacher. Having taught that for a number of years, you know, I just, my brain jumps right into like, great would it be to have, to upload our grading rubric and examples of the argumentative essay, for example.

 

or the Supreme Court analysis and have students work through their own work, getting that real time feedback from an AI tool. Like, here’s an example of where you could maybe score an additional point in this category, or here’s why a grader may not give you the point here. Here’s another example. get that real time feedback as they’re sitting and practicing that skill. So when they sit down for the course assessments and the final AP exam. They have feedback that works for them and that has helped them grow individually rather than, unfortunately what we end up having to do is, you know, go through all these essays, score and give them a line or two on the rubric and give it back to them. Hopefully within a week of when they turn their essay in, where instead, how great would it be for kids to work through that with their, with technology providing them essentially real-time feedback. and they’re writing, you know, and that’s, so I mean, technology can be great and move us forward. But I think to bring it back to the quote, technology isn’t necessarily what’s progressing us forward, it’s correctly applying the pieces of technology that we have. That’s where…

 

Steve (27:23)

Yeah, it’s who’s using it, Chris. You’re a teacher who cares. Think about the tech-no-crats or the tech, let’s go back to the claim, right? Let’s rescue it. Think about social media, algorithms, and what technology has done, the efficiency of giving us what it is that… technology knows what we like and want and how that can shut down our access to other ideas and can actually regress the society because all of a sudden we’ve got less exposure to other people’s ideas. How ironic. You know, you think technology opens us to the world. But in a way, it narrows our horizons. Again, if the people that are in charge of it have a profit motive to serve people what they want, don’t create cognitive dissonance in people. Don’t create critical thinking. That’s just a momentum killer. Go with who they are and what they want and sell them things and get people to pay you to get in front of them. Anyway. It’s so, it’s amoral, right? Technology is amoral. It’s how it’s used and by whom.

 

Chris J (28:47)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel that way about a lot of technology things. It’s another tool to be applied, you know, correctly, right? I mean, like, let’s go back to one of our most fundamental pieces of school equipment, the pencil. You know, is the pencil itself like a good or a bad tool? No, it’s just a tool, right? And can it be a disruptive tool? Yeah. Because we’ve all had the kid who sharpens their pencil 17 times in the class period, right? And that’s disruptive. It’s not the pencil’s fault that the kid’s disrupting it, it’s in the application of it, right? And so then we’ve got, think all of our pieces of technology that we’ve got are kind of all that same model. We can apply them correctly, we can use them correctly. Now also is the pencil always the right tool?

 

Steve (29:15)

STAB!

 

Chris J (29:37)

to achieve our instructional goal. No, it’s not. You know, I, so I’m left-handed. I hated using pencils because you know what my writing looked like when I got done? It looked like this smudged mess because you know, I’m writing with my left hand. And so for a lot of cases, the pencil is not a great tool for me where, you know, it’s… 90 % of the population, they would never think about this. And why did poor Chris always turn in these messy, I mean, I have terrible handwriting, that’s a totally different issue. But why did my paper always look like this smudged mess? Because half of my graphite’s right there on my hand as I’m writing. You know, every piece of technology is the same thing. And so I like, I would push back on his claim here and say, technology necessarily isn’t the thing that’s making us… fall behind that’s pulling us backwards. It’s the people using it in an incorrect way or in the wrong setting or in the, you have to have the right piece of technology for the right job or you will go backwards. But when you have the right piece of technology for the right job, it can be transformative.

 

Dan (30:47)

people misusing it. You’re so right. And the struggle there, Chris, is that, at least in my school, that is very well resourced. We often fall into the trap of adopting the latest technology every year. So we’re continually chasing new tools, trying to keep up. Sometimes that’s a good thing. It’s allowing us to do things we were not able to do before. But other times it’s just…doing something similar to what we did before and it’s causing more headaches. Because it’s a lot to learn technology, a new tool, especially at the beginning of the year when you’re getting your class ready and everything else. So yeah, it’s the decisions of the people who have access and power of the technology. Those decisions are front and center important. I was just, yeah, go ahead.

 

Chris J (31:46)

I was just gonna say when the technology becomes the barrier to learning too, then you have a problem. And so when you’re creating like as a teacher, I think, you as I’m creating this lesson or this activity, I’ve got all these tech tools I can use. Which is the most efficient way for my students to demonstrate their learning? Because most of the time I’m not assessing their ability to use technology. I’m assessing their… understanding of the content, right? Have they met the learning objective? Are they meeting the standard? And my standards are not, you know, ability to upload a file into, you know, seven different word processors. No, I want to just read the stuff they wrote. And so I want to find the most efficient way to do that using the best technology for not necessarily the newest, but the best technology tool for it, right? And so when tech literacy and tech illiteracy become yet another barrier to student learning, then we have a problem because, you know, the kids who, like my daughter, have grown up with access to a variety of technology will be very different in terms of their ability to produce work at school than students who don’t have access to it or who didn’t have ready access to it or who had access to only one kind versus another, you know. You know, gosh. I will struggle if my daughter ever has to go to a school that uses Apple products, you know, because I, just don’t, you know, that’s just not the tool of choice in our household. And so she’s not very familiar with it where other kids, you know, when I put a PC in front of them, they look at it like it’s an alien machine. so like, you know, right there, you’ve just got tech literacy in the different languages of the different tools out there, you know? So we have to be conscious of that when we’re developing and implementing

Learning. teaching learning, guess is a better way to say that.

 

Steve (33:42)

That’s the tech learning curve that gets onerous and makes it hard for, think teachers especially, to really go with the program. Because what is a teacher’s job? We’re always trying to hold certain variables at a constant so that we can feel very comfortable with the way we’re introducing something the same way we’ve done it the last 10 years for every class. But then if there’s something that’s changing, we’re able to connect that immediately to something that’s already known. And I think that that’s what teaching is. It’s always a mixture of, this is what you know already. Now let’s move this to another level here. The minute you introduce technology and compel a teacher to learn something new, they’re thrown off their game almost immediately. Now they’re not as comfortable with the other things that they already had and they’re maybe not as effective or what have you. So I don’t know, I look at teachers and people wonder like, why do teachers, why are they such Luddites? And why is the education system so behind private industry? in the use of these technologies. And I just want to grab them and just say, it’s because they’re teachers.

 

Dan (35:13)

We’re dealing with human relationships. That’s our North Star. It’s not this cool technology tool. If this doesn’t fit into our path towards helping humans learn, we can’t do it well. I was just finishing your thoughts, Steve. I don’t know if that… Yeah. ⁓

 

Chris J (35:31)

Yeah, well, and to go back to my constant coaching analogy to things too, I, you’re going to laugh. I have a favorite stopwatch. Okay. It’s this very specific Ultrak stopwatch ⁓ that, that I, it’s like my go-to, you know, I have just a stopwatch, right? It just times things. But I have picked out the, the one that works the most efficiently for what I need. And I’m comfortable with how it works. And it is effective in what it’s meant to do. can time, it can take splits. It’s easier for me to recall it. It’s easy for me to record it. It’s easy for me move on to the next thing. It’s not a barrier to me doing my job of coaching athletes. It’s almost second nature for me to use it. Now, one year I ordered them and we, they substituted it. It’s, know, I don’t know where in the process someone decided like, we’ll get them this one instead. It’s close enough. ⁓ it was not close enough. I, it may have been a better stopwatch and turn it. don’t really know if it was or not, but it was not what I wanted. And so, you know, I actually from the meets when I was using this, I pulled out my phone, I went on Amazon, ordered my good old trusty Ultrex stopwatch because I’m like, I can’t, you know, this will be a barrier to me being able to do all the other things because I don’t know how the, there are only four buttons on the thing, but I don’t really know how to pull up the information I need in a timely manner so that I can record it and communicate it to my athletes and move on to the next thing. I just want. the one I know that works. And I know that we’re like that in the classroom sometimes too, right? I wanna use the thing that I know that works. because I know how it works and because then it lets me focus on the 26 humans in the room rather than the tool.

 

Steve (37:13)

There you go.

 

That’s it right there. Because when you were looking at the stopwatch and confused, you weren’t looking at your athletes. You weren’t planning ahead. You were not making anybody better. You were regressing. How about this? Let’s throw this right there. That’s a regression. It was stopping your momentum. Technology, the advance of it.

 

Chris J (37:22)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure.

 

Dan (37:44)

Definitely. So that’s back to the claim, technological progress is provided with an efficient means for going backwards. But we also dealt with the counterclaim. It can be an amazing help. Like that AI tool that I shared that I helped my AP government students, there’s nothing that even comes close to the value of that in getting instantaneous feedback for them on their weak areas.

 

Steve (37:44)

It can happen. That’s, I guess that’s, yeah.

 

Dan (38:11)

with the essential question, I don’t know what you guys are, if you’re thinking of any questions, I’m zeroing in on the word progress and backwards. What do those words mean? You what is progress in technology? What does it mean to go backwards? That’s kind of a, a higher level thing. But if a kid got interested in that, that might be a nice little side conversation on what those words mean. Do you guys have any ideas on questions that might come out of this?

 

Steve (38:40)

Yours is a good question. It made me forget mine.

 

Chris J (38:46)

Well, I guess, so my question is… you know, is it really the technology that’s making us go forward or back? you know, is that the thing that’s propelling progress or impeding progress, the technology, or I mean, is it the user and the application of it, you know? And I think that goes to your example of your school’s technology, or I mean, any time that there’s new tech, is that what’s propelling us forward, or is that holding us backwards, or is that our application of it?

 

Dan (39:23)

So the human decisions behind the technology, that might be the thing to focus on whether or not there’s progress, not the technology itself that’s innocent.Yeah, I like that.

 

Chris J (39:36)

Mm-hmm.

 

Steve (39:39)

Mine is, how do we know if technology is good for us? Any specific technology that’s in front of you? How do you know if it’s worth your time?

 

Dan (39:39)

Huh.

 

Steve (39:53)

to learn, adopt, to reject.

 

Dan (39:57)

And probably experimentation is necessary over time to really try it in a way where you’re with fidelity so that you can see if it fits into your routine. I think that’s the only way to then decide whether or not it’s good, not a one and done workshop or something. You really got to immerse it. So anyway, I’m just answering that question a little bit, but it’s a really good one.

 

Chris J (40:26)

Well, and I think that goes also to like the the ability to fail forward, right? You know, when we’ve got a new piece of technology, we have to try it out and it probably isn’t gonna work the first time and it probably isn’t gonna create the product that we want the first time. And that’s gotta be okay, which I’m gonna circle back to the whole start of my story. That’s why I love junior high kids. Cause I can go up there and say, guys, I have never used this for, let’s give it a try. And you know what? If it works, great. And if it doesn’t, whatever, move on with life. And so when we’re throwing a technology, a piece of tech tool or a piece of technology, we got to be willing to just give it a try and acknowledge like, this probably is not going to work right. And that’s got to be OK because that’s how technology is, right?

 

Dan (41:21)

That’s really nice to model that for the students, Chris, to say, I’m going to try this. I don’t know what’s going to happen. You might not even be trying to do this, but that is setting a standard for the kids. Hey, it’s OK to try it. That’s a good message for them. Yeah, this is great. Atlas Huxley, I’m going to read it one more time before we close. Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. I think we really worked with the claim and the counterclaim well here with good examples. mean, the track analogies really came into this and fit really nicely. yeah, well, Chris, thanks so much for being a part of this.

 

Steve (42:08)

Thank you.

 

Dan (42:09)

Being a part of our group in the spring, and we hope to work with you moving forward. You definitely have a great way of thinking about the profession, I think.

 

Steve (42:18)

And you know, Chris, I applied for that. It’s the idea conference, right? I did get an application in for that, which is a technology centered conference, if I’m understanding it right. And Chris promised to join me if he can, and we will go to the Teach Different Method to technologists, you know, but I think that they’re going to be very amenable to it.

 

Chris J (42:18)

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Excellent. Mm-hmm. for sure.

 

Steve (42:46)

And they’re gonna be teachers from all disciplines anyway there, so.

 

Chris J (42:50)

Yeah, well, and I mean, one thing I’ve loved about this method all the way through is that it’s a framework for doing good teaching with students. And it uses content that, I mean, the amount of content and the number of quotes and all the stuff that is provided with you guys that we had access to during the pilot was great. But then by the end, you know, I certainly was thinking like, oh, well, I can use this piece of content here to introduce this activity. And so I like the adaptability of it to fit into the good teaching that we’re already doing. And like, this is just one more good tool to engage students. And it can be to introduce a bigger topic or it can be to, you know, to wrap up something. And so, you know, I, I’ve just really enjoyed that. And of course, you know, yes, as the guy who loves to use technology, you, I found some great ways to blend some existing tech tools with the framework that you guys have provided to, again, fit the goal and the students that I have. I really like how adaptable it is. I think that’s something that I’m looking forward to sharing with people at IdeaCon and in other ways as we can get this out there and people can see like, no, this isn’t…

 

Dan (44:07)

Awesome.

 

Chris J (44:14)

like one of those box programs that like you have to do everything exactly right, you know, like the best tools are the ones that you can pick up and you can use in your classroom tomorrow with the stuff that you want to teach the kids rather than trying to make your curriculum fit around the specific tool. And so that’s something I’ve really enjoyed is getting that. Blending it into the stuff that I know works already, and this just becomes another engaging activity.

 

Steve (44:42)

That’s great. I love adaptability. That’s the best compliment you could give. teachers just are so… We have our own ideas of things, you know? we can get perfect. We’re open to learning.

 

Chris J (44:48)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dan (44:55)

We’re open to learning though. Yeah, we are open to learning. It’s just learning in a way that augments the things that we already think are valuable. That’s the hardest part.

 

Steve (45:05)

That’s the magic bullet. That’s the magic bullet right there.

 

Dan (45:09)

Yeah. Well, great. Well, again, Chris, really appreciate it and, you know, looking forward to staying in touch and best of luck for this new school year.

 

Chris J (45:19)

Yeah, thanks guys. It’s been great. Yeah, thanks for having me.

 

Steve (45:20)

We’ll see you soon, Chris, of course.