Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Rachel and I enjoyed making sausage balls several times for our family during the holidays this year. We took several photos (and had family members snap a few pictures) during the cooking process, so we could make a VoiceThread about cooking sausage balls. This reminds me of “how to” essays I helped my students write as a 4th grade classroom teacher. Rachel did pretty good with elaboration on each of her points. We used six images to make this VoiceThread. For the first one, Rachel recorded herself “live” on VoiceThread using a microphone, but for the others we recorded using Audacity so we could make some minor edits and then uploaded each recording as a mp3 file to VoiceThread. Here’s our story!

We used a different recipe this year than I’ve used in the past, and I REALLY liked this one not only because the cooked sausage balls taste great, but also because the ingredients give the mixture a better consistency that holds together better than other recipes I’ve used in the past. This is the recipe we used:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups Bisquick
• 1 pound uncooked Jimmy Dean pork sausage
• 4 cups shredded cheddar cheese
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 tsp. dried rosemary leaves
• 1/2 tsp parsley flakes

Steps:

• Cook the sausage in a pan, breaking it up into small pieces.
• Combine all ingredients in a large bowl “meatloaf style.”
• Form mixture into small balls, and place them evenly on a greased cookie sheet.
• Bake for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees F.
• Share and eat!

Sausage balls can also be made in advance and warmed in the oven. They can also be frozen. Few things beat HOT and FRESH sausage balls right out of the oven, however!

Happy New Year to everyone!

Technorati Tags:
recipe, cook, cooking, sausage, sausageballs, holiday, voicethread, howto

Our digital identities online are only going to increase in importance in the months and years ahead. How do people verify what websites are genuinely yours? This is a question many people (including teachers) may have not given much thought in the past, but I think it’s a good idea to start considering it. The case of assistant principal Anna Draker in Texas back in 2006 was one example of how verifying websites which are authored by a specific educator can become very important. I wrote about this a bit back in October in the post, “Obama on Flickr and Validating Information Sources.”

This evening I was pleased to discover (via Flickr user kOoLiNuS’ profile page) the free service ClaimID.com. I spent about an hour linking all of the blogs, social networking websites, other web 2.0 sites, and staticly created websites (I still have a few of those) which I author and to which I contribute on my own ClaimID page: http://claimid.com/wfryer. I wrote about OpenID back in January 2007 for the first time in the post “Google Reader and OpenID,” and I continue to be very interested in both this project and the overall goal of facilitating schemes for not only easing the login process on different websites (is there ANYONE out there who feels like they need MORE userids and passwords?) as well as helping individuals verify websites which they author or co-author. The former goal is part of OpenID, ClaimID focuses on the latter but permits users to integrate OpenID within their account.

Who does Google say you are, based on a simple keyword or phrase search for your first and last name? How about your children, your children’s teachers, and your children’s principal or superintendent? I think it behooves all educators to think about their online identity in 2008, and the ways they are (or are not) modeling the safe, appropriate, and powerful use of digital networks to share ideas and knowledge.

The last item I added to my ClaimID.com page this evening was my personal contributions to the English WikiPedia to date. Consider challenging your own students in 2008 to begin (if they have not already) compiling digital documentation of their personal contributions to the largest, free encyclopedia resource on the planet. Couldn’t that link make a nice addition to an electronic portfolio, for either high school or college graduation? I think so.

What does your personal WikiPedia contribution page look like today? What would you like it to look like on December 31, 2008? There’s no time like the present to start making contributions, even if they are small ones, to WikiPedia!

Technorati Tags:
openid, claimid, identity, education, school, teacher, eportfolio, portfolio, wikipedia, contribute, contributor

A new version of Wordpress is out, and I’ve upgraded the three installations I’m now maintaining this evening: this blog (Moving at the Speed of Creativity,) Learning Signs (our family learning blog) and Eyes Right (a Christian team blog.) Several of the newer features of Wordpress DO make the process of upgrading easier, but this is still a somewhat tedious process that requires careful attention to detail. I like the current WordPress feature which shows a notification message at the top of the dashboard when a new version is available:

From a security standpoint, it is a VERY good idea to keep your WordPress installation up to date, just as it is a good idea to keep your client computer operating system(s) up to date with the latest security patches. There sometimes ARE compatibility issues with plug-ins and new WordPress versions. For that reason, when MAJOR WordPress updates have been released I’ve checked for compatibility on the main plug-ins I rely on (like PodPress) and only upgraded after compatible versions of those plug-ins become available.

Several months ago during an upgrade, which I attempted to do in a more hasty fashion than I should have, I neglected to de-activate my plug-ins first before upgrading and that led to some problems that may have corrupted one of my mySQL databases. I’m not sure if those problems are related to the troubles I had with my podcast feed, but they could be. I had been using an automatically created WordPress RSS feed for my “podcasts” catagory, but somehow that got messed up and enclosures stopped working as they should in the “burned” Feedburner feed for my podcast. I tried using a Wordpress.com website to create my podcast feed for awhile, but ultimately switched over to using FeedForAll software (commercial) for creating and managing my feed. I resumed using the PodPress plug-in for Wordpress, which I REALLY like, but I manage the RSS feed separately. I’d prefer a web-based solution for managing the feed, but I like the control FeedForAll provides over the XML code. Thankfully, since I use Feedburner (a great, free service) for my podcast feed, I haven’t had to change my PUBLISHED podcast feed address.

I follow the basic steps for upgrading Wordpress provided in the WordPress Codex whenever I want/need to upgrade my blog engine software. More specifically, the steps I follow for completing a Wordpress upgrade like I’ve completed this afternoon (x3, once per installation) are:

1. Download the latest version of Wordpress, as well as upgraded versions of Wordpress plug-ins I use. My current plug-ins are listed on the about page of my blog. (I updated that page thoroughly this evening.) I like the fact that the plug-ins page for Wordpress now shows if newer versions of uploaded plug-ins are available, with a handy link to directly download the latest version.
2. Under Options - Discussion in the Wordpress dashboard, turn on the option “Before a comment appears: An Administrator must always approve the comment.” This insures spam comments don’t go up on the blog while the anti-spam plugins are deactivated.
3. De-activate all Wordpress plug-ins in the Wordpress dashboard. Thankfully there is now a single link that deactivates all of them with one click.
4. I delete the “wp-content” directory in the new version of WordPress I’ve downloaded. That directory includes plug-ins and themes, and since I don’t want to overwrite my existing theme and plug-in files (in at least one case, I’m using a modified version of the default Kubrick theme) deleting and not uploading wp-content seems like the best way to avoid an overwrite.
5. I upload the new version of WordPress into the root directory used for the blog site. (I use the free ftp software for Macintosh, Cyberduck.)
6. Reactivate all the plug-ins in the Plug-Ins menu of the WordPress dashboard.
7. Turn off the option to require an administrator’s approval before a comment shows up. (Undo step #2 above.)

That seems like a lot of steps when I write them all down, but thankfully this process DOES seem simpler than it has in the past. Given this complexity, however, I certainly WOULD recommend that educators (and others) getting started with blogging use an administrated blog engine service, like Wordpress.com or Edublogs (for WordPress) or Blogger. In each of those cases, network administrators handle the updates and upgrades for the blogging engine software. This does impose some limitations in terms of the customizations available, but for many people I think those limitations are outweighed by the benefits of NOT having to mess with all these “upgrade issues” whenever a new version of software, like Wordpress, is released.

If you’re using WordPress and also deal with upgrade issues, I’d be interested if you have other tips or suggestions related to this process. Also, does anyone know the word that means “all the plug-ins I currently use in Wordpress?” There is a special term for that which I’ve heard before, but have forgotten.

Technorati Tags:
wordpress, blog, blogging, plugins, opensource

I saw the remarkable film “Amazing Grace” when it was released in US theaters this past April, but for some reason I did not blog about it or the issues it raises before. That is an oversight I am pleased to remedy this evening.

I adore NetFlix. Our use of NetFlix waxes and wanes, but before the holidays we updated our movie queue to include the 1997 movie Amistad, the 2006 movie Amazing Grace, and a 1998 documentary “The Voyage of La Amistad: A Quest for Freedom.” As I recall we took our then nine year old son to see “Amazing Grace” at the theater, but had never shown him the movie “Amistad” previously. My wife and I saw “Amistad” at the theater shortly after he was born in 1997, and I remember she was so upset by the scenes of the mother and child on the middle passage that she had to leave the theater for awhile. Shelly read Zach Hunter’s book “Be The Change” about working to end contemporary slavery sometime last spring, and has encouraged me to read it. (I haven’t yet.) To date, I think my only blog reference to Zach and that book was my August 2nd post, “Maintaining perspective and changing the world.” The full title to his book is “Be the Change: Your Guide to Freeing Slaves and Changing the World.”

This evening, we watched the movie “Amazing Grace” again along with some of the special features on the DVD from Netflix. If you have not seen this movie, you need to. I’d definitely put it on a “must see” list for anyone, whether or not you are a teacher. This goes on a “human beings must watch” movie list. I had known that England outlawed the slave trade before the United States prior to watching this movie for the first time, but I had never heard of William Wilberforce or heard the story of his campaign to end the global slave trade. When I heard Randy Testa, Vice President of Education for Walden Media, speak at our state library conference in Oklahoma at the end of August (an outstanding presentation he unfortunately would not let me record and share) I was interested to learn some U.S. state legislators have responded so strongly to this movie they have suggested it become required viewing for all high school students. I share strong enthusiasm for this film as well as the issues it raises, but am NOT an advocate for increasing the number of curricular mandates in ANY state of our nation. Despite my opposition to that specific proposal, I think the fact some have proposed making this film mandatory for high school graduation says a great deal about how important these issues are, and what an excellent job this film does in presenting them.

Few things are more abhorrent than human slavery. It is extremely important that as learners of the present and students of the past, we acknowledge and understand that in the course of human history, slavery was legal “only yesterday” and remains a reality for millions of people even today.

As we anticipate the start of a new year in 2008, it is worthwhile to consider what issues and causes are worth sharing with our students and encouraging them to take an active role in. The abolition of slavery should figure high on all our lists. The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Ohio is one resource among MANY referenced in the special features of the “Amazing Grace” DVD. The campaign “The Amazing Change” focuses on the realities of modern-day slavery, and tangible steps which people of any age can take to stop slavery as modern day abolitionists. Do your students think abolitionists were just historical figures, like Harriet Tubman? If so, they need an update on current events. Introduce them to David Batstone’s book “Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade–and How We Can Fight It” along with Zach Hunter’s book “Be the Change: Your Guide to Freeing Slaves and Changing the World.” Those books are for sale, but there are MANY resources you can plug into yourself and invite your students to read that are FREE.

High on this list is the WikiPedia article for William Wilberforce, along with the BBC’s history link for Wilberforce. On the BBC website, pay particular attention to the wonderful links on the right sidebar. The WikiPedia articles for Thomas Clarkson and Olaudah Equiano should also not be missed. According to the article for Olaudah:

Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797), also known as Gustavus Vassa, was one of the most prominent people of African heritage involved in the British debate for the abolition of the slave trade. He wrote an autobiography that depicted the horrors of slavery and helped influence British lawmakers to abolish the slave trade through the Slave Trade Act of 1807. Despite his enslavement as a young man, he worked as a seaman, merchant, slaver and explorer in South America, the Caribbean, the arctic, the American colonies, and the United Kingdom.

Brycchan Carey’s website of links and resources related to Olaudah Equiano is superb as well. As soon as I saw the theatrical portrayal of Olaudah signing copies of his autobiography in the movie “Amazing Grace,” this evening, I immediately thought of Project Gutenburg, which shares free, digitized copies of books which have passed into the public domain. Surely Olaudah’s autobiography, which was published in 1789, would be among those works now freely available?

How delighted I was to find his book, “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa,” available as a free electronic download from Project Gutenberg! I now have zero excuses for not reading his firsthand account of the transatlantic slave trade. There is no better way to learn history than from first person accounts, and here is a first-person account of slavery from a former slave, in his own words. In past centuries, people would have had to find and purchase Olaudah’s book to read and understand his story. Now, by simply clicking a few links, his entire narrative is before my eyes and waiting to enter into my thoughts.

We live in remarkable times. Our times are remarkable in large part because of the courage, fortitude, and perseverance of visionaries and leaders like William Wilberforce. Their work, however, and ours, is far from finished. Do you aspire to make the world a better place? If you are an educator of any type, the ideals of our profession embody this goal. Do your students aspire to make the world a better place? What do they care about, what do they want to understand better, and what do they want to work to change TODAY even as they are yet in the flower of their youth?

I was extremely impressed this past summer at NECC, listening to Dr. Tim Tyson discuss the changes in student video topics at Mabry Middle School over the past seven years. Tim shared that student films changed from those which simply shared facts and ideas, to those which focused on real-world problems and encouraged members of the audience to TAKE ACTION and make a difference. That trend line should be a reality in the digital storytelling contests and film festivals hosted in every one of our school districts.

If you have aspiring digital storytellers in your classroom, let them know about “The Better Hour Contest.” The deadline for entry is March 1, 2008, so they will have to get busy once school begins again in January. The available prizes are substantial, but the overarching purpose is even more impressive and important.

What was done at your school this past year to commemorate the 1807 abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in England? Do students, teachers, and others realize slavery is still a CURRENT event, and there are things they can be doing to take action and stop it?

If not you, then who? If not now, then when? Become a modern day abolitionist, and encourage your students to join you. We aren’t practicing and sharing these digital literacy skills merely to amuse and inform ourselves. We’re sharing these skills to transform the world into a better place.

Let’s get to work.

Technorati Tags:
slavery, history, wilberforce, england, amazinggrace, changetheworld

I have posted some new thoughts to the TechLearning blog which piggybacks a bit on David Jakes’ post from yesterday, “Semi-Permeable.” I titled the post, “A model for permeable classrooms.” This is my remixed schematic of Gore-Tex applied to the “permeable” or “semi-permeable” classroom.

Technorati Tags:
permeable, goretex, education, learning, reform, school

As you look forward to 2008, consider the role conference blog posts and conference blogging can play in your own personal / professional development and in the PD of other educators within your personal learning community. There are at least five different ways you can utilize and promote the effective utilization of conference blog posts for professional learning in the year to come.

1. Regularly read and comment on blog posts shared by others attending educational conferences.
2. When you attend a face-to-face educational conference or professional development session yourself, consider posting your own notes, summaries, and reflections on conference sessions.
3. If you are involved in organizing an educational conference, take steps to facilitate and support conference blogging by attendees.
4. Continue watching and reflecting on the 41 presentations shared during the 2007 K-12 Online Conference. Encourage other educators you know to do the same!
5. In your own school district or educational organization, grant professional development credit for virtual conference attendance based on the submission of session reflections by participants.

1. READ AND COMMENT ON CONFERENCE BLOG POSTS

Tools like David Warlick’s HitchHikr website serve as useful “aggregators” of blog posts as well as images shared during and after educational conferences. While educators certainly can search the web and the blogosphere independently for posts related to educational conferences, HitchHikr is an outstanding place to visit regularly to catch up on recent conference posts since they are “tagged” with common keywords that are indexed by blog search engines like Technorati. The 2007 National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) is one example of an “intensively blogged” conference event in the past year. Hopefully we’ll see even more conferences and professional development events, including many NOT specifically focused on educational technology, which will inspire a similar quantity of blog posts and blog-powered conversations. The Conferences and Workshops forum of the Classroom 2.0 Ning is also a good place to learn about educational conference opportunities and share ideas, but Ning does not currently (as far as I know) aggregate individual blog posts from different conferences in the same way HitchHikr does. (It’s possible to set up an RSS feed for conference blog posts with specific tags, but I don’t know of a Ning that focuses on all educational conferences the same way HitchHikr does. Maybe this is a Ning opportunity for an enterprising educator out there!)

I include “AND COMMENT ON” in this recommendation, because providing written feedback to someone about a blog post they shared has positive potential to take professional learning to a different level. We all passively “consume” media and information in various forms throughout the day, but we less frequently take some of that information and media, synthesize and apply it to our own context, and then share that out with others in a public, global format. This ACTIVE process of synthesizing, applying and evaluating information as well as communicating it with an authentic audience “out there” on the web potentially has intrinsic as well as instrumental value. Not only can this process benefit you as a learner, helping you think more deeply about ideas and how they apply to your specific context and background knowledge, but they also have the potential of influencing other educators who may follow the comment discussion thread you’ve added to.

Conversations change us much more than passive consumptive media experiences. Resolve to periodically “check in” with other educators blogging about educational conferences and professional development events around the world, via HitchHikr and other tools, and (as Emeril would say) “TAKE IT UP A NOTCH” in 2008. Taking it up a notch in terms of PD blog posts means actively participating in conversations about the information and ideas being shared, rather than remaining a relatively passive “fly on the wall” simply consuming content.

2. BLOG EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES AND PD EVENTS YOU ATTEND

As a percentage of the total number of teachers, edu-bloggers are small group. Despite that current reality, the impact of the edu-blogging community (whose ranks are open to anyone who wants to join) is far reaching and can be even more so in the year ahead. Because we are steeped in face-to-face learning experiences, I think many times we tend to overvalue F2F learning and undervalue virtual learning opportunities. As cell phones capable of accessing data streams from the Internet continue to proliferate, and the available access to various Internet-based data streams continues to grow, I think the impact and relevance of the ideas shared by the edu-blogging community will also increase. While the number of educators using free tools like Google Reader as a “digital newspaper” to access both mainstream media as well as user-created content media streams is still relatively small today, I feel confident those numbers will only grow in the months and years ahead. Choose to place yourself on the cutting edge of thinking and conversations about learning, learning resources, and the ways digital tools can be most effectively used to support learning by becoming (or remaining) an active POST contributor as well as COMMENT contributor to the edu-blogosphere.

Back in September 2005, I wrote an article for the TechEdge which the editors surprisingly refused to publish, titled “Blogging TCEA 2006: Create, Share & Access.” I never returned to that article to reformat and repurpose it for a different audience, unfortunately. The idea and proposition of encouraging conference attendees to blog about sessions and their reactions/impressions of the information shared by presenters is more relevant than ever.

I was glad to run across Bruno Giussani (www.LunchOverIP.com) and Ethan Zuckerman’s (www.EthanZuckerman.com/blog) “Tips for Conference Bloggers” (a 6 page PDF) this week. This excellent guide addresses the following issues as they relate to conference blogging:

• tools
• location
• preparation
• software
• speakers
• style
• quotes
• audience
• context
• linking
• tagging
• timing
• mistakes
• collaboration
• digestion

This is a wonderful, easily consumable and processable guide to conference blogging, and I would encourage anyone planning or considering blogging at a conference to review it. The only additions I’d make are:

1. Offline software tools, like MarsEdit and Ecto, can be wonderful tools for writing and formatting blog posts at conferences. Whether you are online or offline you can use spellcheck and format posts exactly as you want them to appear on your blog, and multiple blog platforms are supported.
2. If you cannot plug into AC power during a conference session, maximize your laptop battery life by turning off unneeded communications connections (like WiFi and Bluetooth) and dim your laptop screen to the lowest setting possible. This is also a good tip to lengthen battery life on an iPhone or other mobile computing device.

3. FACILITATE CONFERENCE BLOGGING BY OTHERS

The NECC 2007 conveners did an excellent job encouraging attendees to blog, by sharing blog sites of attendees who were blogging the conference, as well as creating and sharing unique “tags” for each session which could be used by bloggers. These tags are automatically indexed by tools like Technorati and HitchHikr (which uses Technorati), to create conversation threads around conference sessions. Steve Hargadon compiled a helpful, comprehensive list of all NECC 2007 sessions and tags, which was a great reference during and after the conference. The provision of a physical space for bloggers to gather and network, “The Blogger’s Cafe,” was also FANTASTIC at NECC 2007 and was the best learning location for me personally at the conference.

More educational conference conveners are embracing the use of social media tools, like blogs and digital photo sharing sites, to facilitate and support conference blogging. Hopefully we’ll see even more educational conferences strengthen this trend in 2008 by actively facilitating conference blogging. At the SITE conference in March 2007, I helped present three different sessions for attendees about blogging the conference and using the organization’s team blog to post and share ideas from the conference. The provision of these types of sessions for conference blogging newbies or those interested in accessing blog posts related to the conference is a VERY good idea for education conference conveners to consider.

Based on my own experiences in 2007, it is fair to say “educational conference blogging” is far from a mainstream activity. As advocates for the appropriate and powerful use of digital technologies to support learning, I think it is up to us to find ways to further bring conference blogging into the spotlight and the mainstream lexicon of conference attendees. It’s a fact that when most educators come to any type of professional development, whether it is a conference session or a local district workshop, generally participants come with a “sit and get” mentality. When the PD is mandatory, inevitably there are also many teachers who “clock watch” through much of the session. 21st century personal and professional development should be ALL ABOUT active participation and engagement with ideas and people, rather than passive consumption. This reflects the same dynamics which should exist in the “regular” classroom as well. The proposition that workshop or PD participants should be active rather than passive represents a major paradigm shift. This change will not happen overnight, but I think conversations are the key catalysts for instructional change. If you’re able to encourage even one more teacher to read conference blog posts, or to share a conference blog post of their own, in some cases a major milestone may have been reached.

The key to changing attitudes, beliefs, and instructional practices is SUSTAINED conversations however, rather than simply “one time” or “one shot” learning moments. To that end, supporting teachers in their regular use of RSS feed / news aggregators should be a fundamental element in a strategy to help educators enhance their 21st century digital literacy skills.

4. PARTICIPATE IN THE 2007 K-12 ONLINE CONFERENCE

The 2007 K-12 Online Conference took place in October, but as in 2006, ALL 40+ sessions from each year of the conference remain online to enjoy, share, and reflect on. In addition, in 2007, it became possible to earn PD credit for submitting a reflection about a conference session. I’ll be revisiting that online database with our volunteer developer in early 2008, so printable certificates will be available as promised.

The opportunity to BLEND personal and professional development learning with online resources is open to ALL teachers at ALL levels, irrespective of content area or geographic location. Personally, I have not yet made time to watch and reflect on even a quarter of the K12Online07 sessions, and I plan to do so this spring. I would love to have access to a Google homepage widget or Pageflakes tool which could serve as a checklist for the K12Online07 sessions I’ve watched and responded to. I will pursue finding or developing that type of tool in 2008, and if you have ideas/suggestions along that line I’d love to hear them.

Continue to participate in and share the K-12 Online Conference! The K-12 Online Ning is a great place to continue conversations about the conference as well.

5. GRANT LOCAL PD CREDIT FOR VIRTUAL CONFERENCE ATTENDANCE

I am a big fan and advocate for high-quality, face-to-face professional learning opportunities. Here in Oklahoma where I live and work, however, and likely where you are, funds for teacher travel to conferences are in short supply. There has been a great deal of discussion in the past year in our state about lengthening the instructional day and the number of instructional days students attend school, as well as further limiting (by state education department mandate) the opportunities teachers have to attend face-to-face conferences during the school week. This would essentially force most or all educational conferences in our state to take place on Saturdays, so teachers would be “off the clock” and “on their own time” when attending, rather than being able to attend conferences while a substitute teacher covered their class.

I am not personally supportive of these instructional time initiatives in our state, but in our current climate the idea of virtual conference attendance does invite more attention than it might have in the past. Ultimately, I view a LACK OF TIME as the number one obstacle to any type of effective instructional change proposal in schools. Teachers perceive they have too much to cover and too little time to cover it, and as a result MANY “good ideas” for technology integration or other instructional change are discarded at a practical level because “I DON’T HAVE THE TIME.” As a related aside, this dynamic encourages me to advocate for FEWER curricular standards and mandates for our teachers and students. We cannot teach our current mandated curriculum with the depth and time it requires TODAY, and the quantities of information we’ll be facing in the years ahead are only going to increase. REDUCING curricular mandates in thoughtful and purposeful ways is our only viable path forward. I plan to post more on this topic over on my Obama Support Blog in the next few weeks.

Given our current educational realities of “too much to do, too little time to do it in,” how can we move forward to encourage educators to blend their personal and professional learning with digital sources? Part of that answer comes down to “carrots and sticks.” I encourage a focus on CARROTS.

Teachers are required to earn a specified number of professional development hours per year. Procedures and processes for getting professional development “approved” at a local level vary widely between school districts, states and providences, and countries, as members of the K12Online07 professional development committee discovered this past year. One “solution” to the confusing morass of differences among school organizations about “approved PD” is getting local school organizations to grant credit for virtual conference attendance. In the K12Online PD credit model, participants are not merely awarded credit for WATCHING a presentation and “warming a virtual seat,” but rather for ACTIVELY creating a reflective product about the information and ideas shared during that session. For more details about this process, please refer to the K12Online07 Credit Wiki.

There is a LOT to look forward to in 2008! Blended personal and professional development learning opportunities figure high on my list, and I hope they will figure prominently on your list and those of other educators with whom you have contact. Our best hope for thriving in the increasingly digital information landscape of the 21st century is to build and expand our own personal learning networks. Hopefully this post has given you some new ideas and links about how you can practically do that in the weeks and months ahead.

As always, I will welcome any thoughts and feedback you might have about these ideas. Happy New Year!

Technorati Tags:
education, school, learning, professionaldevelopment, k12online, k12online07, conference, blog, blogging, hitchhikr, warlick, davidwarlick

Joanne Jacobs’ December 23rd post, “Self-defense is no defense” struck a chord with me, largely because of the experiences of some family friends last here in Edmond, Oklahoma, last Spring. The middle school age son in the family was having trouble adjusting to his new school, and ran into trouble with some bullies who picked on him regularly. Similar to the situation Joanne described about Rachel Davis in a Tennessee school, this Oklahoma eighth grader was suspended from school for “fighting” even though he was attacked by other students in the cafeteria and had only tried to defend himself against what constituted a gang attack of three on one.

School policies which punish every student equally involved in a school fighting incident, irrespective of fault, intentions, or actions, are WRONG. I think those policies are designed to be more convenient for school administrators, and local community leaders should rightfully question and contest those policies in light of other legal precedents which exist in our society.

This past summer at NECC, Darren Draper shared a motto with me that one of his instructional technology staff peers keeps on his computer desktop as an important reminder. The motto is in the form of a question:

Are you doing what is convenient or what is right for kids?

Policies which punish a student for being the helpless victim of a violent attack at school equally with the malicious perpetrators of such an attack are WRONG, because they contravene the basic tenets of justice which undergird our entire civil society. Not only are they unfair (unjust) — they also send the wrong message to all parties involved in or aware of altercations like this. Whether it concerns instruction and student learning or issues of school discipline, everyone involved in the educational process inside and outside of schools should focus on what is best for kids, not just what is CONVENIENT.

From the perspective of a school administrator, I can clearly understand why a “no-fault punishment scheme” that that applied to the case of Rachel Davis and our friend’s 8th grade son in Oklahoma were preferable. No-fault insurance is easier and preferable from the perspective of individuals and organizations involved in motor vehicle accidents, since it has as its goal “lowering premium costs by avoiding litigation over the cause of the accident, while providing quick payment for injuries.” In the same way, “no-fault punishment schemes” in school districts which disregard all information about students’ actions and intentions as IRRELEVANT seek to make the process of meting out discipline easier and less “messy” for administrators as well as parents. What school administrator enjoys dealing with an angry parent? No one does. By having a blanket policy that disciplinary actions are handed out irrespective of evidence or facts, school administrators can say what the Edmond Public Schools‘ principal told our friend last year: “I’m sorry, but any student involved in a fighting incident at school is automatically suspended regardless of the circumstances.”

To evaluate the ethics and propriety of this school policy, let’s change the context. I lived in Mexico City for a year, in 1992 to 1993. One of the things people warned me about when I lived in Mexico was traffic violations and car accidents. Unlike the U.S. justice system, which maintains a presumption of innocence until an accused party is proved guilty, I was told Mexican laws are based on the Napoleonic Code which assumes guilt until innocence is proven. According to Mexican attorney Jaime B. Berger Stender’s article “Mexican Legal System Overview” cited in the current WikiPedia entry for “Legal systems of the world:”

Mexican criminal law has several interesting and distinctive features. In Mexico, one is deemed guilty until proven innocent.

This basic difference in the legal systems of Mexico and the United States is HUGE. I am very thankful I live in a country which has a legal system including a presumption of innocence. Note, however, that even though the Mexican system includes a presumption of guilt, there is ostensibly still an opportunity for accused parties to prove their innocence in a court of law utilizing witnesses and available evidence. I say “ostensibly” because having lived in Mexico and learning a fair bit about the realities of the Mexican legal system and politics, it is an understatement to observe that “money goes a long way” in making a difference in the Mexican legal system in many contexts. The prevalence of bribery and corruption in the Mexican legal system is well documented and pervasive, and was certainly a big eye opener to me when I lived there in the early 1990s. Corruption in the legal system, in politics, and in society more generally is NOT limited to countries and contexts outside the United States, however. Corruption is a pervasive evil which unfortunately rears its ugly head in virtually all cultures.

My intended point amidst this discussion of contrasting legal systems is that even though the Mexican legal system differs in a FUNDAMENTAL way from that of the United States on the basis of an assumption of innocence or guilt, as a theoretical system it is SUPERIOR to that found in many if not most of our U.S. schools when it comes to situations like student fighting. As a policy, students ARE NOT PERMITTED to present evidence about their guilt or innocence. A hearing about guilt or innocence is not even conducted, because it is considered irrelevant to the disciplinary action which will be meted out by administrators.

Change this context from the schoolhouse to a small, rural community in another country. You have been involved in a traffic accident, and someone in the other car was killed. Not only are you presumed to be guilty of a crime (manslaughter) but you are also NOT afforded an opportunity to present evidence and witnesses which could shed light on your guilt or innocence for this act and outcome. You are sentenced and serve out the terms of your punishment, without legal recourse. This may be YEARS of prison time, even in solitary confinement, without the right to see a lawyer or contest the crime of which you have been convicted without a trial. (Sadly, this also reminds me of the status quo in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.)

Such a situation would justifiably outrage most citizens of the United States as being patently unjust and unacceptable. Yet why do we permit an analogous situation to persist with regard to student discipline in many if not most of our schools?

I think one of the common refrains we hear from defendants of the “status quo” of school discipline systems would be, “These are policies for school, not for the real world outside of schools. School is not the real world.”

This justification is unsatisfactory, however, because schools SHOULD be considered “the real world.” Whenever we justify things in a classroom based on the premise that “we do this in school, because school is not the real world” I think we invite in a host of troubles. The learning activities and assessments in classrooms should more closely resemble those in the world outside “the boundaries of the bell,” and the disciplinary policies governing student and teacher behavior in schools should also resemble those found outside of schools.

Practically speaking, what does this mean for school administrators and school boards? Schools should abandon no-fault punishment schemes, regarding student fighting and other situations, immediately. Students SHOULD be provided with an opportunity to demonstrate or prove their guilt or innocence with respect to an alleged or actual fighting incident. The existence of school surveillance cameras, as were present in the case of Rachel Davis, SHOULD be considered by school officials in determining the appropriate disciplinary course of action to follow with involved students.

The other issue which this situation points to is whether or not public school attendance should be mandatory in the United States in the twenty-first century. Some people might maintain, in response to this situation, that school officials are justified in following rules out of sync with the rest of our civil society (automatic punishment for involvement in a fighting incident, irrespective of the person’s actual role) because schools are unique institutions: Students are REQUIRED to attend. This fundamental difference in the involuntary nature of school attendance might be argued to support the maintenance of the current system of punishments and consequences for student misbehavior.

Other educational leaders, including Gary Stager (”What’s the Difference Between School and Prison?) continue to question some of the fundamental assumptions we make about public schools and the cultural environments which have developed based on those assumptions. One of these basic assumptions is that school attendance should be mandatory. Taken to a negative extreme, schools as institutions can resemble prisons. Jonathan Kozal makes this point persuasively in his book, “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.”

Ultimately, our U.S. school districts and states not only need to abandon no-fault punishment schemes, they also need to abandon the basic mandate that public education is mandatory. A free, equitable public education SHOULD and MUST be provided to every person in the United States irrespective if his/her economic, geographic, or other context. Students and families who would fail to take advantage of free, world-class educational experiences (and undoubtedly there would be some) would be acting against their own self-interests. A decision to NOT pursue an education in the 21st century is self-critiquing, much in the same way that venturing outside in shorts and a t-shirt on a sub-zero, windy day is.

Ultimately, our educational system needs to empower individuals to make “good choices” and reward those who do. I am NOT a supporter of voucher systems, but I AM a supporter of educational charter schools, innovative approaches to learning which maintain high expectations, and rational school disciplinary policies. School disciplinary policies which treat all individuals the same involved in a school fight, irrespective of whether a person was a hapless victim or a malicious perpetrator of physical violence, fail to meet the basic expectations of just treatment we have in U.S. society or reward people for good choices. On a broader level, we need to encourage school leaders to adopt more “real world” expectations for student and teacher behavior by dispensing with the 19th and 20th century requirement for school attendance.

Persisting in the same patterns of behavior and expecting different results defines insanity. To nurture and support the learning potential of all individuals in our society in the 21st century, our schools will need to change some of their basic assumptions and operating procedures. No-fault punishment schemes for school discipline are one area that needs reform NOW.

Technorati Tags:
school, education, discipline, punishment, schoolreform, school2, reform, principal, mandatory, attendance

VoiceThread is not just a wonderful tool for sharing ideas and and school presentations like book reports. It’s also a a great venue to ask an international audience to share experiences like holiday traditions. Currently, this one includes folks from the U.S. (Mays, Kansas), New Zealand, and Israel:

I either had never heard, or didn’t remember details, about Hanukkah before. I think it is great that even though this VoiceThread is titled “Christmas Around the World,” it already has international perspectives which go beyond Christmas traditions. Got a few minutes to share some thoughts? Add your voice to this worthwhile VoiceThread!

Technorati Tags:
voicethread, holiday, christmas, tradition, digitalstorytelling

This evening Rachel (my 4 year old) recorded an eight-image VoiceThread digital story, sharing some of the things she knows about Christmas. Her thoughts ranged from Santa and stockings to baby Jesus and the star of Bethlehem. At age four, her recorded voice reveals the stream-of-consciousness way in which she processes the world and connects ideas to each other.

The juxtaposition of secular holiday traditions with religious ones can certainly be confusing, and even overwhelming, for people of all ages. Rachel seems to be doing pretty well with her understanding of Christmas themes and messages.

Capturing her voice singing part of “Joy to the World,” is certainly a wonderful gift. We are happy to share this special VoiceThread digital story with you.

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Technorati Tags:
christmas, voicethread, digitalstory, perceptions

Dr. Lawrence (Larry) Lessig was the first professor I ever encountered online who blogs regularly. As a result of his work I read online, I not only learned about Creative Commons, I also ended up learning a great deal about the history of the Internet and our current state of affairs with regard to intellectual property law, copyright, and fair use as a result of reading his book “The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World.” I showed part of Dr. Lessig’s keynote at the Wizards of OS 4 conference this past September at the Learning 2.0 conference in Shanghai, in my session “Inventing The Future: Safely Empowering Learners in the Read/Write Society.” The clip I showed, in which Dr. Lessig defines and “frames” our historic ties to a read/write culture (as well as the read-only culture of the 20th century) has been very influential on me as I continue to think about the ways learners of all ages should be encouraged to move from the role of content CONSUMER to content CREATOR. Although I have never met Dr. Lessig in person, it is not an understatement to say his ideas and thinking have influenced me more than any of the professors I paid money to learn from as a graduate student. Such are the realities as well as possibilities for learning in our interconnected, 21st century infoverse.

Since I have such respect for Dr. Lessig, his ideas and his work, I was understandably delighted last night to learn via Eric Hoefler’s post “Lessig on TED” that Dr. Lessig’s presentation “How Creativity is being strangled by the law” from the TED conference is now available online via YouTube.

In this presentation, Dr. Lessig explains how “the tools have creativity have become the tools of speech” of the younger generation growing up in the early 21st century. He advocates for a middle road of artists and digital business developers supporting the open licensing of content for remixing, via frameworks like Creative Commons, and (as he did at Wizards of OS 4) does an excellent job framing the landscape of media reuse, remixing, and online sharing via the use of compelling stories.

My own presentation style has been heavily influenced by Dr. Lessig, and this 20 minute TED talk presentation features the “Lessig-style” presentation mode at its finest. I personally find his techniques to be both novel and effective ways to use multimedia presentation slides, images, videos, and contrasting colors to communicate in simple yet powerful ways.

Dr. Lessig’s ideas about the importance of supporting more open forms of content licensing, as well as the ideas of Brian Lamb about the importance of educators publishing content on the “open web” (shared in the “More Than Cool Tools” keynote for K12Online07) are strongly influencing my ideas as I consider topics for my keynote address at the Missouri Distance Learning Association’s annual conference this summer. I think knowledge of and advocacy for these two ideas: Creative Commons content licensing and publication of as much content as possible on the “open web” so that content can become reusable, embeddable (preferably) “digital learning objects” available for other learners around the globe to remix, are two of the most important ideas for anyone to understand and support who is interested in distributed learning (a better term than “distance learning”) in the 21st century.

Give Dr. Lessig’s 20 minute TED Talk a listen. Then if you have time, watch and listen to his full keynote from the Wizards of OS4 Conference last fall. (Scroll down for the Friday presentations.)

Rather than watch this YouTube video on my iPhone or on my computer screen, I opted to connect my laptop to our television tonight and watch it full-screen on the TV. This is relatively easy to do now, since I have a 1/8″ stereo audio plug connected to our home receiver for iPod playback, and can quickly attach a DVI to composite/S-video adapter to my Macbook and move the S-video cable from our DVD player to the computer adapter. Watching this on our “regular TV” was great, and it struck me that this sort of experience is exactly what “Delivering the Digital Lifestyle From Three Screens” is all about. The easier it becomes for video content to move from my iPhone, to my computer, to my television screen in the living room, the more readily I (and other content consumer/creators) will be able to seamlessly work with and enjoy media content in the time and location of our own choosing.

I enjoyed an on-demand lecture about some of the most important intellectual property issues facing our nation and our educational institutions this evening, thanks to various forms of technology now available at my fingertips.

I love being a learner in the 21st century!
P.S. For more on the past work of Dr. Lessig on copyright/IP issues, as well as his current work in tacking governmental/institutional corruption, read the excellent December 6th article in the Economist, “Cyberlawyer 2.0.”

Technorati Tags:
copyright, remix, education, lessig, school, politics, creativecommons, ted, tedtalks, tedconference, larrylessig, legal, law

This podcast is a recorded skype interview with Colin Davitt, Instructional Technology Specialist with the Lindbergh School District in St Louis, Missouri, about his initial impressions of the XO Laptop. Colin received his XO Laptop two days ago, and is VERY enthused about the capabilities and power of the XO! After hearing him talk, I am REALLY wanting to order one. How exciting to hear from a first-hand witness about the exciting capabilities of this $180 laptop! Note: The XO Giving program requires a $400 purchase: This provides one XO Laptop to a student in a developing country, and one XO Laptop to the person ordering the XO. The actual cost of the XO Laptop hardware is $180 presently.

 

 Podcast212: XO Laptop First Impressions from Colin Davitt [13:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3022)

Show Notes:

1. XO Laptop: Give One, Get One (Extended through December 31, 2007)
2. OLPC: One Laptop Per Child Project
3. One Laptop Per Child (New Version), Reviewed by 12-Year-Old (blog post on Freedom to Tinker)
4. More XO Laptop Reviews
5. Current Technorati Search for OLPC reactions

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This episode features a conversation with Karen Montgomery, Tim Fahlberg, and Wesley Fryer about why wikis should be considered a “basic ingredient” for gourmet learning in the 21st century, and how Tim’s MathCast project is a phenomenal example of using digital storytelling technologies to learn and share our learning with others. Like writing, learning mathematics should be viewed as a process and not simply a series of final answers. Meta-cognition is the ability to “think about one’s own thinking,” and Mathcasts provide a great window into the thinking and learning process of students as well as teachers. By using a $50 graphics tablet and free digital technologies like VoiceThread, PBwiki, and software from the Jing Project, learners of any age can (and ARE) creating MathCasts to document and share their learning. The ability to comment on and provide feedback on the learning and ideas of others via VoiceThread provides superb opportunities for asynchronous, thoughtful mentoring. Possibilities abound! Check out our podcast shownotes for links to resources discussed in this episode, including our “Geek of the Week” websites! Happy Holidays to everyone from your hosts at The Technology Shopping Cart!

 

 Technology Shopping Cart Podcast02: Wikis, VoiceThread, and MathCasts [71:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3748)

Show Notes:

1. XTimeline
2. Karen’s Social Bookmarks
3. Jing Project (screencasting)
4. NPR Technology Podcast
5. Google StreetView
6. Google Street View Captures Boston in Controversial Detail (NPR)
7. PBwiki
8. Wiki in Education Case Study: St. Francois Xavier Community School
9. Will Richardson’s Blog and Book: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms
10. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
11. The K-12 Online Conference: A great FREE place to learn about wikis and other web 2.0 technologies
12. Educational Technology Gourmet (Karen and Wesley’s digital learning curriculum project)
13. The Thinking Machine Wiki (Karen Montgomery’s wiki)
14. The Technology Shopping Cart Wiki (our podcast wiki)
15. Make Your Own Mathcasts
16. A portfolio page for a set of VoiceThread Mathcasts by 5th graders
17. K-7 Mathcast 500 Project
18. Tim Fahlberg’s Mathcast website and blog: www.mathcasts.org
19. Darren Kuropatwa’s blog
20. WikiPedia article for Graphics Tablet
21. Wacom Graphic Tablets (cross-platform)
22. Adesso CyberPad (about $150) - Has an inking pen so you can see what you’re writing when it’s hooked up as a graphics tablet (Windows-only)
23. Consumer Guide: Graphics & Writing tablets Product Reviews

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The Engines of Our Ingenuity podcast has a great, short episode narrated by Catherine Patterson titled, “INVENTING THE NEWSPAPER.” Students in school today may take the terms “current events” and “news” for granted, but these types of real-time and near real-time information sources were invented and became popular, relatively speaking, only yesterday. Here in the United States, “current events” became possible in the mid 1800s with the advent of the telegraph. Samuel Morse was one of the inventors who facilitated this communications revolution. The Pony Express was a short-lived phenomenon in mail service in the United States (April 1860 to October 1861) because of the telegraph. Communication at the speed of light (even if it was slowed by the human use of morse code) was far preferable to sending letters on horseback across North America. In our current age of iPods, Google searches and cellular phones, it’s probably easy to lose sight of how recently our information and communications landscape has been transformed.

This “Inventing the Newspaper” podcast has a full-text transcription available online in addition to the linked m3u file, which is streamed audio. (It plays in iTunes for me.) Recent episodes of the podcast are available from an NPR podcast channel with an RSS feed of the latest 10 items.

The podcast’s webpage includes a link to The British Library’s page a “Concise History of the British Newspaper in the Seventeenth Century,” which includes timelines and interesting scanned images.

Knowledge IS power, and news IS relatively new. If accessing and consuming (rather passively) news and information published by others is a recent phenomenon on the timeline of human history, consider how novel the ability to PUBLISH and DIRECTLY SHARE ideas and information via the Internet is from a historical perspective?! Tools like Blogger and Wordpress are revolutionary since they let anyone with access to the web publish text and media on the global stage. Tools like Gabcast and Gcast let anyone publish directly to the web from their cell phone. The impact and importance of these communication technologies, now placed in “the hands of the common people” (not simply the powerful elites who control media and publishing) is only starting to be felt today, in my perception.

Consider the following quotation from this podcast, addressing conditions in England in the early 1600s:

In England, popular weekly corantos brought profits to news-mongers, or news-sellers. Corantos traveled by carrier, post, and trade routes to eager readers throughout the country. They reported only foreign events, for the crown tried to keep a tight grip on domestic news. Yet they thrived.

The new media genie has just recently gotten out of the bottle. Like the English government of the early 1600s, political leaders in other contexts may want to “keep a tight grip” on news events. Can they? To an extent, but the advent of new publishing venues is weakening that ability to control and restrict the free flow of information more than ever. Groups like Free Press (nod to Clay Burell) are activists promoting “diverse and independent media ownership” in the United States and elsewhere. The struggle to exercise the right to press freedom, and freely publish ideas beyond the control of governing authorities and elites, has a long and important history. As you discuss digital technologies and communication possibilities with your students in the year to come, take some time to study the history and value of a free and independent media. The WikiPedia article for “Freedom of the Press” is a great place to start.

We are likely to hear more voices clamoring for censorship of WikiPedia and other information sources in the year to come, as Dr. Scott McLeod discussed in his Novemeber post “Just Say No to Wikipedia” on his blog “Dangerously Irrelevant.” Yet as this “Inventing the Newspaper” podcast reveals, our need to identify bias in information and be saavy/media literate consumers of ideas has been important for centuries. Again writing about conditions in the early 1600s in England as newspapers begin to gain a foothold, Catherine Patterson explains:

The outbreak of civil war between king and Parliament in 1642 transformed the news business in England. Censorship controls lapsed and domestic news became widely reported. Partisan news-books, with names like The Daily Intelligencer, proliferated. They supported rival sides and they slanted the news in their own direction. Publication became more frequent.

Rather than “hide” or “protect” our students AND our teachers from the vast oceans of information now proliferating throughout our digital infoverse, it is essential we all learn and teach each other how to effectively swim and navigate the currents and tides of these new waters. I discussed this from a south Pacific beach in November of 2006 in the video podcast, “Reflections from Hawaii on our Information Landscape.” While there certainly ARE compelling reasons to use “virtual sea walls” to protect students as they learn to swim and deal with tide currents, ultimately we ALL need to learn to effectively swim in our digital information landscape– not just in a protected swimming pool, but also out on the “open water.” Being a non-swimmer should really NOT be an option.

Welcome to the dynamic information landscape of the twenty-first century. Where are we headed next? Where do we want to go today? Our abilities to speak out and be heard have never been greater in history.

Technorati Tags:
press, media, history, newspaper, censorship, freepress

This podcast is a recording of the initial hour (with group working times edited out) of a workshop I led for approximately 125 educators at Education Service Center 10 in Richardson, Texas, on December 17, 2007. The description of this workshop was: Good teaching is similar in many ways to good cooking. Recipies are helpful, but master cooks often modify those to meet different needs and situations. The same is true for teachers. If we extend this analogy of cooking to teaching and learning in a web 2.0 world, what are the best “ingredients” to use as we help both teachers and students learn to be more effective, safe, and powerful communicators in our flat world? In this working session we will focus on four key ingredients: del.icio.us social bookmarks, Flickr photo sharing, VoiceThread digital storytelling, and videoconferencing. The hands-on portion of our workshop will focus primarily on using social bookmarks to both document/archive our individual “gems” we find online, as well as collaborate and share those resources with others. Cooking can be intimidating for novices, but richly rewarding. Let’s learn to cook up some gourmet learning with some powerful (and free) web 2.0 tools!

 

 Podcast210: Powerful Ingredients for Digitally Interactive Learning (Workshop Part 1) [53:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2787)

SHOWNOTES:

1. Wiki curriculum links for this workshop, “Powerful Ingredients for Digitally Interactive Learning”
2. Google SMS (free service)
3. Hall Davidson’s Keynote: Moving from Personal Knowledge to Global Contribution
   @ Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference 2007 (via Bob Sprankle’s Bit by Bit Podcast)
4. Movie “Meet the Robinsons”

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Dr. Elizabeth Zelinski of USC was recently interviewed about an extensive memory study of older adults by the authors of the SharpBrains blog. In the interview, Zelinski stated:

The physical fitness analogy is a good one, in that cognitive enhancement requires the engagement in a variety of activities, those activities must be novel, adaptive and challenging-which is why computer-based programs can be helpful. But even at a more basic level, what matters is being engaged with life, continually exposed to stimulating activities, always trying to get out of our comfort zones, doing our best at whatever we are doing. A major typical misconception is that there is only one general intelligence to care about. In reality, we have many different cognitive abilities, such as attention, memory, language, reasoning, and more, so it makes sense to have different programs designed to train and improve each of them.

These views make a strong case for learning environments in which both students and teachers are exploring new avenues for communication and collaboration. It supports the idea that rather than simply doing “school as usual,” human beings learn best when there is novelty and challenge in the learning environment. Anyone who has taught K-12 students for any length of time understands the importance of classroom routines, especially for some students. Routines and tradition, however, should not entirely direct the day.

As an adult, think about the reasons you enjoy reading and sharing information in the blogosphere. The opportunity to learn about a new tool, turn over a new or old idea in a novel way, or make a connection you hadn’t experienced before are all compelling reasons to read, comment on, and write blog posts. The students we teach are no different. Rather than oversimplify the world into scenarios with four possible multiple choice answers, we need to embrace both the complexity and the novelty offered by many aspects of our digital learning environment.

The predominance of FEAR in our classrooms, as well as in U.S. society in general today on a variety of fronts, is not conducive to learning. Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick’s observation about fear and schools, shared by David Wahl a few days ago on his blog “Creative Creativity: A Daily Guide To Creativity And New Ideas,” is thought provoking:

I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.

I wouldn’t personally say “trying to teach children anything” is “a big mistake,” but I do think we often fail to take student interests into account when formulating assignments and learning tasks. It’s much easier to simply give students an assignment without differentiating it to meet their needs, skills, and (to an extent) their interests. Striving to ignite interest and fuel natural creativity with students should be an essential element of 21st century teaching.

For ideas and inspiration related to creativity and learning, check out David’s past posts “Increasing Creativity: 5 Tips On How To Trick Your Brain Into Taking A Fresh Look At The World,” “Becoming Creative: 6 Easy Steps Toward Becoming Creative,” and “10 Ways To Prevent Writer’s Block.”