Indications That You Are Moving in the Right Direction

This from teacher I worked with a few weeks ago on establishing a wiki for her AP US History Class:

did you see the first completed review page on my wiki--pretty awesome. some of the links are careless and even useless, but I've noticed so far with the new page that they're linking in more useful resources. i am very pleased with the content and organization. thanks!

And then this from her students:

it makes it easier to communicate with ALL of your classmates, not just the ones you normally talk to outside of school.. also, its awesome because its a group project that everyone can collaborate on but we don't all have to be together to work on it

But also the project has opened up valid discussion about the merits of using such technology in schools:

I hate the AP review project. It is a superfluous use of technology that only leads to frustration. More time is spent organizing the page and competing with overachievers for things to do then actually learning anything about history. Scrap it please before it evolves into a worse monster that no one can manage.

On Thursday and Friday of this week, I worked with two groups of teachers on the merits of feedback as a means of self-assessment for teachers. While the workshop wasn't packed to the gills, the teachers I worked with began to see why I survey them every time they leave my classes.

As people in the art and science of education, we have to be able to get constructive feedback from our stakeholders in addition to the few observations that are done by our administration. Two or three snapshots are not enough to transform our teaching in a meaningful way. Our most important stakeholders, our students, need to be voiced in the process of their own education. Imagine using the survey results as a basis for class discussion where the points made by the students are validated and discussed, or using the results as a basis for planning a new lesson and informing the students that this lesson was driven by their comments on the last unit, or last lesson.

Ownership

Since hearing Alan November speak, I am intrigued by the idea of ownership of learning and the roles of teachers and students in a classroom. I have spent the last year talking about authentic learning, tools, technology, and pedagogy in the 21st Century and how different it should be, but what does that look like? My wife asked me a question last night: how do I engage my 4th graders in their own learning? I had no direct answer. It took a few minutes of really thinking and brainstorming to find out where she needed to go (I also asked the Twitter network) I realized that it takes a lot more than just knowing that there needs to be a change, and that there will be a change in our classrooms, than actually affecting that change.

Surveying the students and finding out what works for them in your lessons and units begins to take them towards ownership of the learning because they begin to see their role in their own learning. "Hey, I can drive this process!" It takes a teacher willing to listen and act on those suggestions heard.


Technorati Tags: alannovember, wikis, survey, pedagogy, twitter, classrooms, 21stcentury

My Thoughts on Mr. November, Part II

"Schools remain cut off from the rest of the world despite web 2.0 technologies. We need to connect them and publicize those connections."

Alan spoke about the need for us to connect our students to the world at large, about the changing global economy and workforce and the radical shifts that are happening in economies worldwide. Like all else I do, I needed to filter that statement a little before letting it run loose in my own world.

I had an interesting conversation today with a good friend of mine regarding what it's like being out of the classroom and what we notice now that we are "on the other side" at least for part of the time. My friend said that, being in the classroom for a while, you often feel like you have exhausted every possible angle on a certain unit, a particular lesson, or maybe even a particular grade level. Leaving the classroom for a while and having the opportunity and the time to devote to finding new angles, new strategies, and new learning adventures gives you fresh perspective, and you find yourself trying hard to get back into the classroom to try what you have found. Why is that so often the case? Is it that we have our system structured so that it's focused less on the quality of instruction and more on the quantity of instruction you can deliver in a set time.

In looking at Alan's quote from above, and in thinking about this situation of perspective and time, they both are matched perfectly. If we have networked teachers, communities of practice either locally or virtually, sharing knowledge, strategy, and especially their students work, we have solved the problem of time and the problem of stagnation. Change the model of how teachers are developed once they are hired to one where they are networked with others of like and unlike mind. Connecting the students, then follows soon after, as the teachers can begin to see the possibilities and benefits of connected learning. I know there is more to this than this brief post, but I truly think that the key to future professional development has to start with networking teachers. For a more thorough look at what this can be, be sure to check out Sheryl Nussbaum-Beech's latest post at TechLearning.

A lot of technology, a lack of vision.

What am I doing to help provide the teachers I work with the ability and desire to have vision? Alan's statement echoes what's been said by so many lately: we have great tools, but what can we build with them? I looked hard at the courses I have offered over the past year to my staff, and I looked hard at the model I offered them in. Had I not accepted this new position (still holding out on that post), I would have restructured the entire way I offer PD. I don't think this 2-hour, sit-and-get is the best way to facilitate change, promote innovation, and instill my staff with the confidence they need to start having real vision when it comes to how they can now teach. And who knows, with your help, this slate of classes in November might be the beginning of that shift for my district.

What is my vision for the classrooms I work in? That's not an easy one, but it's one that we should get a handle on soon. If you asked me now, I'd go with this:

We are the change that we want to see; it starts with us and how we enable that change in others around us. We want globally connected learners because we may not be all that our learners need us to be. Our classrooms should produce students whose sense of community is not constrained by their geographic location because they never learned that way; the world was always their classroom. Our teachers and students should know audience to be much more than just teacher, or class, or school, but nation, and world beyond that. And our methods will be the subject of debate and critique among our peers.

Flickr Image Credits:
"Be the Change," from dmal's photostream
"Do you Believe in Change?" carf's photostream

Technorati Tags: blc08, alannovember, education, philosopy, professionaldevelopment

My Thoughts on Mr. November

Friday, at TechForum New York, the keynote speaker was Alan November, of November Learning. Alan is someone whom I have read much about via other's experiences in meeting him, attending BLC, or hearing him recently in Shanghai, but never really did any focused research on myself. Who was this guy, and why did he always leave behind a wake?

His bio in the conference program started off with a great piece of information: his first professional gig was that of an oceanography teacher at an alternative high school in Boston Harbor. Where can't you go after that?

Needless to say, I was impressed, and tried to take notes on his presentation, but when your network shows up, it is difficult to stay focused on much other than your twitterstream. Also, however, I find it hard to take notes any more unless the speaker is talking about something other than tools. Thankfully, Alan seemed to care less about the tools, even at one point, throwing a jab to the aggressive vendor crowd assembled.

What he did give me was this:

Turn your fears into goals.

That sounds simple enough, but let's put it into practice for a minute. Here are a list of fears/obstacles that I often hear when working with staff:

• I am not technologically savvy.
• There is no time to implement this into my curriculum. I am held to state standards on tests like Regents/GEPA/HSPA; I need to focus on that.
• The students will not take this seriously.
• They (the students) just copy and paste everything anyway.
• I can't add one more thing to my list of responsibilities.

And as Alan was speaking, he impressed me less with his rehearsed ideas, but more with his spontaneous addressing of crowd concerns, taking direct questions from several people who iterated some of the same fears/obstacles above. Looking at that list, I can do that. Here is my revised version:

• I will become comfortable teaching in a manner that appeals to the learning needs of my students.
  
• I will use resources contributed by teachers who are using technology to help students reach state standards on tests.
• I will create lessons that matter to my students, ones in which they will work on without realizing it as work.
• My assessments and assignments will be authentic, so that students cannot merely take the work of others and pass it off as their own.
• I will focus on adding one new method to my teaching repertoire this year.

As I ready myself for a switch in job titles (more on that as the time nears), these type of semantic shifts are things I want to embrace. I have long thought that leadership determines institutional attitude more than any other component. My experience in the schools I have worked in bears this belief out. If I am to be someone who expects change, pushes innovative measures through, and enlists the creative forces of my staff, then I have to able to transform negativity into a goal-setting mentality like Alan prescribed.

This is the first in a series of posts I am generating from his session, and from the subsequent round tables and discussions from Friday.


Technorati Tags: blc08, alannovember, philosophy, education, change

Professional Development Workshop Dates

If your interest was piqued by the classes I listed in a previous post and you want to participate, below are the titles, dates and times for the classes. I also included the descriptions again so you wouldn't have to keep going back and forth between two posts.

As for bringing you all in, suggestions? Ustream? Skype/Yugma? I am all ears.

Note: Classes are offered twice to accomodate the different schedules of the buildings I work in. So if you can't make one, check the other.

ALL TIMES EASTERN STANDARD TIME, U.S. (UTC/GMT -4 hours)

Presenting with Google Earth in the Social Studies Classroom, 4hrs
Location: SMS Room 121
Presenter: Patrick Higgins
Date(s): TBD
Time: TBD
Limitations: Grades 5-12 Social Studies and English/Language Arts teachers only
Course Description:
Teaching has become such a visual profession, with great emphasis placed on the context within which you present the material to the students. Using traditional methods of presentation such as PowerPoint can be augmented with several emerging technologies. Google Earth allows teachers to create dynamic, visually engaging presentations that employ the use of video, image, and geographical interfaces.

Participants in this workshop will use Google Earth to create a class lecture or presentation that they otherwise would have created using standard methods (MS Word, PowerPoint, etc.). Follow up with the instructor is recommended after the class ends.

Presenting with Google Earth in Social Studies Classroom, 4hrs
Date(s): November 19-20
Time: 2:30-4:30
Limitations: Grades 9-12 Social Studies and English/Language Arts teachers only
Course Description:
Teaching has become such a visual profession, with great emphasis placed on the context within which you present the material to the students. Using traditional methods of presentation such as PowerPoint can be augmented with several emerging technologies. Google Earth allows teachers to create dynamic, visually engaging presentations that employ the use of video, image, and geographical interfaces.

Participants in this workshop will use Google Earth to create a class lecture or presentation that they otherwise would have created using standard methods (MS Word, PowerPoint, etc.). Follow up with the instructor is recommended after the class ends.

The Classroom Blog: How to move your students writing to a secure, online community. 4hrs
Date(s): November 26-29
Time: 8:00am-9:00am
Course Description:
Our definition of literacy is quickly changing, so much so that we really need to rethink what it means to be "literate" in this century. According to a study commsioned by the National School Board Association,, more than 50% of high school students have produced content on the web. Whether that means they are posting to a MySpace or Facebook page, or building a website or wiki, our students are active online. Just as with anything else we teach them, we need to be able to teach them how to create good content, content that has real value both in design and delivery.

Blogging with your students is a great step in this direction. Student writing proficiency and their desire to write will amaze you when you give them the freedom to create on their own blog. We will use 21classes to create your classroom blog. Depending on your level of comfort, we will allow your students writing to be viewable to others, or just to registered members of the site. Other topics to be discussed: online safety, online collaboration, and copyright.

The Classroom Blog: How to move your students writing to a secure, online community. 4hrs
Date(s): November 26-27
Time: 2:30-4:30
Course Description:
Our definition of literacy is quickly changing, so much so that we really need to rethink what it means to be "literate" in this century. According to a study commsioned by the National School Board Association,, more than 50% of high school students have produced content on the web. Whether that means they are posting to a MySpace or Facebook page, or building a website or wiki, our students are active online. Just as with anything else we teach them, we need to be able to teach them how to create good content, content that has real value both in design and delivery.

Blogging with your students is a great step in this direction. Student writing proficiency and their desire to write will amaze you when you give them the freedom to create on their own blog. We will use 21classes to create your classroom blog. Depending on your level of comfort, we will allow your students writing to be viewable to others, or just to registered members of the site. Other topics to be discussed: online safety, online collaboration, and copyright.


Feedback Matters: How student feedback can change your lesson design: before, during, and after, 2 hrs.
Date(s): November 1-2
Time: 8:00-9:00am
Course Description:
We spend a good portion of our school year assessing our students on what have learned in our classrooms. But how often do we assess them on how they learned best? Asking students for feedback on your classroom practices, lesson design, and subject choice can lead to great strides in your professional practice. A simple five-question survey, skillfully designed, can yield feedback from the students such as what presentation mode the students enjoyed most, what articles mattered the most to them, or what area they would like you to have spent more time on.

Using Schoolwires, you can easily create a survey with varied question types. Schoolwires also provides an analysis page, plus a way to download the results to an Excel spreadsheet. This class will also explore how to create embeddable polls that can be placed on wikis or blogs using services such as PollDaddy and SurveyGizmo.

Feedback Matters: How student feedback can change your lesson design: before, during, and after, 2 hrs.
Date(s): November 1
Time: 2:30-4:30pm
Course Description:
We spend a good portion of our school year assessing our students on what have learned in our classrooms. But how often do we assess them on how they learned best? Asking students for feedback on your classroom practices, lesson design, and subject choice can lead to great strides in your professional practice. A simple five-question survey, skillfully designed, can yield feedback from the students such as what presentation mode the students enjoyed most, what articles mattered the most to them, or what area they would like you to have spent more time on.

Using Schoolwires, you can easily create a survey with varied question types. Schoolwires also provides an analysis page, plus a way to download the results to an Excel spreadsheet. This class will also explore how to create embeddable polls that can be placed on wikis or blogs using services such as PollDaddy and SurveyGizmo.

The Wiki Way: Using Wikis as Collaborative Environments, 4 hrs.
Date(s): November 12-15
Time: 8:00-9:00am
Course Description:
Several teachers in the district have begun to use the power of wikis to enable their students to work collaboratively on web pages centered around a particular subject or project. Sites that use “wiki” technology are turning the ideas we have held about online research upside down. A Wiki is defined as:

a type of web site that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change some available content.... This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring. The term wiki also can refer to the collaborative website itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a Web site, or to certain specific wiki sites, ...and on-line encyclopedias such as Wikipedia.

Wiki technology lends itself inherently to collaborative learning and creation. The very idea that several students can work on a body of information both simultaneously, independently, and from any location where they have an Internet connection, immediately extends the classroom beyond the 40 minutes that we see them and beyond the physical walls of our classroom. Participants from any content area will benefit from the balance of student freedom and teacher control afforded by wikispaces. Some examples of projects that teachers using wikis have created are: classroom study guides for full and half-year courses and even individual exams, collaborative projects with other schools in other countries, choose-your-own-ending stories, and student-driven tutorials for all levels of mathematics.

The Wiki Way: Using Wikis as Collaborative Environments, 4 hrs.
Date(s): November 12-13
Time: 2:30-4:30pm
Course Description:
Several teachers in the district have begun to use the power of wikis to enable their students to work collaboratively on web pages centered around a particular subject or project. Sites that use “wiki” technology are turning the ideas we have held about online research upside down. A Wiki is defined as:

a type of web site that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change some available content.... This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring. The term wiki also can refer to the collaborative website itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a Web site, or to certain specific wiki sites, ...and on-line encyclopedias such as Wikipedia.

Wiki technology lends itself inherently to collaborative learning and creation. The very idea that several students can work on a body of information both simultaneously, independently, and from any location where they have an Internet connection, immediately extends the classroom beyond the 40 minutes that we see them and beyond the physical walls of our classroom. Participants from any content area will benefit from the balance of student freedom and teacher control afforded by wikispaces. Some examples of projects that teachers using wikis have created are: classroom study guides for full and half-year courses and even individual exams, collaborative projects with other schools in other countries, choose-your-own-ending stories, and student-driven tutorials for all levels of mathematics.

Internet Safety: What you need to know about keeping your students safe online, 2 hrs.
Date(s): November 20-21
Time: 8:00-9:00am
Course Description:
If ever there was a hot topic among educators, it is the issue of how to keep yourselves and your students safe as they venture into the realm of online content creation. We wrestle with our fears and those generated by the media regarding the dangers of online activity, but we long to connect our students to the growing amount of quality information, interaction and creative outlets that the web offers. Where is the line?

This workshop will delve into common-sense strategies to help you feel more comfortable about using the internet in the classroom, working with your students in an online collaborative environment, and teaching your students true online ethics.

Internet Safety: What you need to know about keeping your students safe online, 2 hrs.
Date(s): November 6
Time: 2:30-4:30pm
Course Description:
If ever there was a hot topic among educators, it is the issue of how to keep yourselves and your students safe as they venture into the realm of online content creation. We wrestle with our fears and those generated by the media regarding the dangers of online activity, but we long to connect our students to the growing amount of quality information, interaction and creative outlets that the web offers. Where is the line?

This workshop will delve into common-sense strategies to help you feel more comfortable about using the internet in the classroom, working with your students in an online collaborative environment, and teaching your students true online ethics.

Google Docs and Spreadsheets: Track Student Writing and Foster Collaboration through Google Docs, 2 hrs.
Date(s): November 30 and December 1
Time: 8:00-9:00am
Course Description:
Working with students as they learn to become writers is often a trial and error process, and we struggle sometimes with the ability to track changes in their revisions. Also, sometimes we have students that truly need more than just a conference or two to set them on the right path to creating a quality piece of writing. What if you could write alongside your students from the very first sentence to the final revision? What if you could provide scaffolding for the students to help them organize their thoughts and see the changes they make to that structure in real time?

Welcome to Google Docs and Spreadsheets, where you can collaborate on a document with a student from the outset, and track changes in their work as they complete it. This application, free from the folks at Google, also allows for a permanent storage place for student writing that is secure and trustworthy. Have a student that loses work, CD's, or flashdrives? Google Docs automatically saves writing every 30 seconds and allows the students to access their writing anywhere they have an internet connection. If you are serious about improving the quality of your student writing, think about taking this workshop.

Google Docs and Spreadsheets: Track Student Writing and Foster Collaboration through Google Docs, 2 hrs.
Date(s): November 28
Time: 2:30-4:30pm
Course Description:
Working with students as they learn to become writers is often a trial and error process, and we struggle sometimes with the ability to track changes in their revisions. Also, sometimes we have students that truly need more than just a conference or two to set them on the right path to creating a quality piece of writing. What if you could write alongside your students from the very first sentence to the final revision? What if you could provide scaffolding for the students to help them organize their thoughts and see the changes they make to that structure in real time?

Welcome to Google Docs and Spreadsheets, where you can collaborate on a document with a student from the outset, and track changes in their work as they complete it. This application, free from the folks at Google, also allows for a permanent storage place for student writing that is secure and trustworthy. Have a student that loses work, CD's, or flashdrives? Google Docs automatically saves writing every 30 seconds and allows the students to access their writing anywhere they have an internet connection. If you are serious about improving the quality of your student writing, think about taking this workshop.

SearchSmarter: Increasing Online Productivity through more efficient research, 2hrs.
Date(s): November 5
Time: 2:30-4:30pm
Course Description:
How do you judge the worthiness of an internet site? When we search for information, or ask our students to search for information, we need to be able to use as many filters as we can to eliminate excess choices that detract from our task at hand: we need to search smarter. The percentage of students who venture beyond the first three or four hits on a Google search is minimal. As those charged with teaching them to delve deeper, providing them with failsafe strategies for making those top three quality sites is imperative.

Using simple Boolean search strategies, as well as alternative search methods and search engines, this workshop will arm you with a multitude of methods for helping your students find a higher percentage of useful information with their searching. You will also be shown how to create a custom search engine that limits the sites that students can search to only those you want them to access.

Introduction to Social Networking and Personal Learning Environments: Using Smarter People to Raise your Level of Thinking, 3hrs.
Date(s): November 5-7
Time: 8:00-9:00am
Course Description:
Professional development is often thought of as being the "sit and get" variety, however, with the emergence of new social networking software professional development can be taken to a whole new, interactive level. This workshop will explore the power of using a network to help you learn "socially," through the use of professional networking sites, social bookmarking, and RSS, participants in this class will learn to find intelligent people in your field and "attach" themselves to them. As they learn and acquire resources, so will you!

Some of the applications used in this class will be the Classroom 2.0 Social Network, del.icio.us bookmarking, and Google Reader. Teachers and staff with familiarity with any of these applications are strongly encouraged to attend.

Introduction to Social Networking and Personal Learning Environments: Using Smarter People to Raise your Level of Thinking, 3hrs.
Date(s): November 14-16
Time: 2:30-3:30pm
Course Description:
Professional development is often thought of as being the "sit and get" variety, however, with the emergence of new social networking software professional development can be taken to a whole new, interactive level. This workshop will explore the power of using a network to help you learn "socially," through the use of professional networking sites, social bookmarking, and RSS, participants in this class will learn to find intelligent people in your field and "attach" themselves to them. As they learn and acquire resources, so will you!

Some of the applications used in this class will be the Classroom 2.0 Social Network, del.icio.us bookmarking, and Google Reader. Teachers and staff with familiarity with any of these applications are strongly encouraged to attend.

Copyright or copy wrong, 2 hrs.
Date(s): November 16 and 19
Time: 8:00-9:00am
Course Description:
As a district we are entering a phase where our student work is becoming increasingly public, as is the content we create for educational purposes. At what point do we as teachers leave the protection of "Fair Use," and enter into the area of copyright infringement? This is information we need to know.

Our society, and especially our students, are becoming increasingly a "cut-and-paste" society, where information, pictures, audio, and video found on the internet are viewed as free for the taking. This is far from the truth; having a clear understanding of what is copyright and what is "copywrong" will help you steer yourselves and your students away from potential legal issues down the road.

Additionally, this workshop will explore the idea of Creative Commons, a non-profit organization dedicated to "creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare 'some rights reserved.'"

Copyright or copy wrong, 2 hrs.
Date(s): November 29
Time: 2:30-4:30pm
Course Description:
As a district we are entering a phase where our student work is becoming increasingly public, as is the content we create for educational purposes. At what point do we as teachers leave the protection of "Fair Use," and enter into the area of copyright infringement? This is information we need to know.

Our society, and especially our students, are becoming increasingly a "cut-and-paste" society, where information, pictures, audio, and video found on the internet are viewed as free for the taking. This is far from the truth; having a clear understanding of what is copyright and what is "copywrong" will help you steer yourselves and your students away from potential legal issues down the road.

Additionally, this workshop will explore the idea of Creative Commons, a non-profit organization dedicated to "creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare 'some rights reserved.'"

Technorati Tags: professionaldevelopment, classes, education, school2.0

Fall Professional Development Workshops, so far

While we are painfully late in getting these out to the teachers, here are the courses I am offering to our staff this fall. Please let me know of a few things as you read this:

• opinions on the descriptions and appeal to the classroom teacher.
• resources I can use to further strengthen the offerings
• how you might want to adapt them into your offerings
• if you are interested in participating via skype or any of the myriad conferencing options we have now.

The classes:


Presenting with Google Earth in the Social Studies Classroom
Teaching has become such a visual profession, with great emphasis placed on the context within which you present the material to the students. Using traditional methods of presentation such as PowerPoint can be augmented with several emerging technologies. Google Earth allows teachers to create dynamic, visually engaging presentations that employ the use of video, image, and geographical interfaces.

The Classroom Blog: How to move your students writing to a secure, online community
Our definition of literacy is quickly changing, so much so that we really need to rethink what it means to be "literate" in this century. According to a study commisioned by the National School Board Association, more than 50% of high school students have produced content on the web. Whether that means they are posting to a MySpace or Facebook page, or building a website or wiki, our students are active online. Just as with anything else we teach them, we need to be able to teach them how to create good content, content that has real value both in design and delivery.

Blogging with your students is a great step in this direction. Student writing proficiency and their desire to write will amaze you when you give them the freedom to create on their own blog. We will use 21classes to create your classroom blog. Depending on your level of comfort, we will allow your students writing to be viewable to others, or just to registered members of the site. Other topics to be discussed: online safety, online collaboration, and copyright.

The Media Rich Classroom: Using Video to Engage and Assess students
We have a multitude of resources at our disposal on a daily basis, and our students live and consume digital media on a daily basis. How can you get that media into your classroom in a manner that allows for thoughtful discussion and dissection? This workshop will focus on ways in which you can embed media into your teaching style without completely redesigning everything you do. Primarily, we will look at unitedstreaming's Quiz Builder, which allows for the creation of independent assessments based on videos. These assessments are completed online by your students and the results are emailed to you.

This class will also utilize YouTube, Google Video, TeacherTube, PBS, and other video sites that allow for the legal playback of material on a website or in educational materials. Participants in this workshop will leave with several assessments created, and lessons augmented by video and other digital technologies.

Feedback Matters: How student feedback can change your lesson design: before, during, and after
We spend a good portion of our school year assessing our students on what have learned in our classrooms. But how often do we assess them on how they learned best? Asking students for feedback on your classroom practices, lesson design, and subject choice can lead to great strides in your professional practice. A simple five-question survey, skillfully designed, can yield feedback from the students such as what presentation mode the students enjoyed most, what articles mattered the most to them, or what area they would like you to have spent more time on.


The Wiki Way: Using Wikis as Collaborative Environments
Several teachers in the district have begun to use the power of wikis to enable their students to work collaboratively on web pages centered around a particular subject or project. Sites that use “wiki” technology are turning the ideas we have held about online research upside down. A Wiki is defined as:

a type of web site that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change some available content.... This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring. The term wiki also can refer to the collaborative website itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a Web site, or to certain specific wiki sites, ...and on-line encyclopedias such as Wikipedia.

Wiki technology lends itself inherently to collaborative learning and creation. The very idea that several students can work on a body of information both simultaneously, independently, and from any location where they have an Internet connection, immediately extends the classroom beyond the 40 minutes that we see them and beyond the physical walls of our classroom. Participants from any content area will benefit from the balance of student freedom and teacher control afforded by wikispaces. Some examples of projects that teachers using wikis have created are: classroom study guides for full and half-year courses and even individual exams, collaborative projects with other schools in other countries, choose-your-own-ending stories, and student-driven tutorials for all levels of mathematics.


Internet Safety: What you need to know about keeping your students safe online
If ever there was a hot topic among educators, it is the issue of how to keep yourselves and your students safe as they venture into the realm of online content creation. We wrestle with our fears and those generated by the media regarding the dangers of online activity, but we long to connect our students to the growing amount of quality information, interaction and creative outlets that the web offers. Where is the line?

This workshop will delve into common-sense strategies to help you feel more comfortable about using the internet in the classroom, working with your students in an online collaborative environment, and teaching your students true online ethics.

Google Docs and Spreadsheets: Track Student Writing and Foster Collaboration through Google Docs
Working with students as they learn to become writers is often a trial and error process, and we struggle sometimes with the ability to track changes in their revisions. Also, sometimes we have students that truly need more than just a conference or two to set them on the right path to creating a quality piece of writing. What if you could write alongside your students from the very first sentence to the final revision? What if you could provide scaffolding for the students to help them organize their thoughts and see the changes they make to that structure in real time?

Welcome to Google Docs and Spreadsheets, where you can collaborate on a document with a student from the outset, and track changes in their work as they complete it. This application, free from the folks at Google, also allows for a permanent storage place for student writing that is secure and trustworthy. Have a student that loses work, CD's, or flashdrives? Google Docs automatically saves writing every 30 seconds and allows the students to access their writing anywhere they have an internet connection. If you are serious about improving the quality of your student writing, think about taking this workshop.

SearchSmarter: Increasing Online Productivity through more efficient research
How do you judge the worthiness of an internet site? When we search for information, or ask our students to search for information, we need to be able to use as many filters as we can to eliminate excess choices that detract from our task at hand: we need to search smarter. The percentage of students who venture beyond the first three or four hits on a Google search is minimal. As those charged with teaching them to delve deeper, providing them with failsafe strategies for making those top three quality sites is imperative.

Using simple Boolean search strategies, as well as alternative search methods and search engines, this workshop will arm you with a multitude of methods for helping your students find a higher percentage of useful information with their searching. You will also be shown how to create a custom search engine that limits the sites that students can search to only those you want them to access.

Introduction to Social Networking and Personal Learning Environments: Using Smarter People to Raise your Level of Thinking
Professional development is often thought of as being the "sit and get" variety, however, with the emergence of new social networking software professional development can be taken to a whole new, interactive level. This workshop will explore the power of using a network to help you learn "socially," through the use of professional networking sites, social bookmarking, and RSS, participants in this class will learn to find intelligent people in your field and "attach" themselves to them. As they learn and acquire resources, so will you!

Some of the applications used in this class will be the Classroom 2.0 Social Network, del.icio.us bookmarking, and Google Reader. Teachers and staff with familiarity with any of these applications are strongly encouraged to attend.

Copyright or Copy Wrong
As a district we are entering a phase where our student work is becoming increasingly public, as is the content we create for educational purposes. At what point do we as teachers leave the protection of "Fair Use," and enter into the area of copyright infringement? This is information we need to know.

Our society, and especially our students, are becoming increasingly a "cut-and-paste" society, where information, pictures, audio, and video found on the internet are viewed as free for the taking. This is far from the truth; having a clear understanding of what is copyright and what is "copywrong" will help you steer yourselves and your students away from potential legal issues down the road.

Additionally, this workshop will explore the idea of Creative Commons, a non-profit organization dedicated to "creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare 'some rights reserved.'"

Technorati Tags: professionaldevelopment,, education,, school2.0,, sparta,, chalkdust

flickr photo credit:"Fresh Development Business Card - Front" pickledshark's photostream

Teaching, within 5 Years

If you had the gift of foresight, what do you think our profession would look like in five year's time? Are the powers of change severe enough to move the field of education out of the rut it has settled so comfortably in, regardless of the myriad changes going on in the professional world around us? This post came to mind as I read the following from David Warlick:

I think that it’s part of the job. It is my job, as a teacher, to be able to teach today — to be skilled at using today’s information technologies within today’s information environments and apply pedagogies that reflect today’s information environments. We suffer from the myths of old world education, that you go to school so that you will be prepared for the next 30 or 35 years. But the teacher we are at graduation from college, is not necessarily the teacher we need to be five years later. Those days are long behind us — and I think that the job has become a whole lot more exciting as a result.

Formal staff development is important. We all need new ideas, new energy, new inspiration. Districts and service agencies should continue to make available any kind of professional development opportunities that are successful. But it’s still the job of the teacher to be competent to teach in the classrooms that today’s students need.

Certainly, the situation is far more complex than this. Teachers do not have nearly enough time, nor enough compensation. They do not have the resources, and many resources are actually blocked from access. They are expected to do so much more than teach, and they are held responsible within conditions that are often entirely beyond their control. I’ve often said that the very best thing we could do to improve teaching and learning is to give teachers the time. Every teacher should have one hour of on-the-job professional time for every hour they spend in instructional supervision.

Warlick, whose ideas are championed in many blogs more renowned than this one, had, in the past, spoke of teaching students to teach themselves in a post not too long ago. The generation of students that is graduating college today and will become teachers in the next few years should also not be allowed to escape this responsibility as well. We need learners as much as we need teachers. We need, I should say, those willing to unlearn and relearn much more than we need anything else.

The Teaching Meme I Never Responded To....

Cindy Barnsley passed this meme on to me on 8/22/07. Despite showing a lack of technorati use, I figured I would honor the meme and continue it along even though it is quite belated.

1. I am a good teacher because…I think about how my students will be changed when they leave our classrooms, and do everything I know to do to affect that change.
   
2. If I weren’t a teacher I would be a…struggling writer, professional trailrunner (I wish), professional student.
   
3. My teaching style is…entirely based on my passion for the subject matter. If I don't feel it, I find it hard to believe that the students will either. Think about it, people have so much on their minds anyway that if we don't make it matter to them, we are just noise.
   
4. My classroom is…wherever my laptop and LCD projector can be plugged in, or even further, wherever I can find wifi.
   
5. My lesson plans are…more and more being influenced by UbD; I start with the end in mind more than I ever have before.
   
6. One of my teaching goals is…get rid of the term "integrate" in regards to technology.
   
7. The toughest part of teaching is…creating authentic assessments to examine whether or not our students have reached the level of understanding we need.
8. The thing I love about teaching is…the satisfaction of hearing your students talk about your class material serendipitously outside of the classroom.
   
9. A common misconception about teaching is…it ends at the end of the last period of the day.
   
10. The most important thing I’ve learning since I started teaching is…every parent was once a student too, and their experience as a student bears mightily on their attitude towards you as the teacher of their child.

I will pass it to Erica and Cathy.

Flickr photo credit to Arash Behshadpoor's photostream


Technorati Tags: education,, teaching,, learning,, philosophy

The UStream Feed

Below is the presentation from NJECC "Web 2.0, Meet Sparta Township Public Schools," via UStream and the slides to match. For some reason I could not get CamTwist to show my desktop on UStream. Maybe I need another tutorial (thanks Robin).

In all, I thought it went well, but it always seems that I could talk forever about the pedagogical advantages of some of the tools available to us. However, I could tell by some of the expressions from the audience that 40 minutes was just enough. Let me know what you think.

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The Maiden Stream

On Friday, October 19th, Angela Davis and I will be presenting to a group of tech leaders, administrators and academics at the NJECC Conference at Montclair State University. We were asked to present based on the strength of a presentation made to the same group last year by Erica Hartman and Jo Shuppon in which they showed the power of having students collaborate on a wiki and the ease of use of Skype.

This time around, I will be going into as much of our work as possible, showing wiki projects, blogging, podcasting, screencasting, tablet applications, and discussing how we develop our staff in terms of technology. Angela will be showing them the dialogue that regularly occurs on her AP Language and Composition wiki, and her SAKAI project with a group of seniors.

Feel like you are missing out? Don't. You can watch our entire presentation and hear us in real time through the incredible technology of Ustream. Follow this link at around 10:00am on Friday the 19th and you will hear either Angela or myself and be able to participate in our presentation via the chat. Ask us questions or cheer us on.

NOTE: YOU WILL HAVE TO CREATE AN ACCOUNT WITH USTREAM IN ORDER FOR YOUR NAME TO APPEAR IN THE CHAT.

Cross-posted at TechDossier.

Technorati Tags: njecc0708,, ustream,, wiki,, chalkdust,, techdossier,, web, 2.0

So you are into technology, now what?

An insane two weeks of connectivity, and I am on the more moderate side of things, has left me wondering where this is all heading. So many new tools that shorten the distance between worlds and worldviews have popped up. Twitter has just blown holes in my ability to disconnect. Now it's even infected my iPhone, keeping me glued to the action in any setting (is there a hack to install twitterific on the iPhone?). Whether it's uStream, Operator11, or even plain old Skype, our ability to teach and be taught on the spot by anyone who is willing is really throwing wrenches into my ability to filter out what matters and what doesn't.

Stephanie Sandifer, who just seems to be driving a lot of my thinking lately, rattled off this great post on Friday, which contained the following push:

In a comment or on a blog post on your own blog — take some time to reflect on and address the following questions:

What? (…is going on with our work, with our blogging, with our exploration… OR …new tools are we discovering, playing with, trying to find classroom uses for?)

So What? (Who cares? Why is this important? Why is this not important? What does it matter? Will it ever matter?)

Now What? (What do we do NEXT? What kind of gameplan do we need? Do we need a game plan? Do we collaborate, start over from scratch, quit doing whatever we are doing altogether, or disappear somewhere deep in Second Life? Seriously — WHAT NOW?)

much in the same way Steve Dembo dropped this on us Friday afternoon after the previously mentioned week of interconnection:

Time for Friday afternoon reflection: Share something you learned this week. (No websites or tools. Something new you actually LEARNED)

My reactions to these questions are below, but I before you read mine, I encourage you all to think along these lines as well. In the past, when we introduced new ideas into classroom pedagogy, we had the comfort of knowing that there would be ample time before the next "big thing" would come along. Now, do we have that time?

First, in reverse order, my response to Steve was as follows:

Learned that our best assets in the classroom are still our teachers who have vision and the guts to follow it.

By this I was referring to the meetings I had with teachers this week, all who wanted to push themselves and their students beyond what was required of them. I think I am fortunate to work in two buildings where things have really caught fire in terms of expanding the walls of the classroom. Our teachers want to be involved in creating with their students, and want to reach students in meaningful ways, and the explosion of collaborative technology truly augments their desire. The fact that they are becoming more adventurous each day makes me excited to be a part of the process.

Stephanie's post is slightly more difficult as it is truly forcing me to analyze where I am going.

What: When I answer this question, the first thing that comes to mind is our stated goal of trying to expand our learning time to outside of the 40 minutes we see the students. Our first steps involve getting teachers to use collaborative writing tools: Google Docs, wikispaces, 21Classes, etc. As far as some of the tools I mentioned in the opening, those tools are going to take time to trickle into the classrooms, but that "seep time" is so dramatically shortened by the situations our teachers are creating. One teacher wanted her students to create a news broadcast for a mock trial and I immediately thought: Ustream!

So What: What's important to me is that our teachers have begun to see that their learning cannot stagnate; if I can get around to it this year, I am going t really push for the creation of PLE's for our teachers. The translation to the students will be immediate. Case in point: we gave tablet pc's to nearly 80% of our high school staff, and the students in those classes are being exposed to resources that those teachers were privy to, but did not know how to translate them into the classroom. The level of transparency is unprecedented.

Now What: Our big focus, in my humble opinion, is to keep asking this question. Tools are not what we need to focus on, but the teaching is. If our teaching does not match our technological abilities, all we have is a digital dog and pony show. When we stop looking at these tools as a means to an end, then we have failed our teachers and our students.

The best meeting I have had this year with a teacher did not involve my laptop or discussion of tech, but rather a discussion of pedagogy and the Socratic Method. As tech coordinators and technofiles, we bridge a gap between teaching and technology. We cannot afford to be lacking on either side of our expertise.


Technorati Tags: sandifer,, ustream,, operator11,, skype,, dembo,, education,, reflection,, pedagogy,, technology


Image credit: Bridge Suspension, from Jeff Epstein on Flickr

Tablet PC's and a Fenway-style venue

This past Monday we had a district-wide professional development day which, for a majority of our staff was the standard type professional development day: two sessions, or one long session and go home. For a group of 70+ high school teachers, it was four hours of introduction to a new challenge.

Last summer, we began to field interest from our high school staff regarding whether or not they would be interested in obtaining a tablet pc for this coming school year. The focus was originally on the teachers who would be teaching in the portable classrooms during the reconstruction, but also on teachers who showed interest. We found more money than we thought we would, so we ordered many more than showed interest initially. Monday, was the first day where we had all of the teachers together to begin 10 weeks of focused professional development around a specific skill or application. Here are the "strands" as we are calling them:

• Podcasting
• Journal or OneNote
• Screencasting
• Wikis
• Blogs
• Connectivity
• UnitedStreaming and Assessment
• Teacher or Student-created applications.

When we put together this program, we really looked at the ability of the tablet to transform their teaching. We did not want our teachers to get a laptop, a tablet at that, and continue to teach as they were before the tablet. We want transformation and content creation. Our staff, like many in the nation and world, consists of some extremely bright, creative people who are producing magnificent content on a daily basis. Our idea is that if the content is being produced, why not push it out to a larger audience, or push it out to our students in a manner that will allow them ubiquitous access to the content.

Four hours in a cafeteria with me had to be broken up somehow, and last week I asked for help with my presentation via a Voicethread. While I still don't have any of my teachers adding to the Voicethread, I did have some all-star participation from my network: Chris, Clay, Sue, Barbara, Anthony, Melanie, Kevin (sorry, no link), and Robin. All were fantastic, and my staff were rapt with their comments and the fact that they took the time to speak to us. Sue actually hijacked my presentation for a while with her comments and asked a series of questions regarding connectivity and the terms we use with Web 2.0. If they knew the answer or had heard of the term, they were to put their hands on their heads, if not, they were to put their hands on their backside. Here is the proof:

The majority did not know the terms Sue was asking them, but by the end of the session, they were on their way to understanding how to connect to the right sources to find out. Note to self: leave Skype until the last thing you show them. Once they found out they could call each other or message each other it was effectively the end of my presentation. However, introducing them to the power that it brings (Thanks, Cathy for the impromptu call from South Carolina!) to the classroom and your own development was worth losing them to playtime a little early.




Technorati Tags: tabletpc,, contentcreation,, teaching,, eduction,, staffdevelopment

Shut that Laptop!

In the last week and a half, my world has been flattened faster than in the previous fifteen months of, shall I say, unabashed geekery. I helped Kim Cofino (along with 17-20 others) present in Bangkok via Google Presentations, I participated in Social Software 07 with Darren Draper and Robin Ellis (sorry I missed tonight), watched Will, Steve, and David on Weblogg-ed TV via UStream, been involved with David Warlick's Fireside Chat on Tuesday night along with a whole slew of people worldwide, and sat in on a call with Graham Wegner, Sue Waters, and Clay Burell this morning to discuss David's keynote a little further.

However, there are two significant events that occurred within the last 24 hours, both centering around a premise that was far less technological in its nature. After falling asleep with the boy Tuesday night at 9:00pm, I woke up at 11:00pm to put him in his bed. On the way back to my bed, I checked the computer to see what portion of my network was still functioning. There was the maiden voyage of Practical Theory TV on UStream: something I couldn't pass up. If you are ever feeling too immersed in the tools, and you have lost sight of the real reason we are employed, grab a seat when Chris is talking, or read his blog, because his perspective never allows him to get too lost on what is cool and new, but rather always brings him back to application and pedagogy. Last night was no different.

Through the course of the 30 or so minutes I was there, Chris and the rest of the crew that were there hashed out the meaning behind a tool like UStream as it relates to student work and student understanding. Yes, very cool tool, but what would a student do with it that they couldn't do before? How would using UStream significantly alter their understanding of the topic they are grappling with? Through trial and error, much discussion, and play, we were eventually able to pull in Dean Shareski onto the UStream channel so that he was visible and audible to the rest of the audience (through some tinkering and use of CamTwist and Skype). The driving question behind the whole broadcast was not "hey look how cool this!" but rather, what does this mean for teaching? I walked away from that with more perspective than I realized at the moment.

This afternoon, I met with a Language Arts teacher regarding a culminating project for some research they are doing on environmental issues. My role in our schools, Technology Coordinator, tends to predispose me to look for technological solutions to projects like this, and that's what the meeting started out as. However, as I listened to Laura talk about what she was seeing in the students and their understanding of the research process, of the factors that were contributing to the worldwide environment crisis, my focus again shifted towards questions that were less centered on technology, but rather on giving the students an experience that allowed them to interconnect their converging ideas about the environment. And, unlike 90% of my meetings with teachers, we never once looked at a computer screen. What we designed made me envious of not being in the classroom full-time anymore: a summit representing all of the research angles the students took with the end goal, unbeknownst to them, to have them discover the obstacles to achieving solutions to their issues lie in human behavior.

This provided me with a glimpse into some potential that might be there for me: lesson design and creation. I've said it before, probably all too often, but the tools we use as teachers need not be networked in the fashion that all of us are used to now. Having students understand that "networking" can begin within the four walls of the classroom and extend beyond that is an area that perhaps needs some study.

Pitch in to my Presentation

The Students Have Spoken

Diane Cordell and I have been conducting some impromptu research via our own interest in the role of schools in the lives of children and the communities in which they exist. The original post was spurred on by Barry Bachenheimer's question to me:

Is the purpose of school to get students ready for the world of work? I argue, no. I think the purpose of school is the encourage students to do, read, see, and learn things that they wouldn't do if left to their own adolescent devices. For example, if left to me, I never would have read half the "classic" novels I read in high school, watched classic films, read the NY Times, or gone to certain museums. Now as an adult, I am glad that I was pushed to do those things. It has made me a more rounded person.

but it came to be much more because Diane and I pushed it out to our students (well, I borrowed some). Diane's student's responses can be found here and are well worth a look. They drive at the need for school to be a safe place that has clear expectations.

Our students were a little more specific, and that may have a lot to do with how I framed the question. But needless to say, here is how the students I asked the question of responded on the class wiki:

In my honest opinion, I believe that schools are doing the best they can right now, they are teaching life skills and how to react with people, while giving them an education. I think that I learn best in a clean environment.

I think that school should provide a base education for students to give them as many opportunities in the future as possible. The standard for base education should be high though, don't get me wrong. Schools should prepare us for life by supplying us with knowledge, obviously, and other skills needed to survive in the world, like social skills, common sense, knowing right from wrong, and other things. It isn't the school's problem if the students don't use the skills taught to them once out of school, but the schools need to provide these things so that the students have the greatest possibility of success. The school enviroment should be clean, friendly, and practical. The environment isn't all that important because all students learn differently in different atmospheres.

...

I also believe that schools are doing as best as they can, but I live in a middle-upperclass town so I do not know if the same can be said for towns and cities with a lower school budget. Although, I feel that schools should be clean and well-equiped with modern technology.

...

In general, schools should be geared to meet the needs of the majority of students. For our school, that probably means preparation for college or other higher learning. I myself am fortunate enough to have a voice inside my head (not literally) who helps to ensure that I take the proper steps in order to reach my college education, but many I people I know lack such a "voice". Because of this, I feel, rather strongly, that high schools need to be more goal-oriented toward the futures of their respective students, and they should be better acquainted with the college admissions process.

...

You asked, and I will answer. I'm going to say the honest truth. I have become jaded for school. I do not believe it will influence ANYTHING in my future career course, unless there's a Video game Design and Development class in this school. What I want is a teacher who can connect to the student, who can teach with all the modern technology (props to Davis and Scott on the wikis), and a teacher who can be forgiving in a time of a mistake. Life is not meant to be a non-stop 79mph crash course through a never ending flow of work. Teachers seem to forget that as students, we have opinions on our work. As a Game Designer, how will I ever need to use Proofs of Geometry? That makes the class boring, and therefore listening and learning become RIDICULOUSLY more difficult. In my life, weekends = essays, projects, outlines, etc. When I come to school, I want a teacher who realizes that we have lives outside of school that need tending to. I am of the belief that all things in moderation leads to a successful life.

Also, this may just be me talking, but I prefer a more Socratic method of teaching. As in, talking and discussing, and where everyone's opinion is key to the lesson. We still use the archaic, slow, mind-tramping process of learning through reading the text. I feel true knowledge can not be plainly read, it must be taken in of one's own accord, processed, understood, and released to others. If we read what we are forced to, we simply scan the information and speak or write it when someone puts a quarter in the slot, and just like machines, we don't benefit.

...

I think that schools should both prepare students for the workforce later on in life and give them a standard education. However, if you want to be a fashion designer, I don't think that whether or not you took physics should matter. There should be certain requirements, but they should be catered to certain career paths. This is because so many people, when they are done with high school, are not prepared for the workforce, not even the work they are passionate about. School and its work takes up so much time, that many people can't uphold or maintain jobs, thus acquiring a poor work ethic. If you constantly have to quit jobs left and right, it will not only make you look less dependable in a job interview, but then for the rest of your life, when the going gets tough either in work, or outside of it, you will always find some reason to quit or to stop showing up. Schools should try to incorporate classes that prepare students for the workforce and that can help them develop a good work ethic.

I think we should be allowed to use cell phones and IPODS in school. If it is going to be shoved in our faces left and right, how could you ignore it? By integrating websites such as this one into our education, we are not only saving trees, but benefiting from one anothers ideas. This website allows kids who are shy or quiet or even mute to share their opinions. But that's just my opinion...

Regardless of teen angst or the current reconstruction project going on at our high school, these comments speak to the idea of relevance, and that more than anything else we need to be teaching content that matters, that moves, that equips our students for a lifetime of change, and fluid, seemingly disparate careers that blend into one another. Our students are really ready for us to change.

Image credit:
"Student Protestors" Dave Bullock / eecue

Kyle MacDonald and the Absence of Fear

One of our English teachers at the high school, Dee Peselli, invited a young man, author, traveler and opportunist Kyle MacDonald, to speak to her classes the other day in our auditorium. I have been so busy between the two buildings I work in that it was only by the stroke of good luck that I heard the Media Specialist talking about setting up the projector and the cameras for the speaker. When I asked her who was speaking, her response was "that paperclip guy."

Last year, on a flight to Florida, I read an article in Reader's Digest about a man who began a quest to trade a red paperclip in the hopes of getting something better. That man was MacDonald, and after a year of trading, he did indeed get something far better than a paperclip. He got a house, complete with deed and tax bill.

He also wrote a book about the experience, and part of what he does now is promote that book. The other part of what he does now is travel. Dee hooked up with him just because, as she put it, "His number was on the website, so I called." Kyle happened to be passing through to Atlanta on Wednesday and asked if he could stop by to speak with our students. For two hours he answered questions about the process of trading a red paperclip for other objects and services until making the final trade for a house.

Peppered throughout his presentation, aside from a raucous slideshow, were some sagacious moments where the students asked him basic questions, like "where did this idea come from?" or "why do this?" His answers, which I guess are at the heart of the book, really struck a chord with the students. His motivation truly stemmed from an absence of fear. His dad had asked him this question:

"What would you do if you weren't afraid?"

He wholeheartedly admits that the question is straight from Who Moved My Cheese, but still, it added such value to his idea, and it immediately dictated how he set out on this quest.

It reminds me of the posts that and the chatter that came out on the backchannels at NECC when Chris Lehmann began asking everyone "what is the worst possible consequence of your best idea?" The questions are similar in that both ask you to examine the sources of what is halting your progress, and then summarily dispose of that constraint.

How would we progress forward if we weren't sometimes our own biggest enemy? I am sitting here trying to put together this presentation on Teaching with Tablet PC's and introducing a group of 70+ teachers to the idea of creating and publishing content that is accessible to an audience wider than 150 students, yet I find myself holding a lot back due to the tendency for this to overwhelm people. Should that fear suspend what I think should be said and shown?

Burma

The second teaching job I had was one in which I was asked to a great deal of juggling. I taught English, Basic Skills, United States History and World Geography all within the span of two years. While it was crazy planning for all of the classes, one of the greatest experiences in how to manage and motivate a teaching staff occurred for me during that time.

Our curriculum was always being studied and dissected in the district, which some viewed as a tiresome process, but I always looked at it as exciting; it was current and active. Every year, especially in World Geography, we added a new facet to study because of the changing nature of the world, its borders, and the inhabitants therein. To that end, as a second year teacher, our building principal asked me to design a unit of study with him.

Stop.

Maybe I was too young to realize it, but my experience in education since then has shown me that the principal of the building spending two weeks in my classroom for a portion of the day working with me and my students was unprecedented and definitely not the norm. Also, in that same vein, it saddens me that it is not.

What we created was a unit of study based upon the last large-scale Burmese uprising for Democracy in 1988 led by Aung San Suu Kyi. For three weeks, we took our students through a comparative study of what occurred in Burma and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We compared it with other democratic struggles in the past twenty years, and compared it to the struggle that the U.S. went through during the formation of our Constitution.

Hearing, as I did of yesterday's call for blogging about the issue in Burma, it instantly reminded me of that unit I planned, and how I Roger Taylor-ed the heck out of it: video from Witness, behind the scenes footage from John Pilger of the BBC, biographies, and a culminating event that featured students from the United States Campaign for Burma in a small group session with our students.

When I hear about the work that Clay is doing, or others around the world who are creating authentic lessons with real-world implications, I get a little nostalgic for the classroom. The ideal situation would involve doing a little bit of both.