Thomas Friedman gives the outsider an inside look into how Google hires new employees in the article “How to Get a Job at Google.” Mr. Brock, the senior vice president of Google discusses what the company is looking for in future employees and offers insight to those who may be hoping to hit the profession gold mine. In theory, all that he talks about is what we would hope that any company looks for during their hiring process by the striking reality is that it is quite the opposite of what we are doing in education for the 15+ years that a student spends to prepare for said job. Here is how I break down some of Mr. Brock's thoughts regarding their hiring attributes, and what we as educators can do help prepare our students if Google is such a company that they would hope to work for.
“G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. ... We found that they don’t predict anything…” We need to move away from assigning grades on a test bases, and move towards content mastery. Testing reflects how well of a test taker the student is and not necessarily how much they know the content. “...the No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not I.Q. It’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits of information.” Our classroom setting needs to include discussion that is not following a pattern on given worksheets. Too much of a student's day becomes predictable and instead of learning outside the box they are learning how to fit in the box. “...What we care about is, when faced with a problem and you’re a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. And just as critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else?” First, we need to include problems in our students day that they can actually discuss and solve. Worksheets with DOK1 questions that are fillers for time will not allow our students to grow as leaders. On another note, teaching students to not always be in the spotlight, is something even adults need to be learning. Too many leaders today could do a better example of stepping back to allow others to lead. We need to get this right before our students will ever see a need to change. “Without humility, you are unable to learn...successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don’t learn how to learn from that failure.” We need to teach failure, admit failure, embrace failure….all of it. How do we do this? Share with others via blogs something that did not work. Humble ourselves when we thought a presentation at work was going to go one way, and it went another. Admit misconceptions, own our mistakes, and ask for forgiveness. Listen with the intent of listening to hear the person, not to respond with our own thoughts. “...and loving to learn and re-learn. This will be true no matter where you go to work.” Ultimately that should be our goal starting at TK. Teaching our students to love learning and re-learning by emulating that ourselves. The day we stop loving to learn is the day we need to step out of the classroom to find it again or allow someone else to come in. While these are all important for educators, I think what is more important is that employers like Google make the switch and value those that are extraordinary and not someone simply because they have a paper from a certain University. Until then our students will only continue to follow the equation that millions others before them have followed to attempt to earn a successful job in our society. Resources: Friedman, T. (2014, February 22). How to Get a Job at Google. Retrieved June 20, 2015, from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html?_r=2 A week ago I was sitting in Starbucks checking off my to-do list. I was feeling pretty productive as I finished up watching a video by Michael Wesch called “Rethinking Education.” That was until I reached the task of reflecting on the video. I had so many great things I wanted to say yet I could not get my words together. The more I tried to come up with something the more I found myself clicking through twitter feeds, blog posts and pinterest links that were leading me absolutely no where. I got up and got a glass of water hoping a little stretch and fresh air might help refocus my energy to complete the post. Still nothing. Overload. I generally like to listen to different Pandora stations while completing work for this class and even that was getting to me. I turned off all extra noise giving it one last attempt to put words down on paper. Where do I even begin to express my thoughts on how important it is for all of us in education to rethink what the heck were really doing with students while they are in the four walls of our classroom? The irony of it all is that one of Wesch’s main points is that our classrooms are not keeping up with the limitless of information. Millions of people can access the internet and contribute to the knowledge. From there thousands are discussing the quality of knowledge that is being shared. As stated in the short film, “are you against the discussion of quality of knowledge?” (Wesch 2011) This is everything that we want our students to be engaged in---questioning and conversing over knowledge! With over 8,000 blogs a day being created, “where are our students in all of this?” (Wesch 2011) I am happy to say that I know education has made a lot of progress since the creation of this video but I also know there is still much work to be done. I started out my reflection sharing how I hit overload because even though technology has and continues to transform education, our students need to be taught discipline and focus strategies even more. The information online truly is limitless. As a parent that has two young children with homework assignments assigned digitally it is challenging to get them to focus on the task at hand considering with a click of a button they could be watching a My Little Pony episode on YouTube. We want our students to be most prepared for future but while we are preparing them for that many disciplines of the past are still very crucial in order to be well rounded citizens of today and tomorrow! Resources: Wesch, M. (2011, January 24). Rethinking Education. Retrieved June 20, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xb5spS8pmE&index=9&list=PLbRLdW37G3oMquOaC-HeUIt6CWk-FzaGp “When we put kids in the factory that we call school, the thing we created to indoctrinate them, why are we surprised at the question, “will this be on the test?” Seth Godin ponders this question in his TedEx speech “Stop Stealing Dreams.” In his discussion Godin challenges the system in which everything that “touches us” is the exact opposite of how we are living and how we are educating the next generation of leaders. If I am honest with myself I want to scoop up my family and live off the grid to fight the system. However, that is not the answer either. We have to know what the problem is if we want to fix anything, so let’s take a look at where it began.
The problem can be traced back to the fact that “we are products of the industrial age.” The industrial age brought productivity and productivity brought the ability for people to make more money than they ever imagined. However, in order to make even more money, more people were needed. They were needed to work in the factories and produce even more to allow for people to make even more money. These people had to be trained though. Thus, school was built. “[School] was to train people to behave, to comply, to fit in. [You were] processed for a whole year and if you were defective, [you were] held back. In order to train people school was created. Until technology. With the introduction of technology for the first time ever we do not need a human being to teach us because the internet connects us all. (Stop Stealing Dreams, 2012) With the internet Godin suggests several ways to think outside the box and “un-normalize” education- -Homework during the day- lectures at night. For free. Explore face to face with teachers during the day.
“Passion and insight are reality. Your work is more important than your congruents to an answer key. Persistence in the face of a skeptical authority figure is priceless and yet we undermine it. Fitting in is a short term strategy that gets you nowhere, standing out is a long term strategy that takes guts and produces results. If you care enough about your work to be willing to be criticized for it, then you have done a goods days work.” (Stop Stealing Dreams, 2012) May we all have the guts to stand out. Resources: STOP STEALING DREAMS: Seth Godin at TEDxYouth@BFS. (n.d.). Retrieved June 13, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXpbONjV1Jc “If students learn what they do...what are they learning sitting here? It’s not just about what [we] are saying it’s also the [deeper] message of the information is up here...that they should follow along and bow to authority and follow, follow, follow…” (Wesch, 2010) Michael Wesch shares his point of view in a TED Talk, as a college professor in regards to his students and how learning has (or more appropriately needs to) change to allow for the rapid growth and change of social media and education. While watching his talk my heart sank. The video is 5 years old yet how many classrooms are still under the idea that students are to follow, follow, follow? We talk about critically thinking and teaching students to be problem solvers but are we even presenting problems for our students to solve? Or are we presenting just enough information for our students to “pass” the next text only to lose that information as soon as the next text content is presented? “We need to move away from what do we need to know for this [multiple choice] test to what do we need to know for the test of our lives”. (Wesch, 2010). School ended for the year last week in our district but what would the walls say? (Wesch, 2010) Would they say that many students are still learning to sit back, be quiet and wait for the answers or are they learning to be an active participant to solve problems? According to Wesch, “knowledge ability changes over time based on the communication environment they are in” (Wesch, 2010) But what if the communication environment never changes? Many, many classrooms are doing amazing things and bringing the global community into their four walls of learning yet on the other hand many classroom students are still sitting back, taking it all (or not) in and waiting for the test in order to move onto the next set of content all while not really learning a thing. Said students reach fifth grade and many are reading at a 1st and 2nd grade reading level and no one has the guts to say what are WE doing wrong? Wesch shares that our students are looking for the meaning of life and trying to find their identity in a world that is throwing thousands of images at them at a time. (Wesch, 2010) In order to help our students we have to “move beyond critical thinking... as it is not a one way conversation anymore”.(Wesch, 2010) Instead, we need to allow them a platform contribute globally as “different contributions all over the world can add up to something quite beautiful”. (Wesch, 2010) I don’t know about you but we owe it to all of our students to contribute, respond and be apart of something quite beautiful! Resources Wesch, M (2010, October 12). From Knowlegable to Knowlege-Able [video file]. retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeaAHv4UTI8. “Why School? by Will Richardson was the first reading I completed for this class, and one that got me very excited about the dialogue that would follow. As I was reading I felt a sense of relief. Finally, there is someone out there saying it has to change. We owe it to ourselves and our students to make that change, yet there are still conversations in the hall listing the excuses as to why students are not learning….and not on what we can do differently (note: I did not say better). The biggest shift that I do not see happening is that “while many adults may not be swimming in this huge and quickly expanding sea of digital content and connections, most of our children are” ( Richardson, 2012) I am not saying that adults are not online...they are. What I am saying is the learning that needs to take place in classrooms is not happening online even though so much of what are children are doing is. As Richardson’s states, “...the world has changed- and continues to changing- rapidly and radically when it comes to the ways in which we can learn, and what knowledge, skills, dispositions, and forms of literacy our children will need to flourish in their futures.” (Richardson, 2012) When I think of how much information is out that and how easy it is for us all to be in touch with it, I am also reminded of Richardson’s words, “ access doesn’t automatically come with an ability to use the Web well. We aren’t suddenly self-directed, organized, and literate enough to make sense of all the people and information online-...the fact is [our students] can still use our help to do those things and more if they are to thrive in the abundance of their times.” (Richardson, 2012) It is our job as adults to not only understand that learning needs to look much different but simply because there are chromebooks in our classroom does not mean that every student knows how to effectively use to connect to a global audience or contributing collaboratively with each other either. There is still much to learn in terms of effectively using technology in the classroom. Within Richardson's essay he touches upon six unlearning/relearning strategies. One that jumped out at me as something to challenge me is “discover, don’t deliver the curriculum” (Richardson, 2012) I am in a unique position in that I do not have my own classroom however I am helping teachers understand the new ELD CCSS. I have to discover it along with them or as my director put it, we have to teach them to fish, instead of giving them the fish. I would say the more challenging step would be “talk to strangers.” (Richardson, 2012) Its not that I don’t enjoy meeting new people, I just haven’t stepped out to meet new people online. Just as White says there are residents and visitors of the internet, I tend to stay at the visitor line professionally and resident personally. (White, 2014). Richardson’s essay has challenged me as a parent and as an educator to continue this conversation with my peers. I cannot help but think back on the useless tests that I have given my students because that's what I was suppose to do. The data from the tests were used for very little, yet I still gave the test. It was a check off that I had to and add to the pile of other tests that were given. I am hopeful for education though as the conversation does not end there. As Richardson said, “The world doesn’t care what you know. What the world cares about is what you can do with what you know.” (Richardson, 2012) Resources: Richardson, W. (2012). Why school how education must change when learning and information are everywhere / Will Richardson. New York, NY: TED Conferences. Dave White, an e-researcher proposes the idea in a short video that most people fall within two categories on a continuum of ‘modes of engagement’ and not within two distinct categories. The modes of engagement are that of visitor or resident. (Visitor and Residents, 2014) Mr. White describes a visitor as someone who does what they need to and then leave, leaving no trace of a persona online, while the resident lives a portion of their life online, even when they log off. (Visitors and Residents Video) The visitor will learn what he/she needs to if it happens to fit a goal while while the resident sees it as space, or an extension of their current life. ( Visitor and Residents, video) Before the video even started I gathered my opinion as to what the discussion was going to be about and where I would fall in those two categories. I was a bit surprised after watching the video that where I thought I would fall was not quite where I am currently. Until recently I found myself a little frustrated with so much social media. I am a somewhat private person with my thoughts (even writing this blog is stepping out of my comfort zone a bit) but in person I am likely to share a lot more. I prefer to build in person relationships and sharing with people in person than sharing online with people whom I have not personally met. One way I have managed to be specific with how I use social media is to give each a function. For example, twitter I use as a way to share with fellow employees and until this class I did not have link to anything personal. Even my picture was that of a beach. Facebook has family and friends but no one that I know from work and instagram is used as an even more specific targeted audience. All three have a specific purpose for me, which makes me believe that maybe i am just a visitor online as I use social media as tool as I see fit. I appreciated that Mr. White speaks of falling within the categories on the continuum and not having to be stuck to either one or the other. A lightbulb went off for me when he said he is very open to speaking and has many videos on the web but does not quite share nearly as much about his private life. (Visitor and Resident, video) For the longest time I thought the two went hand and hand--the bigger your web presence, the more you shared about your personal life. While that is true for some I am glad to see that is not true for all. So, this is me stepping out a little more. If I am expecting my students to be global learners, I too need to put myself out there and share my thoughts with other educators! Resources Visitors and Residents [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sFBadv04eY White, D. (2014, September 9). Visitors & Residents. Retrieved June 6, 2015, from http://daveowhite.com/vandr/ |
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