Sign of the times...

On the EdWeek Digital Education Blog, I read about a law that says educators can't use social networks to contact students... OK, seems reasonable... but wait... my son has been my student and he is my FaceBook friend... and the law says I can't contact former students.. wait, what?... really?

So... here is a situation... I have maintained contact with a former student... as he graduated form high school, then college... his parents invite me to their house when he is in town so we can catch up, and I occasionally contacts him via FaceBook to seek his advice (he works as a computer programmer). Now I am breaking the law when I do that (well at least in Missouri).

I understand the need to protect people, but really... doesn't this seem a little too far. 

South Korea

While browsing EdWeek today, I was intrigued by this article which indicates the South Korea government intends to supply students with tablets so they can access virtual textbooks.

I can hear my colleagues response now, "But they only use computers for dumb stuff." (And they are surely accurate in this assessment... if I had a nickel for each game, "sneezing panda" video on YouTube, and attempts to post "<3  this" or "LOL" on FaceBook have I observed in school, I could retire.)

Unfortunately, many teachers accept that observation as a reason that they should not use computers with students. I counter, if e don't give students something other than "dumb stuff" to do with their computers, then we can only blame ourselves for the predominance of  dumb stuff.

August: Tools to Know

August is here. A word that brings mixed feelings to educators. Before this month is out, we will be back in school. As the days of freedom to read and write what I want when I want (and the option of clearing my head by going to the garden for a few minutes disappears) dwindle to a precious few, I am reintroducing myself to a few tools... looking for changes, looking for new connections. I will post these tools here as I rediscover them...

If you haven't uses WolframAlpha yet, please take a few minutes and revisit it... a search engine for computable data, and it is amazing the data that is kept. The quick tour is here.

Khan Academy has been gaining some attention as it makes thousands of video available--basically show-and-tell speaker and "chalkboard" for solving math and science problems. Everything from addition to calculus.

Rediscovering John Perry Barlow...

Something made me think of John Perry Barlow's A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace that he wrote in 1996 as a response to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which was the first attempt pf the US government to regulate (some say censor) what what said by whom on the Internet.

It had been probably six or eight years since I last read it... it is still timely... as much now as it was then. I think I am going to have my middle school students read it this year.

https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html

Cyborg Anthropology

In this short TED Talk, Amber Case describes some of the important trends in cyborg anthropology... she makes excellent points with which we should all be familiar:

• technology extends us
• information technology extends our cognitive abilities
• we have amazing connections that increase our humanness
• we do need time to reflect

Baseball in the Digital Age-- The World is Changing

My sons and I went to Fenway Park on Sunday--saw a Sox victory, Terry Francona's 1001th win as a manager and Tim Wakefield's 2000th strikeout as a Red Sox pitcher. Lets' look a little deeper:

1) We purchased tickets from a season ticket holder who had placed them on a web site that caters to that market.

2) We downloaded and printed our own tickets which were scanned so that we could enter the stadium.

3) Waiting for the subway, my son started downloading the app for MBTA.

4) I paid for gas and subway "tokens" by putting my credit card in the gas pump and the Charlie Card vending machine.

5) Fans in the really expensive seats just below us (we had Pavilion Box seats) were placing orders for concessions with wait staff using digitized pads, and paying with credit cards that were scanned on those pads.

6) I saw many fans (including myself) taking pictures with their phones, updating their status on FaceBook, sending email, and otherwise sharing the experience with others.

The experience of handing your ticket to an usher and having a torn stub handed back appears to be gone... the experience of passing food from vendor in the aisle to those further down the row and then money and change back and forth seems to be leaving (at least in some seats)... the experience on knowing just how much the trip costs by the disappearing collection of bills in your pocket appears to be gone as well.

Need Evidence the World is Changing?

I dare anyone to watch this and then build an argument for keeping math education "same as it ever was... same as it ever as... same as it ever was..."

ISBN & DOI-- a primer

I was excited about Zotero (see yesterday's post and previous posts) and had the chance to show it to a colleague. He asked a great question, and I realized I probably needed to introduce educators to these tools as they are very useful in the web-centric world in which Google dominates.

ISBN's are International Standard Book Numbers-- these 13-digit numbers identify every book that is published (a few years ago the standard switched from 10 digits to 13 digits, thus many books have two ISBN's).

DOI's are Digital Object Identifiers-- these much longer than 13-digit "numbers" (letters are also allowed in doi's--sometimes the acronym is capitalized, sometimes not) are assigned by publishers to articles that are published in periodicals, and because most periodicals are accessed via online databases, these facilitate searching.

When you find an ISBN or a DOI, you can enter it in a search box (you can Google it) and the details of the resources are immediately available--and ISBN's and doi's can be entered into Zotero to be automatically added to your bibliography.

Try it... 

copy and paste this bold text: 10.1080/01972240600567170 into Google and you will find details of this article:
Deuze, M. (2006). Participation, Remediation, Bricolage: Considering Principal Components of a Digital Culture. The Information Society, 22(2), 63-75.


copy and paste this bold text: 9780385533065 into Google and you will find details of this book:
Christian, B. (2011). The most human human : what talking with computers teaches us about what it means to be alive (1st ed.). New York: Doubleday.

Zotero -- Really gotta use it!

Previously, I suggested Zotero is an excellent tool for managing and sharing bibliographic records. As I made the suggestion just after I learned about the site, I was commenting only on what I thought the potential was; recently, I have been trying to polish up a writing project and so have a growing bibliography... when it is done, I expect around 100 sources.

I have been managing the bibliography with Zotero. When writing, I have my word processor with the reference section open in a file and I have Firefox with the Zotero plug in installed. I add references to Zotero with the ISBN or DOI and wait a few second for the information to be loaded into Zotero, then drag the icon for the source from Firefox onto the task bar and into the reference file, and move the drop text cursor to the correct spot in the list and drop it.

I do notice about 20% of the entries have some error... maybe listing only one of several authors is the most common error I have noticed. Most of the sources I am using for my project are also being added to a group I started... check it out:

http://www.zotero.org/groups/21st_century_schools

The Internet

For those who have been paying attention, this summer has been full of stories about information technologies and the ethics of those devices. Personally, I hope these stories stay in the news and western societies continue the collective conversation about how to conduct ourselves in the digital world. I hope we ("the people") also continue to be heard and those who acted in an unethical manner (and their bosses and the owners of the companies for which they worked) are held accountable both economically and criminally.

As educators, we all have a responsibility to engage our students in discussions about the world in which they live and to encourage them to think about what companies and governments are doing and how those actions affect us. To that end, the speaker in a recently posted TED Talk proposes we "take the Internet back." It is on my "to share ith students" list for the fall:

Interesting View of the Internet

An RSA Animate video that challenges some of the assumptions that are common about technology and its social influences is available on YouTube:

Some TED wisdom...

I have not visited TED yet this summer... today, I happened to stop by and found a couple of interesting talks... and they are short!

The Information

This summer, I finished James Gleick's The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood. This is a book that needs to become on of the "must reads" for the second decade of the 21st century; despite the 426 pages of text.

The subtitle does explain the content and organization of the book perfectly. First, several chapters dedicated to the arrival of writing (and its effects on society) and the history of books and computers and networks. These chapters deserve careful reading and reflection by those who hope to be educated in our knowledge age. Second, several chapters detailing the work of the information theorists in the mid-20th century and ho people like Claude Shannon and Alan Turing (and their many colleagues and collaborators) tamed and framed information so that that computer revolution could occur. Finally, a brief treatment of the changed information landscape.

Educators should take some time to become familiar with the history and the flood of information and to come to understand the implications for their work and the questions that arise. These are the issues that will determine the direction our professional takes in the coming years. Educators should be familiar with the theory of information because it tells us the concepts upon which our professional is built, but I am think getting caught up in those details may interfere with what we do in the classroom.

Thinking About Distance Learning

Educators who surf the World Wide Web frequently encounter advertisements for online universities. The sales pitches are enticing for busy adults who seek a graduate degree; “learn on your own schedule,” “save costs,” finish quickly through accelerated schedules.” The advertisements come from diverse providers, including for-profit universities which have been in the news for unflattering reasons over the last year.

Verifying the accreditation of any university is as easy as visiting the web site of an accrediting agency to find the status of member institutions. Understanding the nature of and quality of online teacher education is much more difficult, however. For more than a decade, I have been involved with online learning as a teacher, a learner, and a facilitator of students’ online work. My experiences have been ancillary to my work as a teacher and an adjunct instructor of graduate courses in traditional settings, and these have led me to several conclusions and six bits of advice for educators who are considering an online degree.

Good students are good students. Students who engage with the course content, their classmates, and their instructors in a reflective and active manner will gain the most from the course. This observation is as accurate for online learners as it is for traditional learners. Openness to ideas and interaction matters most, the differences between those experienced online and those experienced face-to-face are of minimal importance.

Online learners miss informal interactions. When attending face-to-face classes, students have the chance to chat before, between, after, and during classes. Such conversations are a safe place for learners to question and validate new ideas and to test their thinking. Those informal situations are difficult to replicate in online settings so online learners have limited access to these valuable interactions.

Online learners gain access to more diverse colleagues. The population of learners for face-to-face studies is usually drawn from local populations; the instructors may have been drawn from more diverse populations. Online learning communities tend to be comprised of people from urban, suburban and rural, rich and poor, and racially mixed backgrounds. Access to such populations is a benefit of online learning.

Becoming educated requires knowledge, not information. Although an online program delivered on an accelerated calendar exposes students to the same amount of information as a face-to-face program meeting over a longer calendar, accelerated calendars do not allow for reflection on and application of that information which is an essential experience for teachers who are graduate students. One way to gain such experience is to participate in professional organizations while a graduate student. This also provides an opportunity for building a network of local colleagues which can be difficult for online learners.

Expect “canned” curriculum. In an effort to ensure all students are exposed to the same curriculum and to make the curriculum appealing to broad audiences, many online universities employ curriculum developers to build courses. While this does free instructors from class preparation (perhaps to devote more time to assessing students’ work) and it does allow for quality control by the managers of the school, it does limit teachers’ freedom to expand the curriculum, include emerging ideas, or respond to events that may influence how the content is perceived by the students.

Many online universities mix business and education, and the results are equivocal. As more institutions enter the online education market, there is a great deal of competition for online students; so decisions are may made with the goal of attracting and enrolling new students. Also, decisions may be made to maximize the tuition generated by a program and minimize the expense of providing the program; that goal is explicit in for-profit universities. I recently was offered an adjunct teaching position at a for-profit university. I quickly recognized that my pay would be well below the livable wage where I live, and my son calculated that he makes more per hour working part-time at the local supermarket than I would as an adjunct instructor for that university.

There does appear to be a role for online universities in 21st century education. Providing graduate level coursework and degrees for busy and isolated educators is one role. However, educators who enroll in such programs have a particular responsibility to be active learners and to find professional experiences beyond online coursework to complete their education. Further, students in these courses must realize that the degree-granting institution to which they pay tuition may be motivated by goals other than their students’ education. Although that may have been true of graduate education for teachers in the past also, it is more overt today. 

NPR reports on using video in classrooms

NPR continues to keep education on our radar this summer:

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/22/137318998/schools-blend-computers-with-classroom-learning

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/23/137325550/math-videos-go-from-youtube-hit-to-classroom-tool

Interesting Comments in Education in China

The more I try to avoid education issues as my summer starts, the more interesting and education-connected stories I hear.

This morning NPR featured a story about China, and a part of the story focused on the educational system.
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/22/137320938/chinas-businesses-boom-but-its-brands-dont

It appears there are two approaches to education: learn-this-and-don't-question-your-teachers or seek-creative-answers-(and-questions). The person being interviewed (an American PhD who was born and raised in China) suggested that the more creative approach is the one he values and seeks to instill in his students and it is one that is contrary to what he experienced in China.

I am in agreement... we cannot be sure what are students are going to encounter in their future and leaders (teachers, school administrators, politicians, etc.) who think they have the answers in their past are just plain wrong-- and the students who attend the schools designed by those people are in trouble (economically, politically, and culturally).

Privatizing education

I am increasingly concerned over the role that educators are allowing business and industry to play in education. Morning Edition on NPR featured a story this morning to addressed that issue:

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/20/137172536/fight-ensues-over-facebook-money-for-n-j-schools

For me the problem can be even more localized. In the last couple of years, I have been associated with a principal who has allowed a business-person-turned-philanthropist to gain deep access into his school. The philanthropist's advice as taken when making purchase decisions, curriculum decisions, and even decisions related to long-term planning. Now, I understand the reasoning... "the philanthropist has some money and we can gain some resources that would otherwise by unavailable." But one has to wonder if the costs of the philanthropist's cash is worth it: I observed several years' worth of planning and training made obsolete when the philanthropist decided that the school should use different software. I observed the school make an unplanned purchase of several tens of thousands of dollars so that the philanthropist's vision could come closer. I saw several educators become disenfranchised so that the professional development money spent for those teachers was effectively lost to the school.

Some of those disenfranchised educators and I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation, and we concluded that the approximately $25,000 from the philanthropist had cost the school about $50,000. Alternatively, we could conclude that the $50,000 spent by the school had resulted in $75,000 in purchase.

When we consider, however, that much of that money as spent on redundant technology (i.e. "upgrading" software that was perfectly functional) and that the philanthropist has ended the relationship with the school and there are several teacher-leaders who were displaced by the philanthropist and who do not anticipate returning to a leadership role in the school, the negative effect of the experience on the school culture and climate will be long-lasting; those effects will be around long after the technology purchased by the philanthropist becomes obsolete.

Magazines and Authentic Writing

Especially today, there are many options for having students' writing bound. I use Lulu, but I know there are many other options.

The Teacher Leader Network, which is brought to you by the EdWeek folks, has featured an article that gives some great pointers on having students write magazine articles. Great fodder for summer planning!

A Voice of Reason!

I have been frustrated with some of the news surrounding education at the end of the year... partly because of some stories and experiences with leaders who have demonstrated terrible "leadership" (I wonder how people with advanced degrees can hold some opinion they do and take the actions they do).

The I found a leader who shared his nine truths of data analysis...

I am refreshed by his ideas, especially his conclusion:

So, let’s end the talk of AYP and Race to the Top. Let’s talk instead about our moral purpose, which is, as Fullan reminds us, twofold: to increase the achievement of all students and to eliminate learning gaps.

Share this with parents!

ScienceNews carried a story about the health risks associated with watching television. Seems like a story we all should share with students and parents as they leave for the summer.

Also seems like a good argument for exploratory activities in middle schools (and other schools as well)... walking clubs, fitness-based PE, gardens, these are all activities that we should spend time doing with our students. Perhaps we can spark and interest that will keep them off the couch and well as adults.

Photo editing

A few students have been looking for options for editing photos-- they have a large collection of pictures that they have been taking on their digital cameras... typical end of the year stuff for middle schoolers.

I showed them Fotoflexer and Picnik... based on their reaction, I am thinking that those who look at this blog may also find 'em useful.

A frustrating story... but read through to the end.

When I heard the report on NPR yesterday about the issues surrounding a Rhode Island high school and the "failure" of the school to produce results despite radical changes in the organization of the school, I started reacting to the story and talking back to the radio. But by the end of the story, I was frustrated and largely resigned to accept that schools have largely become political institutions.

In the story as it appears on the NPS web site, we see  a large section of the story is dedicated to "placing blame." Teachers blaming administrators, administrators blaming teachers. In the end, students losing.

In the last several years, I have observed what I call "smoke-and-mirror" education becoming more common. Teachers are calling silly and irrelevant classroom practices "student-centered instruction." Principals are calling last-minute changes implemented to avoid labor disputes or reductions in staff "innovative reforms."

At the end of the story about Central Falls, we hear that the school has become "a cautionary tale about the complexities of school reforms and whether the federal government should be dictating what those reforms should be." Based on the evidence in the story and the observations I have made, I am beginning to wonder if educators should even be involved.

Just as the frustration sets in and I begin to loose hope, I had some messages in my inbox from NELMS friends, and I was reminded that there are good educators around and they are doing great work, and the NELMS community is full of these professionals.

I think I am in the wrong business...

FaceBook is worth $100 billion? Really?

Must be those FarmVille gardens grow magic beans!

Hackers and the Cloud

I am a fan of cloud computing... using web-based applications like Google Docs and similar tools. Recently, All Things Considered, the NPR news program, ran a story that focused on the treats to cloud computing from hackers. While the story does point to potential threats, it also points to a reason why cloud computing is appealing. There are threats to online resources out there, and as an educator who has all he can do to teach and support local users, I don't have the time or the expertise to keep ahead of the potential threats on the web. By using the cloud, I am joining a cooperative that is supporting those who do have that expertise, and I am trusting they will do their job well

NCLB News

In recent days, No Child Left Behind has been in the news as the administration has been saying that "rules will be relaxed" unless it is reauthorized. NPR has published a reasoned account: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/12/137135625/arne-duncans-plan-b-may-leave-no-child-behind 

I am thinking that we really need to think about reauthorizing a law that has left many children behind (the drop out rate has been increasing since NCLB arrived on the scene) and we have been measuring our value and placing our children's future in the hands of the test authors.

Open Source Textbooks?

Free online textbooks? Really? Are they credible? Can we use them to offer students experiences that would not be available otherwise?

These are questions I hope to explore over the summer, and this web site is one that I will put on my list"

http://www.ck12.org/flexbook/

A spring stand-alone connecting art and science and computers...

This 10-minute TED talk it entitled "Taking imagination seriously," and the artist makes here point quite well.

IMG00055-20110608-1400.jpg

Database question

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Digital Learning Amazes Me...

Yesterday, I was on our school's full-text database in search of a few articles for a writing project that has the potential of consuming my summer, when I found a new link to a product provided by the publishers: A collection of five foreign language courses delivered via video (a mix of audio with transcripts and video).

Sure, there are complaints that could be registered-- there is no instructor, there is no feedback, there is no way to justify a grade. But surely, there are benefits also. In my school we have no option for teaching French, German, or Mandarin, but students can at least be exposed to those languages and cultures via this new tool. The frustrating thing for me, is that I get excited about new technologies and new opportunities for our students available via technology, but when I share them with colleagues the reaction is usually something along the lines of "that'd nice, but it won't fit into my classroom."

Apple's iCloud

The big news yesterday was Apple's announcement of iCloud-- a cloud computing platform. I am have been a cloud computer for some time, so I am unsure if it will cause me to change anything. Interestingly, in this BBC report, one of the experts who is interviewed does observe that cloud computing will be "the next big thing" with 70,000,000 Americans moving to the cloud in the next five years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13677690

Google Earth... Weather Now!

A student (who is whining that I am not giving him a "shout out") was looking around on Google Earth today and recognized that there is now an option to add weather-- yes real-time conditions-- to a Google Earth display. The layers options now include radar and clouds as well as current conditions.

Perhaps this is a tropical storm forming in the Atlantic? (I doubt it.) This does put yet another amazing tool into the hands of students and teachers,  however.

Another Book for Summer Reading...

My pile of summer reading is getting too tall already, but this review of 'A New Culture of Learning' by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown makes me think I ned to put that one on my list as well.

Math Education

This guy must be brilliant, because he is saying what I have been saying for years!

Just for fun on a Friday!

Gotta love the physics games!

http://www.physicsgames.net/swf/dynamicsystems.swf

The World is Changing...

Hackers have been in the news lately... cyberattacks can be considered an act of war... China is attacking Google? Oh my...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13626548

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13614125

PhET Simulations

Many science teachers are aware of the collection of Java-based interactives maintained by the Physics Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I have used the collection with students in grades 5-12 for several years.

As I have visited recently, I have noticed several new and interesting simulations.

YouTube Education

If your school IT folks still block YouTube, then perhaps you need to show them

http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400

Of course, they may be familiar with it already. Of course, they still may have god reasons to block it-- it can consume huge amounts of bandwidth!

Still, educators-- teachers, leaders, and IT folks-- can no longer ignore the content that is available on YouTube and the connection kids feel to it.

Cloud Computing

One of the web sites I hang around on (yes, I now I need to get a life) introduced me to JoliCloud... basically a "site" that allows you to manage your accounts on cloud computing from one place.

I am not sure how all of the applies to middle school educators, but I do think it points to the "de-webbing" of the Internet. Whereas much of the growth of the Internet in the first two decades of its existence was based on the use of the World Wide Web, much of the current growth occurs via "apps" which are accessed via the Internet, but are not the web as we have come to know it as an open resource that anyone can access.

Alternatives to PowerPoint

Here is an interesting collection of tools that are alternatives to PowerPoint... this list includes options for creating web-based slide shows and for uploading directly to YouTube and similar services.

It sure seems like a good spring standalone to have students create a presentation on perhaps their favorite sports team (may I suggest the Boston Red Sox!) with the expressed purpose of finding the one that is the best (easiest to use and most useful).

http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools

Makes You Wonder...

Now, I am a fan of online learning. When it is done right, it can be a very meaningful experience for students. "Doing it right" means students who engage in the content and with their classmates on a regular basis and teachers who do the same.

I was recently offered a contract teaching at an online college that offers masters degrees for educators. During the interview, I was told that the pay was $2300 per course. An amount about 30% less than I earned for teaching at the local community college last fall, but about 25% more than I earned for teaching at a similar online college about a year ago. Well, the fine print of the contract showed that the $2300 is only if the course has 55 or more students! If the course has a reasonable number of students, let's say 20, the pay is less than half what I was told I would earn, and further, this contract is as an independent contractor, so I would be responsible for all taxes.

I did a little math, and found that-- even before I include any additional time for completing the tax documents necessary for being an independent contractor-- if I work the expected number of hours teaching the course (55 which I think is too few to give students reasonable feedback on their work) , I will bring home less money per hour for teaching graduate students in education than my kids do working at the local supermarket.

This makes me think back to when I first started teaching-- in 1988. My salary back then was $15 per week more than I got paid mowing lawns. But that was in take home pay... my school also paid my benefits, so that is not really a fair comparison.

This makes me wonder about the future of online education... as for me, I intend to ignore that contract... I would prefer to donate my services to NELMS than to allow the owners of a for-profit college to make such profits from my work.

More Homework for Teachers

I just received and email from the folks at TED (I joined their TED-ED list a few months back) and they are seeking submissions from educators... come up with your most creative idea and submit!

The list of categories they are seeking submissions to fill \is here:

http://education.ted.com/content.php?368-submission-categories

Something to Think About

Yochai Benkler has spoken and written about how information technology is changing the economic, political, and social dynamics of societies around the globe. In this talk from more than five years ago, he summarizes some of his important ideas... this is not really a presentation for students (although I am sure it can start some good conversations in many classrooms).. my goal is to get educators thinking about the future for which they are preparing their students.

Your Summer Reading

OK middle school teachers... time to prepare your own summer reading list as well as you students' list. Here is your assugnment:

1) If you don't use your school's full-text databases, talk to your librarian and find out how to access any that you have available.


2) If you don't have access or if you are familiar with your database, then visit the Directory of Open Access Journals, a site that links to more than a thousand peer-reviewed journals. Find one that is of interest to you (not your students, this is for you!) and read abstracts, articles, and reviews.

I used to work with a superintendent who said that part of his job was to help teachers who had become burned-out rediscover the enthusiasm that brought them into education. He tried to achieve that through supporting professional learning. I keep that spirit alive in myself by reading... I have a tall stack of books awaiting me and my porch this summer... and the titles have little to do with education... there is biology and cognitive science and other science. I also intend to read a dozen open access journals!

http://www.doaj.org/

Gotta Share

Here is a little humor, but also one pointed commentary on nature of the world today...

http://www.ted.com/talks/gel_gotta_share.html

Spring Standalone-- Crayon Physics

A group of students have been playing Numpty Physics in my computer room lately... this is a version of a game that is available in several places... such as here.

Many kids find it an interesting challenge and they are frequently observed collaborating on solutions. Not necessarily the greatest academic activity ever, I am sure it is not "covered" on any test, but I will take a young person who can collaborate on these and solve these well over a young person who can answer tests questions any day!

Non-neutrality of Technology

I have recently finished Andrew Feenberg's Questioning Technology.... it is a book on the philosophy of technology from last century. He responds to many of the philosophers who presented ideas about technology and how technology influences society. Such authors have been on my reading list for most of the winter and spring, and so I was surprised when I found myself-- while reading the final chapter of his book-- coming to the conclusion that the reason schools have not changed since the arrival of digital technologies is that we have ignored the influences technologies have on how we think and communicate. Many scholars refer to this as the non-neutrality of technology.

So, if technology is non-neutral-- which it is-- then any attempts to integrate it into what we are already doing in our schools is sure to fail. Our schools emerged in response to other technologies and other social systems. Those technologies and systems are largely irrelevant today. Once we all realize that, then we can go about the work of reinventing our schools and our practices to reflect the new realities.

Spring Stanalone-- Science

I am a science guy at heart... I started life as a scientist and continue to harbor the dream of spending my life in the biology lab... anyways.

A few recently posted TED Talks show some amazing science... use these to engage the students who are left in your class when the other half is on the filed trip this spring.

OpenCulture

Here is a great resource for media-- books, courses, audio, video.

http://www.openculture.com/

Bridge Building Spring Standalone

Here is a standalone that my middle school students enjoy...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/bridge/challenge/index.html

A Great Resource

I recently asked colleagues for a list of sites they have stumbled upon, but have not had a chance to use. My intent is to add these to my "to mess with" list for the summer, so that I can be better prepared to help them use the sites in the fall. DocsTeach is a project of the National Archives to create activities using primary sources.

http://docsteach.org/

Online privacy...

Over the weekend, I had the chance to listen to an episode of Click, a production of the BBC. This particular episode addressed issues of online privacy, including several interesting perspectives.

• Some countries require users of web 2.0 sites where posting comments is allowed to register using their real names, so that "flamers" are identifiable. 
• A filmmaker attempted to hide himself and challenged detective to find him. His story was documented in film.
• Several tools are available for anonymizing your web sessions.

Very interesting ideas, worth talking about with middle schoolers, I think.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00glj6v

Questia

Just as I was posting about DeepDyve, a librarian colleague mentioned Questia as a similar choice for reasonably-priced online research.

DeepDyve

My school purchases access to full-text databases (as I am sure most others do), but our subscriptions do not always include the articles I need to read. There are choices for purchasing articles from publishers, but the cost is high (like $25 per article!). In an attempt to find other choices, I found DeepDyve-- a site that allows members to rent articles (viewable in a web browser and no downloads or printing).

I am not sure it is a great option, but I am always looking for choices!

Teaching is...

An article made its way to my inbox recently... the question "Is teaching a part-time job?" has arisen again, and a commentator on EdWeek has responded. Of course, I am always wondering why those what shout so  loudly about how great we have it aren't applying to our local state college for the post-bac program in teacher education... anyways.

I have a little different take on what teaching is... for me, teaching is knowing my stuff... really knowing it. I read and write all of the time to find out what we need to do to making school relevant. When colleagues (and principals and school board members and others) ask me questions, I find answers that come from the best scholarship I can find.

Once I understand what the answer is, I craft the answer for them, and typically they ignore it. Too often today, education is a political issue-- a community or school board member or principal or teacher who seeks personal benefit takes on the "challenge" of leaving no child behind or winning the race to the top.

We forget that teaching is about young people and their brains. Teaching is about helping young people develop the skills they will need for a rapidly changing world.

If you think you know how to do that, you are wrong... you can bring your skills and experience to a new group of students each day and try to create it every day and in every class, but you cannot talk someone else's talk and walk someone else's walk in hopes of replicating their success.

How Do We Teach Without Technology?

Here we are, May 2011. Computers and digital tools and data are everywhere... on our desks, in our backpacks, in our pockets, in our cars.

I worked with first and second grades yesterday and we were using online collaborative tools. The task was simple, several students writing sentences about frogs on a single document. At first, they were apprehensive and unsure, "hey someone else is writing on my paper!" was heard from several students-- and several rooms as we had spread the students out to get the idea of collaboration at a distance. Soon they had the idea and were chatting with each other to point out mistakes, and the smiles were amazing when they saw that someone had fixed a mistake they had pointed out.

Then in came my middle school kids--who are a wonderful group of seventh graders who try anything and everything I give them and they have a great sense of humor and are risk-takers. I told them to open up a spreadsheet so that we could first gather some information from their play of Spent, then practice graphing the data. The students told me they had not made a spreadsheet all year!

I am really unsure how one can claim to be teaching math in 2011 without giving students experience creating spreadsheets and programming them to manipulate the data.

Stress and math... is this really a surprise?

An article on EdWeek's website seems to have pointed out the obvious: Kids perform worse on math tests if the test are given in high-stress situations. The article does point to some research that is identifying some of the causes of math anxiety, so it is worth a look:

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/05/18/31math_ep.h30.html

Spent-- An interesting game

I heard an interview on NPR today of a woman who was involved with developing the game called Spent.

In a nutshell, you lost you job and have to go to work at a low paying job and your goal is to live a month without running out of money. It was developed in collaboration with a nondenominational ministry in North Carolina. I played a few games this afternoon, and have become convinced that it is worth a look. (It is now in my "spring standalone" collection.

Zotero Again!

Last Friday, I discovered Zotero and I posted it here because I was so excited about it... as I have been exploring it and researching some more, I am even more convinced it is a tool we need to introduce to our students.

Basically, this is a Firefox plug-in that allows you to build references as you surf or as you conduct online research (I am talking about using full-text databases not Wikipedia).

If I am using Firefox and I find a book on Amazon that I want to add to my bibliographic database, I can click the icon in my address bar. If I have a book in my hands, I can enter the ISBN and have it added to my bibliographic database. If I am on a full-text database and I find a reference with an DOI (digital object identifier), I can copy and paste it and it will be added to my bibliographic database.

Once I am ready to add a resource to my reference section of my paper, I can drag it from my web browser into my word processor. I little reformatting (e.g adding italics to to title in my word processor) and the references are complete.

I am a researcher, I take referencing seriously, and I think we need to be sure we are teaching good researching skills to everyone today as it is becoming more important in the information-overloaded world of the 21st century.

This video comes from Zotero's site:
http://www.zotero.org/static/videos/zotero_1_5_cast.flv

Zotero

Did you ever find something and wonder how you could have missed it for so long?

Here is one I missed...

http://www.zotero.org/

Check it out... seriously.

Spring Stand-Alone Lessons

In every school I have ever worked in,  spring has been a very disrupted time. (Field trips, end-of-the-year concert rehearsals, incoming students visiting, outgoing students leaving to visit... fill in with your favorites!!!) I am not complaining, I think all of these activities are essential and I have never done anything to limit my students' participation. These are, however, disruptive.

One strategy I have come up with to minimize the "damage" done by these disruptions is to try to keep a folder of ideas for single-period activities in my desk. Simple labs when I taught science-- the ones with explosions were the most popular; logic games and puzzles when I taught math. In recent years, my folder has included online activities.

Teachers' Domain-- a resource I have posted here before-- from the good folks (and fellow New Englanders) at WGBH is an excellent source of what I call spring stand alones.

For example... in this months newsletter from Teachers' Domain there was a link to several resources dealing with careers. My favorite includes interactive and video profiles of men and women which work in the sciences.

Games, Games, Games...

I am sure many are familiar with the buzz surrounding educational games. The general thinking is that kids are so used to gaming and human brains are adapted to respond to the reinforcements used in games in a positive manner, that educators should begin adopting games to take advantage of those aspects of games.

The difficulty arrises when we consider the breadth of gaming environments and the breadth of cognitive skills we can practice and in gaming environments. "Games" include everything from arcade style puzzles (think Pac-man) to games that require complex strategies and analysis to solve. Games can also be used to teach simple recall to analysis and synthesis-- the entire range of Bloom's taxonomy.

The teacher who allows students to play arcade-style games as a reward, the teacher who has students record a diary of their Oregon Trail mission (anyone remember that one?), and the teacher who uses FoldIt to introduce the organization of proteins can all claim they are "using games," but the thinking required, the products that result, and the nature of the experience will be much different for students in the different classes.

Given all of this, I am always on the look out for games that are educational in the sense that they:

• Introduce students to accurate and relevant information.
• Require more than simple recall of "facts" to understand, play, and win the game.
• Are not arcade-style games and do not make excessive use of eye and ear candy to motivate students.

One source for such games is the education section of the Nobel Prize web site.

StoryBird

The librarian with whom I work showed me storybird.com today. It is amazing. I set up my account (it is a teacher account, so I can create and manage student accounts and create assignments for them.

When a user creates a storybird, they can choose from artwork that has been provided, and then drag and drop the artwork and add text to tell the story. Storybirds can be group projects... students can invite others in their class (or anyone else with an account).

The site is free to use, and the company makes money by selling the stprybirds... I can see a school book fair that features the kids' books... that is real books, bound and all!

http://storybird.com/

MeetingWords--simple online collaboration!

Yesterday, I was researching communities of practice, and I found an online document that had been created using MeetingWords which is the easiest online collaboration tool I have ever found:

1) Click the button to create a pubic document.

2) Copy and paste the URL into an email (or onto a web page).

3) Visitors follow the link, and type their name.

4) There is a document that everyone collected can edit. There is a chat window.

5) The file can be exported as a text file (there are other options listed for export, but there did not work when I tried to use them).

6) Oh yeah... you can upload a file to the document window.

An interesting change...

The spring 2011 issue of Action in Teacher Education arrived in my mailbox yesterday. As I skimmed the abstracts of the articles, I slowed down to read the one summarizing the research on pre-service middle school educators' experiences with technology. The article is on my "to read" pile, but the most interesting thing to me was that PowerPoint was referred to as an "old" technology along with magazines and similar media in the abstract. As I mentioned, I have yet to read the entire article so I am not sure why the authors choose to so categorize PowerPoint, but the observation that technology to present information is more similar to magazines than to other interactive technologies illustrates a more sophisticated understanding of information technlogy than I observe in many colleagues.

Physics Games

A colleague recently asked for some games to keep kids thinking over the summer. I asked what subject she had in mind... science was the response, so we googled "physics games." We found physicsgames.com (and .net and .org) that all have pretty much the same games. I don't see these as too academic, but there are some interesting and challenging puzzles in the mix.

WolframAlpha

In the past, I have mentioned WolframAlpha and other products by the folks who make Mathematica on this blog and on the blog I used to maintain for NELMS. It is worth a reminder, however... if you have forgotten about it, then follow the link explore it for a few minutes.

Technology Acceptance Model

In have been preparing resources for the series of courses I am going to teach for NELMS this summer, and one of the topics I anticipate discussing is the Technology Acceptance Model and how it can be used to plan for ICT in middle school classrooms...

Digital Generations in School

School leaders like to talk about the need to transform schools for the digital generation. Unfortunately, they missed the chance. Most scholars mark the beginning of the "Digital Generation" as 1990-- children born in that year (the year when the protocol for the World Wide Web was first published) have never known a world without computers and similar technology. They entered school just as the schools were connecting and they graduated with smartphones in their pockets. Those kids are now young adults, and doing what young adult do, so their children-- the second digital generation will soon by arriving in our schools.

Educators must recognize the changing nature of the media landscape. Whereas older adults are used to being consumers of information and being broadcast to, today's digital generations are used to engaging and interacting with information and others through technology.

There is beginning to be a trend away from encouraging educators to "teach with technology" and towards engaging students with ideas and technology. Technology needs to become transparent part of what we do and how we do it. Still, today, many teachers approach a technology-based lesson.

Larry Rosen, who wrote, Rewired, a book previously reviewed here, contributed an article to Educational Leadership that is available on the web... it points out the reasons why transparent technology is important and directs educators to sources of curriculum and instruction ideas...

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb11/vol68/num05/Teaching-the-iGeneration.aspx 

Digital Generation

While preparing some presentations for colleagues, I was reminded of some very instructive YouTube video from the folks are the Kaiser Family Foundation who have focused much attention on the transition to digital life in the United Staes:

It is worth looking at again...

This genre of video showed up about 5 years ago... I am a fan for several reasons... one of which is the they can remind us in a few minutes that the world we grew up in (even of you are younger than me-- I am 45!) is gone:

Priorities

I understand finances. I really do... money comes in... money goes out. I understand the role of government also. Collect money from the people and spend it for the public good.

This graph makes me wonder, however:

The story where I obtained this graphic is here:

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/04/29/30technology.h30.html

As an educator who is concerned with the future of our children in an ever-changing world, I am concerned about the priorities of a government (or our political leaders) who decide to cut funding for maintaining even a minimal level of technology in our schools when oil companies receive millions upon millions of dollars worth of tax breaks.

Wikipedia

Yesterday, I was working with a group of students and we were researching performance-enhancing drugs. The conversation quickly turned to appropriate sources for academic research, and (as you can probably predict) students tried to argue that Wikipedia was fine for school research. (As you can probably predict also, I argued that it was fine for initial research, but not for academic research that requires references.)

A student made my point for me... he edited the page we were all looking at and told everyone to reload the page... we all saw how the list of substances banned for Olympic athletes now included some items that I do not think should be there. I thanked the student for proving my point that we have to triangulate!

Excuses, excuses, excuses

The conversation in education seems never-ending... "how do we use technology to teach?" (Of course, the "use technology to teach" in my question could be replaced with most any initiative one wants to pursue.

The scary tendency I have observed is that educators seem to be really good at starting... we decide we want to use technology (again replace that as fits your situation) and we go in search of a way to do it, and we start...

and as we begin to make progress, we get uncomfortable... and we claim we need more professional development... and we claim we need more time... and we claim the test scores need attention... and we claim there is no money...

and we fail...

and we start over again.

I call this horizontal progress.

Filter Bubbles

An interesting video appeared on TED in the last few days...

We assume the Internet is an open and democratic information source... the speaker suggests that is not so:

The World is Getting Scary (More Scary)-- More Evidence

Sony has been in the news recently for a security breech which exposed customers' personal information (including financial accounts) to unauthorized access.

I am also ready a book called Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters (I won't give full details as I don't think it os worth many educators' attentions). In that book, the authors goes into detail of the search habits of Americans and what we can learn from it. (For example why "prom dress" is such a popular search in January and where in the country "plus size prom dress" is most popular.) The author reassures readers in the introduction (I did not find his words reassuring), that the data he used for his book (and that he uses in his work as a search analyst) has been "scrubbed" of personal data including locations, financial account information,  social security numbers, and similar data.

Now, I am not sure if the editor added that caveat in order to avoid problems with readers, or if the authors added that in because his organization actually does anonymize the data they use, or if the author wrote that with his "fingers crossed" and was actually misleading his readers. We are all left to wonder if the data are being collected without our knowledge. I am increasingly worried about this...

The World in Changing...

Check this out... as much as I love books I  realize that medium is for the most part going to be replaced...

Interesting...

Reports of the news out of Pakistan this morning demonstrated an interesting trend in this decade...

Many authors point to the events of September 2001 as the motivation for many to begin blogging. Many who witnessed those events went to the blogosphere to share reactions and thoughts. Since then, user-created content has become a natural part of the web.

This morning's BBC reports of the reaction in New York to the events in Pakistan included the presenters reading Tweets of those who were on the streets in New York as well as the presenter noting the hash tag that was being used to contribute to the on-going online reactions.