Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes for Every School (2015)

INTRODUCTION

A Hacker’s Approach

USED BOOKS. A dry-erase board. That ignored supply closet at the end of the hall. A 99-cent notebook. A smartphone. The contents of the ordinary teacher’s life are not being used to their fullest potential. Although state-level policy changes, expensive new programs, and district-wide initiatives can significantly improve our work as educators, we don’t have to wait for these things to start solving problems that make an already difficult job even more challenging. Some of our biggest, most persistent obstacles can be overcome by using the things that are right under our noses, more creatively.

In this book, we have gathered 10 powerful ideas, or hacks, for solving education-related problems. Each hack shows you how to take the objects, systems, and people who are already available to you and repurpose, reorganize, or reimagine them to creatively address problems. Technology does come into play, but only sometimes: In four of the hacks, free technology tools are an integral part of the solution, but the other six require no technology at all. Anyone—regardless of his or her tech skills—will find something useful here.

YOU, A HACKER?

Who is the YOU we are speaking to in this book? Who is our intended audience? If we’re offering solutions to problems in education, does that mean only administrators should read this book? Absolutely not. More than a collection of ideas, this book represents a philosophy: We no longer live in a time when educators have to wait for the people in charge to solve problems. Sure, some solutions still require months of meetings and need piles of paperwork to change hands before changes can be made, but the hacks in this book can be implemented by anyone. You don’t have to be an administrator to get these rolling. In fact, the people in charge may not be convinced that an idea has merit until after an individual teacher has tried it.

Embrace the concept of iteration, of continually reviewing and reworking a solution until it becomes the perfect fit for your particular needs.

If you are one of those teachers, surrounded by colleagues who may not be eager to run with new ideas, then find ways to try them yourself. If your administrator is not ready to move meetings to the cloud, as we suggest in Hack 1, see if you can move one meeting you have planned with a colleague. If no one at your school is interested in setting up a school-wide Book Nook (Hack 8), haul an extra bookshelf into your classroom and start your own there. All of the hacks in this book can be tweaked and developed into a whole-school program, but they can also be scaled down, so that individual educators can still try them.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BETA TESTING AND ITERATION

The ideas presented in this book are frameworks, not rigid prescriptions. They are designed to be built upon and improved, flexible enough for further development and adaptable to your individual situation. That’s what hackers do—they take an idea and try different things with it, continually working on problems until a robust solution has been built.

When software engineers develop new applications, they usually go through what’s known as a beta phase. When software is “in beta,” it has all of its basic parts, but is being user tested to work out the kinks and find the bugs. The beta concept can be applied to any new program, tool, or system; for best results, it should be applied to your hack as well. Instead of waiting for the perfect time to implement it, or waiting until you’ve done extensive training and practice and have everything in place, why not just try it? Launch it in beta and see how it goes. When problems arise, remind yourself that this new initiative is in beta; problems can and should be seen as opportunities to learn and improve.

Once you’ve gotten through the beta phase, try it again: This is your second version of the hack, the next iteration, where some of the bugs have been fixed and the hack has been fine-tuned. Taking an iterative approach is so much better than what we often see with education initiatives: We try it once, decide it doesn’t work, and abandon it. Instead, embrace the concept of iteration, of continually reviewing and reworking a solution until it becomes the perfect fit for your particular needs.

BOOST YOUR HACK WITH BRANDING

When working to implement a hack in your school, the idea is likely to be more successful if you spend a little time branding it. In the same way that Maroon 5 promotes an upcoming concert or Martha Stewart packages a new line of table linens, put some thought into how your hack might be packaged so it will grab people’s attention more quickly and drum up more curiosity.

The teachers in the first Marigold Committee (Hack 6) branded themselves by wearing felt marigold pins to faculty meetings and other whole-faculty events. And though it would still work the same way without it, the Pineapple Chart (Hack 2) has been branded with a pineapple. Both of these hacks would serve the same purpose without their branding, but they might not have the sticky quality that all hacks need.

If you’re excited about the hack you’ve chosen and want others to experience your enthusiasm, think about giving your hack a name, a launch date, and a proper promotion with well-designed posters or web pages, cleverly crafted video or P.A. announcements, and other packaging that will send the message that this idea is fresh, new, and exciting. The buzz you create will make stakeholders feel invested in the project and build community, which is so important to every school.

WHERE DID THESE HACKS COME FROM?

While a few of these solutions came from our own practice as teachers, others are just good ideas we’ve curated, solutions we’ve heard about that others are using, hacks that are so impressive that they have to be shared so you can try them.

As with all “new” ideas, most of these hacks build on concepts you may already be familiar with. In fact, someone you know might already be using one of these ideas, or some variation of it. That’s fine. We don’t claim ownership of these hacks—it’s the ideas that matter, and they deserve to be shared and developed. If everyone who heard a new idea kept it quiet for fear of running into someone who was already trying it, ideas would spread far more slowly than they often do. Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg had decided that social media was not new (ever heard of MySpace?); Facebook might be nothing more than a magazine full of selfies. For every person who sniffs that an idea is “nothing new,” there are ten more who have never heard of it. It’s the variations, the iterations, that can make an old idea fresh again.

WHICH HACK WILL BE YOURS?

Our hope is that each of these hacks will excite and inspire you, make you feel empowered, and open your mind to what’s possible in your school. Although we realize all 10 hacks are not likely to suit every person who reads this book, the truth is that if even one takes hold in your school and solves a problem that was once seen as unsolvable, the book will have earned its keep.

It’s in here: One of these hacks will grab you, make you set this book aside, pick up your phone or open up an email to contact someone, another person with the same hacker mentality as yours, and say, “I think I found it.”

Which one will it be? There’s only one way to find out.

ABOUT THE HACK LEARNING SERIES

“Hackers don’t take realities of the world for granted; they seek to break and rebuild what they don’t like.”

—SARAH LACY, AUTHOR/JOURNALIST

A HACKER IS someone who explores programmable systems and molds them into something different, often, something better. Hackers are known as computer geeks—people who like to take applications and algorithms to places their designers never intended. Today, hackers are much more. They are people who explore many things both in and out of the technology world. They are tinkerers and fixers. They see solutions to problems that other people do not see. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg might be considered technology’s greatest hackers. No one taught them how to build an operating system or a social network, but they saw possibilities that others couldn’t see.

The Hack Learning Series is a collection of books written by people who, like Jobs and Zuckerberg, see things through a different lens. They are teachers, researchers, and consultants; they are administrators, professors, and specialists. They live to solve problems whose solutions, in many cases, already exist but may need to be hacked. In other words, the problem needs to be turned upside down or viewed from another perspective. Its fix may appear unreasonable to those plagued by the issue. To the hacker, though, the solution is evident, and with a little hacking, it will be as clear and beautiful as a gracefully-designed smartphone or a powerful social network.

THE STORY BEHIND THE SERIES

In 2014, I had an idea about three problems in schools that I felt could be easily fixed. What they needed was the perspective of a hacker—someone unaffected by the problem, who viewed its underlying issues from a different angle. I wrote a short blog post identifying the problems and included very easy fixes. The post sparked plenty of thoughtful discussion, and someone suggested that schools have more concerns, similar to the ones in the blog post—enough, perhaps, for a book. Some time later, three school problems became 10. All they needed was space on a page and a hacker’s finesse.

I began collaborating with a smart educator named Jennifer Gonzalez, and soon we had a table of contents and chapter outlines for 10 Hacks. Months later, we completed this book, the first in the Hack Learning Series. The quick fixes clear the path to better practice, open communication, and improved professional development. We believe that they can make schools wonderful places, even in a time when the bureaucracy makes education extremely difficult.

As we worked on developing our 10 hacks, we wondered about other learning issues that are not covered in Hacking Education. So many facets of learning need to be hacked: The Common Core, digital literacy, reluctant learners, special education, project-based learning, teacher preparation, assessment, leadership, and infrastructure, to name a few. When teachers, parents, administrators, and policymakers see the amazing insights that hackers can bring to various issues, they are sure to want more. Enter the Hack Learning Series—an evolving collection of books solving problems that impede learning in the world of education and beyond.

INSIDE THE BOOKS

Hack Learning books are written by passionate people who are experts in their fields. Unlike your typical education text, Hack Learning books are light on research and statistics and heavy on practical advice from people who have actually experienced the problems about which they write. Each book in the series contains chapters, called Hacks, which are composed of these sections:

·   The Problem: Something educators are currently wrestling with that doesn’t yet have a clear-cut solution.

·   The Hack: A brief description of the prescribed solution.

·   What You Can Do Tomorrow: Ways you can take the basic hack and implement it right away in bare-bones form.

·   Blueprint for Full Implementation: A step-by-step system for building long-term capacity.

·   Overcoming Pushback: A list of possible objections you might come up against in your attempt to implement this hack and how to overcome them.

·   The Hack in Action: A snapshot of an educator or group of educators who have used this hack in their work and how they did it.

EDITOR’S PROMISE

I am so proud to be a contributing author and publisher of the Hack Learning Series, written by renowned educators, speakers, and thought leaders—all dedicated to improving teaching and learning. I promise that every Hack Learning book will provide powerful information, imagination, engaging prose, practical advice and maybe even a little humor. When you read a Hack Learning Series book, you’ll have solutions you didn’t have before.