writing in the open spaces

Sometimes we get discouraged, wondering if our efforts to have our students working in self-directed ways can, well,  really work. Three years ago, a small group of us visited Jim Groom at the University of Mary Washington. He helped us set up a wordpress blogging system for our school.

It started slowly, but some people have taken it and run. One is Senior Exhibit adviser Katie Blashford, who sent me an email this morning:

If you have time you should see what our FA wiz kids are doing……many using their tech skills all on their own.

1.) see FAblogs with Maddie’s new tutorial videos embedded so cool
2.) Tomorrow is Rachel Fried’s medical forum.  Tom Catron is a guest speaker.  Unfortunately, he could not make a physical appearance so he prerecorded his speech and put it on youtube.  He is then skyping in during the Q and A portion of the evening.
3.) Kahlil just finished his KatalMath website…….this one speaks for itself.
4.) With many of the events coming up (gallary at Eileen’s Feb 13, Tyler’s guitar workshop , Rachel’s forum etc) the primary publicity has been via Facebook, medical blogs, guitar forums, and other social networking tools.

Of course, I give credit to Katie, who has pushed to help the kids make their learning transparent and meaningful. These are experiences they will remember. Powerful learning, Katie. Thanks so much for sharing.

 

Reading this article about Amir Abo-Shaeer, the recent MacArthur award winner, took me back a few years. Amir has established an experienced-based learning program for his students.  Fast Company reports he runs the engineering Academy “like a business.”

“Students help write grants; they do PR, and they develop our website.” He calls his approach project-based learning and says the students learn both soft skills and business skills so they are ready “to join the world of work.”

“We are going to be left behind if we don’t see a paradigm shift,” says Abo-Shaeer. He therefore wants to see his project-based learning applied to all subjects and taught across the United States in order to meet the demands of “students as consumers of education.”

I applaud Amir for his work and insight into how students learn best– and what we can accomplish when we create the right design for learning.

Years ago, I taught high school journalism along with the standard English courses. Whenever I stopped to think about the difference in the two courses, I was struck with how much the journalism students gained from their real-life work. They wrote, published (yes, even back in the 1980s we used a Mac and published our newspaper at the local printer), and sold advertising. Working in teams, they learned to lead, collaborate, and share. We had real deadlines, and we stuck to them.

In contrast, my English classes, for the most part, sat in rows quietly, discussing the previous night’s reading or taking a quiz.Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet learned how to transfer what I had designed in my journalism classes to the rest of my day.

The journalism students tended to become better writers than my English students. They also approached their learning eagerly, often spending far more time working on our newspaper than our class guidelines required of them. Students engaged in debate about truth and fairness, they set goals, and they learned communication skills. Each student focused on his or her strength, whether advertising, photography, or writing, and yet, they all learned the skills. Heck we were even blogging back in 2004!

I guess  I am a slow learner because I finally realized I could apply similar principles to my English classes. And, as I’ve written before, much improved  learning came from this approach.

Amir has created a powerful program for his science and engineering students. His philosophy of education resonates with all of us who have worked to create project-based, authentic learning in our classes. And now he has been rewarded fully with a grant to teach other teachers.

This works.

image credit: By digitaljournal.com

 

I have to admit to feeling somewhat disconnected this fall. After all, I’ve taught for most of the past 30 years, recently at Fredericksburg Academy as the instructional tech coordinator and an English teacher. Fall can be difficult for ex-teachers who love being in the classroom.

Today, a colleague shared with me an email and screenshot of work her kids were doing. She had sent it out to the entire faculty and then realized I might enjoy seeing what the students were up to. She was right. So cool.

Here’s her email:

Here is a little story about young, independent, tech savvy students overcoming their obstacles and taking responsibility. Blair is absent today, but she emailed me this morning to tell me that she had made arrangements with her partner about the paper that they were supposed to write together in class. Now, during class both students are typing on the same Google doc at the same time and chatting with each other in the Google chat feature. I thought that it was cool that I could check in on and literally watch students as they worked in my classroom, but this is even better. The best part: they set this up on their own.

Thanks, @jclarkevans for keeping me in the loop. I especially enjoy this coming from Blair, a student who claimed she just “didn’t love” using the laptops two years ago when I taught her ninth grade! (However, she was the one most intrigued by my talk about digital identity.) We never know where our students will go when we allow them to figure things out on their own. And teachers like Jennifer allow this to happen.

 

Today’s CEO is not social, says Forrester Research’s CEO George Colony–in a study reported today on the Mashable site. I pulled one of the quotes that made me think about administrators in our schools:

Colony has concluded that, “None of the CEOs of Fortune Magazine’s top 100 global corporations have a social profile.”

Wow. None. But should we be surprised? Very few school principals, Heads of Schools, or even high-level administrators have a social profile. George Couros, whose fairly recent jump into social media has propelled him as a leader in this area, started Connected Principals to share those that do. But until the past few months, I saw few administrators willing to take the perceived risk of being “out there.”

I find social media fascinating. I can’t imagine not sharing and learning online. But it seems people either get it or don’t.

Educators are no different in that regard. But those administrators who have jumped report great satisfaction in their transparency with parents and families. Check out Larry Fliegelman’s latest post about connecting with his parents. Josie Holford, head of Poughkeepsie Day School, keeps her families up to date through her blog, Twitter, and Facebook.

So as I read the post on Mashable, I wondered….how different will our “school world” be when administrators around the world will feel as LIVESTRONG CEO Doug Ulman does. In the post he says,  ”perceptions around social media being too risky for CEOs are beginning to change.”

“I would predict that more and more executives will see this as an opportunity rather than a risk,” he says.

I hope more school administrators will soon discover the possibilities.

image:By Pranav SinghPranav Singh

 

I once told Sheryl Nussbaum Beach I didn’t feel moved to change the world.

We were chatting about all things education–and how some folks are comfortable presenting to large crowds (I’m not), and some feel compelled to change the world of schooling (I wasn’t).

At the time, I felt that my personal line in the sand, which I drew in the sandbox of a classroom, was enough. I could individualize instruction, buy netbooks for my kids, create an inviting atmosphere, offer a variety of ways to assess children, and focus on what worked.

I became comfortable in my own small, corner of the world.

And then last spring, I found myself taking over conversations in department meetings, dinner parties, and family gatherings. Whenever the chats turned to school (and specifically social media), I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. My frustration with how we “do” schools bubbled over. During our last week of vacation, my uncle turned to me mid-rant and said, “Ok then, how do we fix it? How do we make schools better?”

I didn’t have all the answers, but I found myself listing everything that matters to me: giving students voice; empowering teachers to work together and reflect upon their practice; offering choice in curriculum and ways to learn; allowing charter schools (with proper direction and guidance) to flourish; changing the way we sort and rank students.

Ok, so I care. Changing the system seems overwhelming at times, but it’s worth it. Our kids deserve more from us.

These are the folks I’m following these days, watching and learning from them:

Coalition of Essential Schools

Big Picture Schools

Ideal Schools

IDEA

Not perfect, perhaps. But at least they are doing the work and not just talking about it. Who else should be highlighted?

 

I finally caught up with another  EdTech podcast w/ Alex, Arvind, and Vinnie on this morning’s run. My classes always seemed to conflict with the live podcasts, and lately I’ve had running partners, so it seemed rude to tune them out and listen to my iPod.

Today’s run was with husband David, and since he doesn’t talk, I listened! This morning’s podcast focused on Posterous, for which I’ve had an account for some time but could not figure out why I needed in addition to my blog.

Now I do.

Sometimes it’s just too much trouble to bring up WordPress, write the post, and publish it. Instead, I quickly post ideas, links, and photos to Twitter. Yet when I constantly link to Twitter alone, I don’t draw people here for conversations. For example, I would have loved some feedback on my assessment post.

This morning’s podcast helped me realize how simple posting to email is, which in turn updates both my blog and Posterous. So then a tweet would send people back here. Plus this gives me a record of resources I want to keep track of and tag. Make sense?

Anyway, I love my community. I would learn even more if I could get myself back up to a decent distance, as 3.5 miles goes by pretty quickly.

 

A recent chat with @snbeach, @baldy7, @datruss and Rob from NH on a PLP info session has me thinking. I mentioned that I got “into all this” (never sure how to categorize these huge shifts in thinking and learning anymore) because I loved playing with “tools.”

Tony said that wasn’t the case for him. But I wonder how many are more like me?

I remember the first time I put my hands on a computer. I was taking a re-certification in 1985 to teach high school again after taking off a few years with my children. A local college offered a class in Basic programming, so I signed up without fully understanding what I was getting into.

Actually, I had never touched a computer, and I was an English major (fully avoiding math and science whenever possible).

Three weeks later, I remember the frustration, the uncertainty, and the exhaustion I felt, trying to use the left side of by brain to logically determine what a loop was and how to write a simple piece of code. On my own for the most part, there was no hand-holding in this course.

Uploaded on May 21, 2009 by Temari 09

By the time I finished,  though, I had learned to write a short grading program that worked.

And I felt a sense of accomplishment.

That one step took me to the next: buying my own computer, figuring out how to manage DOS and Windows apps, and  installing peripherals. I was having so much fun figuring it all out and learning something new, totally in the flow.

And then something amazing happened. I was given a Mac to use in my journalism class, the first computer to be used in the county for any instruction. I began to see the power of turning kids loose and taking control of their own learning. One boy learned Illustrator and shared it with the class; another became a graphics design expert and landed an after-school job. Many began finding other strengths in writing, publishing, and advertising.

In a few short years, I was online in a text-based web, texting with someone from Europe, who jumped onto my screen. The possibilities for my classroom were rumbling around in my head. By 2000, I was back in school in a M.Ed program in Instructional Tech. In 2004, I started blogging (first trying to install Manilla on our school server); then I discovered Twitter in 2007, and my world shifted.

Isn’t this what we want for our students today? To want to work through problems, concepts, or issues? To be curious enough to see how things work? To create?

My circuitous path led me to new ways of thinking about how my students learn and what I want schools to “look like” (if, indeed, we need to have schools at all). It all started with an interest in figuring out a tool, but it’s moved to how these tools–or now these online social technologies–change the way we live in this networked world.

What has changed your thinking? How can our interactions with each other and the tools make meaningful change in the life of our students?

Uploaded on January 16, 2008
by seeks2dream

 

I’ve spent a lot of time on the train lately going back and forth between Virginia and Rhode Island, where my family lives.

The eight-hour ride provides much time to think. About life. About work. About how hungry I am.

On this trip, I’ve been thinking about my blog. When I first started blogging, I was running and training for races, and updates were simple. I was all about the run.

A few years later, I shifted to an edtech blog, one I shared with my teachers to help them envision how to integrate technology into the classroom. After moving back into the classroom, the focus (on this blog) became my students and me–a time to reflect on all I was learning and doing.

So now what?

We don’t need another edtech blog. There are too many already, most preaching to the choir and saying the same old things. Oh, that sounds a little bitter, doesn’t it?

But I love blogging. Writing gives me a chance to clarify my thinking, reflect on what I’m learning. Sometimes 140 characters just isn’t enough.

A logical step for me is to write about my new work, which by the way will be done mostly from the comfort of my sofa. Or dining room table. Or comfy chair in the library. I haven’t decided yet.

And there are so many decisions to be made. What kind of monitor will I need? What’s the best way to organize my contacts and interviews? How many cups of coffee should I drink every day?

I’ll need help.

So I hope you’ll hang around (all three of you) and jump in anytime.

 

Six of us, all members of the Powerful Learning Practice, have been discussing our teaching shifts and pondering these thoughts all year:

• how do we know these 21st Century skills of creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, information literacy, and digital citizenship (borrowed liberally from here and here) are key for students' success? success at what? are they skills? how do we assess any of this?
• what are our goals?
• how do they affect our current teaching practices?
• where does technology fit into all of this?

Often the conversations we spin in, around, and through each others PLN's make me dizzy. Sometimes, though, we don't talk, we act.
And when I see a group of teachers learning, sharing, creating, and living the conversations, I feel content.

Today, for example, I watched FA Blogs grow! I noticed that Carey's 8th grade classes were adding their blogs today, getting ready to reflect on what they were learning in French class. Then Jennifer opted to jump in with another, putting our creative writing magazine online. Before long, both Carey and Susanne had commented on her new blog.
I was busy teaching, but when I finished, I checked Twitter to see that they had managed to figure out all the details themselves.
A former student, studying at Georgia Tech, even chimed in to comment on the design.

Jennifer is also blogging with her seniors, though we haven't moved them to FA Blogs yet. However, as I was working on the admin side of WPMU today, I noticed another blog.
"Who is that?" I wondered…..
One of our math teachers has decided to read and blog along with Jennifer's students this semester, so she is putting her thoughts out there. Wow. I'm speechless.
Our math teacher, writing with our English students. Sharing, learning, reflecting.
Sigh. Happy sigh. Yes, it's working.

 

That was the comment one of our history teachers relayed to me from one of her students after she introduced blogging to them.
Yes, we've been trying to get the students to blog, to share their thoughts online. For good reasons, I believe. But the student's concern is valid. If no one reads the blog or comments, why bother? In this teacher's case, the blogs are political, and the students would benefit from having others participate.

Yet, my colleague Jennifer uses blogs for different purposes–one is to create a year-long record of a student's thoughts about what he or she has read. I use blogs for sharing within a class, to extend our classroom conversations. But at this point, I'm not sure I want "outsiders" commenting on my ninth-graders blogs. Both reasons are valid, yet I have heard others argue absolutes: blogs should never be used in a closed environment or without the ability to comment.

So how do we create community and audience for beginning bloggers? I'm not the first to talk about this. And I don't necessarily have any innovative ideas.

In both cases above, students within a class are able to read and discuss each others ideas. I do know that if we treat the blog like homework that gets turned in
and checked off in the gradebook, where only the teacher sees it, then
students probably won't see any value.

What makes a class blog a success? Any ideas? And what about students who express real discomfort with having to put their ideas out there?