Mary Worrell

Another school year is about to begin! And, I must admit, I am even more excited this year than I usually am! After a busy year planning with our amazing teachers, parents, students, administrators at YIS, along with fabulous colleagues around the world, we are finally ready begin our 1:1 laptop program, called the Connected Learning Community (CLC).

Since we’re a small school, we’ll be implementing the program from grades 6 – 12 in one go (13″ MBPs), and we have come up with some unique and fun ideas for starting this school year off in a special way.

Two Days of Orientation

Instead of starting our year with a standard assembly and regular classes, we have planned out two full days of non-formal school, similar to a university orientation (huge thanks to Rebekah for the idea!). Although many of the sessions will be focused on topics related to the CLC, we’ve also planned in time for cross-grade level team building, fun getting-to-know you activities, and other important start of the year events. We hope that it will go so well that we’ll run this kind of orientation every school year.

Our fantastic counsellor, Adam, and I have been working on developing creative and active sessions that will introduce our most important CLC-related concepts to our middle and high school students. We want to make sure the sessions allow lots of time for discussion and deeper understanding of the content, as well as provide opportunities for students to work together and get to know each other.

Here’s what we’ve come up with:

CLC Introduction: This mock-trial session is intended to help students understand their rights and responsibilities as part of the CLC. Students will be split into 10 groups and asked to role-play courtroom scenarios based on our Responsible Use Agreement (created with student, teacher, admin and parent input). Each group will need to come up with a ruling which reflects the RUA, to be shared with the whole class at the end of the session. For example:

You’re using the YIS Humanities Facebook page to complete your assignment for Ms. Madrid, when a notification pops up that another classmate (in this class) has commented on one of your photos (unrelated to this project). Without thinking, you click the notification tab and Ms. Madrid catches you. What is your fate?

Digital Citizenship Introduction: This session is intended to help build a consistent understanding of appropriate online behavior across the school. To introduce the idea, we’ll show a short clip from Arrested Development, “Pier Pressure“, where some of the characters are “taught a lesson” in an over-the-top way (watch it, it’s hilarious). After the short clip, students will be split into groups of four, to create their own over-the-top “lessons” based on our RUA and digital citizenship expectations. Ideally, each group will then be able to act out their scenario (but we may run short on time).

Finding Balance: Adam has developed this session to focus on understanding how easily we can fall out of balance. Students will start the lesson by playing a balancing game in partners, where each student stands on a spot and they hold and pull a rope to try to get their partner to fall off. Afterwards, they will discuss the types of strategies they developed to help maintain their equilibrium, and how they can apply that to the choices they make about how they spend their time. It will also be important to discuss the expectation that no computers will be allowed during break, and that only students with school-work will be allowed to use their laptops during lunch (in a designated room, with a teacher supervisor).

Managing Your Laptop: This session is intended to introduce students to a variety of productivity techniques in a very short amount of time (e.g. making a repeating event in Google Calendar or backing up your laptop). For this session, every student will have their new laptop (and our CLC Handbook) with them, so they can immediately implement the skills they learn. Students will work in partners or small groups to complete a list of “challenges” using any and all resources available to them. As they complete each challenge, they can record the steps or the resource they used. In case they can’t solve one of the challenges with their team, they will also have three “lifelines” they can use: asking a technician, collaborating with another group, or checking with the facilitator. By the end of the lesson, all students should have at least 10 new tricks they can use to be more effective with their laptop, and a list of helpful resources they can go to when they need it.

Teacher Training

In addition to the work we’re doing with students on those first two days of school, we’ve also scheduled extra time for teachers to build their skills. During the three teacher work days before school starts we have time set aside to understand and discuss the Responsible Use Agreement, to continue building classroom blogs (required for teachers this year), and hands-on support for our other tech tools (especially Google Apps). Of course, we have tons of PD planned for the rest of the school year too, so the training doesn’t end this week.

Also, both orientation school days will be shorted, to end at 2:30, to give us about 2 hours of PD time at the end of the day, focusing on Digital Citizenship and Managing Your Laptop. Those two sessions will follow almost exactly the sessions that we’ve planned for students, but with a few subtle shifts to make them more appropriate for teachers.

Digital Citizenship Introduction: teachers will complete the activity almost exactly as described above (for students), but without the acting (nobody needs that kind of pressure on the first day of school). We’ll just share the scenarios each group creates and discuss them as a faculty. We’ll also introduce our new Digital Citizenship curriculum, Digital Dragons, to the staff, which will be implemented in the middle school this year.

Managing Your Laptop: Similar to the student session above, teachers will be given a set of important skills to learn. Instead of having to figure it out completely on their own, we will have stations set up around the room with “lead teachers” who can demo the skill quickly (like a modified SpeedGeeking session). The teacher list will include at least 15 items and teachers can work in partners (or independently) to complete at least 10. We’ll keep a Google Doc open for those who feel confident about the skills they learn to add their name, so that after the session is over, teachers can ask anyone on the list to teach them anything they didn’t have time to learn. The goal is to make the session active and fun, to spread the tech leadership to as many staff members as possible, and to build a list of helpful resources for teachers to return to anytime.

Parent Presentations

In order to formally introduce the CLC to all parents, we’ll be offering two presentations focused on the vision and history, laptop details, and family responsibilities, as well as time for Q&A. The HS parent session will be optional, and held on the Wednesday evening before school starts, and the MS parent session will be mandatory, and held on the second day of school. The outcome of both sessions is a signed RUA and Laptop Agreement Policy, so that students are ready to pick up their laptops.

Final Thoughts

I am so excited to see how this orientation goes! I hope students, parents and teachers are engaged and learning, and enthusiastic for the year to come. I’m sure there will be glitches along the way, but so far, I am really happy with the way things are shaping up.

For those of you already in 1:1 schools, are we missing anything? Do you have any advice for us as we begin this adventure? Anything we shouldn’t forget to do?

Image Credits (CC License)

• SpinCircle by LaPrimaDonna on Flickr
• Pastel Colored Pencils (Depth of Field) by Pink Sherbet Photography on Flickr
• Three Generations MacBooks by The Next Web on Flickr
• How Many Non-Macs Are There? by Quang Minh on Flickr

Related posts:

1. Tech Tidbits: Increasing Teachers’ Digital Efficiency
2. Developing a Connected Learning Community

Shared by Mary
Assessment shouldn't be about assigning a number. It should be about providing feedback and guidance for improvement. Should there ever be a right answer? Or should it be "how did you get to this answer? Is it the best answer? What are other answers? Reflect." Though that might be hard to fit onto a multiple-choice bubble sheet.

Shared by Mary
Assessment shouldn't be about assigning a number. It should be about providing feedback and guidance for improvement. Should there ever be a right answer? Or should it be "how did you get to this answer? Is it the best answer? What are other answers? Reflect." Though that might be hard to fit onto a multiple-choice bubble sheet.

Shared by Mary
Great read on what it means to be a dyslexic student in today's schools.

"Dyslexic children use nearly five times the brain area as normal children while performing a simple language task, according to a new study by an interdisciplinary team of University of Washington researchers. The study shows for the first time that there are chemical differences in the brain function of dyslexic and non-dyslexic children," said a 1999 University of Washington study.

'"People often don't see how hard it is for dyslexic children to do a task that others do so effortlessly," added Berninger, a professor of educational psychology. "There are learning differences in children. We can't blame the schools or hold teachers accountable for teaching dyslexic children unless both teachers and the schools are given specialized training to deal with these children."'

'"Dyslexia is a lifelong condition, but dyslexics may learn to compensate for it later in life. We know dyslexia is a genetic and neurological disorder. It is not brain damage. Dyslexics often have enormous talents in other parts of their brain and shine in many fields, e.g. Thomas Edison and financier Charles Schwab."

"In the language tests, the boys heard a series of word pairs that consisted of either two non-rhyming words such as "fly" and "church," two rhyming words such as "fly" and "eye," a non-rhyming real word and non-word such as "crow" and "treel," and a rhyming word and non-word such as "meal" and "treel." The boys were asked if the word pairs rhymed or didn't rhyme and if the pairs contained two real words or one real and one non-word. They responded by raising a hand to indicate yes or no. In the music test, the boys heard pairs of notes and raised one hand if they thought the notes were identical and the other if they believed them to be different.

"While the dyslexic boys exhibited nearly five times more brain lactate activation during a language task that asked them to interpret the sounds of words, there was no difference in the two groups during the musical tone test. This means the difference between the dyslexics and the normal children relates to auditory language and not to nonlinguistic auditory function, according to Richards and Berninger"

That 4.6 times the brain area, why does that matter? Speaking with a colleague's class of sophomore future teachers a few years ago one of the students asked, "If you could read "normally" - they did use their fingers to make the quotation marks, which I appreciated - wouldn't you want to?"

"What would I have to give up in exchange for that?" I asked in return. The class was confused, so I tried to explain that the 'clumsy' 'inefficient' form of reading I do is just part of what I consider a vastly different brain system which just might be far better at processing the complex imagery of multitasking (which "good readers" often claim is impossible) and multi-level perception. I think of all the things I have been "good at" in my life - design, storytelling, visual memory, police work, comprehending differing cultures, and I think all of those successes are due, in part, to the way my brain processes information - that "disorder" called dyslexia. If I could process print efficiently, would all that be lost? It seems likely, which is probably why "poor reading" is far more common among humans than "proficient reading."

Dyslexics do not use the left temporal region (as "good readers" do) to sound out words. In fact, dyslexics and other poor readers even avoid using that region when "successfully compensating." (Shaywitz, 2003)

The world of evolution chooses "winners," and the multitasker, the multi-level comprehender, the visual thinker, remains extraordinarily valuable in many places around the earth.

The fact that, as one example, the United States has never, in over 150 years of trying, gotten two-thirds of Americans beyond the sixth grade reading level (what NAEP calls "proficient) suggests that facts are facts, more struggle with reading than succeed. More brains are wired "abnormally" - by school standards - than are wired "normally."

This was a gigantic problem during the Gutenberg Era, but thankfully, the Gutenberg Era is pretty much over everywhere but in school, and for everybody but the U.S. Department of Education. We don't read manuals anymore, we find the right clip on YouTube to lead us through a process. We don't write checks anymore, we swipe cards or punch numbers into our computers or phones, or we bump phones, or our phones get scanned. We don't use handwriting anymore, because it is slow and difficult to read, although our Windows tablets can convert our handwriting into real text. And if we struggle to read alphabetical text stamped onto paper or displayed on a screen these days, we turn on our reading software, and convert it to audio.

Even "out in the real world," where once menus written in fancy script like the one on the front of the above birthday cards had generations of American boys telling waiters "I'll have what she's having" on our dates, we can now go online, pull down the menu, convert it to normal text or audio, and act like we belong in the world when that waiter arrives.

But in schools, and especially on Duncan-promoted high stakes tests, none of these current century rules apply. Instead, we're back in the 1950s when dyslexia was often called "minimal brain damage" or minimal brain dysfunction," and those who "had that" disease were called - without any code words being used - "retarded." ("Retarded" meaning, since the 1870s in U.S. education, "unable to operate at the "normal" grade level for your age.")

We don't teach kids how to use these solutions, we don't teach them to choose the right solutions, and we don't evaluate them on how they'll actually function when they escape school. Instead "we" - starting with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his flak Justin Hamilton - bully these kids, and torture them on standardized tests, and call them, and all who try to help them, "failures."

And sorry Justin, insult me if you must, but this is child abuse. There is no other way to describe it. And we need to stop it, and realize Gutenberg is dead, and we need to give students the tools they need to access communication and information, and to express themselves.

Because the alternative is awful. I want Justin and Arne to know that. I've even written a book, in part, about that. And if Mr. Hamilton or Mr. Duncan won't order it from Amazon (or the accessible pdf form), if they ask, I'll send them that chapter. Maybe, using their preferred reading method, they can read it, and start to understand. And then maybe they can go down the hall and actually listen to Karen Cator, and read her plan, and start to make education less about force from above, and more about letting the most kids succeed.

- Ira Socol

If one year of a dog’s life is equal to seven human years, then one year of 1:1 implementation must be equal to about three human years. And seeing as we are entering in to our fifth year of implementation next year, we must be turning in to one of those cranky teenagers. Let’s break it down:

Year 1 – The Newborn: In our first year, only teachers of 1oth and 11th grade were given laptops. Everybody else, including students, were stuck with laptop carts and computers labs. While it allowed us to get familiar with the machines, we couldn’t really do anything.

Year 2 – Toddling Along: In year two, all teachers in the Middle/High School received laptops as did students in 10th and 11th grade. There was a lot of stumbling, falling down and crying.

Years 3 and 4 (this year) - Adolescence: All teachers and all students in grades 6 – 12 now have tablets. We’ve grown up, we’re getting more independent. For the most part, we are still trying to please but we are gradually testing the boundaries of what is ‘allowed.’

And this brings us to next year: Year 5 – The Cranky Teenager. Teachers and students are getting restless. Some want change and they want it overnight. They are no longer happy being told what is good for them or appropriate. They want to figure it out for themselves. They want to be subversive. Every wall is seen as a challenge to overcome rather than a boundary to be obeyed. And sometimes, just sometimes, people get cheeky just to see if they can get away with it.

Obviously, I’m not talking about every teacher or every student. But there is a critical mass forming. We’ve been given a rigid structure to help us understand one way of thinking. Now that we know the rules, some of us are ready to break or bend or ignore them. Now that we know some of the possibilities, some of us won’t settle for anything less than everything.

Idealistic? Maybe. Will we make mistakes? Definitely. But that’s part of growing up.

(For the record, I think this Cranky Teenager stage is an exciting stage to be in! We’re at the stage that Chris Lehmann talks about – except for our atrocious Vietnamese internet connection. The conversation is no longer centered around what technology we have in the school but rather what we are doing with that technology.)

How is your 1:1 implementation going? Are you going through similar stages, or are you a child prodigy?

Images:

Codename: Crossbone by Shavar Ross licensed under CC BY NC ND

Technology must be like oxygen by langwitches licensed under CC BY NC SA

Reading Hey Shorty!: A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Public Schools and on the Streets is like drinking vitamin water for activists. An immersion in how-to community organizing, movement building, and feminist activism against sexual harassment, this book is the one we’ve all been waiting for. Written in easy-to-read language and clearly outlined, bullet point action steps, co-authors Meghan Huppuch, Joanne N. Smith, and Mandy Van Deven make the case for feminist activism in schools in ways that will make our non-initiated colleagues understand that we need to act now.

As hard as it is for some educators and administrators to admit, all schools are sexual and sexualized spaces. More specifically, when it comes to sexual harassment, all schools are spaces of power and submission, authority and silence.

Pervasive and destructive, sexual harassment is considered to be a “typical part” of school life by two-thirds of the 1,189 New York City public school students surveyed by Girls for Gender Equity (GGE), a Brooklyn-based girls advocacy and movement building group dedicated to gender justice.

In this new and important book, GGE co-authors Huppuch, Smith, and Van Deven, reveal urgent research that the young women in their Sisters in Strength program discovered.

Their three pivotal findings should press those of us who are educators and school leaders to respond: 1) in-school sexual harassment occurs in many ways, to many people, and in many locations; 2) sexual harassment is a “normal” part of young people’s school experience, and 3) students want and need more education about sexual harassment. 

One of the most disturbing findings asserts that sexual harassment is part of “what it mean[s] to be at school,” implying that “students find sexual harassment routine and acceptable.”

Of course, it’s not acceptable. As the authors point out, members of school communities, from principals, to other administrators, to staff, to the students themselves, perpetuate sexual harassment to the point where it is so normalized that many victimized students do not report it, nor do they even know that they have a federal law, specifically Title IX, to support them.

GGE reminds us that those who are often the targets of sexual harassment, in particular, women, girls, and LGBTQ youth, are “taught to put up with violent and destructive treatment because they have ‘no choice,’” leading to fear of coming to school, depression, poor decision-making with their bodies, and even attempts at suicide.

In response to these findings, Hey Shorty offers excellent strategies for students, educators, and adult allies to stop sexual harassment. One strategy for teachers caught my attention, namely, that educators should have “anti-discrimination rules for their classroom and incorporate anti-oppression lessons into their teaching.”

I could not agree more. I believe the first thing we need to do to make that happen is make sure that teachers themselves receive anti-racism, anti-classism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, and anti-transphobia training as part of their professional development.

In order to reach the point that all teachers incorporate these kinds of lessons into their curricula, faculty members need to do the work of unpacking their own oppression and the oppression they have done unto others not just in school but outside of school as well. Even those of us who are committed to this work need to practice anti-oppression work with our colleagues—even when it gets frustrating and exhausting—so that we can create a healed and healing community of adult allies for our students. Only then will we be able to reach GGE’s vision for becoming the fully realized social justice educators—not just content teachers—our students deserve.

What makes reading Hey Shorty exciting is that GGE’s work is based in feminist theory, especially intersectionality and women of color feminism. The authors make these theories completely accessible to the audience they are trying to reach, namely: educators, administrators, and students.

For instance, without ever using the word, their explanation of intersectionality—or Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory that asserts that systems of inequality along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, etc. overlap—makes urgent that we need to apply this theory in our leadership of schools:

Sexual harassment affects our lives in profound ways because it grows out of larger forms of individual and institutional oppression that we experience as young people, women, people of color, immigrants, and members of the LGBTQ community. Achieving social justice is not just about race or class or gender or ability or nationality or religion. It’s about all of these things at once, because, as Mahatma Gandhi famously said, ‘No one is free when others are oppressed.’”

I can imagine my colleagues reading this book. I can imagine my students reading this book. I can imagine teaching this book. I can imagine it on summer reading lists for years to come. I can imagine schools inviting Huppuch, Smith, and Van Deven to come speak at assemblies, delivering their most pressing message: “The world can no longer ignore that gender-based violence is a health, education, and economic-development issue that negatively affects our entire society.”

From Smith’s inspiring founder’s story to Van Deven’s search for Title IX coordinators in New York City’s public schools to Huppuch’s initiation into GGE’s fierce advocacy culture to the poetry and testimonies of Sisters in Strength interns, Hey Shorty reads like the activist version of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls. After reading their book, we can rest assured that no one’s walking off with all of GGE’s stuff. Each woman and girl’s story of community organizing and movement building bolsters the next, revealing the visioning and action steps for gender justice in schools that we desperately need.

Follow Girls for Gender Equity on Facebook and Twitter. Learn more about their book tour for “Hey Shorty!” and bring them to your school.

Yesterday Seth Godin posted an essay on his blog about "The Future of the Library," a call-to-arms for librarians to envision their work less as a defender of a "warehouse for dead books" but as as a "producer, concierge, connector, teacher and impresario." To paraphrase the response of librarians on blogs and on Twitter: "Yes, we know." and "Yes, that's what we do."

One example of this "future of the library" that is indeed here now: the newly released New York Public Library app, available today via iTunes: Biblion: The Boundless Library. The app is a re-launch of the library's Biblion journal, but in a format specifically designed for the tablet.

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The first issue of Biblion launched today features items from the library's collection from the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair -- documents, images, essays, film and audio that let you explore the library's stacks "opening up hidden parts of the collections and the myriad story lines they hold and preserve." These stories include details about the exhibits on display (including a shocking Salvador Dali exhibit and the General Motors Futurama ride), about some of the debates before and after the event (including debates about innovation, abstract art and the Second World War), and about the "Fashion, Food and Famous Faces" that were there.

The app was designed in conjunction with Potion and it's a joy to scroll through. While it does tout the ability to "explore the stacks," the app certainly recognizes the library mission here isn't about "dead books." Rather the information is accessible and beautifully presented, taking full advantage of the touchscreen technology and the rotation of the tablet - the horizontal view lets you explore the collection visually, while the vertical view lets you read essays and thumb through imagery.

The New York Public Library plans other editions of Biblion that will open up other collections and programs. It is also planning a number of other apps as well, including one that'll let patrons manage their accounts and access catalog information. Also on the docket, an app in conjunction with the Find the Future game, an overnight scavenger hunt facilitated by game theorist Jane McGonigal.

It's all in celebration of the New York Public Library's centennial, and certainly all a demonstration that it's not just the future of the library that'll look very different - it's the present.

Discuss

People talk a great deal about the ’21st century skills’ of collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity. Do we model them ourselves, as teachers?

10 ways to collaborate for teaching and learning…

1. Open the door.

Let go of the idea that you have to teach in ‘your way’ in ‘your space’. Team teach. Invite people in. Share spaces. Learn together.

2. Talk.

Collaborative planning is a constant conversation. (Thanks, Fiona Zinn). Share what worked and what didn’t. Build on each others’ ideas. Talk about how you’ll use shared spaces.

3. Be open-minded.

There is more than one way of doing things. Be open to new ways of thinking and new ways of learning. Learning can look different from the way it did when you went to school.

4. Include your students.

Ensure you are part of their learning community rather than boss of the learning. Ask for feedback. Talk about the process of learning. Listen to their voices. It’s their learning.

5. Make learning trans-disciplinary.

Learning takes place when we connect new knowledge or ideas with what we already knew. The more connections, the stronger the learning. Create opportunities for connections across disciplines.

6. Share.

Share your time, your ideas and your expertise. Share tasks and resources between team members. Share responsibility with your students.

7. Focus on the arts.

Work with the art teacher and the music teacher. Use the arts to enrich learning in any subject area.

8.Establish an in-school PLN.

Learn from and with your personal learning network. It might be your grade level team, teachers of the same subject or, best of all, a mixed group. Share practice. Build on each others’ ideas.

9. Establish an online PLN.

Use social media to connect and collaborate with educators anywhere, any time. Get the most out of Twitter. Ask someone to help you get started on building an online network. (I will)

10. Create a global collaboration.

Use Skype or Voicethread to collaborate with a class in another country. Exchange ideas and beliefs. Learn from each other.

Do you collaborate to make teaching and learning richer? How?

More ’10 ways’ posts.

 

Do you count yourself among a growing number of educators using Twitter to enhance classroom discussion, or are you considering testing out this platform for educational purposes in the future? You’re certainly not alone; in fact, the use of Twitter in the classroom is gaining traction, and was recently featured in a New York Times article.

 

If you’re interested in taking your Twitter-use to the next level, check out these tools for managing classroom discussion, creating follower lists, and gathering data about your Twitter discussions. These are just a few of the many tools available to enhance your experience using the standard Twitter platform.

 

1. TweetChat

TweetChat is a fantastic tool for organizing a discussion on Twitter. Create a hashtag for a classroom or a project and use TweetChat to connect with everyone using the hashtag. It’s also a great way to temporarily “block out” the rest of Twitter, allowing students to focus on the discussion taking place within class, minimizing distractions from other people they may follow on Twitter.

 

2. Formulists

 

Formulists allows you to “organize, manage and expand your Twitter community through smart Twitter lists.” This is a great tool for anyone who is following a large number of people on Twitter and does not want to manually sort each user.

 

3. WeFollow

 

Wefollow is a twitter directory that lets you find users grouped by specific topic areas. Search for “education” in the wefollow directory and you’ll find a list of the top educators on Twitter you may not already be following. You could also direct your students to this site to find people to follow in their area of interest.

 

4. Tweetcal

Twittercal is a free service that connects your Twitter account to your Google Calendar. Use the feature to manage a school calendar or upcoming classroom events. You can add events from your favorite Twitter client, and post events from your Google Calendar to your Twitter accounts.

 

5. Archivist

Archivist is a service that uses the Twitter Search API to find and archive tweets. It’s a great tool for capturing visualizations, or graphic representations of the data from a hashtag you might use in the classroom. It can help you understand trends, the number of Tweets over time, top contributors, words, sentiment and more.

 

What are you favorite Twitter tools?

Shared by Mary
Pretty cool infographic showing the history of networks and how they've morphed over time.

The history of the network is a story about communications. In the late 19th century, the railroads began connecting cities and towns throughout the world. Today, the global digital network gives news definitions to space and time.

In this new space, we are entering the realm of the virtual. The virtual network is becoming the standard that many enterprises are adopting as the performance requirements increase and the need to optimize is driven by costs and competitive pressures.

That's a story that has been told time and again as illustrated in this infographic by GetSatisfaction.

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Pick up a book like James Joyce's Ulysses and you'll likely want a library at your side to help define, translate and help give the context needed to understand the plethora of heady content inside. Before the days of the Internet, reading some of the more scholarly literary texts involved just that - having a dictionary or other reference materials on hand.

Now, Google has brought these things together by adding search, translation and word definitions directly to its Google eBooks offering.

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"When bookworms stumble across a word we don't know, we face the classic dilemma of whether to put the book down to look up the word or forge ahead in ignorance to avoid interrupting the reading experience," writes Google engineer Derek Lei on the company's blog. "Well, fret no more, readers, because today you can select words in Google eBooks and look up their definitions, translate them or search for them elsewhere in the book from within the Google eBooks Web Reader--without losing your page or even looking away."

Google does this, of course, using its in-house tools, such as Google Dictionary, Google Translate and its flagship Google Search technology. Readers can also search for the word or phrase not only in the text, but in Google and Wikipedia. When looking for a word definition, readers are presented not only with a basic definition, but the ability to hear the word pronunciation.

It's great what turning printed words into digital representations means for the reader experience, isn't it? Instead of flipping through a dictionary, all you need to do now is right click on a word and a world of context and information is immediately available.

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Shared by Mary
Interesting look into how fringe groups utilize the social web. Would be cool to use in a global studies or history course.

The Taliban, the ultra-conservative Islamist group that ran Afghanistan while it acted as a host to Osama Bin Laden, have a Twitter feed. Called @alemarahweb (Mostafa Ahmedi), the website attached to it is described as belonging to the "islamic emirat of afghanistan" (sic).

The Taliban have usually been described, rather euphemistically, as "medieval" in outlook and they have not had a public relationship to communications technology, unlike the late Bin Laden. However, the group has been tweeting since December 19 of last year. In that time, they have posted 773 tweets. They have 2,970 followers but only follow 12. So not exactly a robust back-and-forth there.

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The overwhelming majority of the tweets are in Pashto, the Iranian language spoken in southern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. However, they started posting in English on May 11, less than two weeks after their former guest was killed by U.S. forces. The English tweets have been concerned with announcing alleged killings of the Taliban's "enemies."

"8 local minions killed, 7 wounded in Kunduz province," "US invaders spy plane shot down in Wardag," "Fifth US tank obliterated in Nawzad" and so forth.

The feeds @alemarahweb follows include @afghanheroesuk, a charity to help British troops in Afghanistan and @afghantim, a U.S. Army logistics officer. No doubt both follows are in the hopes of tracking movements of supplies and troops.

Other sources: Guardian, The Envoy.

Discuss

Shared by Mary
Cloud computing as environmentalism.

The data we produce creates its own heat. It's a heat that is abstracted in our lives as we work in our offices and homes. But the heat is real.

Data centers consume massive amounts of electricity. A report by the Environmental Protection Agency states that data centers in the U.S. consume 4.5 billion kWh annually, or 1.5 percent of the country's total electrical consumption.

The following two case studies show how virtualization technology can help in cooling data centers that may be over capacity.

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Virginia Commonwealth University

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VMW-81110-VCCS-Snapshot-09.pdf

The Costs That Come With Cooling Overheated Data Centers

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Shared by Mary
The media is always struggling to win over the public with credibility claims and objective coverage. But as a former journalist, I know the real reasons I got into the business (and I know the reasons I left, but that's another story). Pursuing the truth is honorable and dangerous for many. This YouTube channel is honoring journalists who have died "in the line of duty." Could be a great entry point into discussing the role of the media around the world.

Journalism museum, the Newseum, and Google have joined forces to launch the Journalists Memorial channel, described as "A Tribute to Journalists Who Have Died Pursuing the Truth."

For those of us who write about feature creep on beer apps from our bathtubs, journalism holds only the dual dangers of trolls and sponge-based injuries. For those who are out in the field, especially in dicey places, it holds the dangers of imprisonment, beatings and death. With the flare up of wars and now mass protests, 2011 has already seen 16 fatalities.

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According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, if the trend stays steady, this year will see the death of almost 50 journalists. The highest fatality rate they have tracked since they started in 1992 was 72 in 2009. Since that time, 861 journalists have been killed on duty and 145 are currently in prison.

(Iran and China lead the list for imprisonment of journalists, with 34 each. Unsurprisingly, they lead the race in imprisonment and harassment of bloggers and other social media participants as well. Tyrants don't draw a thick line between amateur and professional.)

The Journalists Memorial is casting a wider net, however, and is asking the public to help identify videos about and by killed journalists, according to a post by Steve Grove on the Official Google Blog

"This channel will become a digital version of the Newseum's Journalists Memorial, which is re-dedicated annually to honor journalists worldwide who have died during the preceding year. This year, 77 names are being added to the list of the more than 2,000 journalists who have been recognized for their sacrifices since 1837."

Here's just one video about just one journalist.

Discuss

Shared by Mary
I found this post (and the subsequent comments) to be interesting since I just started graduate school through a distance program at MSU in educational technology (MAET). I suppose statistically graduate school is a rip off, especially for educators who could take advantage of the exploding numbers of teachers joining online communities rather than taking student loans that will take years and years to pay off on a teacher's salary.

I wanted to get a graduate degree in something that interested me. And yes, I know I could have designed my own program and PD through the wealth of resources available in my PLN - and in many ways I do and use this to supplement what I'm learning in school. I could have joined a MOOC of some sort and collaborated with people around the world. But I wanted the school experience. From a practical standpoint, I also chose to pursue graduate school because of the professional opportunities I will be afforded with that very expensive piece of paper. I'm living in The Netherlands now and in order to even be considered to teach higher level subjects to 11th and 12th grade students, you need a master's degree. I like school. Maybe it's the same way that people like getting a massage. For the money? It's probably a rip off. But I enjoy it and I certainly find it rewarding in other ways even if it doesn't have a good ROI.

Isn't there something to be said for learners who do better in a school environment? That people are individuals and learn differently and one might be best suited by "traditional school" while another best served through something more experiential? I agree that we need a major cultural shift in the U.S. and elsewhere. College degrees say little about a person other than they studied a lot and got a piece of paper in a certain subject - it says nothing about who they will be, their problem-solving skills, their drive to improve an organization. That's all a gamble. And unfortunately the higher ed system has stacked everything in favor of the ones that pay out to get the piece of paper.

I’ve written articles on why high school is a waste (see this one and this one) and why college is a waste (see this).  Now it’s time to take on grad school and to do that is my great friend and provocative inspiration Penelope Trunk who has been writing about how graduate school is a waste of time and money (yes, business school and law school too).  When radio and TV producers need someone to bitch about graduate school, they call Penelope.  


I just loved her interview on NPR last week. It’s a great interview in part because of how quick she is at supporting facts and backing them up with research, but also because she completely lost patience for people still defending grad school. She explains in her wildly popular career advice blog that even to defenders of grad school it is clearly a bad financial decision. The guy she is bantering with int the interview actually resorted to saying that you need to go to grad school to be a good person. That’s where Penelope went nuts on him.


Penelope recognizes that not only is grad school a rip off but college is a rip off (here's a great discussion in New York magazine with James Altucher, a venture capitalist in NYC) And she goes on to share that folks like me are saying that High School isn’t even necessary.  She concludes that the future belongs to home educators because they are self-learners.


Her advice for those desperately seeking direction through grad school is this:

So all there is for adult life is you, following your nose, trying to figure out what brings you joy. Each time I see someone who has done that, in some little way, I feel relief and hope for myself.

Shared by Mary
Interesting to see students trying to keep their "suburban lifestyles" on track in this exercise. For many families, an $82,000 a year salary is far out of the question. Decisions aren't about cars and cellphone plans, but about food. I'm all for financial literacy, but let's be realistic for a moment.

At Finance Park in Fairfax, Va., eighth-graders are playing grown-ups — for class credit. The park is a real world mock-up where schools bring kids to learn financial literacy. The teens shop for groceries, buy cars at the dealership, even pick cable plans at a faux Verizon Store — all while trying to stay on a budget.

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Shared by Mary
Educators as connected coaches in environments dedicated to learner-led education...kids doing the learning around passions.

Cross Posted from the PLP blog- Conversations from the Edge is a series of raw, honest and candid dialogues about education’s shifting learning landscape. Hosted by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson.

Dear Will,

You know better than anyone that I am an optimist. I truly do see possibilities more than problems.

Well, I woke up this morning feeling empty. I woke up grieving for children. I blame it on a dream I had. A dream about unhappy students, hundreds of them, shuffling through halls with broken spirits and sad faces. Students who were disenfranchised and unempowered, who were doing what it took to get through school (all 12 years of it) because it is a mandate- required by parents, society and the state. Beautiful, creative, kids who learn so much naturally out of school but remain uninspired in school by teachers who have failed them. These same teachers also feel betrayed by a system that has left them disempowered as well. One that has ripped away their dreams of changing the world one kid at a time. The system is broken and it is going to take hard work to fix it… to reculture it…to transform it.

A Dream Come Real
I know it was a dream – or was it? I found myself wondering if the hard work we are both doing through our workshops, keynote presentations and Powerful Learning Practice is making a real difference. I woke up feeling frustrated that many with whom I learn daily, seem to, especially as of late, want an easy button. They simply do not have the passion or the drive to go deep. They give all the right excuses. “Right” meaning seemingly justified. Excuses like I have no time, I’m just a teacher, it’s out of my hands, we have to teach to the test, we have AP exams we have to prepare kids for, I need more, there isn’t enough money, the kids are not capable of learning on their own in passion based ways, the kids have to be policed, working conditions suck, the culture hasn’t shifted, we do not have the resources or technology, our parents won’t let us, they don’t seem to care, and on and on and on. I hear things like “I am trying to have powerful conversations but no one is talking back” or “these just aren’t my conversations” or “I am just not interested.”

Learner Led Communities I know part of the answer to re-envisioning education comes in the learning communities we are creating – deep, sustained, communities that have hard, messy conversations and become safe places where we ask controversial questions that push for positive change. But part of the problem is getting participants to buy in and make time and truly commit to spending time in community, building trust and learning together. It takes time and energy and folks have to understand it is developmental. The shift will come if they will invest themselves, the very best part of themselves.

It will require a shift in dispositions, beliefs, and values. Such as these (from my soon to be published co-authored book on connected learning):

Dispositions of a Connected Learner
1. Propensity for and understanding of strengths-based appreciative approaches to learning;
2. Tendency for mindfulness (paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally);
3. Commitment to understanding, gained through listening and asking good questions related to practice;
4. Perseverance toward deep thought, demonstrated by exploring ideas and concepts, rethinking, revising, and continual repacking and unpacking, resisting urges to finish prematurely;
5. Courage and initiative to engage in discussions on difficult or messy topics;
6. Willingness to leave one’s comfort zone to experiment with new strategies;
7. Commitment to deep reflection about the efficacy of the work we do;
8. Inclination toward being open-minded and non-judgmental;
9. Dedication to the ongoing development of expertise;
10. Ardor for a culture of collegiality – that “None of us is as good as all of us” and that the contributions of all can lead to improved practice.

The disillusionment is pervasive though. I see educators everywhere so unhappy. And I see students, masses of students, so unhappy. Everyday, it seems, we all go to school because we have to go. Twitter lights up on a snow day. Something is wrong when educators are as excited as students at the prospect of a snow day. What happened to passion? What happened to teachers motivated by a daily drive to inspire their students?

I love what Joe Bowers says: “True accountability would demand that we ask children if they like school; then we would have to care about their answer – and be prepared to do something about it. Where interest lies; achievement follows. “

It is true — teaching to someone’s weaknesses only produces mediocrity. It is when we work through our strengths and our passions that we can achieve excellence. That’s appreciative learning.

Dream School
I have been dreaming lately, dreaming about starting a school, a place where kids can ask questions and follow their passions. A place where caring adults create the conditions where deep learning can thrive and are willing to get out of the way and let it happen. A place where we value what all learners have to offer teachers and students.

This school is a blended place with inquiry occurring both online and face to face. A school, like a lab school, where others could see self-directed learning in action. Then today I came across the Independent Project. Have you seen the clip at the bottom of this post? Please watch the whole thing and then let’s talk. I am thinking maybe we could start our dream school as a school within schools. What if the Powerful Learning Practice school was an opt-in program that traditional schools had for their students? Just like some schools have virtual classes as part of the choices they offer kids, what if this kind of self directed learning experience was also an option and it was supported by a connected learner experience online as well. Maybe we should reach out to our PLPeep schools and start there? This way it could serve a two-fold purpose. It could be part of our PLP Connected Learner School, and it could serve as the spark that shifts culture in the physical school where it resides in an authentic way — from the inside out. What do you think?

The Evolution of the Teacher
As teachers and educators, we have to shift from doing things TO students and instead create a dynamic learning environment where students take ownership of their own learning and pursue it passionately. In a connected world, with the Internet and powerful digital technologies literally at our fingertips, we would be foolish not to integrate those things into the learning experience. But when I talk about the shift, I am not talking primarily about changing the tools we use. I’m talking about transforming the way most teachers teach today – either because they were taught to teach that way or because the accountability system makes them believe they have to teach that way.

This is going to require a pedagogical shift. Assessment will become a proactive process embedded in learning itself. Rather than just telling us about the quality of the teaching, assessment will be designed to help the learner understand how to improve and learn more. The shift will require much more from teachers than just throwing out a few clarifying questions. When we let learning rule the school structure, teachers will have to evolve into much more than the delivery vehicle – the person who simply deconstructs knowledge into small, bite sized pieces that can be memorized and regurgitated on tests. Rather, teachers will become connected coaches who understand how to use appreciative inquiry to help students construct and validate their own learning.

Shared by Mary
Release your ideas early and often.

Over the next month or so, I have a couple of presentations talking about the way that ‘the digital’ impacts the ways in which we work with others. I’ve spent a lot of my time over the last few years focusing on the learning part of that cycle, but maybe not as much about the day to day of actually partnering up with someone in order to work together and get something done. It’s odd, I guess, that i haven’t, as other than this blog, I almost never do anything on my own. I tend to work better when there are other voices in the mix… they keep me on track and keep my ideas from spiralling out of control.

Partnerships at a company level
One of the things that Bonnie (speaking of partners) brought up to me in our discussions around partnerships, is how they have moved from being between companies to being between people. It’s a pretty profound change when you think about it, it used to be that for two people from different institutions were going to work together there needed to be a fair amount of driving/floating/flying around involved to get them near enough to each other to get any work done. This requires that your ideas be in pretty good shape before someone in your organization is willing to spring for ticket fair (not to mention the amount of time that you need to be out of the shop) My suspicion is that this has a profound effect on innovation. I’m not necessarily saying its a good or bad effect, but it certainly changes things. If i can take any kind of crazy idea and just skype someone about it, it sure does speed things up. It also means that new ideas can come from lots more places. It might also mean that i need to spend less good thinking time on an idea before it gets out the door.

Partnerships and locality
One of my struggles in the past 5 years on the island has been making local connections to work with. I have an excellent working relationship with people from all over the world and still struggle finding people here. I think this is a real challenge in an era where choice and happenstance on the internet makes connections available. I’m tempted to use the time that I have for ‘fun’ projects with people i have worked with before, or with people that I happen to run across. I’m not sure if the rest of you are in this position… but it sure is a struggle when I have feelings about local issues in education or social media and realize that I don’t even know who to call to get involved in the conversation.

Beating duplication
Maybe the nicest thing about working in this era, is that I need not simply replicate all the same mistakes that everyone else makes. And, for that matter, my mistakes can be of value to others… which might be even more encouraging. If you set things up right, and you release your ideas early and often, you can gain months on any project simply by hearing back from others doing similar things. You might even find a partnership or two. If you can band together with others… sustainability isn’t far behind.

Partnerships for sustainability
I’ve been co/manager of edtechtalk for nearing 6 years now. We’ve done thousands of shows (ok… maybe under 2000 but we’ve done a heck of alot of them) and lots of people have made lots of connections that have helped them out. I can promise you that I wouldn’t have done a podcast every week for the last six years without a little help and encouragement along the way. We’ve lost a few shows, gained a few others, we’ve had shows where different people have cycled in an out of them. The best of projects is susceptible to real life. To new kids and new jobs and moves to different houses.

The ability to be open, not just in the sense of being willing to share, but also to have that sharing get out there to have your openness ‘interact’ with others is the most powerful part of the change. As people have come in and out of my personal life, the things i have done have changed. You’re friend the guitar player leaves and you stop jamming so much, the person who likes hiking moves away and you stop going to see birds. We’re not all like this, I realize, but I sure am. The thing that having all of you out there changes is that there are others to play with. As I’ve lost connections over the years the ‘long tail’ of others interested and passionate about the same things as i am have filled the gaps (not exactly the same way… but that’s often good too) and allowed me to stay focused longer…

and maybe get further.

Shared by Mary
Thinking of what kept me going as a newspaper reporter. Not the fear of being fired or reprimanded, but the fear of my colleagues having to shoulder the work I was supposed to do.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

- Douglas Adams

Jabiz called me out this morning.

He didn’t mean to, but I’m glad he did. Each of his assertions was incorrect. I haven’t written 124 posts. Neither have I written a post each day since January 1.

Let me explain before you give up on this experiment all together.

This is my 127th Thing I Know. I realize yesterday’s post was labeled “124 of 365,” and there’s a reason for that.

I can’t count. Well, I can’t keep count. If you were to comb the archives, you’d find two 63s and two 94s. I’m not sure how it happened, but every TIK from March 6 on has been a day or two off. I’ll be going back and correcting them, but it’s going to take some time to individually rename half of the posts I’ve written this year.

The second inaccuracy was the claim that I’ve written one post per day. There were a few days over the last couple of weeks that got away from me. From being on the river to writing narratives to entering grades to report card conferences, my days got away from me.

I’m not sure anyone would have wanted to know what I knew in those few days. At least two of the posts were begun in end-of-day exhaustion only to result in me wake finding an open laptop on my stomach after I had passed out in bed.

I counted this weekend. May 10 is the 130th day of 2011.

I owe me some posts.

They’re coming.

No matter whether anyone else cares, my brain won’t sit right until this is all back on track.

What’s interesting to me is my lack of freak out. I could be rambling on and on to myself that I’ve lost the purity of the project or that writing more than one post in a day to catch up is cheating.

I’m not doing any of that.

It will get done, and the missing posts aren’t missing because of sloth or apathy.

Life needed me to prioritize school ahead of writing and then sleep ahead of writing. I obliged.

Today, a student got to my first period class late. We were just finishing up a vocabulary quiz. At the beginning of the year, my policy was that any student missing during the quiz would not be allowed to make up that portion of the quiz.

“Get here on time if you’re think it’s an unfair policy, and you’ll never have to worry about it,” I said.

The tardy student raised his hand once he’d taken his seat.

“Can I make up the quiz tomorrow during lunch?”

“Where were you?”

“I just got to school.”

“Why were you late?”

“I woke up late and then had to catch the train.”

“You can make it up Thursday at lunch.”

Then, I walked away.

I could have lectured him on the importance of punctuality or restated the policy, but that’s not what he needed at the time. The student was visibly frazzled and stressed by getting to class late and missing the quiz. Adding to that would have accomplished nothing.

If he makes a habit of it, we’ll talk.

I’ve been late to meetings and missed deadlines outside of self-imposed blogging deadlines. I’ve felt the frustration of falling short of the expectations of others and myself.

In those moments, it wasn’t the people who lorded the hegemony over me who made me want to work harder the next time. It was those who looked closely to see what I needed and responded from a place of care.

If I ever took advantage of their empathy, they once again responded caringly and called me on my actions, helping me learn lessons I didn’t necessarily want to learn but needed to.

I once taught with a teacher who accepted no late work and allowed no make-up work, citing the real world in her reasoning.

“When these kids get into the real world, they’re going to have bosses who don’t let excuses and tardiness fly.”

I’ve been in the real world for a few years now, and it’s not nearly as cut and dry as my colleague made it out to be.

There are times when deadlines are hard and fast, not to be taken lightly. Other times, life piles up and we’re forced to make choices. Then there are those moments when we make the wrong choices and firm understanding, not berating and belittling, is what’s called for.

I am reminded of this sentiment as I catch up on my writing. I will remember it again, Thursday, as I administer the make-up quiz.