Catching up on Ted Talks, and blogging, I see many connections between much of the related topics I enjoy discussing.

Iin particular, I saw two deep connections between two Ted Talk. The first one was about the expectations of Cell Phone usage and the second was about expectations for cheating. The connection between the two made be think greatly of culture in a school setting.

Dan Airely's talk shared many of the experiments he did on exploring how willing people were to cheat. What he found was that when the community around the person was willing to cheat, the person was more willing to cheat. 

Exmaning this in a School climate, one can easily see this in a school setting. If the teachers/ administration is lenient on school rules and policies or they themselves participate in a minor form of "cheating," than so will the student body. This being evident in the form of role modeling. No brainer here.

So what if the expectations in the classroom or school were consistant and clear. In which all teachers and student leaders modeled a consistant set of positive behaviors beneficial to the school setting for learning. We would have a school culture of quality. This comes through loud and clear in Ron Berger's book, A Culture of Quality. 

There have been many research experiments demonstrating this very point. One I am remninded of is a teacher that was asked to teach a classroom of Gifted and Talented students. At the end of the course the students were tested on state exams and they did exceptional. To be expected, right? What the teacher was not told was that these were students that were actually tested to be in the remedial class. 

So how is this applicable? What if we had the expectation that technology was part of our school setting? What if it was expected that part of students learning was sharing their learning back to the community? What if the expectations for students and teachers was to be a community of learners, creators, problem solvers and communicators through technology? What would our society look like 5, 10, 20 years down the road? 

So this is where I see the connection with Renny Gleeson's talk about Anti-Social Smartphone Users.  Many of our cultural behaviors are based on what is acceptable as a society, whether they are postiive or negative. If we begin by setting a particular behavioral expectation in our home and school setting, for example cell phone use, we can begin to make a societal expectation or change. Especially if we are aware of the particular behavior and expectation and reasons for the behavior. 

So how to begin this culture of change or expectation? I think that  Dan Airely's talk suggests a solution. Airely says that we should test our intuitions (perceptions of what could happen in the future based on our actions), even if they are difficult to do. Why not test the intuition of your school climate or classroom culture? What if every teacher trully beleived that every child could learn and wanted to learn?