Productive Struggle

What a great morning today has been! (I'm only being half sarcastic there). My son woke up not feeling the very best, but off to school he went, as did I. I've been working with our counseling department to transfer their website over to the fabulous new Google Sites (can I even still call it new? It's been out for a while now!)

Anyway, one of the things we were trying to do is embed their Twitter feed on the website. Not having a direct way to do that, I consulted my best friend, Google. I stumbled upon this video and this article when researching how to create a widget that would work. 

Now for the purpose of this post. "Productive Struggle" is a term I have seen recently on a few of my favorite educational websites. I completely understand what the reference means and experienced this hardcore this morning. The video I found this morning truly made it look simple as 1-2-3. Thinking I could follow the instructions without consulting the video again, I started on my copy-paste-a-thon without thinking twice. I got to the end, and my widget didn't work at all, not in test mode or on the site. 

So, I consulted the article again, and after a few attempts, I realized I hadn't named my index appropriately. So I changed that and saved everything. It worked when I ran the test mode (YEAH!), but not when I embedded it on the site (BOOO!). 

So, I consulted the article a few times more and saved the script a new way, which WORKED!!! I was so excited that after many failed attempts, my efforts paid off. What a great feeling! I had to go share with my colleague I was so excited. 

This feeling is what I want for my students and teachers. I want them to try and try and try again, until it works and they feel accomplished. I'm not going to lie, it was frustrating. I feel fairly comfortable taking risks to further my knowledge when it comes to technology. I'll follow an HTML script, even though I don't necessarily understand everything I'm reading or doing. So that frustration happened on the third or fourth attempt at creating this widget. We have to have a bit of grit and perseverance when learning something new. Otherwise, we might not be successful. 

I am reminded of a phrase from my favorite Country radio morning show, Bobby Bones. "Fight. Grind. Repeat." That is what this new buzzword "productive struggle" is all about. Not giving up when the struggle is real. Fighting to find a way to make "it" work. Then, doing that all over again with the next new learning.