Recently found … 02/24/2010

  • “Something exciting is happening: the U.S. government is opening up. To satisfy the Open Government Directive agencies are soliciting your ideas on how to make them more transparent, participatory, collaborative and innovative. If you use your voice, it will be here to stay. Get involved.”

    tags: government, politics, social studies, collaboration

  • “Experiential Learning Games: Experiential programs where we learn a huge amount about critical issues in a short period of time while having fun.

    Global Education Lab for teachers: A hands-on intensive that provides you with everything from global perspectives to lesson plans and supplementary materials for the next day’s classroom—delivered by educators with over 60 years of global education experience.

    Design Science Lab: For students, teachers, professionals—where solutions to global and local problems are developed—by you.

    Global Learning Resources: For you: Movies, Research, Blog and more”

    tags: global, global citizenship, social studies, resources, video

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Bumps in Cyber Space

It’s been a while since I posted about Cory’s experiences as a newly minted cyber high school student. Truth is, there were some bumps in the highway. Around the end of week two, there was a noticeable drop in commitment. “I think I’ll just work on music today …” was the entry-point for a fierce debate about how work should be prioritized. When does school work end and personal projects begin? Is she taking advantage of the new learning environment, or are mom and dad simply freaking out about the newness? It’s just so different than anything we’ve experienced in traditional schooling …

But we seem to have turned a corner (although I’m sure this won’t be the last tumultuous week of schooling). What has really changed?

I notice an increase in teacher contact. Cory’s learning coach called to give us a progress report (she’s doing great) and we discussed class options for the coming months. This is the first time a teacher has called our home to tell us our daughter is doing well in school – and ask what we think …  Are we comfortable? Do we have any questions?

This may sound strange … but I notice an increase in the ability to plan and understand elapsed time. Yes, sounds ridiculous – after all, I’ve insisted on analog clocks in the house since Cory was two and I was appalled at how many kids could no longer tell time. However, although she could look at the clock and tell you the time – it had no meaning. My unscientific hypothesis was that her school day was so regimented, she never had to bother understanding time – someone would always tell her when to come and go. Now that Cory is responsible for getting up and attending her elluminate sessions, it seems she has a sudden ability to understand time. It’s like a muscle that’s finally getting exercise.

I notice an increase in the level of involvement with extracurricular activities – taking more of a leadership role. Maybe it’s a function of finally having time to devote to these projects.

I notice … a more rested child, resulting in an increased enthusiasm for everything!

Notable conversation of the week: I came home yesterday and was greeted by, “I need help with science.” My first response: Did you ask your teacher? No, of course not … “Oh, I forgot that I can ask my teacher for help.” She’s still learning that she now has far more access to teachers than ever before …

Chris Lehman, Principal of SLA – Keynote at PETE&C

Four biases …
1) School 2.0 is progressive education with 21st century tools (go back and re-read Dewey) … it is easier than we think … we finally have the tools to realize Dewey’s dream
2) Citizenry … not workforce – our job is not to co-create, with our students, the 21st century citizens. By doing that, we’ll get the workforce we need … and the activists, artists, parents, etc
3) Educators, parents, and students know more about school than politicians … but how do we regain that power we have ceded to others
4) Public Education is the cornerstone of the US democratic experience – without it, we don’t have a true democracy; RttT is about segmenting and fragmenting us by creating groups of winners & losers

The Great Big Question: How can we have so many passionate, dedicated educators in our schools and still have so many problems?
-overwhelming majority of teachers care passionately about children and work very hard, so why is there a problem?
-we must fix the system: put a good person into a bad system and the system will win every time

The world in which we live: the maddening paradox of education 2010
We graduate more students from high school in this era than we have ever before in our history (not just numbers but by %age) … and yet, we talk about our failing schools and “the good old days” (which weren’t actually so good)

Data Driven Decisions
-assumes that you use good data — but good data is not cheap or easy to collect
-the data we use to measure our students is the cheapest data available (the multiple choice scantron test)
-in fact we have great data on our students – it’s the work they do every day and we need to make that matter again

Accountability = External … Responsibility = Internal
-we have ceded control
-we live in an era of accountability
-we need to change the language because it trickles down
-if we want to own our schools and our kids, we must take responsibility ourselves – that will trump accountability

“Just a teacher” syndrome
-too often we resign to the idea that “I’m just a teacher”
-teachers have great influence
-don’t sit back and allow school to “happen” to students – fight for what we believe in

How? We organize …
-not in the unionization sense … unions cannot rest on the notion “we know what’s best for teachers” because that loses the higher ground to groups that say “we know what’s best for kids”
-teachers need to lead the way
-we should call politicians on the carpet, but we don’t
-if we don’t want to stop this happening to our schools, we must stop them

Education … not training
-today we are training students to follow directions or do a job that may or not exist
-in reality, the jobs aren’t there but it’s easier to blame schools than the lack of jobs
-if we want kids who can figure out what it’s going to look like, it’s not about teaching them to take a test, it’s about teaching them to think

A big problem … a lack of humility
-“I did everything I could, it’s not my fault the kids didn’t get it” … we have to admit that we fail: if a we fail a child, then we failed
-Politicians claim they know all there is to know – “we just have to do it” … nothing but hubris

A related problem … the discussion is a-historical
-it’s as if we never tried to fix schools before
-“schools need to be more like businesses” … we’ve done that – that’s why we follow the factory model
-we need to be better scholars of our own profession and know what came before us
-“why do we do it this way?” because we always have

“What the school system needs to understand is that its strength lies, not in the strength of the central organization, but in the strength of the individual school, not in making one school like another, but in making each school a distinct unit. The need of the system is the preservation of its units, so that each school can keep itself alive, wide awake, responsive to its people, easily adaptable, the best of its kind.” – Angelo Patri – A Schoolmaster of the Great City (written in 1917)

“What’s Good?” is a better question than “What’s New?”
-we chase the new …
-the best collaborative tool is the one we agree to use together

Tell a Better Story … We Must Have Vision
-we need a better way to talk about education

You Can’t Standardize
-how do you have differentiated instruction and standardized testing, standardized curriculum
-differentiated instruction, differentiated schools
-if differentiated instruction is good, then so are differentiated classrooms, differentiated assessments

We Learn Best When It Matters To Us
-“If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.” – John Cleese
-MIT media lab – lifelong kindergarten
-“All children are artists but we beat that out of them in school.” – Pablo Picasso

Things are Different … How Do We Deal With That?
-kids are learning differently … in too many schools, we ask kids to divorce themselves 7-1/2 hours a day from the way they live their lives
-it’s as if we deny them the oxygen they breathe …
-however, if discipline is your first priority, you’ll never get to your second
-rather than ban cell phones, let’s teach kids to use them well, use them intelligently

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” – Alvin Toffler
-What do we have to unlearn in our schools?
-As teachers … what are we willing to unlearn and relearn? What practices are outdated?

“If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” -John Dewey

So what do we do? Ideas are easy … implementation is hard …

Have a vision and build everything around that vision
-bring people together, build consensus
-what do we believe? how does our school reflect that?
-refer to Coalition of Essential Schools 10 core values; Christian Long Learning Manifesto

What do you want for SLA kids?
-thoughtful (meaning, full of thought)
-wise
-passionate
-kind

… if they are, they will be able to figure the rest out

Caring Institutions
-we teach kids, not subjects
-for a mission statement to matter, you must be able to point to systemic processes that do it
-change your language: stop saying “I teach science” … say “I teach kids science”

Advisory Program
-every adult has a group for 4 years of HS … 20 students
-powerful for students – they always have an advocate
-powerful for parents – they always have a point of contact
-powerful for teachers – they hold each other accountable

Inquiry Driven
-what are the questions we can ask together?
-true inquiry … the one question we never know the answer to: “What do you think?”

Student Centered
-it’s not about us, it’s about them
-cannot say “I taught it, they didn’t learn it”

Teacher Mentored
-kids need adults, especially in this changing world
-teachers that kids see every day can be the most important adults in their lives

Community-Based
-we can learn from many
-schools are not babysitters
-schools cannot be black boxes
-technology can help – you don’t need to be IN the school to be part of the school

Collaborative
-synthesis works: my idea is better when it intersects with yours and is made better by it

Passionate
-school has to matter
-dare kids to do work that matters – when you do, they will do it well

Integrated
-the day has to make sense
-we ask kids to shift gears too rapidly (especially in a 42-minute period day); then we’re surprised when they don’t remember what happened in 1st period
-integrate the subjects thematically so that they all make more sense

Meta-cognitive
-we need to think more about thinking
-won’t remember details, but will remember how to think, learn

Authentic
-assessment as real and transparent
-the best assessment is of the work the students do

Understanding Driven & Project Based Classrooms
-how we organize the learning
-traditional classrooms are recall-based: at the end of a unit when you really want to know what the kids have learned, what assessment do you give? If it’s a test, then the project is the assessment (otherwise you do assessment-based learning with projects along the way)
-projects have to be about REAL work – challenging, rigorous, and authentic
-if you really want to know if kids have learned something, make them do it, apply it, transfer it

What do we gain in this model?
-authenticity, engagement, learning

What do we lose?
-the illusion that we can measure everything a child has learned
-the idea that we can have it all look the same
-the idea that this is easy … because this is hard?

Technology Must Be Like Oxygen
-ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible
-part of what we do all the time
-we have to stop talking about it so much
-it’s not about a “blog project” … the ideas must come first

Relevance
-why do we take away cell phones, ipods?
-what are the kids doing wrong?
-paraphrasing Neil Postman: certain technologies are not additive, they are transformative (i.e. the printing press)
-we have schools + computers … but what we really need is brand new schools
-we have to give kids access to the tools but then we have to change our pedagogy

Transparent
-we can invite the world to our schools
-use moodle to create a walled garden; use droople when you want to publish

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF TEACHER IN THE AGE OF GOOGLE??????
-we have to be willing to transform our role as teachers
-we still have one last thing to teach our kids and it’s the most important: wisdom

Recently found … 02/23/2010

  • “Digital Information Fluency (DIF) is the ability to find, evaluate and use digital information effectively, efficiently and ethically. DIF involves Internet search skills that start with understanding how digital information is different from print information, knowing how to use specialized tools for finding digital information and strengthening the dispositions needed in the digital information environment. As teachers and librarians develop these skills and teach them to students, students will become better equipped to achieve their information needs.”

    tags: 21stcenturyskills, literacy, digital literacy

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Ken Robinson – Keynote at PETE&C

(these are stream-of-consciousness notes … what doesn’t come across is how charming and engaging he is)

everything we attribute to human culture, human nature … capacity to step outside oneself and use imagination – visit a range of possible futures

power of imagination will take us into the future … but:
a) we take it for granted
b) we suppress it – especially in our children, especially through education

most adults have no sense of their capabilities, what their talents are … don’t enjoy what they do

people whose lives are fulfilled, love what they do – they are in their element; they are relaxed and being themselves

most school systems divert people from their natural interests & abilities … and related to that – we have a real crisis of human resources; people are dislocated from their sense of purpose

example: US average of 30% drop-out rate from high school

the system is out of alignment with how kids work, think

the system isn’t all bad, but it could be 1000x better … and it wouldn’t take much to change it

narrowing of curriculum & use of high-stakes testing … driven by a need to support the economy; however, business will tell you that students don’t arrive in the work world knowing what they need to know = great disconnect

if you work with kids, you know what makes them energized

they system of education has become overworked with other people’s agendas

Peter Brook, The Empty Space
-a lot of theater isn’t worth watching … but it’s one of the most powerful forms of human communication
-if you’re interested in making theater as powerful as it can be, must be clear on what you want it to be
-in a typical performance, what can you subtract and still have “it” … ? curtains, lighting, costumes, script, director, stage, building … the essential thing is the actor in a space and somebody watching – relationship between actor and audience
-we should work to improve that relationship and not let anything get in the way

analogy … education has become encrusted with every kind of distraction: politics, building codes, union bargaining, publishing industry, testing industry …

in the middle are the kids – if you threw it all away … the one thing remaining: kids trying to learn and teachers trying to help them – and we shouldn’t put anything in that distracts

kids are actually forgotten in the middle – forgotten by the system

most attempts to reform confuse human beings with manufacturing products

the educational system was designed in the 19th century to meet the needs of a manufacturing economy … if we designed a system to meet needs today, we wouldn’t create what we have

so what’s this other place we could start from?

to reform, it’s difficult because we have to question the things we find obvious …

we assume there are things we can’t change – but we live in a time where change is happening constantly … a time of revolution

human life has never been simply and straightforward – all times of tumult

to meet challenges – we have to think differently about ourselves, we have to think differently about talent – and we have to think differently about education … we have to change our minds

Abraham Lincoln – 2nd annual address to congress – “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise high with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and we will save our country.”

We have to disenthrall ourselves, but it’s easier said than done – it’s hard to realize what we take for granted (example: people over 25 wear watches, those under 25 tend not to … for them, the time is everywhere)

digital natives … digital immigrants

… mimeograph machines …

the transformation since then is hard to convey … kids just take it for granted

“technology is not technology if it happened before you were born”

soon computers will be able to learn, i.e. able to rewrite their own operating programs … by 2020, you’ll be able to have a computer with the processing power of an adult, for $1000; this combined with population growth (from 1970 to 2000, world population doubled) …

strain on earth’s natural resources is completely unprecedented … therefore we cannot predict what the world will be like:
-new economies emerging
-US place in world being challenged

stakes couldn’t be higher … and the generation coming up in school is disingaged

HUMAN ABILITY

example: photograph of tiger in jungle
-western cultures say, “it’s a tiger”
-eastern cultures say, “it’s a tiger in a jungle”
western cultures are focused on individuals; eastern cultures are focused on the group

these habits of mind pre-date consciousness … what we take for granted gets right in our brain and we don’t know it’s there

policy makers take for granted: going to school is all about going to college; if you don’t go to college, your life is over – we need to stop this notion: those that want to go to college should go, but those who would like to do something different, should not feel pressure to get there

we need a diverse perception of college and the routes available

too many students go to college unprepared, or graduate from college not knowing what they want to do

our community depends upon a diversity of interests and talents – but we have developed a system of education where we are preoccupied by a certain career route

as part of education reform, we need to celebrate diversity

college doesn’t “begin in kindergarten” … kindergarten begins in kindergarten

a 3-year old is not half a 6-year old … a 6-year old are not half a 12-year old – they are who they are; children are being interviewed at the age of 3 for entry into kindergarten

the system is increasingly about standardizing … that is being confused with “raising standards”

education is being standardized:
-by assessment industry
-by textbook industry
-by political efforts
etc.

contrast with raising standards for food industry (like michelin guide) … high level criteria that can be met in any way they like (unlike “fast food” which is standardized by being the same) – result is high quality and diversity of restaurants

education is following fast food model, but needs to follow the michelin model

kids are different … the reason so many drop out is because they’re all being treated the same

we can’t improve education without improving the experience of every child in the system; it must be personalized

THE ELEMENT

if you’re in the element
1) you’re doing something for which you have a natural capacity
2) you have to love it (people are good at things that they don’t necessarily like)

kids in schools “get” all sorts of things that they’re not allowed to engage with in school … and being good at something isn’t a reason to do it

the element is about finding your own criteria for what makes life worth living … don’t be dazzled by other people’s criteria for success

human talent is not always obvious – it might be buried and you have to go looking for it

education’s job: create the conditions for growth – and to do this, we have to change our minds about how to do it

we cannot make a plant grow – they grow themselves … but gardeners create the right conditions for plants to grow

education is more like agriculture than industry … a healthy organism is healthy everywhere and it also nourishes the environment it depends on

we must customize schools to local circumstances by …
1) reinstate and reinvigorate a broader curriculum (don’t cut the arts)
2) assessment is important BUT standardized tests must have a role, not be the foundation of the culture (tests are helpful diagnostically, they are not helpful when they become the focus of the exercise)
3) at the heart is teaching – there is not school that is better than its teachers; professional development of teachers must empower them to be creative about themselves and their students

life is not linear … it’s organic – what we become depends on how we invest in our own talent; great parents, great teachers look into a child’s eyes and agree to invest in their talent, even though they don’t know where it’s going to take them

we don’t know the journey we’ll be on – we can only set our compass to true north and be on our way

video about The Blue School in NY: http://www.theblueschool.org/

winter of 2004 – it rained in Death Valley and the whole floor was carpeted with flowers; therefore it shows that Death Valley isn’t dead, it’s dormant; below the surface are seeds of possibility – just waiting for the conditions to be right

we can’t improve the system by pushing harder at the manufacturing model – we need to shift the metaphor

Anais Nin: “There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

For education, the time has come to blossom …

Recently found … 02/22/2010

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Recently found … 02/19/2010

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Recently found … 02/17/2010

  • “OpenStudy is a social study network for students; a place where you can get together with buddies online, just like you would in the library or coffee shop, and work together on assignments, test prep or whatever else you want to study. We believe that you should be able to study whenever you want and with whomever you want and, above all, that the more social studying becomes, the better you learn. Our belief is that students can teach other students and whether you want to give help or get help in your studies OpenStudy will match you up. “

    tags: social networking, study, study skills, networking

  • “Graphical representations of words. A World Cloud can represent any main idea or topic based on the words used. ABCya! Word Clouds are fun and exciting because they allow for creativity and imagination beyond lists or graphic organizers.”

    tags: wordle, wordcloud, generator, cloud

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.