Half Full or Half Empty: A Look Back on the Year

 It’s May so it makes sense to look back on the school year to  reflect and assess how things have gone with the change in my job from specialist to integrator. We have had the Mac laptops for a year (we got 1 cart last April, 5 more last summer), the teachers have all had theirs for a year, the students have had access for almost the whole school year at this point so it’s a good time to see what we have done. And of course, it’s also a good time to see what there is still left to do, hence-half empty.

Accomplishments:

1. Teachers are comfortable with their Macbooks
2. Teachers and students are using the laptops everyday for something, whether it is a visit to First in Math, Spelling City or an application like Pixie, the teachers and the students are using technology in some way.
3. Some first grade students are blogging
4. Many fourth grade students are blogging
5. Fifth grade students are blogging (this is not new but still . . )
6. We have made connections to other classes through blogs, skyping and Mystery Skype
7. A third grade class skyped with a Veteran for Veteran’s Day and also shared their biography museum with a class in California
8. A first grade class has tweeted about and shared pictures of their Painted Lady butterflies and has received comments from  other first grade classes in other schools
9. Second grade students have shared their love of and improvement in reading through podcasting
10. Many students are creating and sharing their work with others
11. Teachers are beginning to think about ways to integrate the technology in purposeful, natural ways

With that being said, there is still more work that needs to be done:

1. I would like all students and teachers to be blogging about their work, their reflections and their wonderings
2. Meetings for brainstorming and sharing need to be a priority and I need to make it happen more often
3. Though I met with many teachers and went in to many classrooms regularly, there were some that I did not go in very often, or much at all and that is something I would like to change, even if it is just to check in to see what is happening
4. I would like to see more classes collaborating with others via skype and making connections with other classes
5. I would like all students to be creating and sharing their work with others, creating a lasting legacy of their learning

Yes, much has been accomplished this year, but there is still so much to do.

So what do you think- half full or half empty?

photo credit: jenny downing via photo pin

TEDxNYED Recap

This past Saturday my friend and colleague @Wendye40 hopped in my car and drove up the turnpike to the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, NY for the TEDxNYED conference with the theme Connected. Instructed. Created. After some technical glitches and a short rewind we were ready to go with the first presenter. I was a little upset (actually more than a little upset, a lot distressed) because the wifi that was supposed to connect us to the world and allow us to be able to tweet and share was not strong at all in the  theater and was not even showing up as an option. I sat in my seat growing increasingly agitated as I watched my 3g spin and spin because I like to tweet during these events and I like to see what everyone else is saying. Unfortunately I was going to have to take my notes using pen and the lovely composition style program they provided and share my thoughts later. So, here I am two days later getting my thoughts together, ready to share what I learned this past weekend.

Presenter 1: Jenny Buccos (@globalcitiz)

• Global citizenship is a critical 21st Century skill
• Global education has mainly been foods, fashion, entertainment
• What does it mean to be a good global citizen?
• Everyone is a global citizen but some people feel they are only a citizen of the country they reside
• You can’t opt out of humanity
• Technology is erasing geographical borders

Presenter 2: Jose Luis Vilson (@TheJLV)

• How can we as teachers and educators use our own voice to elevate our profession
• Teacher voice should be nuanced, distinguished, powerful
• We need to speak up and speak out
• What do I need to do to advance my voice
• We need to be advocates for our own profession (see related article)

Presenter 3: Juliette LaMontagne (@Jlamontagne)

• Students need to be part of designing solutions to problems rather than just learn about a problem
• The desire to learn by doing
• Designing solutions to big global challenges
• Project Breaker- unique projects organized around a challenge

Presenter 4: Jim Groom (@jimgroom)

• We need to get away from crisis mode of education and invest in what it means to create and produce and be a citizen of the world

Presenter 5: Sree Sreenivasan (@sree)

• “Almost everyone will miss almost everything you do on social media”
• With regard to social media, we should always be listening, not just broadcasting
• We need to marry the digital and the physical to have anything done; if you want it to be successful, bring together the physical and the virtual
• Hashtags amplify what you are doing
• Social Media success formula

Presenter 6: Jamie Cloud (@cloudinstitute)

• “Educating for the future we want with the brain in mind”
• “Most people make sense to themselves” – Dr. Steven Jones
• We get stuck in our own thinking
• Why is it so easy to get stuck in our own thinking: fear, change is difficult, how much our status, identity and finances are attached to the old model
• Results of being stuck in our thinking: “believing is seeing”, we ignore or can’t read the feedback

Presenter 7: Chris Emdin (@cchrisemdin)

• Hip-hop based education
• Using your Heart Inspiration and Power to Heal Oppressive Pedagogy

Presenter 8: Adam Bellow (@adambellow)

• Passion and dedication can be infectious
• You are the one you can control
• Question the rules of the system and change it
• “Fixing” education implies it is broken implying it once worked
• The problem is the way we see school
• “McDonaldization” of Education”- now we stuff kids full of information rather than having them make stuff (at least during the industrial revolution, people made stuff)
• We give kids boundaries of DONT’S rather than tell them what they CAN and SHOULD do
• Problems have not changed, the medium has (instead of passing notes, kids are texting)
• Come up with questions then figure out how to learn it
• Every learner should have an IEP (individualized education plan)

The day was running late and since we had a 2 hour drive back, we needed to hit the road prior to the last few presenters but overall I came away with an understanding that education is no longer “one size fits all” and as teachers we need to harness the power of social media tools and other web 2.0 platforms that will allow our students to connect, share and collaborate with other  people around the world so that students can be the architects of their own learning.

What is Wrong With this Picture?

This is my son’s backpack. Notice all the paper. Notice all the binders. Notice the laptop peeking out

from the back (top of the pic) of the bookbag. This is my son’s second backpack; the first one ripped from being overstuffed and hauled around. It weighs around 45 pounds (actually, I am guessing here since we do not own a scale) and my son and all the other students at his high school, carry these overloaded backpacks to all their classes because they do not have time to go to their locker.

So, what is the problem with this? My son goes to a one-to-one high school. All of the students are given Macbooks to use for school. Lots of the time, the laptops stay in the bag because, as you can see, the students are using paper, pencil and notebooks in these classes.

Why is this allowed to  happen? Why are these teachers not having their students take notes using Evernote, or at least Word? Why are teachers still handing out paper to their students to add to the amount of stuff they have to carry? Why aren’t these teachers and administrators being coached on integrating technology? Why aren’t they being encouraged to connect themselves and their students? Why are our students carrying around backpacks filled with the tools of yesterday’s students when they have the capabilities and the possibilities and the technology of today?

My thoughts: not enough PD was given to these teachers before the laptops were issued. Classrooms are still set up with the teacher at the front of the room . No expectations for use. Administrators are not educated in the technology and connectedness of today so they do not know what is missing, what the potential is of teaching their students to connect, problem solve, communicate with others outside of their school. Filtering. Fear. Teachers-some-not all- do not know how to manage students with laptops so they tell the students to keep them in their backpack. Since there are no expectations from the leadership for the teachers to teach with technology, you have some that use it and others who do not. Luck of the draw. Is this what we want for our children-luck of the draw? Is that what you want for yours?

 

Collection of Quotes Part 2 from Stop Stealing Dreams

So as not to overwhelm anyone with too long a post, I have divided my collection of quotes from Seth Godin’s Stop Stealing Dreams into two parts. I for one can only read so much at a time and would not want anyone to cut out from reading too early. So, here are the rest of the passages and quotes that I found thought-provoking.

Section 46: I am wondering when we decided that the purpose of school was to cram as much data/trivia/fact into every student as we possibly could.

We’re not only avoiding issues of practicality and projects and hands-on use of information; we’re also aggressively testing for trivia.

Section 47: Then, though, as we got smarter about the structure of thought, we created syllabi that actually covered the knowledge that mattered.

But mattered to whom?

Section 64: The industrial model of school is organized around exposing students to ever increasing amounts of stuff and then testing them on it.

Almost none of it is spent in teaching them the skills necessary to connect dots.

Section 65: The notion that each of us can assemble a network (of people, of data sources, of experiences) that will make us either smart or stupid—that’s brand new and important.

What is the typical school doing to teach our students to become good at this?

Section 70: What’s the point of testing someone’s ability to cram for a test if we’re never going to have to cram for anything ever again?

In an open-book/open-note environment, the ability to synthesize complex ideas and to invent new concepts is far more useful than drill and practice. It might be harder (at first) to write tests, and it might be harder to grade them, but the goal of school isn’t to make the educational-industrial complex easy to run; it’s to create a better generation of workers and citizens.

Section 71: Lectures at night, homework during the day

The next day at school, teachers can do what they want to do anyway—coach and help students in places they are stuck. In a school like this, the notion that every student will have to be in sync and watch the same (live!) lecture at the same time will become absurd.

Section 72: What we can’t do, though, is digitize passion. We can’t force the student to want to poke around and discover new insights online.

Without school to establish the foundation and push and pull and our students, the biggest digital library in the world is useless.

Section 73: When students can get patient, hands-on, step-by-step help in the work they’re doing, they learn more.

Section 74: The role of the teacher in this new setting is to inspire, to intervene, and to raise up the motivated but stuck student. Instead of punishing great teachers with precise instructions on how to spend their day, we give them the freedom to actually teach.

Section 77: The lesson to the kids is obvious: early advantages now lead to bigger advantages later. Skill now is rewarded, dreams, not so much. If you’re not already great, don’t bother showing up.

Section 82: School serves a real function when it activates a passion for lifelong learning, not when it establishes permanent boundaries for an elite class.

Section 83: Your work is worth more than mere congruence to an answer key

Fitting in is a short-term strategy, standing out pays off in the long run

Section 84: Teach kids how to lead

Help them learn how to solve interesting problems

as the world changes ever faster, we don’t reward people who can slavishly follow yesterday’s instructions. All of the value to the individual (and to the society she belongs to) goes to the individual who can draw a new map, who can solve a problem that didn’t even exist yesterday.

Section 85: once someone becomes passionate about a goal, she will stop at nothing to learn what she needs to learn to accomplish it.

Section 90: When we associate reading with homework and tests, is it any wonder we avoid it?

If you want to teach kids to love being smart, you must teach them to love to read.

Section 97: If the training we give people in public school or college is designed to help them memorize something that someone else could look up, it’s time wasted.

Section 100: real music education involves teaching students how to hear and how to perform from the heart

Section 101: Real learning happens when the student wants (insists!) on acquiring a skill in order to accomplish a goal.

Section 102: When access to information was limited, we needed to load students up with facts. Now, when we have no scarcity of facts or the access to them, we need to load them up with understanding.

Section 104: Real learning happens in bursts, and often those bursts occur in places or situations that are out of the ordinary.

Practice works because practice gives us a chance to relax enough to make smart choices.

Section 108: School as the transference of emotion and culture

One thing a student can’t possibly learn from a video lecture is that the teacher cares . . .about him

Section 113: Is the memorization and drill and practice of advanced math the best way to sell kids on becoming scientists and engineers?

Section 114: Just wondering: what would happen to our culture if students spent 40 percent of their time pursuing interesting discoveries and exciting growth opportunities, and only 60 percent of the day absorbing facts that used to be important to know?

Collection of Quotes from Stop Stealing Dreams Part 1

screenshot

I have been reading Seth Godin’s manifesto Stop Stealing Dreams and wanted to share what I thought were provocative and meaningful quotes.

Section 3: Large-scale education was not developed to motivate kids or to create scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system. 
Section 4: The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake: We spend a fortune teaching trigonometry to kids who don’t understand it, won’t use it, and will spend no more of their lives studying math. We invest thousands of hours exposing millions of students to fiction and literature, but end up training most of them to never again read for fun 

As soon as we associate reading a book with taking a test, we’ve missed the point.

Section 6: School reform cannot succeed if it focuses on getting schools to do a better job of what we previously asked them to do.

Section 7: workplace and civil society demand variety, the industrialized school system works to stamp it out.

The normal school (now called a teacher’s college) was developed to indoctrinate teachers into the system of the common school, ensuring that there would be a coherent approach to the processing of students

Section 8: For a long time, there was an overlap between the education that the professions rewarded and the education that we might imagine an educated person would benefit from. Tied up in both paths is the notion that memorizing large amounts of information was essential. In a world where access to data was always limited, the ability to remember what you were taught, without fresh access to all the data, was a critical success factor.

 Section 9: By instilling values such as obedience to authority, promptness in attendance, and organizing the time according to bell ringing helped students prepare for future employment.

 Section 13: schools remain focused on yesterday’s needs.

Section 14: “What are you doing to fuel my kid’s dreams?”

Section 23: Group projects are the exception in school, but they should be the norm.

 Section 24: teachers who care teach students who care.

Section 43, one of my favorites: Teach the history of baseball, beginning with Abner Doubleday and the impact of cricket and imperialism. Have a test.

Starting with the Negro leagues and the early barnstorming teams, assign students to memorize facts and figures about each player. Have a test.

Rank the class on who did well on the first two tests, and allow these students to memorize even more statistics about baseball players. Make sure to give equal time to players in Japan and the Dominican Republic. Send the students whodidn’t do as well to spend time with a lesser teacher, but assign them similar work, just over a longer time frame. Have a test.

Sometime in the future, do a field trip and go to a baseball game. Make sure no one has a good time.If there’s time, let kids throw a baseball around during recess.

Obviously, there are plenty of kids (and adults) who know far more about baseball than anyone could imagine knowing. And none of them learned it this way.

The industrialized, scalable, testable solution is almost never the best way to generate exceptional learning.

Section 44: Teaching is no longer about delivering facts that are unavailable in any other format.

Section 45: We can amplify each kid’s natural inclination to dream, we can inculcate passion in a new generation, and we can give kids the tools to learn more, and faster, in a way that’s never been seen before.

Indulge My Parental Pride

My daughter is in the middle school challenge program. She is a voracious reader who breezed through the Hunger Games trilogy and has inspired me to read them as well. She needed to use the vocabulary from the book to do a creative project. My suggestions to create a movie using images to illustrate the words fell on deaf ears, instead she chose to write a poem. Within about twenty minutes she had crafted this poem which I think is just too good not to share.

This is the poem I wrote for my creative quiz on the second set of Hunger Games vocabulary.

Decrepit and tenuous, her hairs plaited down her back,
Katniss lie down in the mud with a smack
Insurmountable was how everything seemed
With her adversaries and their maces it was like a bad, bad dream
She wished she were back in the capitol with a tureen filled with delicious foods
But not with Haymitch and his nasty, mean moods
With the Capitol, their demeanor, their affectations, and it all, they hoped this years games wouldn’t be anticlimactic after all
They sanctioned these games like it was an every day norm
But to the tributes, it was inexplicable in every way, shape, and form
In the Hunger Games, cornucopia was synonymous to staying alive
But in Peeta’s case, if Katniss didn’t swathe him, he’d still be fighting to survive
As you can tell, the games are very intense
And the fight to survive is very immense

Why Creativity and Passion Matter

We recently finished independent research projects in one of the fourth grade classrooms. You can read about that in this post. The teacher and I wanted to hear what the children thought of the process and the opportunity to explore a topic of their own choosing. As the teachers, we know what we thought about the process but we wanted to hear form them. Here are some of their responses:

I enjoyed the fact that other people would be reading my work. I like the feeling of getting other people excited about the next section of the story. I always enjoyed writing, but when I blog I get detailed feed back on my story, and sometimes the readers know more about the topic than I do! They can comment and tell me all of their knowledge, for the story and for the topic.

 I loved this project and bloging. I can’t wait for the next time we can do an IRP again. I think this is a great learning project. It’s great to focus on one topic that really interests you.

I love feeling like a real writer

It allowed me to show my creative side through things that I like a lot. 

Because it allows me to have some time to do things I like.

I liked that you could chose what you wanted to learn about.

That you got to learn about everyones when they presented it.

Set Godin, in his manifesto Stop Stealing Dreams writes,

“We can amplify each kid’s natural inclination to dream, we can inculcate passion in a new generation, and we can give kids the tools to learn more, and faster, in a way that’s never been seen before.”

As you can read from the students’ responses to the project, if given the time during the school week, the freedom to choose their own learning and the chance to pursue a passion, they can rise to the occasion and go beyond the status quo.

photo credit: Martin Gommel via photopin cc