How about this for a school culture goal?
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
From Spencer's scratchpad
"So, it makes me think of the school year. I'm going to encourage my students to be free and to speak up and to go places emotionally and intellectually that might be uncomfortable. Yet, I also want to create a safe environment with a community who cares about them. Parenting has taught me that these two goals are often in tension with one another, but still worth pursuing. I want my students to feel safe enough to be free and free enough to be safe."
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Learning - Technology
“What is the best technology for the learning experiences we want to craft?”
the learner develops the habit of “asking questions about the answers that he finds.”
A literacy machine enables us to communicate, not merely with words, but with pictures, sound, and motion. It enables us to get the attention of those who can help us accomplish our goals.
What is going to help students learn to become literate, resourceful, and habitual learners — engaged in a learning lifestyle?
Quotes
We don't talk this game, we play it.
Your certainty must be greater than everyone's doubt.
The gift is your presence of feeling good and being happy and bringing this to others.
PLC
If there is anything the research community agrees on it is this: the right kind of continuous, structured teacher collaboration improves the quality of teaching and pays big, often immediate dividends in student learning and professional morale in virtually every setting.
Monday, August 16, 2010
The Committed Sardine
http://www.committedsardine.com/sardines.cfm
why we're called committed sardines
A little known fact is that a blue whale is so large that when it decides to turn around, it can take 2 to 3 minutes to turn 180 degrees so that it can swim in the opposite direction. As a result, some people have drawn a strong parallel between blue whales and our school systems. It just seems to take forever for schools to turn things around. Our ability to adapt to changing times helps explain at least in part the rise in demand for vouchers, charter schools, home schooling and virtual schools. There are some people who just don't believe, or don't want the public school system to turn things around in time.
But compare the cumbersome way a blue whale turns around to how a school of fish turns around - specifically a school of sardines - which has the same or even a greater mass than our whale. A school of sardines can turn almost instantly. So the question that comes up is - how do they do this? How do they know when to turn? Is it ESP? Do they use cell phones? Are they using the Internet?
The answer is both a little simpler and quite a bit more complex. If you take a careful look at a school of sardines you'll notice that, at first, the fish all appear to be swimming in the same direction. In reality, at any time there will be a small group of sardines swimming in a different direction, one that tends to move against the flow or against conventional wisdom. As they swim in another direction they cause conflict. This creates some friction and general discomfort for the rest of the school.
But finally, when a critical mass of truly committed sardines is reached - not a huge number like 50 percent or 80 percent of the school, but 15 to 20 percent who are truly committed to a new direction - the rest of the school suddenly turns and goes with them - almost instantaneously!
Isn't that what has happened with our attitudes towards drinking and driving? Isn't that what became of our feelings about smoking? Isn't that exactly what happened to the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union? Isn't that what caused the Internet to suddenly appear overnight? Each and every one of those events was an overnight success that took years in the making. Overnight successes that took a small group of people who were truly committed despite the obstacles, challenge, yabbuts, and TTWWADI (That's The Way We've Always Done It) to make the necessary change.
Noted anthropologist Margaret Mead once wrote "never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world - indeed it is the only thing that ever has." That's why we're Committed Sardines.
The Committed Sardine Blog ... Thinking outside the can.
11 Techy Things for Teachers to Try This Year
MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 2010
11 Techy Things for Teachers to Try This Year
The new school year is here for many teachers. For those who haven't started school yet, the new school year will be here soon. If you've set the goal of trying something new in your classroom this year (shouldn't that always be one of our goals), here are eleven techy things teachers should try this year.
1. Build a Blog or Build a Better Blog
Blogs can serve many purposes for teachers. You can use a blog to communicate information to parents and students. You can use a blog to create a running journal of classroom activities and lessons throughout the year. Blogs can be used by students to record and reflect on their own learning. Make your students contributing authors on a class blog and have them write a weekly reflection on their own learning.
Three good platforms for classroom blogging are Blogger, Edublogs, and Kid Blog. All three of those platforms are very easy to start as they don't require any technical knowledge on your part. All three of those platforms allow you to control your blog's visibility settings. Get directions for creating Blogger and Edublogs blogs here. (Disclosure: Edublogs is an advertiser on Free Technology for Teachers.)
2. Build a Wiki With Your Students
Building pages on a wiki is a great way for students to record and share knowledge about topics they've researched. Last year one of my classes created a wiki about 1920's culture in the United States. When everyone was done contributing one of my students made the observation that the wiki had more information than the textbook, he was right.
Teachers and students can also use wikis to create digital portfolios. Students can create and edit their own pages to show-off the work they're most proud of.
Wikispaces, PB Works, and Wet Paint provide free wiki hosting. I prefer Wikispaces because they provide free advertising-free wiki hosting to teachers. Learn how to use Wikispaces here.
3. Build a Website
So a blog doesn't provide quite what you're looking for and a wiki doesn't either? Try building your own website. On your website you can include calendars of assignment due dates (tryGoogle Calendar), post reference videos and documents for students and parents, and even collect assignments.
Building a website used to be a difficult, technical process. That is not the case anymore. There are many free website creation and hosting services available on the web. Google Sites can be used to create a website containing blog and wiki elements. Learn how to use Google Sites in my publicationGoogle for Teachers II. Some other website creation and hosting services you might want to try are Weebly, Webs, and Yola.
4. Create Videos Without Purchasing any Equipment
Video is a powerful form of communication. It wasn't that long ago that classroom video projects required possession of expensive editing software and other equipment. That is no longer the case. Today, anyone with access to the web can make a high-quality video production. Two of my favorite web-based video creation services are Animoto and JayCut. Of the twoAnimoto is the easiest to use while JayCut offers the most editing options. Learn how to use Animoto in my free publication Making Videos on the Web.
5. Create Maps to Tell a Story
Maps are obviously useful for Social Studies teachers, but did you know that you can also use multimedia maps to tell a story? Google Maps and Google Earth can both be used to create a multimedia story. Try having your students write the biography of a famous person by plotting points on a map and adding text, images, and videos about that person to each placemark. Visit Jerome Burg's Google Lit Trips to learn more about using Google Earth in a literature course. Visit Tom Barrett's Maths Maps to get ideas for using maps in mathematics lessons. Need some general directions for using Google Maps or Google Earth please consult my free publications Google for Teachers and Google Earth Across the Curriculum.
6. Try Backchanneling in Your Classroom
As staffing cuts create larger class sizes, it is becoming more difficult for some teachers to hear every student's question and or comment. Some students are reluctant to verbally share their thoughts in the classroom. And some students just have to blurt-out every thought or question they have as soon as they have it. Creating a backchannel for your students can address all three of those problems.
A backchannel is another name for a chat room in which your students type their questions and comments whenever they have them. You can then address those questions and comments immediately, have students reply to each other, or address the questions when time permits. Learn more about the uses of backchannels in my presentation about using backchannels in the classroom.
Here are some school-friendly services that can be used to host backchannels: Today's Meet, Chatzy, Edmodo, and Present.ly.
7. Join a Social Network for Your Professional Development
Social networks can be used for much more than just sharing pictures of your kids with you old high school friends. Twitter,Classroom 2.0, and The Educators PLN are great places to connect with other teachers around the world. Use these connections to gather ideas for improving your lesson plans, share and find great web resources, and perhaps virtually connect your classroom to another classroom. Check out the Flat Classroom Project for ideas about connecting classrooms around the world. View my resources to learn how to build your own personal learning network.
8. Use an Online Service to Save Your Bookmarks
Every spring just before school lets out for the summer and all of the school-issued computers are re-imaged, some of my colleagues come to me in a panic wondering how to save all of the websites they have bookmarked on their computers. This problem could be completely avoided if they would just try using an online social bookmarking service like Diigo, Delicious, or Google Bookmarks.
Using an online bookmarking service allows you to access all of your favorite websites from any Internet-connected computer anywhere. All three of these services offer browser add-ons that allow to save bookmarks just as easily as you would with the bookmarking features in Firefox or Internet Explorer. These services also allow you to share your bookmarks with others (your students for example) and to add comments to your bookmarks so you remember why you saved each one. Learn more about online bookmarking services in this video from Common Craft. Learn how to use Google Bookmarks in my free publication Google for Teachers II.
9. Get Your Students Searching More Than Just Google.com
Give students a research assignment and the first place that most of them will go to is Google.com. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but if that's all your students do they're not likely to find the best possible information. One of the ways you can do this is by introducing your students to Google Wonder Wheel and Google Timeline. Both of those refinement tools are built into Google Search. You should also show your students how to use Google's advanced search options. If your students are searching for information that contains numerical data such as distance and time, introduce them to Wolfram Alpha. Learn more about Internet search strategies and tools in my free publication Beyond Google. Learn how to build your own search engine in my free publication Google for Teachers II.
10. Have Your Students Create Podcasts
Creating podcasts is a great way for students to preserve oral histories or to hear themselves practicing a foreign language. Open source program Audacity and Apple's Garage Band are excellent platforms for recording podcasts. You can also record podcasts without installing software by using Aviary's Myna service or Drop.io's voicemail service. If you need a free place to host podcasts check out PodBean or Blubrry.
11. Eliminate Inbox Overload
Get all of your students using Google Docs or Zoho Writer this year to eliminate the need for them to send you document attachments. Simply have them share their documents with you. You can edit their documents and grade their documents without having to open attachments. Using Google Docs or Zoho Writer will eliminate issues associated with students sending attachments that you cannot open. Getting your students to use either of these services will free up a lot of storage space in your email inbox.
Stay tuned later this week for a free PDF guide on how to use the tools mentioned above.
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Bob Sullo's Rant
Does Academic Rigor Matter? (What Your Doctor Won’t Tell You)
Most of us blindly accept that students preparing to be doctors should be subjected to the most demanding, rigorous, God-awful course of studies as undergraduates. I mean, that soft, liberal arts, humanistic stuff is OK, but “real” professionals – like doctors – need to be tested by fire and lesser candidates “weeded out.” Applying to med school is the academic equivalent of survival of the fittest. My college roommate was pre-med. I saw what he had to get through. I have to admit that as a health-care consumer, I’m glad he endured a hellacious course of studies. I want to have confidence that my doctors have been prepared well. Knowing they were pushed to the limit somehow provides reassurance.
Oops! Hang on a second. A study reported by David Muller, MD and Nathan Kase, MD from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine of New York University in New York challenges the prevailing wisdom that “tougher is better.” Their findings appear in the August 2010 volume of Academic Medicine(Volume 85 – Issue 8 – pp 1378-1383) and compare the performance of those medical students who followed the more traditional, “rigorous” undergraduate program – organic chemistry, physics, and calculus – with those who took “softer” undergraduate courses and majored in liberal arts. Their results? “Students without the traditional premedical preparation performed at a level equivalent to their premedical classmates.” In fact, the authors say there is a need to “remove content that is ‘irrelevant to medical practitioners, researchers, and administrators’ and that serves only as a mechanism for weeding out students in a ‘trial by fire.’”
Yikes! All along I thought rigor helped me get the highest-quality medical care. Seems like all I got were stressed out docs no better prepared to care for me than their counterparts who pursued a less demanding course of studies. (And those humanity-types probably can engage me in some interesting conversation!)
What does all of this mean? For one, forget the whole “rigor translates into enhanced performance” mantra that permeates the educational landscape. Creating “hoops” does nothing to promote quality, even in professions traditionally viewed as the most demanding. A much better predictor of success is reasonable capacity laced with heartfelt motivation to be the best you can be. I wonder how many potentially wonderful doctors (or lawyers, or teachers, or accountants, or auto mechanics, etc.) we have “screened out” for reasons that may be capricious. Looks like higher standards may have little to do with increasing capacity.
By Bob Sullo.
"Dogs and School Reform" Article
Dogs: An unusual guide to school reform
My guest today is Marion Brady, veteran teacher, administrator, curriculum designer and author.
By Marion Brady
Driving the country roads of Scotland, Ireland and Wales, I have sometimes been lucky enough to be blocked by sheep being moved from one pasture to another.
I say ‘lucky’ because it allows me to watch an impressive performance by a dog – usually a Border Collie.
What a show! A single, mid-sized dog herding two or three hundred sheep, keeping them moving in the right direction, rounding up strays, knowing how to intimidate but not cause panic, funneling them all through a gate, and obviously enjoying the challenge.
Why a Border Collie? Why not an Akita or Xoloitzcuintli or another of about 400 breeds listed on the Internet?
Because, among the people for whom herding sheep is serious business, there is general agreement that Border Collies are better at doing what needs to be done than any other dog. They have ‘the knack.’
That knack is so important that those who care most about Border Collies even oppose their being entered in dog shows. That, they say, would lead to the Border Collie being bred to look good, and looking good isn’t the point. Brains, innate ability, performance – that’s the point.
Other breeds are no less impressive in other ways. If you’re lost in a snowstorm in the Alps, you don’t need a Border Collie. You need a big, strong dog with a really good nose, lots of fur, wide feet that don’t sink too deeply into snow, and an unerring sense of direction for returning with help. You need a Saint Bernard.
If varmints are sneaking into your hen house, killing your chickens, and escaping down holes in a nearby field, you don’t need a Border Collie or a Saint Bernard, you need a Fox Terrier.
It isn’t that many different breeds can’t be taught to herd, lead high-altitude rescue efforts, or kill foxes. They can. It’s just that teaching all dogs to do things which one particular breed can do better than any other doesn’t make much sense.
We accept the reasonableness of that argument for dogs. We reject it for kids.
The non-educators now running the education show say American kids are lagging ever-farther behind in science and math, and that the consequences of that for America’s economic well-being could be catastrophic.
So, what is this rich, advantaged country of ours doing to try to beat out the competition?
Mainly, we put in place the No Child Left Behind program, now replaced by Race to the Top and the Common Core State Standards Initiative. If that fact makes you optimistic about the future of education in America, think again about dogs.
There are all kinds of things they can do besides herd, rescue, and engage foxes. They can sniff luggage for bombs. Chase felons. Stand guard duty. Retrieve downed game birds. Guide the blind. Detect certain diseases. Locate earthquake survivors. Entertain audiences. Play nice with little kids. Go for help if Little Nell falls down a well.
So, with No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top as models, let’s set performance standards for these and all other canine capabilities and train all dogs to meet them. All 400 breeds. All skills. Leave No Dog Behind!
Two-hundred-pound Mastiffs may have a little trouble with the chase-the-fox-down-the-hole standard, and Chihuahuas will probably have difficulty with the tackle-the-felon-and-pin-him-to-the-ground standard. But, hey, no excuses! Standards are standards! Leave No Dog Behind.
Think there’s something wrong with a same-standards-and-tests-for-everybody approach to educating? Think a math whiz shouldn’t be held back just because he can’t write a good five-paragraph essay? Think a gifted writer shouldn’t be refused a diploma because she can’t solve a quadratic equation? Think a promising trumpet player shouldn’t be kept out of the school orchestra or pushed out on the street because he can’t remember the date of the Boxer Rebellion?
If you think there’s something fundamentally, dangerously wrong with an educational reform effort that’s actually designed to standardize, designed to ignore human variation, designed to penalize individual differences, designed to produce a generation of clones, photocopy this column.
If you think it’s stupid to require every kid to read the same books, think the same thoughts, parrot the same answers, make several photocopies. And in the margin at the top of each, write, in longhand, something like, “Please explain why the standards and accountability fad isn’t a criminal waste of brains,” or, “Why are you trashing America’s hope for the future?” or just, “Does this make sense?”
Send the copies to your senators and representatives before they sell their vote to the publishing and testing corporations intent on getting an ever-bigger slice of that half-trillion dollars a year America spends on educating.
NOT to do on the first day
This year, I promise my students to not:
- Sit behind my desk and wave at you, but instead be in the hallway, smiling.
- Expect you to put everything away and stay organized, after all, learning can be kind of messy.
- Hand you a folder with paperwork to fill out so that I can get to know you better. Real community comes from conversation.
- Give you a list of my rules; we will make expectations together.
- Welcome you to "my room," it is our room!
- Talk about all of the homework you will have, instead I will share the great knowledge we will uncover.
- Tell you how you can earn rewards; no stickers, stars or trinkets in here - knowledge is our reward.
- Pretend that I know what you are going to say or only partially listen; you are my focus and will be the whole year.
- Run to the teacher's lounge and share stories about those kids that I have. Instead I will share just how phenomenal this year will be.
- Pretend that I have all of the answers or am the absolute authority in the room; this is a journey we take together and you get to teach me as well.
- Hide that I am nervous. I don't know you either so, of course, I am nervous.
- Tell you how to get an "A." Learning is not about grading, it is about learning, so grades will not be a main focus.
- Second-guess everything I said or did; I will trust in myself and hope you do the same.
- Be afraid to try something you suggested; after all, what is the harm in trying?
So ask yourself, what do you not want to do on the first day of school?
Care first
I learned that teaching is more than just following a curriculum. We get to touch people’s hearts; we get this unique opportunity of making someone’s life different by giving them tools to be better, by teaching them to believe in themselves and by showing them they are special and unique. It’s by showing them we care that we’ll get to do the most. It’s by loving them that we’ll be able to make them flourish.
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