The Fischbowl

Ideas I'd Like My Future Principal to Consider: The Schedule

2012-02-05T10:59:00.000-07:00

We have a problem with time. Specifically, the way we allocate it in schools. As Chris Lehmann points out:

Our schools are structurally dysfunctional places which, therefore, makes teaching and learning much harder than it needs to be, so that teachers -- and students -- have to succeed despite the system, rather than because of it.

As long as high school students have to travel to eight different classes where eight different teachers talk about grading / standards / learning in eight different ways, students will spend far too much trying to figure out the adults instead of figuring out the work. When that happens, too many students will fall through the cracks and fail. If we built schools where there was a common language of teaching and learning and common systems and structures so that kind people of good faith can bring their ideas and creativity and passion to bear within those systems and structures and help kids learn, we will find that more teachers can be the kind of exemplary teachers that Mr. Kristof wants.

As long as there is little to no time in the high school schedule for teachers and students to see and celebrate each others' shared humanity, too many students will feel that school is something that is done to them, that teachers care more about their subjects than they do about the kids. (emphasis mine)

At Arapahoe we have a fairly unique schedule for a high school, we call it the Variable Schedule. It's very similar to a college schedule. Some classes do meet five days a week, but most meet less than that; some MWF, some TR, some four days a week, etc. Let me be clear, there are many, many, many good things about this schedule, not the least of which is that it allows students to explore more areas than a traditional schedule, and it allows students to work one-on-one with teachers during unscheduled hours (or use the media center, or work in groups, or do whatever they need to get done).

Over the years we've become pretty protective of the Variable, as periodically there is pressure to abandon it.

(If you're interested, the two most frequently cited reasons: 1) High school students can't handle the 2-8 unscheduled hours a week we give them, especially with an open campus; 2) Teachers typically teach "only" 20-23 hours a week, which is less than in a traditional schedule.)

We feel it allows students the flexibility to explore lots of different areas they might not normally get to, it gives them experience dealing with unscheduled time which is invaluable later in college, work and life, and it allows for the opportunity for teachers and students to develop deeper relationships.

I think over the years of defending the Variable we may have lost track of something important: there may be a better way to do things. For most of us, the only types of schedules we really have to compare to are the traditional 6 (or 7 or 8) by 5 schedule, or the block schedule (or minor variations on those two, like rotating days). The traditional 6 by 5 schedule holds very little appeal to us and, while the block schedule is appealing to some folks in some ways, it doesn't appear to be better than what we have.

But here's the thing - those aren't our only options. While the Variable may have been innovative when it was implemented at AHS in 1967, and while it may have served us well for most of the 45 years since, that doesn't mean it's the best option today. The world is significantly different now than it was in 1967, and learning opportunities are significantly different, so shouldn't schools be as well?

So am I proposing a specific schedule? No. I'm proposing that it's time for us to reexamine our purpose and goals in our school and that everything should be on the table, including the schedule. But, for the sake of discussion, here's a schedule that perhaps would break us out of our mindset of Variable, traditional or block scheduling.

What if students went to "regular" classes only in the morning (say 9 am - 12 pm, because certainly we wouldn't have teenagers start at 7:21 am in any logical universe). Then after lunch (I'd suggest more than 30 minutes, think about all the great discussions you have at conferences outside of the sessions), what if students were able to explore something they were passionate about more in-depth? Maybe that's a small class of students interested in the same thing working with a teacher or teachers. Or maybe that's an independent study. Or maybe an internship at a local business or place of learning. Or maybe something online. I don't know what exactly it looks like, but I think it's one (very rough) example of how we need to change our thinking about the possibilities of what school could look like.

Don't you learn the best and the most when you are engaged in something you are passionate about? Why wouldn't we want that for our students?

And, to be sure, even this proposed schedule is still pretty traditional, as it's hard for me to think creatively enough given my lifelong immersion in the traditional idea of what school should look like. Which is why I think we need to do it together, as a school community.

I think our current notions of what school - and school schedules - should look like are hopelessly outdated. As Ira Socol says:

Assignments need to stop having dates on them. Assignments - such as they may be - need to have goals instead. What are you hoping to accomplish? to learn? to create? to build? to know? to demonstrate? to provoke? How do you think you'll get from "here" to "there." What in the world does a date or a time have to do with that? Why would you even begin to interfere with the learning process by limiting the time? I'll explain, because in the industrial process of schooling 70% of a subject "learned" by a specific moment trumps mastery at some other time. Do I really need to explain how ridiculous that is?

Which is why I'd like my future principal to lead us through an examination of what exactly we want for our students, how we would best go about doing that, and what kind of school schedule would best support that. Maybe it turns out that the Variable is the best option (I obviously don't think so, but that doesn't mean it isn't). Or perhaps just tweaking the Variable. But perhaps something radically different, something that makes much more sense for learning in 2012 and beyond, as opposed to schedules created in the 1920's (traditional) or 1967 (our version of the Variable).

Here's what it comes down to to me. If you were designing a school today, would you design anything even remotely similar to what we have? Would you have 58 minute classes, where we think about Algebra for 58 minutes then, bing, now we go think about grammar then, bing, now we go to Band?

With all the affordances that technology allows us, with our ability to connect with information, ideas, and people inexpensively and easily around the world 24/7/365, with our ability to pursue our passions in way unthinkable for most humans even ten years ago, would you really limit learning in this way?

I would not, which is why I'm hopeful that, as great as the Variable has been, we don't cling blindly to it. I'm hopeful that my future principal will lead our community in a discussion of how to design the best school/learning experience possible for our students in 2012, and then help us get there.

Tools I'd Like My Future Principal To Consider: Twitter

2012-02-01T15:50:00.000-07:00

From the article Meet Your New PD Tool in Scholastic Administrator magazine:

"I really think anybody who doesn't spend a little time building a personal network is doing themselves and their school a disservice. If we're not modeling this stuff for our teachers and students, then I don't think we're doing our jobs."
(p. 31, quoting Patrick Larkin, @bhsprincipal)

I'd like my future principal to consider that statement and ask themselves if they are modeling what it's like to be a lifelong learner, a connected learner, for our students if they aren't actively using and harnessing the power of social media. I'd like my future principal to not only have an active presence on Twitter, but I'd like them to engage their administrative team and the entire faculty in a discussion of how best to leverage these new tools (as well as the possible negative aspects that are indeed present). I'd like them to lead a discussion about how the staff could use tools like Twitter for their own personalized professional development:

For Sheninger, tweeting is like directed Googling. "Instead of doing a Google search, you're harnessing human power, a human-generated search engine driven by education professionals who are passionate and have determined that having an online presence will have a dramatic, positive impact on their professional practice."
(p. 31, quoting Eric Sheninger, @nmhs_principal).

I'd like them to lead a discussion not only about how to leverage tools such as Twitter to broadcast information to our community, but how to also use those tools to engage our community as learners. I'd like that discussion to extend to ways to have our students engage with other passionate learners around the globe - safely, meaningfully, and effectively.

I'd like my future principal - and their entire administrative team - to know what #cpchat is, and what folks are referring to when they talk about the Connected Principal's blog, or CASTLE. I'd like them to know not only Patrick and Eric, but Chris and Lyn and George and Josie and . . . the list goes on and on (including lots and lots of folks that I don't know . . . yet, or perhaps ever, it doesn't matter as their network will be personal to them.)

I'd like them not to be surprised by some of the things Eric says in this video:

Video credit: http://www.scholastic.com/administrator/

"24/7. When I need it. From anywhere in the world. To me that's power. It's helping my students see a new world. It give me goosebumps every time I think about it." - Eric Sheninger in the video

I want my future principal to help our students see - and participate - in this new world.

Discussing Little Brother with Cory Doctorow: Take Two

2012-01-30T21:01:00.000-07:00

Anne Smith and Maura Moritz's students will once again be discussing Little Brother with author and blogger Cory Doctorow. A different set of students had this opportunity two years ago and it was a great experience (see that post for more details on the bigger picture of the unit), so we're really looking forward to this.

If you're available at 8:30 am Mountain Time on Tuesday, January 31st, feel free to join us in the live stream or the live blog. Mr. Doctorow will be responding to our students' questions live via Skype from London (the stream will be a not-so-great quality webcam-based ustream, but you should at least be able to get an idea what it looks like and hear fairly well), and the live blog is a place for our students to backchannel while the Skype session is occurring. If you do join us in the live blog, we simply ask that you use your real name and make constructive contributions to the conversation.

Update 1-31-12
Here are a few pictures from today and the embedded ustream archive.

Crowdsource My Basement Design

2012-01-29T13:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this is kind of a silly post that I actually don't believe will generate anything, but I thought it might be fun anyway. We're about to finish our basement and I am not a very visual person, so trying to picture what it might look like is difficult for me. I'm sure we'll get lots of help with that from the contractor and most likely will go with one of the designs they come up with, but I thought it might be fun to see if I could tap into the wisdom of my small crowd.

We currently have a "full," unfinished walkout basement with a wood floor (with some crawl space underneath). We've just finished replacing the furnace, air conditioner and water heater figuring it made more sense to do that before finishing the basement instead of having to go in after. There are two windows and a sliding glass door that lead the backyard. When we adopted Abby we put down the cheapest linoleum we could find in one part of the basement to have a play/craft area for her, and the rest of the basement has just been used for storage.

As you'll see from the pictures, we do have a fair amount of "stuff" down there, but most of it will be gone before finishing the basement. We have lots of empty boxes that we've used as a "wall" to keep the dog out of the storage area, and those will mostly get recycled. We have a whole bunch of boxes of old school stuff, most of which we'll go through and probably get rid of because our philosophies have changed. What will still need to be stored are various holiday decorations, suitcases, and camping stuff (and a few miscellaneous other things).

There are a few things we have planned for the basement area. First and foremost is a bedroom/bathroom combination. This is initially designed for Abby (soon to be twelve) to have a larger space than her currently fairly small bedroom. But it will also be designed for the possibility of one or more of our aging parents to move in with us. Consequently it will need to be designed in an accessible manner, including wider doors and a walk-in shower (no tub). We'd also like it to have a walk-in closet for Abby and/or the parents. It should be large enough to fit a queen bed, a desk, and probably a couple of dressers.

The bathroom should have a sink (probably single), a toilet and that aforementioned walk-in shower, and perhaps a small linen closet. While it will function as a "master" bath for that bedroom, we also want it to be the bathroom for the basement, so therefore we envision it having two entrances, one from the bedroom and one from the rest of the basement.

We also have ideas for the rest of the basement, but they are a bit more flexible. Right now we're thinking a video area (couch and chairs, decently large screen), a mini-kitchen (sink, microwave and cabinets, perhaps with some kind of counter with seating), an area that could be a ping-pong table or a kitchen table if our parents moved in, and perhaps a workout area (big enough for perhaps two machines - treadmill and elliptical, for example). We'd also like to build some limited storage closets in wherever we can.

Here are some pictures (please ignore the junk, it's messier than usual as we just shoved stuff every which way as they were putting in the new furnace, water heater and ductwork) to try to give you an idea of what it looks like right now.

I used both graph paper and the free Autodesk Homestyler to get a rough layout of the basement. Here's the graph paper version:

And here's the Homestyler version:

These are reasonably accurate in terms of measurements, but could be off by as much as a foot or so in any given dimension. The brown rectangular shapes are my lame attempt at indicating pre-existing obstacles, such as the furnace (that's the big one), on-demand water heater (against the wall), support poles, and drainage pipes (the drainage pipes could possible be moved). You can also see the sliding glass door and the two existing windows at the "bottom."

Here's my first attempt at coming up with a layout (as you can tell, I'm not much of a designer):

So, as I said in the beginning, I'm not really expecting much from this post. But, if you're really into design and want to take a shot, I'd love to see your ideas. Create your own online (at Homestyler or somewhere else) and link to it in the comments, or create it with some other software and upload it somewhere and link to it. Or, if you have a finished basement that you really like and think part of it might work for us, upload a picture or two and link to those. (Or, if you did something and you really regret, let us know about that as well.) And, of course, you can always just leave a text comment with your ideas.

So, can you help out a design-challenged blogger? I'd love to see what ideas you might have.

Quotes I'd Like My Future Principal to Ponder: Participatory Media Education and Civic Education Are Inextricable

2012-01-23T18:37:00.000-07:00

From the article titled "Head of State" in the print edition (subscription required, although if you are in a school you most likely have access to it through one of your library subscription services) in the November 7th, 2011 issue of Time magazine:

Whereas US Envoys once filed secret cables to Washington late at night, Clinton has pushed her ambassadors to expand the use of Twitter and Facebook - State now has 192 Twitter feeds and 288 Facebook accounts - and her daughter Chelsea calls her TechnoMom. "We are in the age of participation," Clinton said at her husband's charity even in New York City in September, "and the challenge . . . is to figure out how to be responsive, to help catalyze, unleash, channel the kind of participatory eagerness that is there."

Clinton is trying to ensure these changes are permanent: she requires every diplomat who rotates through the foreign-service institute to get training in social media. (p. 31, emphasis mine).

The United States Secretary of State is requiring every diplomat to get training in social media - sure seems like perhaps we should be doing the same with and for our students. Yet typically social media participation is looked down upon in schools and, in fact, banned outright and blocked by our Internet filters. I'd like my future principal to reflect on the above quote and then lead our faculty in a discussion of whether we are truly preparing our students for their future when we block most if not all social media, much less work with our students to help them unleash the potential power of it.

That reminds me of another quote, this one from the National Council for the Social Studies Position Statement on Media Literacy:

The 21st century world is media saturated, technologically dependent, and globally connected. We live in a multimedia age where the majority of information people receive comes less often from print sources and more typically from highly constructed visual images, complex sound arrangements, and multiple media formats. The multimedia age requires new skills for accessing, analyzing, evaluating, creating, and distributing messages within a digital, global, and democratic society. The acquisition and application of critical analysis and media production skills are part of what constitutes media literacy. The Internet and the everyday use of social networking technologies, together with the expansive growth of corporate entertainment media and the integration of popular culture, also require us as social studies educators to link participatory media literacy with civic education. (Emphasis mine.)

If the majority of information people receive comes less often from print sources, then I'd like to see my future principal engage our faculty in a conversation around whether that is also true of our classrooms. If not, should it be, and what might that look like?

And the money quote cited in that same article, from Howard Rheingold:

“In the twenty-first century, participatory media education and civic education are inextricable” (Rheingold, 2008, p. 103)

So, in other words, if we aren't teaching participatory media, then we aren't teaching civics. Since we're required to teach civics, I'm hopeful that my future principal would help us as a faculty figure out how best to incorporate that into our classes.

Things I Want My Future Principal to Read: 1472 and 2012

2012-01-17T19:04:00.000-07:00

One more post that was at least initially generated from my reading of Jeff Jarvis's Public Parts. This time it was a passage on p. 205 that resonated that I wanted my future principal to read and consider, but it also sounded a bit familiar. Turns out I had already Diigo-ed it when John Naughton's article in the Guardian he references was first published:

So let's conduct what the Germans call a Gedankenexperiment — a thought experiment. Imagine that the net represents a similar kind of transformation in our communications environment to that wrought by printing. What would we learn from such an experiment?

The first printed bibles emerged in 1455 from the press created by Johannes Gutenberg in the German city of Mainz. Now, imagine that the year is 1472 — i.e. 17 years after 1455. Imagine, further, that you're the medieval equivalent of a Mori pollster, standing on the bridge in Mainz with a clipboard in your hand and asking pedestrians a few questions. Here's question four: On a scale of one to five, where one indicates "Not at all likely" and five indicates "Very likely", how likely do you think it is that Herr Gutenberg's invention will:

(a) Undermine the authority of the Catholic church?

(b) Power the Reformation?

(c) Enable the rise of modern science?

(d) Create entirely new social classes and professions?

(e) Change our conceptions of "childhood" as a protected early period in a person's life?

On a scale of one to five! You have only to ask the questions to realise the fatuity of the idea. Printing did indeed have all of these effects, but there was no way that anyone in 1472, in Mainz (or anywhere else for that matter) could have known how profound its impact would be.

I'm writing this in 2010, which is 17 years since the web went mainstream. If I'm right about the net effecting a transformation in our communications environment comparable to that wrought by Gutenberg, then it's patently absurd for me (or anyone else) to pretend to know what its long-term impact will be. The honest answer is that we simply don't know.

Now it's certainly debatable whether the Internet is going to have a similarly large effect as the printing press, but that's a debate I'd like to see my future principal lead and participate in. (After all, part of the debate will surely be whether the Internet is going to have a much larger effect than the printing press.)

I then somewhat serendipitously came across this complementary post by Mark Pesce and Robert Tercek,

Yet there was a humanity before, a Homo sapiens before sapience. We can reach back through prehistory, but our reach extends only as far as language. Before language, our species was like a small child, remembering nothing. After language we have continuous memory – indigenous Australians claim a cultural continuity going back some 60,000 years. Language empowers us to express ourselves and know one another’s minds, but also imprisons us within an unbreakable cage that limits our ability to know anything about our pre-linguistic ancestors. We are so different from them they are incomprehensible to us. Language has so changed us that we understand nothing of those who do not share language.

“We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.” Language was among the first human tools – along with stone axes and fire – and definitively the first tool that lived entirely within us, a bit of innovation as much cultural as technological. In the moment language arrived on the scene, it became indispensable, and once indispensable, we adopted it as innate, favoring those with the greatest linguistic capability, and thereby subtly affecting the evolution of our species. People who ‘talk pretty’ have broader prospects for success in the world. They and their children will thrive.

Every claim made for the power of language – as an amplifier of human capability – can also be made for the sudden arrival of hyperconnectivity. Connected people are more successful, and those most successful at mastering the techniques of connectivity have the greatest successes. Connection is becoming indispensable, and we have already begun to think of it as an innate capability. The billion seconds from 1995 – 2026 is witness to a transition from a world in which no one is connected, to a world where being connected and being human is seen as synonymous.

Just as we now see being verbal and being human as synonymous, hyperconnectivity is adding another layer of richness and depth to our experience. Where we can observe the sudden explosion of depth in the human record, eighty thousand years ago, so our children’s children’s children’s children will look upon this billion seconds as a second explosion, another sudden quickening, before which the ‘dumb’ and disconnected generations of humanity will seem incomprehensible and inhuman.

I definitely want my future principal - and really all principals current and future - to be discussing hyperconnectivity. Do they agree, or disagree? (Or, more likely, how much of it do they agree with and which parts don't they buy into.) If connected people are more successful, what does that imply for our schools? Is hyperconnectivity really indispensable, an amplifier like no other; is it really changing what it means to be human similar to the way language did?

My next principal will (hopefully) be at my school for the next half billion seconds until 2026. (I know statistically it's unlikely for a principal to stay that long, but since our current one has been here for 27 years I'm hopeful the next one will last for at least half that long.) Isn't this going to be one of the two or three critical questions they (we) are going to have to address during their tenure?

Flickr cc: Dean Shareski

Come Be My Boss

2012-01-16T14:54:00.000-07:00

Wanted: Chief Learner, Arapahoe High School

Qualifications: Desire and ability to change the world.

Timeline: Principal Selection Process (pdf)

More Info: Job Posting (closes 2-10-12)

Drawbacks: One (at least) hard to deal with employee.

Quotes I'd Like My Future Principal to Ponder: This new economy tilts toward publicness.

2012-01-16T10:00:00.002-07:00

Again from Jeff Jarvis's Public Parts, a quote I'd like my future principal to ponder (p. 137):

"Privacy was once free. Publicity was once ridiculously expensive," says entrepreneur Sam Lessin. "Now the opposite is true: You have to pay a mix of cash, time, social capital, etc. if you want privacy." You pay for privacy in the effort and hassle it takes to manage privacy settings. You also pay in the opportunity lost if you choose not to be public and social. On the other side of the ledger, you can be rewarded - with attention, influence, information, deals - if you reveal yourself. This new economy tilts toward publicness. (Emphasis mine.)

What opportunities might schools (students, teachers, administrators, communities) be losing by choosing not to be public and social? How are our fears possibly getting in the way of preparing our students to be successful in an "economy [that] tilts toward publicness?" As my future principal, how are you going to help our staff - and our students - understand the new privacy and the new publicness?

Quotes I'd Like My Future Principal to Ponder: Isolation Costs Too Much

2012-01-12T16:27:00.000-07:00

I'm currently reading Jeff Jarvis's book Public Parts. I'm not that far into it, so I don't know yet if I'd recommend my future principal read the book, but this quote from p. 45 is one that I'd like that person to ponder:

"Businesses used to be hierarchies of business units whose assets were called customers and products." Now "they are changing into networks of business units whose assets are called relationships and capabilities." Turning that perspective into an investment strategy, I'd bet money on start-ups that put relationships at their center so they can disrupt old, closed industries (later we'll look at what social car companies and airlines look like; imagine, too, the social store, restaurant and school). I'd buy the stocks of companies that know me well and play well with others. I'd short the companies that build walls around themselves. In a linked world and a relationship economy, isolation costs too much. (emphasis mine)

I'd like my future principal to ponder, and lead the staff in discussion around, the idea that an isolated school, a non-social school, a "closed" school that isn't actively reaching out to others and building those relationships (including letting students build those relationships as an integral part of their learning), is a school that is ripe for disruption. I think they should also lead a discussion about how well such a school would be preparing their students to live, learn and work in a networked world.

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. - Eric Hoffer

Things I Want My Future Principal to Read: What To Tell Your Twelve-Year-Old

2012-01-10T13:27:00.000-07:00

(This is part two in a possible series. See this post for an explanation of the future principal part of the title of this post.)

I found these two recent articles from the Economic Revolution column in The Denver Post pretty interesting. They're written by Dave Maney who, in his own words, attempts to "connect the dots to our economic future." This sums up the thrust of the two articles:

The prescription for the last few generations has been: Work hard in school, get into a good college, pick a career field with lots of demand, and success will follow. I'm pretty sure that's what my parents told me, and it served me well. But I'm afraid it's largely misguided advice now.

While I don't believe that education is solely about preparing you for future employment, I do believe that's part of our mission. I also believe that many of the current batch of reforms are being made in the name of economic success and competitiveness, yet they seem to fly in the face of what I see happening. (Which, of course, is probably why these two articles caught my eye, since I agree with much of what he says. It's always dangerous to read too much into something that confirms your own bias, but here goes.)

I particularly like how he attempts to state his "ten big ideas," but then also tries to frame them in terms of how he would begin a conversation with a twelve-year-old. For example, one of his points is:

In this tumultuous time, I wouldn't trust anyone's traditional prescriptions for success. (Nor mine for that matter.) It's incumbent on everyone to think for themselves, to observe, to interpret, to plan and to course-correct.

And he frames it for a twelve-year-old as

Starting point for your 12-year-old: "School's important, but being able to think for yourself is more important. We should talk about how people learn to do that."

Perhaps these articles could be part of the basis for a good discussion led by our new principal about our current assumptions about what our students are going to need to be successful in the workforce. As a bonus article, we could add in The Career Of The Future Doesn't Include A 20-Year Plan. It's More Like Four:

The particulars of Hasler's young career can appear exotic and, yes, flighty. But his essential experience--tacking swiftly from job to job and field to field, learning new skills all the while--resembles the pattern that increasingly defines our careers. According to recent statistics, the median number of years a U.S. worker has been in his or her current job is just 4.4, down sharply since the 1970s. This decline in average job tenure is bigger than any economic cycle, bigger than any particular industry, bigger than differences in education levels, and bigger than differences in gender. (Since women are more likely to interrupt their careers for child rearing and caregiving, their average time in a job is even shorter than a man's.)

Hmm, reminds me a bit of this.

Things I Want My Future Principal to Read: Old School or Bold School?

2012-01-05T20:56:00.000-07:00

My longtime principal (more than 25 years at our school) recently announced he'll be retiring at the end of the school year, which means we'll be looking for a new principal. (I'd link to the job posting, but it's not posted yet. (Update: Position is posted.) While I don't have any direct say in the hiring process, I've naturally been thinking a bit about what qualities I would want in a new principal as well as what questions I'd ask in the interview process if I were part of it.

You may have noticed that I haven't been blogging much the past year or so. That's for several reasons, not the least of which is that both my day job and my personal life have been somewhat overwhelming. But it's also because I haven't felt like I've had that much to add to the conversation. I felt like I needed to come up with some original thinking to make it worthwhile to hit the publish button, and I just didn't feel like I had that much original to contribute. Thinking about hiring a new principal, however, has made me want get back to my earlier blogging style which was much more of a link-blogging effort, linking to other interesting items and occasionally adding a thought or two of my own.

I think it might help me crystallize my own thinking in terms of what I'd like to see in a new principal. Now, I'm not naive enough to think that my future principal is likely to be reading my blog, but stranger things have happened and perhaps some other folks out there (either current or future administrators) might find some use in it as well, so here goes.

So the first item I'd like my future principal to read (and think about), is Will Richardson's latest for District Administration: Are You an Old School or a Bold School?

Right now, we need bold schools, not old schools. By that, I mean we need schools to take serious steps to not only reinvent themselves, but to step out and advocate for a new, more meaningful definition of what learning means for our students, one that goes beyond simply “higher student achievement” or “increased student performance.”

Bold schools are places of questions, not answers. When much of what we currently think is important for our students to know is just a few taps on a phone or a Google search away, our central mission can’t be to deliver and test for content mastery. Instead, it must be to develop deep dispositions for learning by supporting sustained inquiry into both the content and context of whatever subject students are tackling.

I would like my future instructional leader to read this short article, and then lead our faculty in a meaningful discussion around some of the issues it raises. This, of course, would need to be in the context of a larger staff discussion surrounding the purpose of school, and the purpose of our school, but I think it would be a good starting point.

In our current age of data-driven, accountability-above-all-else schools, I'm realistic enough to understand that our new principal will need to be able to navigate in those waters. But is it too much to ask that we also get a principal that has a bold vision for what our school can become, that can not only retain what is great about our current school (and there is much that is great), but can also lead us to someplace better, to reinvent ourselves and create, as Will says,

[S]chools [that] are steeped in cultures where everyone, both educators and students, are seen as learners first.

I want both my new principal and my school to be bold. I think our students deserve nothing less.

Let's Put It to the Test

2011-12-05T13:32:00.000-07:00

For years in various forums (blog posts such as this one, professional development sessions, speaking engagements) I've been saying that state and federal legislators should be required to take the standardized tests that they make our students take. They should take them under the same conditions that our students take them and then publicly report their results - and their thoughts after taking the tests and seeing the results. (I've also suggested that high school educators be required to take each others' final exams, but that's another blog post.)

As successful adults and leaders in our society, surely they would be up to the challenge, right? And surely the results would prove their hypothesis, that the skills measured by these tests are both necessary and sufficient to be a successful adult and contributor to society, right?

Well, it looks like one school board member at least had the same idea. This article in the Washington Post is trending in my Twitter stream today:

“I won’t beat around the bush,” he wrote. “The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a “D”, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.

He continued, “It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate.

Yep. He goes on to say,

“If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had.

. . . "I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.”

So, again, I renew my call that all state and federal legislators, as well as all education reformers that use standardized tests as the primary measurement of how successful schools are, to take the mandated state tests in your area and then publish the results. (As a bonus, I think all education reformers should be required to send their children to the same types of schools they are designing for other people's children, but that's also another blog post.)

There's a difference between standardization and high standards; between recall and application; between testing and accountability; between schooling and learning. I fear that many of our so-called leaders have forgotten this. Perhaps it's time for them to walk-the-walk and be held accountable on the same tests they are requiring of our students.

Update: The hashtag for this is #takethetest

Skyping with South Korea

2011-12-05T10:34:00.000-07:00

Anne Smith is at it again, this time having her all boys' class Skype with students in South Korea.

My all boys' class was matched up with Jeff's class in South Korea at the Korea International School. I knew that my all boys' class was going to be writing their "This I Believe" essays on something important to them, something they strongly valued. Jeff let me know early on that his class was going to be writing their essays with a slight twist to the assignment: "I Believe in Evolution...". To help you understand his requirements for their essays, Jeff is a science teacher, thus they were going to be writing about evolution.

The time difference between Colorado and South Korea is a bit of an issue, so the students in South Korea agreed to stay up late and Skyped our students from their homes. Read Anne's post for all the details, but this was another great opportunity for our students to connect and learn from/with other students.

Here's a Picasa slide show that Anne put together to give you an idea of what it looked like on our end.

Year 4: Team Shift Happens on Kiva

2011-11-24T09:13:00.000-07:00

This is the fourth year that I'll be microlending through Kiva. You can read these four previous posts for even more detail, but here is the basic idea:

I lend $25 to an entrepreneur ($25 is the minimum they accept). But I also purchase two $25 gift certificates that I then email to two members of my PLN. I’m asking those folks to then do two things.

First, they can choose which entrepreneur to loan the $25 to. Then I’m asking them to consider doing the same thing – purchasing two $25 gift certificates and emailing them to two members of their PLN (with the same request that those folks continue the cycle, sending two Kiva gift certificates to folks in their network - a Kiva Pay It Forward plan). It would also be great if they blogged about it and left a comment on this post.

Since I’m apparently always going to be connected to the phrase Shift Happens, I thought I’d try to use that to do some good, so I created Team Shift Happens on the Kiva site:
We loan because Shift Happens, and we want to be the change we want to see.
So, those email requests will also ask that when they make those loans they consider adding them to Team Shift Happens so that we can keep track of the total. They still direct where the loan goes, it just gets aggregated under the team. Joining Team Shift Happens is completely optional, and is not the point of all of this, but it's just an interesting way to try to keep track of the lending spurred by the original blog post.

Team Shift Happens has loaned $19,050 so far. You don't have to join the team, but please consider giving. I'll be sending out my gift certificates today (Thanksgiving here in the U.S.), but these obviously make great gifts for many of the holidays coming up.

There are many worthy causes out there, this is obviously not the only one. But, if you're like my family and you already have more than enough "stuff," perhaps you could dedicate some of that disposable income to this cause.

For those of you interested in possibly doing this with your students, Bill Ferriter has compiled some nice classroom resources you can use with students around microlending.

What Should Be the Purpose of School?

2011-11-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

My friend Zac (and his friend Trevor) want to know: What Should Be the Purpose of School?

It started as a question in class. Listening to discussions of actions schools should and should not take, I started to want to know what ideas were inspiring what sounded to be firmly held beliefs in the role of school.

That got me thinking about what people outside our classroom believe should be the purpose of school. My suspicion is that these ideas are not as synchronous as we might believe them to be. I mentioned this to my friend Trevor. From there, the School Purpose Project was born.

So, you have four ways to thoughtfully respond (pick one, don't do all four). You can fill out this google form if you have a lot to say and want to type it, or if you prefer you can leave an audio message, send a text message, or upload a video.

They'll start working with the data right after Thanksgiving, so try to get your responses in before that. Please note that all answers will be made public. I can't wait to read/see/hear what you think.

To Be Honest

2011-11-12T19:04:00.001-07:00

< Prologue >

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1, William Shakespeare (circa 1601)

Honesty is such a lonely word.

Everyone is so untrue.

Honesty, Billy Joel (1979)

< 1 >

I presented at the K20 Innovative Learning Institute held in Norman, Oklahoma on Thursday. During the presentation several folks tweeted out quotes or reactions, including Laura Buxton who tweeted a quote from me about possible future spouses googling our students (in the context of talking about their digital footprint). Ira Socol tweeted back to Laura that he wished we would stop using scare tactics to threaten our students. I didn't see the tweets until the next day, but I replied back to Ira that I hadn't really thought of it as scare tactics, but I would think some more about it.

After thinking a bit I replied and said I still felt like it wasn't scare tactics, but simply being honest with our students. Keep in mind that that quote from my presentation was in the context of both a positive and negative digital footprint. I wasn't just talking about colleges, employers and spouses googling them (looking for something negative), but also about the positive footprint they should be building (so those folks - and others - could find the positive.)

I pretty much align with Ira in my distaste for trying to "scare straight" our students - I think they deserve more respect than that. On the other hand, I also think they are deserving enough of our respect to be honest with them - I think they can handle thinking about the possible negative consequences of their online actions (as well as the positive), without seeing it as a scare tactic. I don't want to threaten my students, but I also don't want to ignore the very possible consequences of a less-than-stellar digital footprint.

I agree with Ira when he suggested that our views of digital footprints are going to have to adapt (i.e., not hold things against young people forever), but I still think - especially for high school students - that they will be held somewhat accountable for their views and actions as teenagers. (In general, I think we underestimate the capabilities - and thoughtfulness - of teenagers, and we should respect them enough to expect good things from them.) If you agree that that's even a possibility, then I think they deserve to hear that from us now.

< 2 >

In my breakout sessions at K20 we talked about a bunch of different topics (resources here) but, as usual, the topic of Internet filtering came up. What was surprising to me this time was how many teachers were basically in favor of pretty strict filtering policies. In pretty much any educational audience there is, of course, a wide range of views on filtering, but in the past the teachers have tended to skew toward a much more open policy and administration and tech support have skewed much more toward a strict policy. While there was a wide variety of opinions present in the room, there seemed to be a much higher level of distrust of students among the teacher participants than what I'm accustomed to.

During one discussion with a high school teacher as we talked about YouTube, he said that if they didn't block it his students would immediately go to the "bad stuff." I asked that since they currently blocked it, how did he know? He replied, "They just would." I then asked exactly what "bad stuff" he thought they would go to on YouTube, and his reply was basically "just bad stuff." I then tried to make the analogy to a newspaper, so I asked if he filtered the newspaper before bringing it into his class. He replied, "Absolutely, I always screen the entire newspaper to make sure it's appropriate before bringing it in to school." (At that point I decided we probably weren't going to agree about YouTube.)

Among a larger than usual proportion of the teachers in the room there seemed to run a general level of distrust of our students. That we needed to control them, and filter the world for them, and make decisions for them. Now, I'm the first one to acknowledge that this is not a black-and-white issue, that as the adults we do sometimes have to make decisions that we feel are in the best interests of our students and that, occasionally, that may mean filtering or blocking - basically censoring - what they are exposed to.

But I see that "occasionally" as being a very rare occurrence. I wonder about the students in that teacher's class who can't be trusted with the newspaper, and how exactly when they turn 18 they suddenly will be able to handle it? I wonder about the students in that teacher's class who walk out into an unfiltered world when they leave the school building and are not having any guidance from the educators in their lives how best to deal with it? I wonder about our willingness to always put our judgment before their's? How exactly will our students become good at making decisions, become good at making judgments, become good at choosing what we would consider the right path if we never give them the opportunity to choose? How will our students become effective citizens in a democracy when they don't get a chance to practice democracy much in K-12?

I wonder how honest it is for us to proclaim that we are educating our students by "protecting" them? Are we protecting them, or ourselves?

< 3 >

I'm really struggling with my Algebra class. (For those not following along, I've picked up one section of Algebra due to budget cuts to go along with my full time technology coordinator job.) In general, I feel like I do a pretty good job of being up front and honest with my students. There are some topics in our Algebra I curriculum that I think aren't particularly necessary at this point (Standard Form of a linear equation comes to mind, as does one and two-variable linear inequalities) and, when those topics come up, I generally let the students know my opinion. I tell them that this is something that I wouldn't choose to teach them at this point, but that it's something that's in the curriculum so that were going to go ahead and learn it. (And, to be clear, I let them know that they are perfectly capable of learning it.)

I also think I'm fairly honest with my students in expressing my belief that while Algebra is probably the most practical of the high school math courses in my school, it still has quite a bit that won't be particularly useful to most of them. That I believe that the habits of mind they develop, that the learning stance they take, that the ability to learn they develop is probably going to more valuable to most of them in the long run then the actual Algebra skills. I try to show them the practical applications of the Algebra where possible, and I try to share some of the elegance of the mathematics where perhaps practical applications are hard to find, but I also freely acknowledge that at least some of what we do is perhaps a waste of their time.

But am I honest enough? I don't tell them that often I'm not sure if what I'm teaching them is in their best interest. I don't tell them that sometimes I don't know why this particular part of Algebra is important. I don't tell them that I often doubt whether this class is the best use of their time. I don't tell them that I struggle with whether I believe students should be taking Algebra in the first place, or whether school as we currently implement it is really designed with their best interests in mind.

But if I tell them all that, will that actually help them? Right now even the students that don't particularly like school or my Algebra class have a basic sense of trust that it's "good for them." Would it be right for me to tell them that I question that assumption, when I really don't have anything to replace it with? Would that harm them more than it would help them?

To be honest . . . I'm not really sure.

< Epilogue >

Primum non nocere (First, do no harm)
Physician and Patient, Worthington Hooker (1847)

Jerry Landers: You know, I'm, I'm liable to lose my job.
God: Lose a job, save a world. Not a bad deal.
Oh, God! (1977)

Upon the People Alone

2011-10-31T16:20:00.002-06:00

(Note: This post departs from the usual education-related content of this blog. Politics alert.)

I don't have enough background knowledge to do this justice, but I wanted to take a moment to recommend that folks who care about democracy read Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress - and a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig.

Lessig makes a compelling case for how money - both campaign finance money and the money associated with the revolving door of politicians and staffers becoming high-paid lobbyists - has corrupted our representative democracy. For me, one of his key points is how he defines corruption. Like most folks, when I hear corruption I think of the most base form: bribery (or, perhaps less derogatory, quid pro quo).

While that certainly exists, Lessig articulates what I've always believed which is that "corrupt" politicians in that sense are few and far between. That the vast majority of folks who go into politics - even the ones I vehemently disagree with on policy - are good people, and want to do good by performing public service. But that the current system has fostered a second type of corruption, what Lessig refers to as "type 2 corruption" (p. 228), or "dependence corruption." This corruption is not as obvious, and it is not bad people doing bad things, it's good people not always doing the right thing due to being placed in a bad system.

Again, I can't do this justice, but in a very simplified form Lessig argues that our current system has negated perhaps the most important principle of the founders: that our elected representatives would be dependent "upon the People alone." (p. 231, I believe originally from Federalist #52) That the current system of lobbying, and campaign finance, and the revolving door between Congress (both elected representatives and their staffers) and lucrative jobs in the lobbying business, has split the dependence of our elected representatives. True, they are "dependent upon the People alone" on election day, but that's the only day they are dependent upon them. The rest of the time the "People" are second-class citizens to those with money.

If you give money, your phone calls get returned. If you give (a lot of) money, your opinion counts (more) than my opinion.

"Individuals with family incomes over $100,000 represented 11% of the population in 2004, cast 14.9% of the votes and were responsible for approximately 80% of the political contributions over $200." Only 10 percent of American citizens give to political campaigns; less than 0.5 percent are responsible for the majority collected from individuals. (p. 233)

The statistics go on and on, you really need to read the book to get the full scope. (As an aside, I did not find this an "easy" book to read, but it's an important one.)

A second, associated problem, is the perception that money influences our elected representatives. Lessig again makes a compelling case that even if the money wasn't influencing our representatives (and he makes the case that it is), it would still be just as pernicious because the perception of the vast majority of the public is that it does corrupt. This damage to the faith we have in our political institutions is just as serious, as it condemns us to have dysfunctional political institutions that can't perform the roles they need to.

About three-fourths of the way through the book I was pretty darn depressed. In fact, I even tweeted to Mr. Lessig and asked if it would have a "happy ending." To my surprise, he replied

This post is partially due to that reply (up to you to decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing). While I have no misconceptions that my blogging will affect much, if perhaps a few more folks read his book and/or begin thinking about these ideas, perhaps it will help.

So what are Lessig's solutions? Well, he outlines several possibilities, but freely admits that they are mostly long-shots. (Yet it is up to to all of us to try.) These possibilities are the ones I found the most intriguing:

The Grant and Franklin Project: Each voter gets a $50 "democracy voucher" (Grant) that they can donate to the candidate or candidates of their choice (this money comes from the taxes we already pay). If they don't donate, it gets donated to the party they belong to. If they don't identify with a party, then it supports the "infrastructure of democracy." (p. 266) In addition, each voter could also contribute up to $100 (Franklin) of their own money to any candidate. The only requirement is that the candidates who accept this money must opt into the system, meaning they would only accept this public financing.
An Unconventional "Primary" Game: Folks enter races against incumbents for the sole reason of putting pressure on the incumbent to support citizen-owned races. By recruiting prominent people in each state (non-politicians) whose sole desire is to change the process, this could apply enough pressure on candidates to do the right thing.
An Unconventional Presidential Game: A candidate runs for President with "a single two-part pledge: if elected, she will (I) hold the government hostage until Congress enacts a program to remove the fundamental corruption that is our government, and (II) once that program is enacted, she will resign." (p. 285) You really have to read this section, it's not as crazy as it sounds. In fact, I would both support and vote for such a candidate.

So, if any of this intrigues you, please read the book. Or watch this 45-minute talk by Lessig about the book if you want a shorter version.

Republic, Lost from lessig on Vimeo.

If any of you happen to be a prominent, non-politician citizen, consider becoming that primary candidate. Visit rootstrikers.org and VotersFirstPledge to learn more. Demand that your candidates for Congress take a pledge to support small-dollar funded campaigns. Ask them the question, repeatedly (and, if possible, in public - and record and post to YouTube).

So, if this is a long-shot as even Lessig admits, why even bother? I can't say it better than Lessig:

Any sane soul who looked at this cause would have to conclude that the odds are overwhelmingly against us. So, why do it? Why waste your time?

I was asked this question quite pointedly once, after a lecture at Dartmouth. "What's the point?" the sympathetic listener asked. "It all seems so hopeless."

And for the first time in my life, in the middle of a public lecture, I was so choked by emotion that I thought I had to stop. For the picture that came into my head as I struggled for a response to this fair yet devastating question was the image of my (then) six-year-old boy, and the thought, the horror, of a doctor's telling me that he had terminal cancer and that "there was nothing to be done." I painted that picture to that Dartmouth audience. And I then asked this: "Would you give up? Would you do nothing?" (p. 306)

This is not an issue of the Left (keep in mind that Lessig clerked for Scalia and was a Young Republican, before turning to his current Libertarian bent). Or of the Right. It applies just as well to the Tea Party as it does to Occupy Wall Street. It's an American issue. I'd even say a human issue. As Lessig states,

We need to remember how different our forebears were. Two hundred-plus years later, they all look the same to us. But they had very different values and radically different ideas about what their republic should be.

They put those differences aside, and saved their nation from ruin. We must do the same. Not after the next election. Now. (p. 326)

Now.

The Perfect Gift for School Leaders

2011-10-19T16:21:00.000-06:00

Looking for that perfect gift for the leaders in your school or district?

Not sure what to get that principal or superintendent that has everything?

Search no more.

Get them What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media (or, if you prefer, the Kindle edition). This collection of short, to-the-point chapters about a variety of educational technologies is an excellent read for those school leaders who understand that technology is an increasingly important component of teaching and learning, but who aren't very comfortable themselves with technology. This wouldn't be a good gift for folks who are immersed in this environment, but for school leaders that want to learn but don't know where to start, this is a great choice.

Compiled and edited by Scott McLeod and Chris Lehmann, this book consists of the following:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Introduction: Chris Lehmann and Scott McLeod
    Foreword: David Warlick

Learning Tools

    Blogs: Kristin Hokanson and Christian Long
    Wikis: Stephanie Sandifer and Vicki Davis
    Podcasts and webinars: Steve Dembo and Wes Fryer
    RSS and RSS readers: Will Richardson and Karl Fisch
    Digital video: Mathew Needleman
    Virtual schooling: Michael Barbour and Rick Ferdig
    One-to-one computing: Chris Lehmann and Pamela Livingston
    Open source software: Tom Hoffman
    Educational gaming: John Rice

Interlude: Social media is changing the way we live and learn: Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

    Social bookmarking: Dean Shareski and Mary Beth Hertz
    Online mind mapping: Carl Anderson and Richard Byrne
    Course management systems: Scott Floyd and Miguel Guhlin

Interlude: See Sally research: Evolving notions of information literacy: Joyce Valenza and Doug Johnson

    Online office tool suites: Diana Laufenberg and Mark Wagner
    Twitter: Alec Couros and Kevin Jarrett
    Online images and visual literacy: Kim Cofino and David Jakes
    Mobile phones: Liz Kolb and Sharon Tonner
    Social networking: Ewan McIntosh and Jeff Utecht

Afterword: Christopher Sessums

(Full Disclosure: I do not receive any compensation from the sale of this book. The entire compensation for my contribution was two free copies of the book. Well, and the opportunity to co-author a chapter with Will Richardson: priceless.)

This I Believe Goes Global: 2011 Edition

2011-10-10T12:29:00.000-06:00

Anne Smith has a post up on her blog about this year's "This I Believe" project. Read her post for all the details, but here are the highlights:

Once again Anne Smith and Maura Moritz will be having their students write their "This I Believe" essays, then record themselves reading them, and post both the essay and the podcast to the wiki.
They are looking for classes who'd like to participate to team up with their classes. Those students would also write and record their own "This I Believe" essays, then the students would read, listen and provide constructive feedback to each other's essays. (Adults can participate, too.)
In addition, we're happy to facilitate additional classes if there's enough interest - we'll try to match up classes based on class size, grade level, and approximate completion date.

There's much more detail on Anne's blog but, if you're interested, check out the wiki and then fill out the Google Form.

#occupytheclassroom

2011-10-07T07:01:00.000-06:00

Back in the spring sometime I tweeted out that I was wondering why we didn’t see similar protests by young people in this country similar to the then-just-beginning Arab Spring protests. While the economic, environmental and education problems that we have pale in comparison to the issues that folks in some of those other countries have to deal with, it still surprised me that there wasn’t more protest here. After all, the present and near future wasn’t look very bright for young people and the leadership of our country seemed to be unable to get much done other than bicker with each other.

Now along comes #occupywallstreet and all the offshoots. (When I saw on Twitter last night that there was an #occupyLexington – where I grew up – that kind of surprised me, and that ultimately spurred this post.) While not only comprised of young people, they are certainly a significant portion of these protests, and I think we’re beginning to see protesters in this country leverage many of the same online tools that folks in Tunisia and Egypt, Yemen and Syria are using (although thankfully without the violence associated with those efforts).

But when I first saw the hashtag #occupytheclassroom in my Twitter stream (can’t recall exactly where or I would link) I smiled . . . and then dismissed it. I was skeptical that any kind of grassroots movement by teachers could have any effect on the current reform juggernaut. Plus teachers, despite our reputation, are generally a conservative lot when it comes to schools – we may want to change a few things, but we generally don’t want to change too much. And, historically, I don’t see much evidence of teacher-driven reform being very successful.

Well, I’m still skeptical, but I keep hearing this little voice in my head. A little voice that says that, in the end, teachers are the ones in the classrooms working with kids each day. After listening for a moment, I remembered whose voice that was. Mine.

About five years ago in some staff development we were doing in my school, I suggested to (argued with?) folks in the staff development that we did have the power to change things. That if we, as a group of reasonably respected and successful teachers in our school, got together and said, “Here are some changes we’d like to make that we think would be beneficial to our students, and here’s why,” that we’d have a pretty decent chance of being listened to.

That instead of blaming “the system,” we should realize that we are the system, and we should advocate for our students when we see things that we don’t believe are in their best interests. And that we, just like the protesters in the middle east, and just like the #occupywallstreet folks, have access to tools that Clay Shirky has shown us make it much easier to not only organize, but to actually effect change. That, really, this thing we call school doesn’t happen without us.

What if we just said, “Enough.”

What if we just said, “Your reform is bad for our students. We need to transform.”

What if we just said, “Not in my classroom. Not to my students. Not to my own children.”

What if we did #occupytheclassroom?

What if I #occupiedmyclassroom?

What if you #occupiedyourclassroom?

I’m still skeptical. But a little less than I was. And maybe, just maybe, a little hopeful.

You?

Update: It looks like this post by Jose Vilson was probably the source of the #occupytheclassroom hashtag that eventually appeared in my Twitter stream.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

2011-10-05T18:42:00.000-06:00

Thanks Steve.

Image by Jonathan Mak

Not Just the Facts, Ma'am

2011-10-02T18:17:00.001-06:00

My sixth grade daughter came home with a social studies homework assignment this weekend: Research 10 Facts About Your Country (in her case, the Bermuda Islands).

Now, I want to be clear here, I'm not necessarily saying this is a bad assignment. I don't know where the teacher is going with this. I could see this being the start of a really interesting exploration of countries, we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

We began by doing what the assignment asked. We helped Abby find some appropriate websites about Bermuda and she read through them and tried to pull out some interesting and relevant facts about Bermuda (copying and pasting into a Google Doc). We also pulled up Bermuda on Google Maps to see where it is, and went to Flickr to look at some pictures of Bermuda. We had some decent conversations about what might be considered important about a country, but what might also be interesting to other sixth graders.

Now, at this point, it's an okay if not particularly engaging assignment and, again, I don't know where the teacher/class is going next with this. But, because Abby is our kid (some would say "has the misfortune of being our kid") we asked her if she might like to try to talk to someone in Bermuda and ask them some questions. (We're walking a fine line here, but we're trying to encourage her to be more curious and less anxious about just finishing the assignment.) She said sure, so I tweeted out

Within a couple of minutes Jennifer tweeted back

And then a few minutes later Shannon tweeted

Shannon kindly agreed to a Skype conversation the next day and Abby generated a list of about 12 questions to ask. As you can see from the video below, the Skype connection wasn't always great (my guess is bandwidth issues getting to Bermuda, but who knows), but it still worked fairly well.

We learned several things about Bermuda that Abby hadn't found in her initial search for "10 facts", including that they catch rainwater from their roofs for all of their fresh water, that girls like playing "netball," and that each house is only allowed to own one car. She also got to see what the roofs and houses looked like, and what Shannon and his wife (and their house) looked and sounded like. Ultimately Abby combined this new information with what she already had, came up with her 10 facts, and we printed out the Google Doc to staple to the homework worksheet. (Yes, I know, but sometimes it's just easier to print and staple than perhaps cause problems by asking to turn it in electronically. She also made a blog post.)

So, which is Abby more likely to remember, the facts she found from a couple of websites, or the 15 minute conversation with Shannon and his wife? (After we hung up we were talking about collecting the rainwater for all their water needs and Abby said, "Wow, they must get a lot of rain." I'm thinking that has more of an impact than reading their annual rainfall in inches.) Which one gave her a better feel for what it was like to live in Bermuda? Which is more likely to encourage her to be curious about the world around her?

What assignments of your own could perhaps be revisited? How can you help connect your students to the wider world around them?

Netbook Update

2011-09-29T19:20:00.001-06:00

Ben Grey has a post over on The Edge of Tomorrow that's worth your time if you're in the position of deciding what kinds of devices to purchase for your students. You really should go read the post (and the comments), but I just wanted to pull out my comment as some folks began investigating netbooks after a previous post of mine.

So, here was my comment (in the context of that post and comment thread, but still mostly makes sense on its own):

Let me just contribute a little info about our experience with netbooks running ubermix.

First, they clearly are inferior to the MacBooks when it comes to video editing and photo manipulation. Now, you can still do some basic video editing on low-res video, and also some basic image manipulation (cropping, brightness, etc.), but you certainly wouldn’t want to do a ton of that on the netbook unless you absolutely had to. I also agree that iLife is something that’s not matched elsewhere, which is why having some iMacs or MacBooks around for those purposes is probably ideal (which is what it looks like Ben’s district has done).

Second, a Mac is going to be a little faster than the netbook at lots of things, and that’s nice to have, and typically the screen is going to be larger (both physically and in terms of pixels), which is also nice.

Third, certainly the touch interface of an iPad (and perhaps a MacBook soon?) is a great addition in many instances (and a drawback in terms of text entry, fingerprints, and scratches).

But I don’t want to get into that part of the argument, I feel like Ben looked at many devices and tried to make the best decision possible for his students, so let me talk a bit about what our netbooks running Jim Klein’s ubermix can do, as that might be helpful to folks reading this thread. Our current district approved model is the Asus Eee #1001-PXD-MU17-BU at $259.40. I can’t tell you for sure how long the battery lasts because it lasts an entire school day, but my best guess is around 8-10 hours. Our two-year old ASUS netbooks last between 4 and 6 hours, meaning they do occasionally run out before the end of the school day. In comparison our (Dell, running Windows XP) laptop batteries last 2-3 hours and also seem to degrade and need to be replaced more quickly.

The machines boot in less than a minute (and shut down in about 20 seconds) and you have a fairly extensive list of standard software to choose from, as well as you can add just about anything open source you like. Since, like lots of folks, we are moving to more web-based software, it can quickly and easily access Google Docs (and the rest of the Google suite) using either Firefox or Chrome. It does run Flash, and Java, although occasionally we’ll run across a site that requires a specific OS (typically Windows, sometimes Windows or Mac). In general, accessing the web is quick, easy and functional.

If you don’t want to use Google Docs or something else online, it does come standard with the current version of LibreOffice, which is full-featured enough for almost any student. It also has Audacity, Skype, Gimp, Google Earth, GeoGebra, Scratch, Webcam software, and a variety of other software. The only software we’ve added to it is Logger Pro to run our science probes and some Dell printer drivers (although we have customized the look and feel quite a bit). You can, of course, download and install just about any open source Linux software.

It is easily customizable and has a very nice imaging process. Once you create the image you can copy that to a 4 GB or larger flash drive and then the imaging process takes about 6 minutes per machine using that flash drive. What I do is copy the image to 16 or so flash drives, then set out 16 netbooks on a table and start imaging. By the time I get to #16 the first one is usually done imaging. If your image is complete, then you’re done. What I do because we have netbooks in lots of different rooms is I create one image that has all of the possible printers that our netbooks print to setup on them, then after I image I simply delete all but the one that needs to be there (faster for me than copying a new image to all 16 flash drives). That probably adds about 2 minutes to each machine to do that. So, by the time I image all 16 and then work my way around and delete those printers, it’s probably about 15-20 minutes per set of 16.

These machines are not locked down (although they can be), so students can – if you or they choose – customize them. While that’s scary to some folks (again, you could lock them down), the beauty is that the built-in restore function works in about 30 seconds. On boot up you can restore to your image and it adds about 30 seconds to the boot process and keeps any user documents. Or, you can choose to completely restore – wiping out the user docs as well – and it’s about 3 minutes. You can even set them to auto-restore back to the image on each boot if you’d like. (And while I typically do it, the process is easy enough that any teacher could be given a 3-step list of instructions to restore on their own if necessary.) Other than a little bit of knowledge to first create the image (and, trust me, I only have a little bit of Linux knowledge), these don’t require much support. (In fact, that’s partially why our tech department approved them, because they don’t have to support them.)

While I don’t use this feature, you can push out updates to them from a server. A script is installed as part of your image that checks for updates, and then if you put a new update out on the server it will grab it (either at startup or shutdown I believe). I’ve chosen not to mess with that, at least partially because so far each year the updated version of ubermix has been enough better that I’ve simply chosen to reimage all of my netbooks (again, at about 15-20 minutes per set of 16, working by myself, that’s not bad, but your mileage may vary).

While our netbooks don’t go home with students, they are used pretty heavily and we’ve had very few hardware issues. In four years we’ve had 2 or 3 cracked screens, a couple of failed hard drive/ssd drives, and a fair number of keys that get picked off and then we’ve had to replace the keyboard. They connect easily to our open wireless network and seem to match our Dell laptops running Win XP in terms of download speed via wireless.

While we did do some training with our Language Arts teachers, it really wasn’t around Linux or the netbooks, it was around what to do with them. Teachers and students both just pick them up and use them – if they are comfortable using any computer, they are comfortable using these – not really much of a learning curve. We have them available for check out in our media center, and also in our Study Center, and students – even ones that don’t have a class that uses them – don’t seem to have any issues using them.

So, I’m not necessarily trying to support one side of the argument or the other, but I think many folks reading this discussion don’t have any experience with the specifics of what Ben is talking about with his netbooks running ubermix, so I’m hoping this helps a bit. For us, the cost factor (as well as the ease of setup/support) is huge. Yes, I would prefer to give our students MacBooks over netbooks, but at a greater than 3 to 1 price ratio that’s a tough call to make. I think we’ll continue to see devices evolve. In the meantime, I would encourage everyone to at least explore a netbook running ubermix if you think it might meet the needs of your students and teachers.

Just Write Poorly. In Public. Every Day.

2011-09-23T15:53:00.000-06:00

Seth Godin has some advice about writing:

The reason we don't get talker's block is that we're in the habit of talking without a lot of concern for whether or not our inane blather will come back to haunt us. Talk is cheap. Talk is ephemeral. Talk can be easily denied.

We talk poorly and then, eventually (or sometimes), we talk smart. We get better at talking precisely because we talk. We see what works and what doesn't, and if we're insightful, do more of what works. How can one get talker's block after all this practice?

Writer's block isn't hard to cure.

Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better.

I believe that everyone should write in public. Get a blog. Or use Squidoo or Tumblr or a microblogging site. Use an alias if you like. Turn off comments, certainly--you don't need more criticism, you need more writing.

Do it every day. Every single day. Not a diary, not fiction, but analysis. Clear, crisp, honest writing about what you see in the world. Or want to see. Or teach (in writing). Tell us how to do something.

So, are you having your students write every day? In public? I know I'm not (although I'm starting to have them write a bit).

I think we're often overly concerned about the quality of our students' writing, and whether it's "good enough" to share. Now, to be clear, I think our students should be concerned with the quality of their writing, and should strive to get better at communicating their thoughts. But if we let the worry about what others will think get in the way of having our students write more, and for a larger audience, then we're doing them a disservice out of fear.

This begs the question, of course, about how much our teachers are writing. Particularly our Language Arts teachers, but really all of our teachers. If it's so important for our students to write, how come we're not modeling it?

Do you write every day? In public? Why or why not?

One. Third.

2011-09-08T19:29:00.000-06:00

Two different data depictions crossed my information stream in the last twenty-four hours. Let’s see what they have in common.

First up is this data visualization of PISA scores put together by Michael Marder, a Professor of Physics and the Associate Dean for Science and Mathematics education at the University of Texas, Austin. Unlike the usual way these scores are presented (particularly to the American public), this time the U.S. scores are broken down by poverty level. Here’s a screenshot, but you really should explore the interactive Tableau visualization or view the mp4 that Professor Marder narrates.

Second was this report (pdf) from the Colorado School Finance Project, depicting the characteristics of Colorado’s K-12 population over the last 17 years. Again, a screenshot, but take a look at the entire PDF as well.

[As you view the Colorado data above, also keep in mind the current budget situation facing Colorado school districts (pdf).]

Now, regular readers of this blog (are there any of those any more given my recent blogging drought?) know that I have some serious concerns about various aspects of our education system, and I believe there are many changes we need to make to best meet the needs of our students. My current frustration, however, is that I feel most of the talk around education reform at the national, state and even local level is not only about the wrong issues, but also misreads the data and ignores the most important factor affecting what they (not I) believe is the best metric for measuring how our students are learning.

For some reason Alex Trebek’s voice popped into my head while thinking about this.

Me: I’ll take Education Reform for $1000, Alex.
Alex: It’s the Daily Double! How much will you wager?
Me: I’ll bet it all on Education Reform, Alex.
Alex: That’s very bold. The one issue that well-known national education reformers might actually be able to have an impact on, but also the biggest issue they pointedly ignore.
Me: What is poverty?
Alex: That is correct!

To be clear, I don’t think poverty is our only issue in education. Nor do I think we should use it as an “excuse.” But as long as reformers think that "test scores" and "accountability" are the best path to meeting the needs of our students, then I think they need to get past the rhetoric and address the underlying issue of child poverty. The hypocrisy of misusing data to justify asking for more and more data from schools in order to judge how well we’re doing is stunning.

A full one-third of public education students in Colorado are on free lunch. One. Third. Until we address that, please spare me any more discussion of CSAP/TCAP/ACT/PISA/TIMMS/NCLB/RttT/YAA.