In the Middle of Different
My name is Dawn Danker and I’m the Information and Academic Officer for Yukon Public Schools. I’m blessed to be in a district where we are focused on a vision for Excellence in Education through the means of providing dynamic opportunities to our students. We are building environments where our students can begin to explore their place in a global society and ultimately a global workforce. We view technology as an important element to accomplishing that goal. We are always exploring great tools, techniques and pedagogy that will support our vision for our district. It’s been through those times of exploration that we have been provided some great opportunities to gain knowledge to better our understanding of relevant elements for our schools.
Recently I received an email informing me that my name had been submitted as one of the nominees for a new program provided by Apple, called the Apple Academy. I was asked to fill out a form and send some biographical information as well as my thoughts on education and technology. Fast forward a few weeks later and I received the email telling me I had been selected as one of the 95 leaders from across the nation to participate in the Academy. I’m telling you, it was a complete and total honor to be selected into such a great cadre of technology educators and leaders. The Apple Academy’s goal is to provide us with thought provoking conversation along side skills, tools, and resources of value as we plan to support our schools. It’s been amazing!
My PLN has become so much richer this week because of the people I have met through the Apple Academy. I know that might hard to believe considering the amount of great information that has been delivered over the last four days of our training, but I promise it’s true. It speaks to the level of talent and knowledge in the training. I have met some really fascinating folks from all over the nation. We have leaders from Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, and California just to name a few. I now have a great network of folks with some amazing ideas and resources. I’m looking forward to connecting with them in the future to help build a better community for my schools with the help of their expertise.
Over the last several days our group has been exposed to all the iLife and iWork applications on both the Macbook and the iPod Touch. We’ve been discussing best practices on classroom management of those tools, differentiating instruction for students, and creativity in the classroom. I have been given many resources for providing quality professional development for all educators. My favorite part of the session has been our utilization of the iPad. We were exposed to many great apps and how they integrate to the Macbook, but I think the most transformative part came when I realized how integrated the components are on the iPad for classroom utilization. There’s no booting up on an iPad. You touch the button and you’re off and learning. This device paired with cloud computing makes it a tool worth further exploration. Imagine...the iPad has only been out three months. What will it look like in a year? *insert me dreaming big*
On Tuesday of this week we had the opportunity to visit the Apple campus, fondly referred to as “The Mothership.” I know many folks have visited this amazing and phenomenal environment but this was a first for me. The first wow moment was seeing the oversized screens showing, in real time, all the apps being downloaded in iTunes, second wow moment was viewing the three Emmy awards to Apple for their progressive accomplishments in the digital world, but I thought the employees were the most amazing aspect. The employees were dressed in what most places would be considered less than business casual. All the employees looked professional, but it wasn’t your “typical” professional dress. Why would you need to dress “typical” if you don’t work in a typical work environment? In my head I could hear fellow educators commenting on the unprofessional nature of the employees based on their attire, somehow equating that would transfer into an unprofessional workplace. What I could see was an uninhibited work environment. I was thinking over the elements they had removed to help their employees focus on being creative and being productive by taking away the need to “be” something based on their outward appearance. As I watched all the employees I couldn’t help but wish for such a great work environment for my kids. Is it too much to wish for a job that lets them be who they are and allows them to focus on their work and the creative elements? I hope not. My kids are young and I have a few years to keep wishing for that kind of environment but for now, they are in a pubic school system that is totally contradictory to the environment that would foster a creative culture. (Disclaimer: My kids don’t attend the school district in which I am employed.) I know not all work environments resemble that of Apple but many large corporations are taking a note from Apple and trying to create a similar environment for their employees. I think in the future we will see more of these work places.
As a guest blogger, Wes requested we try to spotlight a recent ah-ha moment. Mine came this week. In the middle of attending this fabulous training, networking with some great folks, and visiting some great work environments, I received a call from my 15 year old daughter telling me our new iPhones had been delivered by Fedex. She wanted permission to go ahead and set her phone up. I began doing what every parent would do by asking her a myriad of questions.
It sounded like this:
Al: Mom, can I set up my new iPhone?
Me: Wow, I guess...I think you should plug it in and charge it.
Al: I already charged it.
Me: Wow, okay. I think you will have to hook it up to iTunes.
Al: Mom, I already read the instructions. My old phone is backed up and I just need to remove my SIM card. I know I need to confirm my information with AT&T and sync is back to iTunes.
Me: Okay, *insert long sigh* I guess my answer is Yes, please set up your iPhone.
As I hung up the phone I began to think over the conversation we had the previous evening with one of our trainers, who happens to be 24. He and my daughter live in a world where technology is the norm. They both have grown up in an environment where technology just IS what they do and how they do it. I can’t help but think if teachers could see the world inside the Apple campus and have one of those experiences where you realize “they” already live in that world and so do we. It’s in this moment that I realize I’m in the middle of something different. We don’t NEED to teach kids HOW to use it...we need to focus on the process and allow them to freely create. For us...we need to focus on our learning. This all challenges me to be in this world with them. It’s not like it used to be, it’s different. I like being in the middle of “different”... I want to BE DIFFERENT.
Over the Pond and Through The Fiber #aha-moment
BACKGROUND OF MY A-HA MOMENT WITH EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
In the spring of 2006, I had a trans-oceanic, international conversation with other educators which fundamentally changed my perceptions about communication and learning. Using the free software program Skype, I joined Canadian educator Darren Kuropatwa (in Winnipeg, Manitoba), Scottish educator Ewan McIntosh (in Edinburgh, Scotland), and U.S. educator Miguel Guhlin (in San Antonio, Texas) in a live conversation over the Internet about the ways new technologies are reshaping the landscape of education in the twenty-first century. I connected from Manhattan, Kansas, where I was visiting my parents at the time. The idea for our live, synchronous conversation started with a blog post a few weeks earlier, and together the four of us built a wiki we called, “Over the Pond and Through the Fiber” where we outlined our planned discussion. During our call, which took place in the evening for me in US Central time, we were joined by several other educators in different locations, including Jeff Allen and Mark Ahlness in Seattle, Washington. While international phone calling has been possible for decades, this type of FREE, Internet-based conferencing was very new to me.
photo credit: MyNameIsSQ
When my Skype conversation with Darren, Ewan, Miguel, Jeff and Mark ended on that spring evening in 2006, I had an “a-ha” moment which was an epiphany. New Internet-based technologies now permit us to not only access information from afar, but also access PEOPLE. While the cost of Internet-based calls like ours was not inconsequential (we each had our own computer and high speed Internet access) the MARGINAL (or additional) cost for the call was zero. I experienced joy as well as exhilaration being able to communicate “live” like this over the Internet for FREE. This experience led me to marvel with new wonder at my good fortune living in our current era of communication history.
Our access to other digitally connected people today is not limited to only synchronous, “live” access (which can be comparatively much more difficult to schedule and coordinate) but also asynchronous access. Email is an asynchronous communication technology which became mainstream for many computer users in the mid to late 1990s. Email remains, however, a “one to one” or a “one to a defined many” communications technology, and as such has inherent limits. Asynchronous communication tools like blogs and wikis (both of which can be considered “information portals” online) empower people to flexibly contribute to discussions at the time and place of their choosing, to “an undefined many.” While I was no stranger to computer-based technologies in 2006, I had not had as powerful and personal an experience with blended learning as I did during the “Over the Pond and Through the Fiber” Skype conference call. Since that time, I have wanted to better understand for myself the learning power and potential which now exists literally at our fingertips as we interact with digital screens, and also effectively share these ideas and skills with others.
REFLECTION ON WHY THIS EXPERIENCE WAS PERSONALLY TRANSFORMATIVE
Prior to this Skype conference call in March 2006 (incidentally still available as a recorded podcast) I had used Skype but never talked to anyone internationally with it. I had known Miguel Guhlin for years, going back to my first years of writing for TCEA's TechEdge in 1996-1997, but did not know Darren. I had read blog posts by Ewan, but had never spoken with him either. This experience was transformative because it not only led to a great synchronous conversation, but it also led to a LOT of subsequent reading and learning as I subscribed to and read both Darren and Ewan's blogs. Later in 2006 I was invited to become a co-convener of the K-12 Online Conference, and those experiences have proven to be exceptionally transformative for me as well. Prior to these experiences, I had not connected at a national or international level with other teachers. I had been blogging since 2003, but in 2005 I had moved my blog to speedofcreativity.org and had started a regular podcast. There were lots of other digital learning activities going on at this time which certainly contributed to the "a-ha moment" of this skypecast being so impactful, but this remains a specific event to which I can point as being very personally transformative.
I was able to meet Ewan in person for the first time at NECC in San Antonio in 2007, and finally met Darren in person at METC in St Louis in February 2010. I met Jeff Allen and Mark Ahlness in person in Seattle in February 2009. The fact that my connections to these individuals led to personal, face-to-face meetings has a lot to do with the impact of this learning experience on me. This skypecast created within me a desire to learn more and make additional connections, to these educators and to others. Perhaps it was most impactful because of these effects it had on my personal motivation as a learner.
[end of #aha-moment reflection]
I'm convinced as educators, we need to document and share what our individual "a-ha" moments have been with digitally connected learning. My experiences are different from yours, but as we share these types of "epiphany" moments when we make new connections or make connections more powerfully than we have before as digitally-empowered learners, I suspect we can identify some patterns as well as similarities. Perhaps like you, I want to help more people experience the transformative potentials of PLNs (professional learning networks) as well as interactive publishing environments which can enable us to learn in transformative ways. We can hear voices we wouldn't otherwise have an opportunity to encounter. We can read about the ideas, struggles, and successes of others who we may have never met face-to-face, but can none-the-less be deeply touched by. With these goals in mind, I'm proposing a new meme with the tag, "#aha-moment." This week (as I'm largely offline and taking a break from my normal diet of digital reading and writing to work on a larger writing project) I'm inviting several folks to guest-blog here on this meme. I invite you to post on your own blog or to an openly accessible learning community to which you belong on this meme as well. Just remember to "tag" your post:
#aha-moment
What has been one of your most meaningful "a-ha" moments of learning with digital technologies? Please share the circumstances of your epiphany and elaborate on why you found that experience to be personally transformative.
If we do this, I'm betting we'll find new ideas we can share with others to encourage further "a-ha moments" with learning technologies and digital connections! The ingredients of an "a-ha" moment for each of us will vary, but I'm sure there are some identifiable similarities. I have a few hypotheses about what those might be, but I'm very interested to see if they are accurate for others' #aha-moments!
Technorati Tags:
collaboration, k12online, learning, school, skype, technology, aha, moment, #aha-moment, connection, epiphany, friendship
What do we do for third tier schools?
Dr. Larry Cuban's post from June 20, 2010, "On Changing One’s Mind about Schooling" includes some very challenging thoughts about education and education reform. Cuban argues we have three basic "tiers" of schools in the United States:
Top-tier schools—about 10 percent of all U.S. schools–such as selective urban high schools in New York, Boston, and San Francisco and schools in mostly affluent suburbs such as New Trier High School (IL), Beverly Hills (CA), Scarsdale (NY) meet or exceed national and state curriculum standards. They head lists of high-scoring districts in their respective states. These schools send nearly all of their graduates to four-year colleges and universities.
Second-tier schools—about 50 percent of all schools often located in inner-ring suburbs (e.g., T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, VA) often meet state standards and send most of their graduating classes to college. But, on occasion, they slip in and out of compliance with federal and state accountability rules, get dinged, and continue on their way as second-tier schools.
Then there is the third tier of schools located in big cities such as D.C., Philadelphia, Detroit, St. Louis, Atlanta, and rural areas where largely poor and minority families live. Most schools in these cities are low-performing and frequently on the brink of being closed. Occasionally, a stellar principal and staff will lift a school into the second tier but that is uncommon.
Our current federal administration, continuing the educational policies of the past, forces restructuring upon schools which fail to meet AYP. Most, if not all of these schools, likely fall into Cuban's defined "third tier" of schools.
My question is, what are we going to do for students and teachers in our third tier schools besides force reorganization? I think a concerted effort to address poverty in our nation is desperately needed. We need to increase, rather than reduce, funding for educational opportunities in our neediest schools and communities. I do not think our current climate of high stakes accountability serves the best interests of educators or students in our third tier schools. While we certainly need to provide more differentiated and customized educational opportunities for our students, instead of simply maintaining the status quo, we also need to INCREASE educational funding for schools and our teachers. In Oklahoma where I live, we rank 48th out of 50 states for teacher salaries. Last fall when I participated in the opening meeting of the Oklahoma Academy as they took up educational issues in our state, I was rather appalled by the moderator's order to members of the audience: Everything is on the table to discuss for improving education EXCEPT increasing funding. How ridiculous.
I have not yet read the final document and recommendations of the 2009 Oklahoma Town Hall, "2009 - Getting Ready for Work: Education Systems and Future Workforce." I would like to review those documents, even though our 2010 legislative session is over. I don't know what the best paths forward are for our neediest, "third tier" schools, but I'm sure the teachers, parents and students in those schools have good suggestions. Perhaps we should ask them and listen. Perhaps social media has a constructive role to play in this regard, in giving voice to those who have historically been disenfranchised to speak out and make a difference on educational and social policies.
I'm tired of seeing teachers and schools "beat up" by politicians and the media for issues that are fundamentally more tied to poverty than they are to educational practices. Increasingly I'm thinking we need to stop making public education mandatory in our nation. We need to keep providing a FREE public education, but we need to stop forcing people to go to school. This coercion is an inheritance of our industrial era school system, in which students were to be prepared en-masse for factory work. When you are FORCED to go to school, sometimes it becomes difficult to determine if administrators are running a learning institution or a prison. The line of thinking which justifies forced school attendance includes the following assertions:
- It's better to force kids to be in school than have them on the street.
- If we force kids to go to school, perhaps we can cause them to have more educational opportunities than they would have otherwise.
The statistics on earnings potentials for high school and college graduates are persuasive about the financial value of an education. At the root of this issue, however, is the question of MOTIVATION. Of course this is a family issue and not just a student issue. I know we need our parents and families to help motivate students. I think it's a flawed social policy, however, to think that by forcing students to attend school and even putting parents in jail (and/or fining them) when students have excessive absences, we are going to constructively address poverty issues in our nation. This is flawed thinking.
Perhaps my own thinking on this is flawed, and I don't have enough personal experiences or research results to back up my opinion. That's certainly possible. I feel pretty confident our current political mandates for "third tier" schools aren't the best pathways forward, however. I'd like to better understand how to help our "third tier" schools move forward, and see our politicians STOP acting (as Larry Cuban points out) that education ALONE can solve poverty's problems.
We also need to stop pretending like all our schools are the same, and they all face the same challenges. They don't. I think Cuban is right, we have three tiers of schools. It's perhaps noble to imagine one day "all schools will be equal," but they never have been and I'm willing to say they never will be. That should not deter us from improving our schools, however. Improvement at one level might begin, however, with an acknowledgement of the fundamental disparities between schools, and the need for different approaches which match contexts.
One size doesn't fit all, and it never has. What we often offer only to "alternative" education students should be offered to ALL students. Different pathways to learn, different ways to demonstrate knowledge and skills. Differentiation is a fundamental hallmark of educational excellence.
Technorati Tags:
education, politics, poverty, priority, prioriteis, tier, cuban, larry
Podcast351: Leading Schools with Digital Vision in a Bubblesheet World (part 2 of 2)
Part 2 of 2: This podcast is a recording of a presentation by Wesley Fryer on June 16, 2010, in San Antonio, Texas, at the summer administrative leadership conference for Northeast ISD. This was a 2+ hour presentation, so the recordings have been separated into two parts. See the podcast shownotes for links to referenced videos and resources. (Audio from shared videos has been edited out of this recording.) The session description was: Much of the world has gone digital, so must learning at school. Creativity is vital, and good leadership matters. Stagnant, accomodation-level technology integration makes technology investments in our schools a waste of money. School leaders can and should encourage teachers to use digital learning tools in transformative ways to open new doors of opportunity for students as well as parents. By focusing on creating, communicating / sharing, and collaborating, principals can help develop a shared instructional vocabularly with teachers which is focused on student engagement. Without creation, there can be no creativity. How will you let your students create? How will you give students choices? How will your students teach the curriculum? These are essential questions to ask together with teachers, as we seek to effectively (and legally) "talk with media / pictures" and leverage the constructive power of digital media tools for learning inside and outside the classroom.
Podcast351: Leading Schools with Digital Vision in a Bubblesheet World (part 2 of 2) [78:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (847)
Podcast351: Leading Schools with Digital Vision in a Bubblesheet World (part 2 of 2) [78:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (847)Show Notes:
- Part 1 of this presentation shared as an audio podcast
- Referenced videos and links
- Presentation slides and videos on SlideShare
Subscribe to "Moving at the Speed of Creativity" weekly podcasts!
Receive an email alert whenever a new Speed of Creativity podcast is published!
OLPC 2012 Tablet Video and more from San Antonio this week
Yesterday I shared a presentation with administrators in San Antonio, Texas, and was delighted to meet Honor Moorman in person at the event. Honor is a teacher at the International School of the Americas, and students in her 21st Century Global Leadership class last Spring created some fantastic videos as culminating class projects. Pre-service teachers in my undergraduate "Technology 4 Teachers" class at the University of Central Oklahoma studied digital storytelling the third week of the spring semester, and were required to:
Choose a video published as an independent learning project by students (at the International School of the Americas in San Antonio), link to it in a blog post, embed it in your blog post, and leave some constructive feedback for the author following our constructive feedback rubric.
It was wonderful to be able to share this story and highlight the outstanding project-based work of Honor and her students in front of an audience of 300 campus administrators in Northeast ISD!
Honor took very thorough notes of my almost three hour session yesterday, and posted those to her blog. At the conclusion of my presentation, I mentioned and showed a picture of the OLPC 2012 tablet prototype which Nicholas Negraponte says will sell for $75. Honor found and included the following video in her post, which gives even more background about this exciting project.
If this video does not inspire you with hope for the digital possibilities for learning in the future, I'm not sure what can. Of course learning is about FAR more than "just" hardware devices, but the devices ARE critical! As Alan Kay says, "The predominant technology in the classroom defines the predominant learning tasks." That's why we're still using paper and pencil to complete most of our assignments in schools today: Pencils predominate. This must change!
I love my iPad and am a vocal advocate for it (I shared several iOS apps in San Antonio during my preso including Evernote) but I'm also eagerly looking forward to the commoditization of touch-tablet technologies. ALL students need and deserve access to these technologies and the capacity to CREATE as well as consume content on them. OLPC continues to blaze vitally important trails for digital learning when it comes to issues of accessibility and COST.
Honor's post is the most thorough set of notes I think anyone's ever taken and posted from one of my presentations. Northeast ISD, San Antonio, and her students specifically are SO LUCKY to have such a connected and digitally literate teacher in their midst! 
After my presentation, it was fun to join NE ISD educators Jim Baldoni and Misty Belmontez for lunch with Miguel Guhlin. Misty coined a great title for Miguel which I think we all should use from now on: "Sensei of South Texas!" (If it wasn't for my kids playing Club Penguin, I don't think I'd have recognized "sensei" as a Japanese word for teacher or mentor.) Miguel continues to be one of my primary "educational yodas" (borrowing that term from Marco Torres) and it's always a joy to get to spend time with him in person.
After I posted my session slides to Slideshare yesterday, I was delighted to learn Slideshare supports viewing presentations in a non-flash format on an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.
I'm delighted to see SlideShare providing this type of iOS compatibility.
In addition to these slides, I published an audio recording of the first half of the morning as a podcast, and also have a wiki page of session links / resources.
One of the most important pieces of advice I shared with San Antonio principals yesterday was the following list of "The Three Hows." These are questions I recommend principals ask teachers before, during and after classroom instructional observations:
- How will you let your students create?
- How will you give students choices?
- How will your students teach the curriculum?
Without creation, there can be no creativity! Hopefully administrators in San Antonio will be encouraging their teachers and students to do MORE digital creating next year!
Technorati Tags:
advice, blog, creativity, education, leadership, learning, notes, principal, school, technology, texas, create, san, antonio, sanantonio
Podcast350: Leading Schools with Digital Vision in a Bubblesheet World (part 1 of 2)
Part 1 of 2: This podcast is a recording of a presentation by Wesley Fryer on June 16, 2010, in San Antonio, Texas, at the summer administrative leadership conference for Northeast ISD. This was a 2+ hour presentation, so the recordings have been separated into two parts. See the podcast shownotes for links to referenced videos and resources. (Audio from shared videos has been edited out of this recording.) The session description was: Much of the world has gone digital, so must learning at school. Creativity is vital, and good leadership matters. Stagnant, accomodation-level technology integration makes technology investments in our schools a waste of money. School leaders can and should encourage teachers to use digital learning tools in transformative ways to open new doors of opportunity for students as well as parents. By focusing on creating, communicating / sharing, and collaborating, principals can help develop a shared instructional vocabularly with teachers which is focused on student engagement. Without creation, there can be no creativity. How will you let your students create? How will you give students choices? How will your students teach the curriculum? These are essential questions to ask together with teachers, as we seek to effectively (and legally) "talk with media / pictures" and leverage the constructive power of digital media tools for learning inside and outside the classroom.
Podcast350: Leading Schools with Digital Vision in a Bubblesheet World (part 1 of 2) [66:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (854)
Podcast350: Leading Schools with Digital Vision in a Bubblesheet World (part 1 of 2) [66:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (854)Show Notes:
- Part 2 of this presentation shared as an audio podcast
- Referenced videos and links
- Presentation slides and videos on SlideShare
Subscribe to "Moving at the Speed of Creativity" weekly podcasts!
Receive an email alert whenever a new Speed of Creativity podcast is published!
Public education is not failing, but political spin doctors want you to think so
Blog posts which begin like this one make me ill:
As failing socialized education once more is cutting teachers and looking to pour federal tax paid money to save salaries of some of them, why not do something different: cut textbook costs by delivering learning content using mobiles. Roughly speaking, one teacher’s salary of $100,000 could provide 100 students with a smart phone for each and an access plan for each lasting many months.
I am a firm believer that we need to improve all our schools and work to provide more differentiated, customized educational experiences for ALL children, regardless of background or context. We also need to thoughtfully and appropriately embrace the use of digital media to support those goals. We should NOT, however, believe the pundits in the mainstream media and blogosphere who portray the entire enterprise of public education as a failure which needs to be scrapped. Free public education is a cornerstone of our democracy, economy and culture. We should strive to improve and transform public education, but NOT destroy it.
On these themes, Mike Rose writes the following on page 6 of his 2009 book, "Why School?"
Playing in and out of all the above are our beliefs about public obligation, about what the public school should support. We have been living in a time of disenchantment with public institutions and public programs. At least since the Reagan years, there has a been a sustained and savvy effort by conservative writers and politicians to redefine social responsibility, to shrink it and redirect it toward the private sector. This book's final chapters affirm a robust notion of the public as embodied in the nation's central democratic institution, the common public school.
We have a strong tendency in our segmented, siloed world to consider separately social topics that should be considered together. We put into place a testing program without thinking ahead to how it might redefine teaching or about the model of mind that's implied in it. We also believe that the testing program alone will correct political and bureaucratic stagnation and compensate for the need for teacher development or for the burdens poor kids bring to school.
Remember NCLB was created to discredit schools and define them (and us as public educators) as "failures." The harmful effects of NCLB continue to seen in most of our public schools today. When bloggers and mainstream media writers claim "socialized education in the United States is failing" we should view that opinion in it's proper context. That frame or perspective should then guide us to act appropriately in response to the realities in our schools.
Education can and should empower us to act on the world. We should not dismantle public education. We should transform it. To do that, more than handheld mobile devices we need good leaders. We need leaders with vision in our classrooms, in our school and district administrative offices, and in government.
Good leadership matters. It begins with critical and independent thinking. Don't believe everything you read online or in print. Do your own research and decide for yourself. Is our entire institution of public education in the U.S. a complete failure?
My research findings and life experiences say no.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Ramona St,Palo Alto,United States
Education can empower us with skills to act upon the world
The purposes of education extend far beyond the narrow "achievement" which is measured on standardized assessments. Mike Rose reminds us of some of the most important purposes of education on pages 36-38 of his wonderful book, "Why School? Reclaiming Education for All of Us." He writes:
Reading and writing gave me skills to create with and to act on the world... through assignments like these I was learning how to marshal evidence and frame an argument. And I was also becoming more adept at handling a sentence, folding information onto it, making a complex point without losing the reader. These skills played out again and again on different topics and in different settings, leading to the ability to write a research article, a memo advocating a course of action, a newspaper opinion piece, an essay like the present one... All of the forgoing helped me develop a sense of myself as knowledgeable and capable of using what I know. This is a lovely and powerful quality-- cognitive, emotional, and existential all in one. It has to do with identity and agency, with how we define ourselves, not only in matters academic but also in the way we interact with others and with institutions. It has to do with how we move through our economic and civic lives. Education gave me the competence and confidence to independently seek out information and make decisions, to advocate for myself and my parents and those I taught, to probe political issues, to resist simple answers to messy social problems, to assume that I could figure things out and act on what I learned. In a sense, this was the best training I could have gotten for vocation and citizenship.
Every student deserves opportunities to be empowered and equipped for citizenship in the ways Mike describes in these sentences. Some of my most ardent wishes for my own children are that they would define themselves, in their own identities, as readers, writers, communicators, and actors in the great play of life. Those abilities to research a topic, organize a written essay or oral presentation, and share it effectively with others are all skills I learned best on my college debate and forensics team. Mike Rose's reflections on what a QUALITY education means inspires me to maintain my hope in educators and education amidst our dark days of misdirected educational policies. It also motivates me to continue developing our Storychasers projects. Many of the skills Mike describes are ones I think storychasers can and do develop. I think there is great potential for students to develop their senses of self and personal identity while refining their research, communication and literacy skills. The type of empowerment and equipping Mike describes here is exactly the sort of education I hope ALL students can experience.
The key to this is not a mandated policy or a rigorous curriculum, however. The key is a great teacher.
Technorati Tags:
citizenship, education, literacy, student, teacher, write, writing, empower, empowerment, learner, capable, citizen
Want to Inspire Creativity? Invite LOTS of Opportunities to CREATE
Without creation, there can be no creativity. If we want to inspire our students to be creative, as teachers we must invite students to CREATE content frequently. Creative sharing should not take place only at the end of the year, or as a culminating project, but as a regular part of learning. The following story illustrates this dynamic in the context of ceramics, but this is applicable in other domains as well. In his book "If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat," author John Ortberg writes:
A book called Art and Fear shows how indispensably failure is tied to learning. A ceramics teacher divided his class into two groups. One group would be graded solely on quantity of work-- fifty pounds of pottery would be an "A," forty would be a "B," and so on. The other group would be graded on quality. Students in that group had to produce only one pot-- but it had better be good.
Amazingly, all the highest quality pots were turned out by the quantity group. It seems that while the quantity group kept on churning out pots, they were continually learning from their disasters and growing as artists. The quality group sat around theorizing about perfection and worrying about it-- but they never actually got any better. Apparently-- at least when it comes to pottery-- trying and failing, learning from failure, and trying again works a lot better than waiting for perfection. No pot, no matter how misshapen, is really a failure. Each is just another step on the road to an "A." It is a road littered with imperfect pots. But there is no other road.
The book Ortberg is citing was written by Ted Orland, and is titled "Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking."
How are you inviting your students to CREATE as a regular part of your class? Students should have regular opportunities to create content and share their ideas with both analog as well as digital tools. Just as "quality time" usually only takes place between parents and children when there is "quantity time," the same can be said for creativity in multiple domains. Quantity is critical.
Let's get creative!
Technorati Tags:
creative, creativity, education, leadership, learning, quality, school, quantity, pottery, ceramics, failure
Podcast349: Crisis in the School: Redesigning the Delivery Model by Steve Wyckoff
This podcast is a recording of a presentation by Steve Wyckoff at the June 2, 2010 iConnect, iLearn Conference in Colby, Kansas. The title of Steve's session was, "Crisis in the School: Redesigning the Delivery Model." Steve relates how ESSDACK (The Educational Services and Staff Development Association of Central Kansas) hosted a summit last April for schools to study different alternatives for redesigning educational models focusing on project-based learning. I titled my text notes from Steve's presentation, "Helping kids connect to their passions and become remarkable: SAVING money shifting to Project Based Learning." Educators in Erie, Kansas, (USD 101) have found that by shifting to a project-based learning model students can be more engaged in their learning, while teachers shift their roles to be the "facilitators" rather than just the "deliverers" of the curriculum. This model can prove LESS expensive than the traditional school staffing model. Steve explains how.
Podcast349: Crisis in the School: Redesigning the Delivery Model by Steve Wyckoff [49:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (851)
Podcast349: Crisis in the School: Redesigning the Delivery Model by Steve Wyckoff [49:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (851)Show Notes:
- Steve Wyckoff's blog: What's Become Clear - Real School Change: Questioning Assumptions About Education
- Post by Steve: Educational Reform: Are We Wasting A Good Crisis
- April 2009 ESSDACK summit: "Crisis in the Classroom: Turning Crisis into Opportunity for K-12 education"
- My text notes from this session: "Helping kids connect to their passions and become remarkable: SAVING money shifting to Project Based Learning" (includes Ustream video of the presentation)
- iConnect iLearn Conference Ning
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NCLB damages US education by narrowing the curriculum
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) continues to harm the formal educational experiences of millions of students and teachers in the United States. In her recent book, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System," Diane Ravitch explains why. In her chapter titled, "Hijacked!" on page 29, Ravitch writes:
Whereas the authors of A Nation at Risk concerned themselves with the quality and breadth of the curriculum that every youngster should study, No Child Left Behind concerned itself only with basic skills. A Nation at Risk was animated by a vision of good education as the foundation of a better life for individuals and for our democratic society, but No Child Left Behind had no vision other than improving test scores in reading and math. It produced mountains of data, not educated citizens. Its advocates then treated that data as evidence of its "success." It ignored the importance of knowledge. It promoted a cramped, mechanistic, profoundly anti-intellectual definition of education. In the age of NCLB, knowledge was irrelevant.
As an advocate for higher order thinking, creativity, digital literacy, project-based learning and engaged, hands-on learning, I'm acutely aware of the damaging influence of NCLB in narrowing the curriculum. NCLB communicates to administrators, teachers, and parents that the only metrics of educational excellence which matter are student scores on standardized reading and math tests. This is a lie.
There are SO many other things which matter in learning, education, school and life. It is incumbent upon us as citizens and voters who care to not only work for the repeal of NCLB, but advocate for more differentiated, comprehensive approaches to assessment. NCLB was a tragic mistake, but thankfully we live in a republic. We can change our laws, and we should.
For more of my thoughts on Ravitch's book, see my recent posts:
- Schools must be data informed: NOT data driven
- NCLB has killed creative teaching and energetic learning about science (at least before state testing)
- NCLB was designed to define public schools as failures
- Will Race to the Top Hurt Kids and Make Charter School Entrepreneurs Rich?
Also check out my phonecast from last week (recorded with iPadio) "Public Schools Are Not Businesses – Why Educational Sharing Matters."
Since I started blogging in 2003, I've written 145 posts which reference NCLB. If you really want to step back in time, check out my April 2005 post, "NCLB may be a stealth agenda to allow corporations to take over our schools." I'd also recommend the February 2008 post, "A contrary view of education and NCLB" (which is an admitted rant in response to a "State of the Union" address) and my April 2006 post, "Troubles for NCLB: It may not be improving achievement and it corrupts the profession."
Creative Commons image by Colin Purrington
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assessment, book, diane, education, nclb, policy, politics, ravitch, reform, review, school, test, testing, critique, criticism, improve
Welcome to Crescent PS: Teaching in a 1:1 Laptop Environment #ok1to1
These are my notes from the opening session at the Crescent Public Schools' 1:1 learning conference on 4 June 2010. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS.
MY ASIDE: THE STORYCHASERS MOBILE LEARNING TEAM BLOG IS A PLACE FOR EDUCATORS IN 1:1 SETTINGS TO SHARE IDEAS.
14 of the 19 Oklahoma schools involved in our 2010-2011 ARRA grant are here. About 140 educators.
First, comments from Crescent superintendent, Steve Sheiver
It will take you 3 years to implement your 1:1 properly, so just expect that.
Be sure to maintain that team concept
- when people come to visit, everyone needs to be on the same page
- if you are a teacher in the classroom, and you say something to a visiting parent like "I don't like these things any more than you do," you've just shot your team in the foot
Professional development is key
I can't say enough good about the 1:1, to emphasize the way I feel
- everything the kids have in textbooks can be on that laptop
- we are in the process of changing the way we teach
- we are teaching kids how to learn, this is a critical transition
New federal, national standards are pretty general
The better you prepare for your classes in advance, the better they will go
The teachers you are going to hear from today have "been at it" for 2 years
Remember it will take 3 years to implement a 1:1 program
- State question 744
- we've had to cut 12% of our staff the last 2 years
-reason: our legislature is restricting money for schools
- if we can pass question 744, that is the only way we can turn that around
- it is not going to be a popular issue
Now we're going to hear from our librarian in the media center
The role of the "old school librarian" was "keeper of the books
- today we are:
- leadership provider
- program administrator
- information navigator
- technology facilitator
We have had a genealogy class for several years
- a family heritage project
4th graders here are using net books
- doing research on them
Ways our library supports our 1:1 project
- family history project
- students teaching students
- mini museum
- media center website
We are a "hybrid" library
Think about this quotation from John Dewey: "If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow."
Now hearing from our art instructor, Christy Lovett
- how many of you are self-proclaimed technology people?
- those who are not, you are "my people!"
- it has taken me a full 2 years to jump on the tech bandwagon, it's taken me 2 years to adjust
My messages:
- it IS possible
- it is a lot of fun!
You can still use project-based curriculum in any content area
- research shows PBL increases retention by 42%
- kids process images 60,000 times faster than text
WELL THAT IS NOT EXACTLY RIGHT, BUT THERE ARE MANY MORE NEURAL CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE EYES AND BRAIN THAN THE EARS AND BRAIN!
Now hearing from Mike Wininger, tech director for Crescent PS
How many people are 1:1 experts in the room?
- people will suggest you have to leave Oklahoma to find experts in 1:1
- raise your right hand
Don't let anyone walk into the room and tell you the way to do 1:1
- the way we are doing it here at Crescent might not work for you
How many people are nervous or scared about what is coming?
- this is scary stuff!
Here is a little snapshot about virtual learning environments
- our 1:1 overview
- I came here in 2004, Mr Shiever came in 2003
- 2008-2009 we were 2A
2006: 30 Macbooks
2007: 70
2008: 115
60/80/120 GB hard drives
have 3 XServes
- moodle, email, data server, OD master / imaging, mobile accounts
Our network, we have a 7.5 Mbps connection
- fiber backbone
- airport extreme
We started with just 1 wifi hotspot in 2004
- even today, our entire campus is not wireless
- library and HS you should have no problem connecting here
1:1 progression here
- Steve Shiever in 2003
- ?Staff development every Wednesday
- lots of conversations, lots of exposure to new ideas
Staff development - (repeat 3x)
- it's not about the box
- high priority
- staff development should be your theme song
2006 we received cart of laptops via OK ACTS
Conversation to commitment
- teachers committed
- preparation: web/moodle
- we talk about our successes and failures
You will spend more time screwing things up at first, but that tide will turn
Preparation is KEY: get things to the web
- even in 2004 we were talking about Moodle: building for the web
- get your "face" out there, even just a generic webpage
- that was before the Facebook craze
- we've been talking about virtual learning environments for years
Course management
- moodle
- Acellus Math
- science, history, english, electives
This freaks many educators out: talking about moving away from the textbook
- "What are you going to do if there is no textbook tomorrow?" That is where you need to spend time mentally, thinking.
We spend a lot of time thinking about web production
- we stumbled onto Moodle, we didn't invent it
- If you haven't heard of Moodle, write this down
- Moodle is free, and that will make your administrator happy
We continually encourage teachers to publish on the web
- people are in all different places with this
What's the best definition of a virtual learning environment
- what does it look like?
- my wife teaches with the Univ of Phoenix, I don't like the way they do it
Why is a virtual environment important?
- you have to have a space to manage this
- my vision of a virtual school is everyone at home
Doesn't that scare you?
- it makes us think the public won't pay teachers if there are not kids in the room
- we aim for that (kids at home) because
we are a hybrid school (that is Jim Askew's term)
Most important job in your community: building relationships with kids
- most important client in your life: kids in your town
We are not really wanting an entirely virtual school
- we want to see kids each day, encourage them, pat them on the back
Teacher's view
- students have to be safe and protected
- you have to have someone with a vision, and that's got to be on everybody's list
- this is exhausting: you are going to be tired, wiped out!
- most teachers want more time and training
What did we learn the past 2 years? We have to be more consistent
Student's View
- if you don't ask kids, often they won't tell
- moodle vs the web: we made EVERYONE go to Moodle (to make this a virtual, hybrid class) we MAKE everyone publish to Moodle
- responsibility issues
We have had kids now ask for assignments and work a week ahead!
- kids want consistency
We are not "there" and we never will be
- it never stops
- it does get easier
- next year you don't have to start all over
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Helping kids connect to their passions and become remarkable: SAVING money shifting to Project Based Learning
These are my notes from Steve Wyckoff's presentation, "Crisis in the School: Budget Busters" at the iConnect, iLearn Conference in Colby, Kansas on June 2, 2010. The Ustream login in the room didn't work but I was able to login with a different browser, so I was able to record/archive this session. (embedded below)
ESSDACK in Hutchinson hosted a summit titled, "Crisis in the Classroom: Turning Crisis into Opportunity for K-12 education" in April 2009. All the panels from that summit are available as free, online videos. This presentation is based on much of the content from that summit.
I think Erie, Kansas is one of the most innovative schools in the entire nation (USD 101)
Steve Wyckoff's blog: What's Become Clear - Real School Change: Questioning Assumptions About Education
- are we wasting a good crisis (post by Steve: Educational Reform: Are We Wasting A Good Crisis)
We need to change our focus in schools
- we should work to inspire every kid to identify what they are so passionate about that they become remarkable at it
The 3 words I focus on:
- inspiration
- passion
- remarkable
had 2 boys at their school who converted a truck to run on nitrogen
- a girl who worked with a geneticist in bovine science
Teachers validate student work
- kids keep track of the standards they are mastering
1st project kids do is teacher defined
- after that they are student defined
Lessons learned
- you can save a LOT of money if you go project-based
- test scores have remained stable (good)
- student engagement has gone way up
Students at Erie High School don't say "boring" now when they describe school, if they are in the PBL track
If we keep doing what we've been doing the way we've been doing it, the only solution to move forward is MORE MONEY
Community reception of this change has been mixed
Good book: "The Innovator's Dilemma"
- your best customers will drive you out of business
I have observed we are scared to talk about "the main course" in education today (changing the core of what we do)
- our focus on preparing kids for college makes no sense today (the Regent's curriculum)
- we do it because we've always done it
Many of our "top kids" are getting PBL-type interaction at home from parents
MY REFLECTION: THIS MAKES ME THINK OF THE BUCK INSTITUTE AND THEIR PBL CURRICULUM FOR TEACHERS (MID-DEL PUBLIC SCHOOLS IS BRINGING IN BIE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO LAUNCH THEIR 1:1 INITIATIVE THIS SUMMER.)
Erie used EdVisions out of Minnesota
The focus of most schools today is just "how do we cut" rather than thinking creatively about how we can do things differently, better, AND save money
Thoughts on testing in schools
- think of driving
- you took two tests when got licensed: one was written and one was a driving test. Which one was meaningful to you?
PBL is about going through guided experiences with adults
- in Erie they are building a new high school
- team of kids
- consultant from Durango, Colorado is the identified expert the students are utilizing
MY THOUGHT: WE NEED TO SEND A STORYCHASERS TEAM TO ERIE!
I have spoken to every pre-service education student at KU in the past 9 years
- I share with them that "doing the same thing that was done to you in school" is the wrong thing
- never had more than 6% of kids report they regularly experienced "flow" in core content classes (were so engaged they lost track of time)
- then I ask them: how many of you had your teachers convinced you were authentically engaged? (lots of hands in response to that)
Kansas State Board of Education last month formed an "Education Commission"
- I was asked to serve on this
- my sole mission and message is: We should focus on helping kids become REMARKABLE, not focusing on test scores
- helping kids identify their passion
Our kids should be driving the car
- most faculty fervently believe we should "expose" students to their content
Our kids don't need to be exposed to Shakespeare to be successful in life
- our kids need to be prepared for the workforce
If the GenEd curriculum is not relevant, then why do we mandate it?
Business world consistently says kids do the worst at COMMUNICATION
- we require that a lot of kids in schools, what does that say about how we teach?
What's the difference between covering, studying, and learning in our schools
- most of our kids NEVER study (they might do that for their hobbies, like fishing)
- kids memorize, but we rarely see them studying and learning
Why I like the Kansas Career Pipeline:
- anything that helps kids self-analyze and identify their passion are good
Our teachers should help kids connect with their passions
- takes 10 years and 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an "expert" at something
- even if you change your mind, once you get those habits in place they can transfer elsewhere
Kids should leave school with a "life plan"
Lots of kids I talk with at KU are NOT passionate about teaching
- coaches are passionate about working with kids after 3:30, many are NOT passionate about working with them before that time
Many of my coaches when I was a principal had the skill set to REALLY
finish the sentence, "They need to know _____ in order to _______."
- do that for Shakespeare
- something about math? building bridges
Many of our coaches teach kids things "in order to..."
- our role models stand and talk like I do / am now
I think we typically use tech
- to entertain kids
- to help them remember the stuff that doesn't matter
- hope they will use it in the real world
Kids at Erie High School are REQUIRED to have a cell phone
- that is the way they communicate with their community mentors
- Skype is open to EVERY kid
Does this present challenges for their tech guy? Of course. But it's not about the tech guy. It's about the kids and their learning.
Every kid at Little River High School has a laptop
- we had every kid login to the Kansas Career Pipeline
- I started showing them some of the things they could find: salaries, occupational fields, more.... You could have heard a pin drop in the room (engagement by the kids was so high)
Technorati Tags:
change, education, learning, project, reform, pbl, based, steve, wycoff
Public Schools Are Not Businesses – Why Educational Sharing Matters
If you have access to a phone and can use it, you can readily publish audio online for FREE as a podcast using iPadio. Your students can as well. This process is called "phonecasting." Tuesday I recorded a 23 minute phonecast using iPadio on my iPhone, continuing my review of Diane Ravitch's new book, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System." Yesterday I shared the post, "Schools must be data informed: NOT data driven," and on May 2nd posted, "NCLB was designed to define public schools as failures." Both of those posts included quotations and reflections on Ravitch's ideas in her book as well. The topic of this phonecast was, "Public Schools Are Not Businesses - Why Educational Sharing Matters."
While the audio quality of this phonecast was not fantastic relative to the "normal" quality I'm used to in recording podcasts, it definitely is passable and is remarkable since it was completely recorded and web-posted AUTOMATICALLY, for FREE, using a cell phone. If you have not checked out iPadio as a podcasting / phonecasting solution, you should. If you have a phone and can use it, you can create web-based podcasts using iPadio.
iPadio and Posterous are now my two favorite websites / web tools to recommend to teachers which facilitate idea sharing and publishing. If you can send an email message with an attachment, you can web-post using Posterous including images, audio files, and videos. Two of my posts today, "When student published videos go viral: Lessons Learned" and "Cook Time with Remmi (9 year old from Tulsa, OK)" were shared using Posterous. Posterous supports cross-posting of content to other blogs, Twitter, Flickr, etc. Posterous is ideal for sharing from mobile devices like iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads.
iPadio and Posterous: Simple and powerful publishing. I love them!
H/T to Karen Montgomery and Darren Kuropatwa for initially commending these web tools to me.
Technorati Tags:
book, diane, phone, podcast, podcasting, ravitch, reform, review, school, phonecasting, ipadio
Schools must be data informed: NOT data driven
This weekend I finished reading Diane Ravitch's excellent new book, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System." I highly commend this book to anyone interested in the topic of education reform. I agree with much of what Ravitch writes, and made extensive notes as well as annotations in my paper copy of her book as I read it. I'll be sharing quotations and excerpts in the weeks ahead. This evening I'd like to share the following paragraph from page 228 of the book, in the chapter, "Lessons Learned." We hear a great deal in our schools and in educational technology circles about "data driven decision making." On this subject Ravitch writes:
Our schools cannot be improved by blind worship of data. Data are only as good as the measures used to create the numbers and as good as the underlying activities. If the measures are shoddy, then the data will be shoddy. If the data reflect mainly the amount of time invested in test-preparation activities, then the data are worthless. If the data are based on dumbed-down state tests, then the data are meaningless. A good accountability system, whether for schools, teachers, or students, must include a variety of measures, not only test scores. To use a phrase I first heard from educator Deborah Meier, our schools should be "data informed," not "data-driven."
In many of our public schools and in state departments of education today, "blind worship of data" IS the order of the day. This is wrong, and is a reality which must change. In many ways, Ravitch paints a clear picture in her book of the immoral political and educational culture in which we live today. At the behest of politicians, educators nationwide have been told to view students as statistics, not as individuals, and to view the purpose of the educational enterprise as raising test scores rather than developing capable minds. We know as parents and educators that we need our schools to do FAR more than simply teach students the basics of literacy and numeracy. Yet astonishingly, we have tolerated a political culture which places exclusive emphasis on those two content areas to the exclusion of all others. This is a policy which is clearly and dramatically mistaken, and it is up to us to change it.
The next time someone says to you, in a meeting or in conversation, "We need to do this to support data-driven decision making," I challenge you to challenge them. Respond by saying, "We need to be data informed, but NOT data driven." Then discuss what this means.
Tests can provide a window into learning, understanding, and retention, but that window is ALWAYS incomplete. We need to stop pretending like we work, as educators, to simply serve data and the masters of data. We don't and must not act as if we do. We work with children and for children for far more than to simply raise test scores in reading and math.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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