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I’m sitting in an empty classroom as the cleaning lady drags her mop bucket across the floor, waiting for the rain to let up so I can bike home and start my weekend. But, such as things are in The Netherlands (forgive me while I cliche), the rain won’t seem to stop and just seems to pound harder each time I go to pack my bag and leave.
I’ve done a lot of things with my students this week, but one thread seems to follow through all of the classes and cross year and subject boundaries (I teach English and technology). Helping students find an idea or topic that excites them – one that they own – that the teacher didn’t let them choose from a list – one that emerged from the depths of their own interests and ideas that maybe they didn’t even realize they had…that is one of my favorite parts of teaching.
It is much easier to create a list of topics and let your students choose from that list. It feels like you’re giving them choices and like you’re progressive because you aren’t controlling everything like some teachers you know. I understand why teachers do this. It’s easier and, more importantly, it’s faster. Give them the topics so they can get on with the real assignment, right?
Generating ideas in an effort to find that magical one that sparks interest and motivation is pretty time consuming. I know because I often underestimate how long it will take students to find “the one.” I push a little, but not much. I want them to experience that “lost in the middle of the desert” feeling that so many writers or designers or learners experience. I want them to know the false starts and the red herrings that seem like they might be “the one,” but that turn out to be nothing more than empty pursuits. Forgive my cheesy metaphor, but it’s the journey, the being tricked cruelly by the mirages, that makes the real thing that much sweeter. It’s still an uphill battle, no matter the task, but having a topic you enjoy working with makes the climb worth it.
You can’t get that from a list of prescribed topics. You never will.
As a disclaimer, I will say the only time I’ve ever issued a list of topics is in the case of timed writing tasks with my older students. I think it’s important for them to see what they might encounter in higher education and on Diploma Programme exams. I will say their experience with brainstorming and the patience to do so in the face of a ticking clock was a big enough pay off for me to keep spending the time on it in class. It’s important and they understand that enough to sketch out some spider maps or outlines before they start scribbling their pens across the page.
An interesting article from ars technica popped up in my Twitter feed today (thanks to @LaughingSquid) about the Motion Picture Association of America’s position that embedding content (that is hosted elsewhere, but that violates copyright) can be deemed copyright infringement.
Now, think about that for a minute.
How often do you embed videos on your Facebook profile? On your blogs? On your Twitter feed? How often do your students do it?
“Numerous websites embed content from third parties they have not personally inspected. Under the theory articulated by Grady, and supported by the MPAA, these websites would be responsible for this content, exactly as if they had stored it on their own servers. This could create a serious disincentive for sites to allow users to post embedded content, hampering the convenience and user-friendliness of the Web.”
Something worth thinking about and talking about and worrying about. I rely heavily on video hosting tools like YouTube and Vimeo for my teaching and learning. The ease of sharing is what makes these tools great and so very useful. Despite SOPA being defeated, keeping the Internet free continues to be a battle against organizations that see this technology it as a threat to their relevance.
It is true that there are sites out there hosting content just so people can freely consume without having to pay for it nor download it (I’ve seen my students watching entire episodes of TV shows this way). However, a decision to view embedded content in this way could have far more reaching consequences than intended.
meticulous: showing great attention to detail; very careful and precise
fiddling: annoyingly trivial and petty
I spent a disturbing amount of my puberty putting paper reinforcers on the holes of college-ruled notebook paper. This started as early as eighth grade when I attended a small, evangelical Christian school in Chesapeake, Virginia. While the school’s curriculum included a number of unofficial yet unfortunate topics (ie: how Catholics are idolators, why dating isn’t Christian, etc.), I came to appreciate its emphasis on primary-source documents and the development of notes and resources by the student that would then become a resource/textbook. Maybe it stemmed out of a need to save money, but “your notebook is your textbook,” they would always say. With this in mind, I would convince my mother to drive me to OfficeMax at the Janaf Shopping Center in Norfolk where I would think and mull over which folder or tab system would be best for which subject. Always ready in my well-organized Jansport backpack was a roll of paper hole reinforcers, White Out, and various shapes and sizes of Post-It notes. Oh, and who could forget the mini stapler and the matching, very necessary mini staple remover? Needless to say, I was poked fun of by my friends for my quirky concern with office supplies.
And this was just office supplies. I would also go through phases in school where I decided to suddenly alter my penmanship. I went through the phase of writing in tiny CAPS before moving onto a Frankenstein hybrid of print and cursive that I thought seemed more adult. As if the penmanship was more important than the words going onto the paper – the college-ruled, hole-reinforced paper.
That was then.
My love of the Internet and technology has ushered in an entirely new way of obsessing over and tweaking my systems. I recently read David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done.” As someone perceived to have so much potential and yet hopelessly prone to procrastinating and missing deadlines, I am always in search of something to save me from myself. I approached GTD out of the same desperation. Many of Allen’s concepts blew me away – I had lots of aha moments and lightbulbs. Yet I still spent an inordinate amount of time tweaking and fiddling with my Evernote, with tags and saved searches, to set it up as a digital GTD system. I even had a friend bring a box of plain manila folders over from the U.S. for my paper reference/filing system because I just wasn’t into the folders here in The Netherlands.
Tags and file taxonomies and GMail labels – these have become my paper reinforcers and White Out and file tabs. I am still doing the same thing and letting the same behaviors mask problems and confidence issues I have lurking underneath all of this seeming “organization.”
I come from a family of attention-deficit folks. My father, my brother, my uncle, and probably countless others are textbook “ADHD” and have been diagnosed as such. I have never been diagnosed nor have I sought out doctors to tell me either way. Young girls weren’t diagnosed with ADD or ADHD as often as boys when I was in middle and high school. If you were a daydreaming girl who couldn’t focus or stay on task, you were deemed lazy or told to “get your head out of the clouds.” I always seemed to be on task, seemed to be busy focusing and working to the untrained eye, but any close inspection (which my teachers never did) would have revealed a serious problem. I did not have trouble focusing, but rather found it impossible to focus on the right thing when I needed to. I can cook a big meal from start to finish and not forget an ingredient. I can knit a pair of baby mittens while listening to a podcast. However, ask me to meet a writing deadline after I’ve finished the interview and I shut down. I’m not ready. I’m still thinking. I’m still brainstorming and figuring out my lede. Ask me to sit down and write that unit plan, the one I’ve been googling and saving links for, the one I’ve been jotting down notes on legal pads for, and again I shut down. I’m not ready. I’m too busy thinking and trying to plan before I plan before I plan. These behaviors are problematic for someone who has an affinity for jobs that require grown-up homework (journalist, teacher).
I came to think about all of these issues while listening to one of my favorite new podcasts. At first blush it would seem to have nothing to do with my life and work, but “Back to Work” with Merlin Mann & Dan Benjamin seems to speak loudly and clearly to my current situation and the way I approach my work and creativity. These are two guys that seem a world away from my life as a teacher, but I can’t help but identify with them. In many ways it’s a superficial connection – I’m a nerd and enjoy the geeky banter, strange facts and movie references that pepper the conversations. I’m also a Mac geek like the both of them. But more than these, I identify with the hunger to create something and the many, many things that can distract and keep you from doing just that if you allow them to.
I just started listening to this podcast, so I’m a bit behind on the episodes. In the most recent episode I listened to, Merlin Mann said that “no one has ever thought a novel into existence.” He rambled on about how the brain and the gut can do a lot to discourage our hand from making something (and I mean ramble in a very good way). He clearly admires writers like Don Murray and Natalie Goldberg and references them often, in connection with writing of course, but also in creating anything. I too came to love Don Murray for the way he framed writing as an approachable practice – it is something you have to practice to get good at. Before he died, he wrote every single day. If a writer stops writing, she is no longer a writer. Anyone can write, but to be a writer, you have to sit down and write. You can’t just think about writing and expect a piece of work to appear. Seems simple, right?
Writing is another activity I avoid – a creative process for which I find countless justifications for not engaging in – because I am afraid of the permanence and finality of having something on paper or screen. With my students, we write in journals every day and practice the act of freewriting – of letting your hand just move across the page, without editing. I tell my students that they can save a piece of writing or throw it away – it doesn’t matter, because it is the act of doing it that is important. However, I also understand how difficult that can be for some of them. This is my own complex, but yet it is something that connects me to those students as they sit down to write. Some get this concept easily while others need support, encouragement and coaxing to move toward a regular writing practice. They need to practice writing if they ever hope to slough the fear of writing. I am not there yet myself.
One of my favorite quotes is by E.M. Forster who pondered “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” That to me is one of the things that can be so intimidating about writing. You may not truly understand yourself until you get things down on the paper or the screen and maybe there’s a reason you avoid doing that – maybe there are things you aren’t ready to understand about yourself. Julia Cameron and her recommendation of “Morning Pages” – of writing three pages every morning, long-hand – approaches writing as near-therapy.
These memories are bubbling to the surface as I think about my students. Those few students who, like myself, are painfully organized and enjoy using highlighters and Post-It notes, only to miss out on the messy, real learning that can go on if you just let go. One of my favorite comedians is Marc Maron. He joked once on his podcast that he visited a friend’s house only to find the friend’s house was extremely clean and organized – every little thing in its place. Maron chuckled and asked “So what are you running from?”
I struggle. I concentrate too much on getting the system just right that I miss out on the opportunities to create somehting with the system. Right now I am thinking and thinking about units and what to do with my students, but avoiding putting anything down on paper. I am letting my mind run wild as my hands sit idle – as the creating muscles atrophy.
I’m just beginning to analyze my perfectionism and procrastination as a sign of something deeper. An apprehensiveness about making mistakes. And when you’re a teacher, mistakes are par for the course. As a teacher, you take time getting to know students, their learning differences and interests so that you can meet students where they are and help them stretch and grow. And, now and again, you make mistakes. You select texts that bomb. You assume students know something only to realize mid-lesson they don’t and then you need to reteach it. You have your “off” days.
I am walking into this new year with goals in mind, hoping they aren’t too pie-in-the-sky or unachievable. I plan to sit down with students and have a discussion about what we all want out of this learning experience. I’ve been reading through “The First Days of School” based on rave reviews from teachers. While I understand the need for procedures – and I will certainly have them – I am more interested in getting to know these kids first than in scaring them into submission with lists and policies. It’s important that I see who has the messy bookbag and who is fiddling with organizing papers rather than paying attention. These observations are just as important as responses on surveys and paragraphs about summer vacations and writing diagnostics. And it is important that they learn who I am, faults and all. Building trust and community is my goal. But first, I must create learning experiences that will allow this all to happen naturally. I must commit them to paper and shake that feeling of permanence and remind myself: every lesson is a draft.
It’s a strange thing being a part of a digital network of teachers from all over the world, especially when you’re still a new teacher, feeling your way through this complex profession (when do you stop feeling new?). Even weirder when you’ve moved to a new country and are helping to open a school from the ground up. A terrifying, exciting, once-in-a-lifetime experience. Did I mention terrifying?
As the time ticks down to the end of August when I will meet my students for the first time – students that will likely be from all over the world, with experiences my younger self could only dream of having, with passport stamps to lands I’ve only seen in movies – sweat is beginning to bead upon my brow. My breathing has increased in pace and seems unlikely to slow until I get into a groove this fall and find some confidence and systems and routines. Sleep is unfulfilling and interrupted with bursts of 3:30 a.m. panic or inspiration or both.
See, I haven’t taught for the last year. I moved to The Netherlands in the summer of 2010 and spent months securing residency and trying to settle into my new home. I have had my head in the education world thanks to some other work and planning this new school, but as for teaching, I’ve not been in a room with students since June 2010. And really, I hadn’t spent too much time working with students before that. Still a “new” teacher, remember?
I am a new teacher. In a new school. In a new country. Doing so many new things, I feel like I’m learning with every turn. Nothing feels like something I’ve done before. This is a powerful and exhausting experience and I constantly find myself asking “is this right?” I try to see my newness as a positive and not as a disadvantage, but there are those days where you can’t help but feel like you will never measure up to the pros.
Thankfully I have that digital network of teachers behind me. It can feel, at times, like a sounding board in the form of a well-worn safety blanket – something to run to when you just don’t know where else to go. This metaphor could be perceived any number of ways – is it a way to feel “connected” in a profession prone to loneliness? Or a false sense of security in a job where, in the end, you really do it on your own every day?
But a strange thing has happened. As I feel the pressure of not disappointing my colleagues, parents, my new students, myself…I feel an even bigger pressure not to disappoint this network. See, when you surround yourself with people you consider experts – people you admire and learn from every day, sharing wowing ideas and experiences in education – you also have an even bigger cadre of people you can disappoint. This pushes me to try harder and do my best, but I know there will be mistakes. There will be days when I think “man, should I even BE a teacher?” I’m wondering if I’ll be confident enough to share those moments with these same teachers, or if I will bury them away in my notebook and keep the shame to myself. I find myself wondering if the “mistakes” shared by the educators I connect with online are akin to the “weaknesses” job applicants share in interviews – perceived downsides that really just beef up your strengths in the end. Do we really share the teaching skeletons in our closets? The moments we were so happy no one was observing that day? The strategies we used and think back on with the sort of stomach turning that only an embarrassing, high school moment can induce? And if we don’t share them, acknowledge them, and think about them, do we really learn from them?
I will be teaching Language A & B English and Technology in all years of the MYP* in addition to some other hats this year as our new school opens later this month. A new school necessitates many hats being worn by only a few teachers. I bounce between moments of feeling brave and proud of myself for tackling such a project, but as the days tick closer those wins are punctuated with “are you crazy? What makes you think you can do this? Leave this stuff up to the pros – you’re not there yet.’” My consolation is knowing that my colleagues are in this with me. We are heading into unfamiliar seas and it is scary, but we are together.
I know the path toward becoming a great teacher means walking that path as a teacher. I know at some point you have to leave behind consuming and reading and learning from your network – the theory – to do the thing you believe you were meant to do – teach. After a year of floating around, I may not feel completely ready to do that, but I am hoping when I do I can turn back to that same group of teachers and say “you were right. It wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was amazing. And damn, it feels good to be here again.”
*This equates to 6th through 10th grade in the U.S. As a small school, we will have some grouping of grades, which is yet another new and exciting experience for me.
This week I started course work through Michigan State University’s online program toward my Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET).
I’ve realized over the course of my brief but intense teaching career that technology in learning is something I want to know more about. I’d been asked by many why I didn’t just get my Masters in Education when I got my license since I already had a degree under my belt (and the classes were the same), but at the time it didn’t seem like something I wanted to pay extra for. At this moment I have no aspirations of being an administrator (though it seems that every back is wearing a target in education these days) and a Masters of Education seemed like a stepping stone towards that and little more. I’d toyed with the idea of getting a graduate degree in something more content focused, such as history or media or even literature again, but none of those grabbed me.
I am an English teacher, but I always felt a little too interdisciplinary for the English department. I liked to walk around, talk to other teachers, and daydream about collaborative projects we could do together if it weren’t for state testing, time constraints, and all the other excuses you can imagine. I needed something that wasn’t an umbrella degree like education, but wasn’t so focused that it limited me to certain content. I found in the MAET program something that spoke to me – a chance to take all of my raw ideas about tech and learning, reflect upon them, and hopefully coax them into some focused philosophy while picking up skills along the way, though that philosophy part might be a reach. My education philosophy seems to change with every day I learn in virtual networks or even talk with a fellow teacher. One shared link on Twitter can get me thinking and wondering about everything all over again. Uncertainty – it’s a nice place to be sometimes.
I’ve started a blog (Mary gets her MAET…still working on that title) separate from my usual teaching blog (See Mary Teach), because I want to keep my course work separate from my usual ruminations in education. Also, some of the content of my MAET blog might be a little dry for some (I’m getting ready to write an example blog post about the differences between web pages and blog posts for my CEP810 course, for example). This is always a challenge for me – to decide how I am going to use one space over another and what tools I’m going to use to achieve the goals. I’m an early adopter of many online apps and tools and often find myself saying things like “wait a minute, I have 45 different ways to take notes…is that necessary?” And determining the answer to questions like that – to finding the right tech tool for the job – is something I hope to become better at through the course of this program so that I may model it for the students I have next year and in the future. And I’m just excited to be talking about teaching and learning in another space in such a complicated time.
I will be cross-posting content from See Mary Teach and vice versa from time to time and while my grad blog is separate, I encourage anyone interested in following it to do so. I plan to be transparent in my learning and opinions of the courses and program as I move through them and I welcome your feedback and interaction.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of teaching to boys and teaching to girls. I even had my mom bring over my battered copy of Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys from the states. My worry is that through these ideas – of accentuating the gender binary in our pedagogical strategies – that we might be enforcing this binary and pushing kids that don’t fit into it further into the fringe. Photo by sleepyneko.
I’m not the most well-read when it comes to YA lit, which is one of the many reasons I adore and appreciate and never take for granted the wonders of librarians. I depend on them and seek them out when I need recommendations or ideas of how to engage a student. Maybe the librarian even knows this student and can give me some ideas about what he might like. I get that it is much easier to describe texts with terms like “boy-friendly” or “girl-friendly.” It’s important to get boys reading. I will never dispute that. But I wonder if it’s more important for us to frame this as getting children reading and abandon this binary.
Thanks to amazing programs and a society with more and more progressive leaders, children are feeling more empowered to come out as whoever they might be. Young girls are coming out as lesbians at an earlier age. Boys are coming out as gay. Children are self-identifying as genders other than the ones they were assigned at birth. And then there are those “tom-boys” and “sensitive guys” that don’t fit the ideas of what publishers deem “boy-friendly.” What about all of these kids?
As a woman I know I’m often offended at the assumption I love rom-coms and tear-jerker films…or that I love jokes about high heels and how “men just don’t get it.” I don’t, for the record. I like documentaries and funny movies and sci-fi. I like comic books. I love RPG video games, but don’t like first-person shooters and things like Call of Duty. I love computers and technology and reading about science. But then again I also love cooking and read food blogs. I love knitting and arts and crafts. I enjoy surrounding myself with artists and designers. I despise clothing and shoe shopping, but like going to the hardware store and DIY projects. I liked R.L. Stine books as a child, but could never get into The Babysitter’s Club, though I had been known to read a few Sweet Valley High books. So…what book might a publishing company recommend for me?
People are complex and children are even more complex as they explore their identities and try to pinpoint who they are and who they want to become. Labels are helpful and make parts of our jobs easier, but they can dehumanize and mask the personality nuances that could allow us to see the real child hiding underneath. The girl that loves to knit but watches sci-fi and likes weilding a handsaw. Or the boy that loves to read fashion magazines, watch Top Model, and is captain of his soccer team.
I attended an ALAN convention once and sought out an LGBT workshop. This is a passion of mine and has been since I started on this teaching journey. I want every child to feel welcome and comfortable in my classroom – not ashamed or afraid to be who he or she or ze wants to be. It was refreshing to hear that authors were moving from books with the expected LGBT themes of coming out to including characters who are amazing and complex and who just happen to be gay. We as educators also need to look for books like these. Consider titles that include diverse characters – diverse in race, gender, sexuality, religion, etc. I’ve been thinking a great deal about these things as I have been charged with developing language arts curriculum and selecting books for the new international school I’m helping to open this fall. I feel a heavy weight of responsibility as I do this – not something I’m taking lightly – and something I’m seeking the help of others in doing because I know it’s dangerous to have one person make all of these choices. One person with biases, ideas, and perspectives.
So how do we do this? How does our language and how we label text effect the ways in which we help students (all students) learn and experience our classrooms?
I just returned from a trip to Paris with my mom (“Mama Worrell”) and my partner Thomas. It was amazing, frustrating, fun, exhausting…all of the things you’d imagine it to be. We saw amazing art, ate the best falafel of our lives (I’m still dreaming about it), and witnessed monstrosities like the Eiffel Tower. I had moments of wonder as I held my mother’s hand climbing stairs throughout this amazing city. And I had moments of despair as I tried to ignore four young African men trying to sell pieces of string as friendship bracelets. There is a lot of poverty every where I look, even when I’m not trying to see it. Seeing these sides of a touristy city make it hard for me to not feel ashamed of myself as I waltz around spending money in a place where so many struggle.
But then I remember the life I lived growing up with my mother working her ass off to support her children while my father was out of work. The mother who didn’t think twice about her pride when it came to seeking social assistance to feed her children. The mother who worked two full time jobs. The mother who got to go on one vacation to Florida with us when I was 11 years old. The mother who was probably still paying off the debt from that trip for years after.
Experiences are relative. I try to tell myself that when I feel guilty enjoying something I know many around the world wouldn’t dream of being able to. I sometimes envy those with thicker skin – the ones that can turn their empathy on and off when they want to really, hedonistically enjoy something without a hint of shame.
I made sure I brought a video camera with me to document all of my mama’s reactions and learning and amazement. I knew this was important and exciting. I’m still not sure how I’m going to compile the whole thing – maybe a few mini movies – but I just know I need to get this on record somewhere. So we can go back and see that from those humble and heart-wrenching beginnings, a family can still make it to the Eiffel Tower and read into that achievement however they wish. It can be nothing – just a trip – or it can be something inspiring. An event to give us happy memories and hope and pride and comfort that it was all worth it somehow. Mama is still pulling 60-hour weeks on nights as a nurse just to be able to fly over here and visit me. But she made it. While her 57-year-old body and achey knees struggled climbing and descending the many stairs of the Paris Metro (not even to begin talking about the stairs she climbed to the Sacré-Cœur), she would turn to me and say with pain still furrowed into her brow, “I can’t believe I’m here,” or put her arm around me and say “Can you believe we’re in Paris…together?”
This was my second time visiting Paris, but it felt new all over again seeing it alongside my mother – a person with whom I share a closeness that Hallmark cards and commemorative mugs can’t begin to explain. As I witnessed her wonder I couldn’t help but think about my work with students and bearing witness to their discoveries and amazements. I’m a bit of a cynical traveler when I visit cities like Paris, seeing the wealthy flaunt their money and my eyes turning instead to beggars and souvenir sellers and wondering about their stories and struggles. I couldn’t even bring myself to visit Versailles since I knew it would frustrate me – to wonder how much money is laid in every inch of that place that could have been used in more productive ways. I rarely see beauty in monuments, but rather waste and death of those used to create it. Traveling with me can be tiring, as you can probably tell.
I came from a low-income family that did a pretty good job of faking lower middle class status thanks to credit cards. It gives me perspectives I’m happy to have, but in some ways clouds my experience of other cultures and monuments and sites. I wouldn’t change anything, but I want to be more like my mother. Someone that can walk into a city wide-eyed, amazed, and not let the scars of her life taint her experience with cynicism. I am always learning from her and from the children I teach and hope to teach.
It’s never to late to shrug off the cynicism and see with new eyes. I’m trying.
I’m a proud proponent of technology integration in schools and I’ll happily talk about it til the cows come home if you let me. I’ve got all sorts of ideas about the opportunities for deeper learning afforded by many social media like blogs, Twitter, Skype, and wikis, to name a few. I could go on and on. But there’s one area where I feel like a total fraud…
I’ve always talked about wanting to make movies and digital storytelling projects with my students, but never had the chance to given resources in the buildings where I’ve worked. I secretly let out sighs of relief after learning this fact. Shame on me.
Even in my personal life I’ve limited myself to snapping photos here and there and taking videos on my digital camera. The videos have just ended up on my Flickr in their entirety. The idea of editing and piecing together something more cohesive just seemed beyond me and difficult.
But I’m happy to say that I have never been more wrong about something.
I’m doing work again for Powerful Learning Practice in a Program Administrator role. This is a great job because it allows me to work while collaborating with teachers around the world and I get to attend webinars with thought leaders around the convergence of education and technology. I’m there to work, but I always walk away with a renewed sense of inspiration about my practice as a teacher.
Such was the case last week. I helped moderate a session with teachers from Texas. Dean Shareski was presenting on video techniques in the classroom. He asked participants to take a video of themselves using the built-in cameras on their computers or devices they had with them and to upload those videos, each around 10 seconds, to his Flickr. In less than 10 minutes a page in Dean’s Flickr was populated with videos of teachers around Texas trying their hand at video making. Dean then took all the videos and edited them into a short.
After seeing the ease with which me and the other teachers learning in this session were able to tell short stories about ourselves in video, I was ready to try it on my own. I was inspired.
Dean shared a video he made using the 5 x 5 format, which involves telling your day in five, five-second video increments. It’s fun and gives people a taste of life in your shoes. I decided to try something similar using a terribly old camera – a point-and-shoot Canon Powershot that is around six years old. The camera records video in a fuzzy fashion, but it’s what I had at the moment.
Throughout the day I recorded snippets of my life here and there. I’d get the camera running, set it down, and record. I captured much more than five second increments and I knew I would have to edit the video to create a more clear story. I sat down with my memory card and proceeded to upload the videos from my camera into iMovie on my Macbook (it took a while for my computer to load each video even though they were quite short).
Once I had all the video clips in iMovie, I set about playing with the program. I’ve never even opened this program before this project. I learned how to play each video, right clicked around to see a drop-down menu of options, hovered my mouse over different buttons to get informational text (maybe this should have been a screencast…another thing on my list to try). As Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach often tells educators participating in PLP, we learn through playing and we need to give students and ourselves time to do that. Rather than get frustrated with not knowing the program right away or seeking out tutorials online, I just let myself goof around for a while.
Eventually I figured out how to edit a part of each clip (click until a yellow box appears and drag each side of the yellow box to the part of the video you want to clip). I selected five-second portions from each video and dragged them into the project window. I played it over and over as I added and edited, making little adjustments here and there.
Once I was satisfied with the clips (there were about 12), I needed to add some transitions. This couldn’t be any easier. You just drag a transition of your choice in between the clips where you want a transition and that’s it. You can make the transitions longer or shorter if you want, but I stuck with the default of .4 seconds. The last thing I needed to do was add a frame at the beginning and end of the video to give some information. I dragged a title screen to the beginning and one at the end, choosing a black background and adding my text.
Export the video and it’s ready to upload wherever. Not including the time I spent recording here and there during the day before, this whole project took me an hour – and that was without any experience in iMovie.
My point in writing this post isn’t to paint myself as some sort of tech savant able to catch on quickly – I’m not. My point is to show teachers that you don’t need to wait for someone to show you how to do these things. You don’t need a long in-service with tutorials. Just give yourself a small chunk of time to play around with a new technology. These days user interfaces have never been easier and more intuitive – you practically have to try to screw some of these things up. Hey, but if you do screw it up, learn from that failure and try again. And you don’t need to be an expert to know how to use these tools with your students. You’re an expert in teaching. Make sure your students know what you expect from them and decide what tools might help them achieve that and then let them loose. Allow them time to play, don’t stand in front of the room making everyone try each and every tool together. Be there to help and let students that have figured it out help the ones a little farther behind. It will be messy. No doubt about that. But you and your students will come out on the other side with highly transferrable skills and techniques to demonstrate learning. Plus, it will be fun. I promise.
And without further ado, I give to you A Quiet Day filmed in my still-very-new home of Breda in The Netherlands…
A Quiet Day from pickledtreats on Vimeo.
I’ve heard and read of people lately lamenting our dependency on technology, complaining about how “social” networks seem to alientate us from real life social interaction, etc. While I hear these things, I try not to listen. No matter how over-stimulated I feel, no matter how out of control my RSS reader gets (sometimes you juts have to hit “mark all as read” and move on), I’m still pretty stoked about living in this time.
One of my favorite things about the web and connectedness is the availability of tons of free software. Developers and programmers blow my mind. I have Program or Be Programmed by Douglas Rushkoff marked as to-read because I am unabashedly being programmed. I don’t know much about how all of this stuff works – the stuff I sit down to use every day – but I would be lost without much of it. The authors of many of the free programs out there spend countless hours developing programs only to spend even more time answering questions in discussion threads, responding to tweets, making helpful screencasts, and addressing errors in the program with subsequent updates. They might request a donation here and there, but whether or not they get it they keep plugging on. I’ve started reading Seth Godin’s Linchpin on recommendation from my super-smart friend Amber Karnes. I realize that these software developers found problems or needs, figured out how to address them with a program, and set about spreading the answer freely. They weren’t waiting for someone to “pick them,” as Godin calls it. They went for it and boy am I thankful.
I’d just like to give a shout out to some of the rad software I’ve been using lately. All of this is available for free. A few of these have freemium options or additional things you can add on for a fee, but at their most basic they’re still great:
1. Calibre. I’d be lost without this program. With the many ebook devices, file formats, and files available, one can easily get overwhelmed. If someone wants to share a file from their e-reader device with you, but you only have a Kindle, you need to convert the ebook to a different format. How do I do that? Enter Calibre. With minimal input from you, the program will take a file and convert it to the format needed for your device. You can also download metadata like tags, book covers, author info, and organize your library. Another awesome feature is the news gathering option. Calibre will grab news from various sources and create a readable file from that online content you can send to your device. Oh, and did I mention it will grab all your Instapaper reads and send them to your device? Every time I turn around this program gets more awesome.
2. Anki. I had a little trouble figuring this one out, but thanks to active discussion boards with responses from the program’s developer and screencasts, I’m set. Anki is a spaced repetition system, which most people consider to be the best system for reviewing information in a flashcard setting. I won’t get into whether flashcards are helpful for truly learning info (there is a lot of debate about the “best” languge learning methods), but it’s something I’m experimenting with in my learning of the Dutch language. To oversimplify an SRS system, it uses algorithms to remember what cards you answered easily versus the ones you need help with and puts the ones that need review closer to the front of the deck. There’s an Anki desktop app, an online version (both free), and a iPhone app ($25) that will seamlessly sync cards and statistics. The program also supports non-Arabic characters and is popular among people learning Japanese. This is a reminder to myself that I need to be studying my Dutch more…
3. NeoOffice. Who needs Microsoft Office? Seriously. This program allows you to save documents, spreadsheets, presentations, in tons of different formats, including super old MS Office file formats. While I tend to use Google Docs for everything, and I recently found my Office for Mac disk, I still need something to open files that might be sent to me in formats my programs don’t currently support. Not totally necessary, but it’s nice to have if you want all the bells and whistles offered by the ubiquitous Microsoft Office suite of programs. NeoOffice is part of the OpenOffice.org project.
4. OmmWriter. This is a distraction-free writing zone program. Once you open it you’re given a clear space to write without pop-up notices or anything else happening on your desktop. Omm has an upgrade for which you can pay, but the basic is enough for me. I’ve gone a little analog with a traditional writer’s notebook for brainstorming ideas, but when I need a clear space to write a blog post or free-write and want to type, Omm is my go-to.
5. Evernote. Yeah, this is another one where you can pay for extra storage space and features, but I’m still below that threshold (most of my notes are text) and find its basic to be enough for my needs. Right now I’m using my new favorite screenshot Chrome extension to grab articles I’ve written online and save them to Evernote. My hope is to create an online portfolio outside of links, which can often go dead.
There are risks with using free, start-up, and open-source programs (the biggest being programmers can just stop updating them or companies can fold without notice leaving users floundering), but those risks are outweighed by the great things you can do with them. And there are lessons to be learned when companies fold – things we can teach students, such as “Don’t put all your digital content in one basket (program)” and the one I need to remind myself of often, “Backup your data early, often, and in multiple places.” We teach kids about time management and organizing their notebooks – here are those same lessons, digitized. Photo by vancouverfilmschool.
So don’t just sit back and accept the suite of products that comes standard on your computer (or on your school computer). There are people out there creating programs that can put the best productivity suites to shame. Schools should be considering these programs first before heading to vendors and spending astronomical fees on licenses.
While the preceding tools aren’t all deserving of the term open-source, I wanted to mention it since I believe the open-source movement to be one of the most amazing parts of the internet. People are creating software and content and telling others to “go, use it, copy it, do with it what you want and maybe in the end it will be even better.” There’s a community out there and a lot of learning and creating going on without any payback (Wikipedia comes to mind). This intrinsically-motivated community is happy to share with others and often asks for nothing more than a bit of hyperlinked credit. This community is an important thing to introduce to students and offers a lot of potential for educational institutions (hello, free software! goodbye licensing fees!). Isn’t this what we want from our students? To not even think about the grade or the points value or the damn rubric, but to create because it’s fun and can make a difference?
Not in The Netherlands it doesn’t. I’ve not had a great deal of exposure to Dutch work environments other than the few times I’ve visited the immigration office and the time I’ve spent with the curriculum team developing a new international school. Working from home isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But even after a few visits to real workplaces, something is startling clear: Casual apparel is okay in The Netherlands, especially in the workplace.
In America, as most Americans can attest, your work attire is taken very seriously, particularly in offices. As a newspaper reporter I only dressed up when heading to a cushy office to interview someone and the rest of the time I rocked jeans and casual dresses. In a workplace where people (used to?) smoke and keep bottles of bourbon in their desks, this is an improvement. But when I became a teacher that all changed. I needed to “dress respectably to be respected,” as one principal told the staff during a meeting. Apparently dressing respectably meant skirt and pants suits like the administrators wore each day.
Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to begin training in the MYP curriculum. It was an all-day session that challenged me and my new colleagues to move away from our previous experiences as educators and think within this new curriculum focused on authentic, project-based learning and interdisciplinary collaboration. I’m still reflecting on the experience and writing about it, which I’ll share soon, but as invigorating as the experience was it was also a chance for me to chat casually with these teachers. Usually we’re cramming a lot into our meetings and have little time for chit-chat, but we had lunch together and tea breaks and I shared a lot about myself, the true outsider on the team, and learned more about them. Photo by semuthutan.
The most glaring difference I found while hanging out in the personeelskamer (teacher’s lounge) is that seeing people “dressed up” was a rarity. Now, these educators weren’t rolling into work in sweat pants, but here are just a few examples:
- Older gentleman in jeans, flannel shirt, suspenders, sneakers.
- Younger woman in cotton dress, tights, Ugg-type boots.
- Administrator in khakis, button-down shirt (no tie), and a houndstooth jacket.
- Younger man in khakis, loafers, and an untucked polo shirt.
It may seem that I’m being overly superficial, analyzing the wardrobe choices of the teachers I encountered, but it affected me so much that I knew there had to be a reason. I realized that this casualness toward dress code was indicative of something deeper in the culture of the school and the attitude toward the teachers. They are considered professionals and treated as such. It’s as if someone said “Yes, I know you’re a professional and I don’t need you to wear black pumps and suit pants to prove it.”
I met a young teacher who had the opportunity to do her student teaching internship in Pennsylvania as part of an exchange program. She said she was told she had to dress up and spent the first few weeks buying new clothes for the entire experience. She told me that in The Netherlands people dress down at work – wearing “work clothes” – and save their dressy attire for events and nights out. Makes sense to me. Teaching is hard work and I don’t know how many days I came home from my internship with my toes nearly arthritic from being crammed in fancy shoes for eight hours.
As a teacher in Virginia I’ve been frustrated with the discussions surrounding a potential ban on virtual communication between students and teachers. The state’s board of education is considering banning teachers from chatting with students on Facebook, Twitter, and through text messages. The reason? To protect the students. At first blush that sounds like a good idea. We all want to protect the students! But why would we want to protect them from their teachers? Yes, there have been the few cases of teachers and students sexting, but with nearly half a million teachers in the country that’s a small drop in the bucket. The education system paints with a wide brush and often does so to the detriment of innovation in our tired system. In this case, rather than deal with the inappropriate teacher-student relationships as they arise, the board is treating all teachers as potential predators than the professionals the majority of them are.
Yes, there are things online that I’d prefer students not run into – predators being the main one. But those dangers are everywhere, not just online. And to take away the one connection to responsible adults that kids may have in those spaces is truly irresponsible. Wouldn’t it be better for us to hold their hands crossing the road than to say “No, holding hands might lead to a sexual relationship, so we’ll just let the kid cross the six-lane highway. Alone.”
I’ve heard familiar gripes about teachers here – that it’s so easy and they get the summers off. Dream job! But overall the school culture itself seems to lead toward a mutual respect among colleagues and an understanding that no, whether one wears jeans or a suit doesn’t mean one is a better or worse teacher. Effectiveness isn’t tied to your tie. Leadership isn’t lost by leaving your collar unbottoned. Seems a little ridiculous when we think about it this way, don’t you think?
It’s small thing, but it means a lot. It has me wondering what other small differences might go a long way to change the entrenched culture of schools in America.
Posts
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
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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.
| Image by Centralasian on Flickr. Found Here. |
At the end of the marking period, both tests along with other "evaluations" are added to the list of "count-ables" and form Student A's marking period grade. What has been measured? How valid is this system of add them all up and divide? What does Student A learn about learning? Measurement? Evaluation?
Now in another classroom, perhaps across the hallway, Teacher B also evaluates student work using the same process with a slight difference: S/he "allows" learners to hand in the corrections (with full work showing) and then averages the two grades (1st attempt and corrections) to figure the final grade (the one that goes into the grade book). In this scenario, what is the student learning about revision? correction? work? I have asked lots of Teacher Bs why the first grade isn't dropped from the grade book as the student has now demonstrated the learning? The responses usually provided include: fairness (there are students who got all correct the first time and that should count more); standard-based evaluation (still not sure what that phase means); Puritan ethic (Makes students want to work harder to get everything "correct" the 1st time); practicing for high stakes test (you don't get a do over).
Wondering what you think about this. Is there some value to establishing points in time where a single test regardless of later performance represents what the learner knew/knows? I can't help but think students must experience these situations like Alice in Wonderland:
Alice says, "If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn't be, and what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?"
You see?
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.
| Image by Centralasian on Flickr. Found Here. |
At the end of the marking period, both tests along with other "evaluations" are added to the list of "count-ables" and form Student A's marking period grade. What has been measured? How valid is this system of add them all up and divide? What does Student A learn about learning? Measurement? Evaluation?
Now in another classroom, perhaps across the hallway, Teacher B also evaluates student work using the same process with a slight difference: S/he "allows" learners to hand in the corrections (with full work showing) and then averages the two grades (1st attempt and corrections) to figure the final grade (the one that goes into the grade book). In this scenario, what is the student learning about revision? correction? work? I have asked lots of Teacher Bs why the first grade isn't dropped from the grade book as the student has now demonstrated the learning? The responses usually provided include: fairness (there are students who got all correct the first time and that should count more); standard-based evaluation (still not sure what that phase means); Puritan ethic (Makes students want to work harder to get everything "correct" the 1st time); practicing for high stakes test (you don't get a do over).
Wondering what you think about this. Is there some value to establishing points in time where a single test regardless of later performance represents what the learner knew/knows? I can't help but think students must experience these situations like Alice in Wonderland:
Alice says, "If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn't be, and what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?"
You see?
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."'
But we know that if, for example, the United States Department of Education insisted that you could not graduate from high school without running a sub-6 minute mile - and offered no exemptions for those who might use a wheelchair or walking supports - we'd see that as abusive. Imagine that video, the kid who can't walk trying to drag himself around the track. And there is nothing at all different from that image than Arne Duncan and Justin Hamilton insisting that a dyslexic student "read" the way Arne and Justin and Barack prefer to - forcing a student who - genetically cannot do something "that way" - to struggle and find themselves, their teachers, and their school communities punished for their "failings."
This, like much of what happens to dyslexic kids during school reading programs, is abuse. It is an insistence that people be converted from who they are, at any cost. And this is true of Reading Recovery, of Success for All, of all the KIPP Academy reading efforts, even most of what you hear at TEDxED.
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?"'"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"
"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 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 SAReading 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.
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.
DiscussPeople 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?
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.
Discuss
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.
"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.
DiscussShared 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.
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.
DiscussShared 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.
Virginia Commonwealth University
VMW-81110-VCCS-Snapshot-09.pdf
The Costs That Come With Cooling Overheated Data Centers
DiscussShared 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.
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.
DiscussShared by MaryI’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 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 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.
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.
Updates
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@Epidiah Update: muffins are good. Gooey inside isn't all bad when it comes to muffins.
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Relaxing on the porch, planning meals, listening to thunder. http://t.co/8S7nZwpg
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@JustMeInHolland We have the thunder, but nothing much yet. Trying to enjoy the porch a little while longer!
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@Epidiah I'm hoping that's what happens, but not usually how I like my muffins. It's the banana wheat germ recipe from VCON. Sub wheat bran.
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3rd time not the charm for this round of muffins. Sunken tops, crispy outside, gooey inside. Let's hope they taste better than they look.
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@brighde I'm going a bit crazy with the cooking. Trying to resist and focus on my to-do list. ;)
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Sunday batch cooking. Vegan egg salad for lunches, steaming veggies, cashew/tofu ricotta, prepping for pizza night. Maybe more muffins.
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Cotton candy sky. http://t.co/smJL98h4
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Dusk along the haven. http://t.co/9LSTzGiU
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@analoguestash Beautiful! I'm so happy for her - wish I could see it in person ;) xo
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12-buck market haul. So much, so cheap. http://t.co/XX23Ll1E
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@Scottishgirl67 Thanks! I try not to go in those places - dangerous for my wallet ;) Might check it out for the oil, though!
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You say weeds, I say wildflowers. http://t.co/iarngVaN
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Ancient overgrowth under the windmill platform. http://t.co/aaeHVzAp
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@thisjay Yes! They're red. It's called Molen de Arend in Terheijden. Sells flour & baking supplies. A great place.
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Scenery near the windmill. http://t.co/J46wOA40
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Windmill from behind. http://t.co/5p4M2qJg
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Where my flour comes from. http://t.co/UYQ0TMB9
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Trying to figure out what mineral oil is in #Dutch and where to find it in #breda. My cutting board needs it. #3amtweets #nl
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Insomnia all this week. Well technically, great sleep then wide awake at 3 am - that weird time when you're not sure if you should get up.
Recent tracks
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Back to Work 22: My Baby Likes Aluminum Foil! by {u'mbid': u'', u'#text': u'Dan Benjamin & Merlin Mann'}10 months ago
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Back to Work 23: Failure is ALWAYS an Option by {u'mbid': u'', u'#text': u'Dan Benjamin & Merlin Mann'}10 months ago
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He Turns Down by {u'mbid': u'05755bf1-380c-487f-983f-d1a02401fa28', u'#text': u'Cat Power'}10 months ago
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Stay In The Shade by {u'mbid': u'cd8c5019-5d75-4d5c-bc28-e1e26a7dd5c8', u'#text': u'Jos\xe9 Gonz\xe1lez'}10 months ago
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American Flag by {u'mbid': u'05755bf1-380c-487f-983f-d1a02401fa28', u'#text': u'Cat Power'}10 months ago
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Broken Arrows by {u'mbid': u'cd8c5019-5d75-4d5c-bc28-e1e26a7dd5c8', u'#text': u'Jos\xe9 Gonz\xe1lez'}10 months ago
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Slow Moves by {u'mbid': u'cd8c5019-5d75-4d5c-bc28-e1e26a7dd5c8', u'#text': u'Jos\xe9 Gonz\xe1lez'}10 months ago
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Keep Yourself Warm by {u'mbid': u'dc21d171-7204-4759-9fd0-77d031aeb40c', u'#text': u'Frightened Rabbit'}10 months ago
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Keep Yourself Warm by {u'mbid': u'dc21d171-7204-4759-9fd0-77d031aeb40c', u'#text': u'Frightened Rabbit'}10 months ago
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Great Dane by {u'mbid': u'e9c97fdb-9fa0-4955-9a6c-1c43e1ac3f64', u'#text': u'Mates of State'}10 months ago
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Hypersonic by Lyyar4 weeks ago
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Favorite Blogs
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Relaxing on the porch, planning meals, listening to thunder. (Taken with instagram)
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Profile
Summary
Experience
- Oct 2010 - PresentSecondary English & Technology Teacher / International School BredaI started with ISB as a member of the school's secondary planning team in the late fall of 2010, developing curriculum, mission, and vision for the new school. I currently work as an English and technology teacher in the secondary school as well as the webmaster.
- Jan 2011 - PresentProgram Administrator / Powerful Learning Practice LLC
- Dec 2008 - PresentWriter/Editor / Self EmployedI left my gig as a newspaper reporter to pursue a career in education. In the mean time, I worked freelance for a number of clients and publications.
- Mar 2010 - PresentEnglish Teacher - Green Run High School / Virginia Beach City Public SchoolsAfter completing my licensure I joined the English department at Green Run. I took over for a recently-retired teacher and taught four classes of 11th grade and one class of 9th grade.
- Jan 2010 - PresentLong-term Substitute - Ruffner Middle School / Norfolk Public SchoolsAfter completing my licensure in December 2009, I took a position as a long-term substitute in a gifted education program for 6th graders. I taught two classes of gifted 6th graders in reading, writing, and early American history.
- Sept 2009 - PresentTeacher Intern - Tallwood High School / Virginia Beach City Public SchoolsAs part of my teaching licensure program, I was required to complete a student teaching experience. Student teachers take over courses from a master teacher, handling all aspects of teaching, including planning learning experiences, assessment, classroom management, and communication with parents. I was placed at Tallwood High School in Virginia Beach for my student teaching experience. With the guidance of a teacher mentor, I taught four blocks of 9th grade world literature and one block of mixed-level journalism. Tallwood High School is part of the VBCPS academy system. My 9th grade world literature courses were part of the school's Global Studies and World Languages Academy, a selective public high school program that prepares students for life as global citizens.
- Dec 2008 - PresentProgram Administrator / Powerful Learning Practice LLC
- May 2006 - PresentStaff Writer - Inside Business / The Virginian-PilotReporter covering small business, health care, retail, workforce issues and green business.
- 2004 - PresentStudent Supervisor / Old Dominion University Office of Development
Education
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2011 - 2013Michigan State UniversityMaster of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) in Education, Educational Technology
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2008 - 2009Old Dominion UniversityTeaching License in Secondary English EducationActivities: Virginia Education Association, National Council of Teachers of English, ALAN.
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2002 - 2006Old Dominion UniversityB.A. in EnglishActivities: The Mace & Crown Student Newspaper, WODU, Relay for Life.
