How to take care of your readers, via Doug Johnson

I read with great interest Doug Johnson's post about the new $399 ASUS laptop that runs Linux. It might be the solution we are looking for not just with a 1:1 program, but also a desktop situation that is in need of addressing.

Doug's blog is well-known; he is, what many consider, to be a leader in the field of educational technology and library science. Here is the comment I left on his post:

Doug,

Perfect little machine for a staff holiday gift guide. I am interested to see how schools, especially mine, would adapt to using a Linux-based OS, especially when they ask the question: "How do open my PowerPoints?"

Interested to see your comparison between the two when the XO arrives.

This is how Doug responded:

Hi Patrick,

Right now kids who have the latest version of PPT for the PC are having a tough time opening any Office documents on our Macs with the current version of Mac Office. No one seems able to remember to save to the older version. I've had more problems with PPT on this Eee than anything else. The fact my PPTs run 80mg and include movies, animation etc., may be part of the problem. Smaller PPTs work fine but I have to adjust font sizes.

I seriously debate whether to buy the newer version of Office for the Mac. I am really liking the Open Office software that comes with the Eee. Seems less feature glut. Kids could have copies on home computeres - Open Offfice or Neo Office. Maybe it i a good time to make the switch?

Thanks for your comments,

Doug

If ever you wondered what people mean by taking care of your readers, this is it. His response not only addressed my questions, but also directed me toward new thinking. It was lengthy, well-thought out, and was much more than I expected from someone as noteworthy as Doug. Cheers to you Doug, for leading by example.


Technorati Tags: dougjohson, blueskunk, leadership, education, blogggin

Why didn't I think of this sooner?

In preparation for my new position as Director of Curriculum for Humanities in my district, I realized that keeping the district technology blog going was something that might be difficult given the amount of time I spent on it and the new constraints of the position. Also, I thought about a few other things that were bothering me regarding the blog:

• there was not much conversation going on with it; the staff would read it, but no one was commenting.
• my posts there were very similar in nature; often I would talk about tools and cool applications of tools in the classroom, and highlight staff accomplishments.
• getting people to the site rested squarely on my shoulders.

Thus, my conclusion was that I needed new voices. So I asked a few of my colleagues to pitch in as co-authors, taking a cue from LeaderTalk. So as of last Monday, Angela Dellucia-Davis, Cathy Wille, Erica Hartman, Michael Gregory, and Brad Davis all became co-authors of The Tech Dossier. What came from this in terms of participation and readership was nothing short of amazing:

Saturday was the last day that I posted solo, and Monday began the contributions of the others. Word of mouth and a few emails to the staff were all we did to publicize the change and as you can see from the graph above, we reached highs in page loads and first time visitors almost daily. This is what I always wanted. Comments, at least three on every post, with a high of 7 on one post.

The mix of administrators and teachers blogging together is an interesting one, one that I will watch intently, but it seems to be working after one week. If you have a moment, please check out the writing going on there this week. It is a grand experiment, and I certainly should have done this sooner.


Technorati Tags: sparta, edtech, education, newjersey, blogging

Two Great Reads

For a while now, I have been waiting for a local article to focus on the benefits of blogging as related to student writing on standardized tests. The easy thing would have been to do it myself, but then again, that just makes too much sense.

A teacher in the middle school I work in, Erica Hartman, (go check her out!!) brought this article from nj.com to my attention through her blog, The itclassroom. In it, Bradley A. Hammer, a professor of writing from Duke University, summarizes why he blogs with his freshman students:

High schools and their curriculums are failing to keep pace with those same advances. They remain focused on "standards," asking such questions as: Do blogs prepare a student to take the new SAT? Does an e-mail message train a student how to write a traditional college-level essay? Clearly, the answer is no.

However, he goes on to say that blogging with an eye towards academic rigor goes a long way towards marrying those elements. This fact is something many of us know already; if you are going to put something out there for the world to see, you'd better have done your research and polished it. His statement strikes at something larger, something more sinister involved with blogging: its negative connotation among some teachers.

To quote Hammer from the article:

In contrast, "standards-driven" high school writing is hindering student interest. Without opportunities for students to publish their writing, they will assess that they write not for meaning, intellectual discovery, communication or understanding but rather in obligatory, outdated, punitive and proce dural ways to obtain grades. Consequently, as students spend their years of education consumed with standardized tests, they learn to write -- and think -- in ways that fail to offer rich and critical contexts for learning.

Teachers seek opportunities for writing to engage and challenge students to think critically throughout the processes of intellectual debate. Writing courses that remain wedded to the genre and methods of the past merely limit students' ability to imagine their work as real. The traditional argumentative essay does not force students to engage critically with complex reasoning "about" an issue but rather merely instructs them on how to argue "for" or "against" it.

Erica, like myself, feels that there is a way to successfully bridge the gap between social networking and the writing associated with that, and successful, critical reading and writing:

Eventhough this article pertains to college writing, I am thinking about how it relates to grades 6-8, especially the mind numbing preparations we do for the GEPA, I'm sorry the ASK8.
Seems to me this is more evidence that each student should create and maintain their own blog.

When we began publishing student writing last year on Writingthecity, we immediately noticed several things happen with them:

• they began to regard audience as driving force behind how much time they spent polishing their writing.
• undercurrents of healthy stress through competition for "reads" began to circulate among the classes.
  
• word of mouth "press" about whose story was good and worth reading, or in more technical terms, critical review.

So what is stopping us? What are our concerns? Because, if it is safety, we've got that one handled. If it's fear that this type of writing won't help come test time, well, that's up to you and how much rigor you supply.

Flickr image credit to Merrick Brown's Photostream

Top Ten Tools

This post is inspired by Jane Hart's project, which I heard from through George Siemens' post about it.

Although I am famous for the phrase "it's not about the tools," I couldn't help but look at what people are using to produce and manage content. Especially when you get to peer into the minds of some really sharp people. Here are mine, with explanations:

• Google Reader- a bit overwhelming at times, but still the hands down best resource for learning
  
• Blogger- my think aloud. This is where conversation begins and ends with me.
  
• Google Notebook- I use this for focused research when I need to compile a list of sources for myself or others.
  
• iShowU- Best cost to performance ratio I have found in a screencaster
  
• Audacity- still simple, still perfect
  
• Zamzar- Converts just about anything on the fly and offers a simple downloadable file
  
• Skype- How I connect to people much brighter than myself
  
• Twitter- My new favorite thing. Quick, ubiquitous, and networked.
  
• del.icio.us- I use this more as a searchable catalog of links rather than an organizational tool
  
• Firefox- As many have said, this is the home base. Completely customized and suited to what I need it to do.

What are your top ten tools?

More Workshop Reactions

As of tomorrow morning, I will be nearly halfway through my summer workshops, and as I have been inspired by the kick-web2.0-in-the-shins-punk-teacherman Dan Meyer, the data on each of the classes is coming back and I need to put it out there for posterity sake. Beginning with the Connective Writing class, which I thought was capped off nicely by a great skype conversation between Konrad, Clay and Carolyn (I pretty much just listened), the feedback has been steadily positive. Here are some examples from the Connective class:

1. I felt the the community of learning theme was hit by skyping with all of the bloggers. It was very worthwhile, we were exposed to so many difefrent applications and began to make our blogs.
2. This course was very good. I would like to have had more time to actually set up the blog accounts. I felt a little rushed.
3. Although I do not consider myself tech savvy I am going to implement blogs for my students this year, slowly at first, I feel it will provide a larger outlet for my students to express themselves.
4. Patrick is very knowledgeable and made the course easy to understand, and easy to relate to. It opened my eyes to the many possibilities that technology can bring to the classroom.
5. It was a lot of information to take in but was well worth the time. I can use it all in my classroom. Blogging, Wikispaces and their uses as well as ways to incorporate writing through the technology available to us.
6. I felt that this helped me feel less intimidated about using the technology and better understand ways I can use these tools in my class.

Now, those answers were in response to a request for an overall summary of the class. When asked if they planned on implementing what they learned, the same people (numbers indicate the respondent)

1. I will start a professional blog for myself and a book blog for my students in September.
2. I will set up a blog for the first novel that we read in September.
3. I will start with a basic class blog page and grow from there!
4. I will set up a class blog for my students to communicate with each other in a different way than routine class discussions. I also plan on setting up a professional blog to communicate with teachers all over the world, instead of just the ones down the hall. I'm excited to get started!
5. I would like to include book chats and classroom discussions with the blogging sites as well as use the Wikispaces to promote more research and discussions.
6. I will try to blog with my students and encourage them to share their thoughts and reflect in a productive way. I also hope to not only read various blogs, but jump in from time to time.

It was truly a great group of teachers to work with, but what strikes me most is that they saw the value in it. I have to confess that as I prepared the class, I wondered if that would come across. The echo chamber of the edublogosphere tends to shield us from the trepidation that exists in the hallways, faculty rooms, and classrooms of the buildings that work in. My mindset going in was really centered on trying to show the the need for doing this with students, not necessarily being that techno-evangelist. As Christian's recent post about Twitter indicated, I think we are all reaching a saturation point with analyzing each and every application for its educational merit.

More to come regarding workshop reactions, and a hearty welcome to all of the new subscribers from the workshops!

An Epiphanous Moment

Aha! moments are rare in our lives, and although we anticipate them sometimes they don't materialize. Today was rife with them. Today was day two of my Connective Writing workshop where we had the privilege of including some great minds in our class. Midway through the morning, Clay Burell, Seoul, South Korea, Konrad Glogowski from Toronto, and Carolyn Foote from Austin, Texas, skyped in to talk with the group of teachers I was working with.

What ensued was a rolling conversation about blogging as a reflective tool for professional development and the logistics and pedagogical advantages of blogging with students. I was giddy listening to the three of them field questions and expound on their own practice.

Needless to say, the teachers I was working with were unbelievably impressed with what they heard and saw. As Konrad was speaking to the group of us about his blogging policy with his students, Clay came in to let everyone know that he had just edited our wiki to include his own parental notification letter and some guidelines that his students follow while blogging in class. Truly a connected moment and one that crystallized something for me that had been a long time coming: I have many teachers.

I hope to listen to the podcast again today or tomorrow to fully glean what we spoke about, but it truly changed the dynamic of our workshop and our learning.


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Me, Removed

Have you ever been intimidated by your blog? Strangely, I have stared blankly into my scribefire box over 10 times in the last few days, trying to find something that fits nicely. Call it writer's block, but this is terrible. There is so much going on in my world that is worthy of at least a note, but, alas, it just won't come.

This is meant to be the chisel to break through whatever I am going through. I'll break it down by topic to make it easier on me.

Introducing: Teen Book Sleuth


Two weeks ago, my colleague David Gorecki and I ran the 2nd Annual Sparta Academy of Digital Media, where we take a group of students through the process of creating digital media. We usually break it down into movie making and web creation. With all that I have learned this year via this blog and the various people who I have the pleasure of reading, it was truly a great opportunity to let students explore their interests and learn some great skills. Out of the 16 students that we worked with, only one chose to focus on website creation. That in itself is telling. However, the student that did, we will call her Teen Book Sleuth after the site she created, really blew us away with her ability and interest level. She worked for most of the week using FrontPage, but after talking with her and getting the OK from mom and dad, we set her up with an account at weebly.com. She transferred her content from FrontPage to the weebly site and customized it to include a blog.

To say that we were surprised at her writing ability is an understatement. She is a wonderful writer and and avid reader. Her site is set up as a review of books in the Young Adult category. I can only imagine what she will produce as she moves along in her studies and her reading. Please visit the site and leave a comment on her blog. She is expecting you.

Connective Writing Workshop

I am in the process of putting together resources for a workshop on connective writing on Monday and Tuesday of this week. The wiki is nearly complete, and I will release the address when I finish it up. To that end, I would like to thank Sheryl Nussbaum-Beech, on whose wiki at APBC I have relied on for resources. What I have found in the past is that teachers respond very well to other teachers who have done something successfully. In that light, I have asked some people from the edublogosphere to participate in the workshop via Skype. Already, I have two people who will be skyped in (one on Monday and one on Tuesday). If you are interested, let me know and we will work something out. It would be a great honor to have some of you talk to the staff I work with.

This workshop is a pivotal one for me, as I would really like to use it as a springboard to get a cohort of teachers blogging from out district. As it is now, very few have taken to it. I am not distressed over it, but blogging and connecting to the myriad resources available through blogging will be a key way to move our pedagogy forward here in Sparta. That's a lot of pressure, but I think it's warranted.

The Kind of Blogging that Makes you Sweat

The other day I posted about Cathy Wille, a Phys Ed teacher in our high school. She's been really pushing her professional development this year, and after a year of looking at the direction of her teaching, the curriculum, and the technology available to her, she has taken the first, and most important step: she has a blog.

The first thing I do when I tell people about blogging is to bring up a statement that I heard from Will Richardson, and I know I have echoed before: this is the best professional development available. I have learned more from blogging and interacting than I could have anywhere else. It's about access to wicked smart people whenever you need it, and I love wicked smart people.

Cathy is still feeling out what she should do with the blog site: whether it should be for driving her class or building a new platform for Physical Education and Health teachers to move to. Often times, that department of schools is the least likely to bring technology into their practices, if only because of the lack of portability in the past. A cursory blog search turns up a few hits, like PE Central, which serves more to aggregate news stories concerning developments in PE. That is essential, but can we do more for this discipline?

Is it possible to gather a slew of resources for Health and PE teachers to use if they choose to? If you have any, we could pass them on to Cathy's blog. If you can, go visit her at HyPE 2.0. I'll start:

• g-maps pedometer- mashup that allows users to plot and store their running, cycling, or walking routes on a Google Map. I use this one all of the time.
• NationMaster and it's partner-site StateMaster- provides great statistics for health units, including the always elusive STD's.

When We are Ready, and No Sooner

A few of the administrators I work with are really beginning to struggle with what their schools will have to look like in a few years, and much like I spoke about a while ago, it's the wrestling with limitations that makes for vigorous creativity. Brad is struggling to gain traction blogging with his faculty, yet he knows that there is real pedagogical benefit for his staff in this type of participation. Thinking about this as I have some time on my hands at the moment, I came across George Siemens' (who always seems to do this to me) post Learning with Networks. In it, he reflects on Terry Anderson's post of the same name. Anderson's conclusion is what Siemens looks at in his post, but I was more interested in Siemens' response:

I can't think of any model other than networks that is capable of
adjusting and reacting at the required pace and manner. But the real
problem is not identifying the solution to our current challenges. The
real problem rests in implementation. When we move to networks, we need to change pretty much everything else. It's like a software program
that has been written in one language, and we are now trying to write
it in another. We can't simply add on and tweak. In education, we
basically have to start over...rethinking curriculum, teaching,
learning, the role of technology, and so on. I don't think we are under
enough pressure yet to make changes of that scale.

What pressure do educators/administrators feel to move away from traditional methods towards blogging as professional practice? It's the whole horse and water thing here. We have to find something to make our staff not want, but need to buy into this. Right now, there is no tipping point in sight, but I think Siemens, and Stephen Downes, as well as a host of others, are spreading the word about the value of learning networks that include blogging and other forms of informal learning mixed with formal classrooms.



Technorati Tags: networks, connectivism, blogging, siemens, downes

The End Result

Revisiting some of the images I had from visiting SLA in Philadelphia, I keep coming back to the idea of a capstone course, one in which the students are required to complete a course of study and then apply it to their own environment in some tangible form. A couple things stand out for me when thinking about this:

Regardless of the issues of setting this up within an established school, it is undeniable that this is authentic learning. If the students, still responsible for all state-mandated curriculum, are asked to use their acquired skills toward some meaningful research and action of their own, the results would be multi-faceted in terms of community benefit. If schools are truly to be centers of community in the future, much as they have been historically, then projects like this must draw in the public and augment how it functions. How better to "democratize" a student than to ask him or her to add value to an existing democracy through a project that forces them to interact with that community?

The changes called for by many of us are evenly seen as very demanding of existing teachers; they are going to have to relearn, and as Alvin Toffler stated "the illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read
and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." Here is our option: create teacher advisors on the secondary level of American schools. Instead of having teachers patrol the halls for a period, or sit at an sign-in table, give them a group of students much like a graduate advisor would have. Here is the way to reach out and change the thinking regarding how we teach. Konrad Goglowski's post today speaks of creating passion-based conversations between students and teachers as the building block for restructuring our schools to get moving towards this whole idea of "2.0." Requiring this would also require teachers to enter meaningful conversations with students about their scope of research and enable teachers to connect the students with the experts that they need to in the local community and the world at large. Connectivity, anyone?

In putting all of this together, I have been reading Clay Burell's recent posts regarding what the role of blogging should be for students. Not being able to do it justice here, I recommend reading the whole string at his blog. When we force blogging upon students as a means of collecting homework, we could be setting ourselves up for some backlash, as that would not be self-directed learning, but just another "requirement." Clay's solution, and one that fits very nicely here, is that class blogs, run by the class instructor, should be subject and homework posting specific. However, each student blog should have a life of its own, a place for reflection. This is where the bulk of student reflection would take place, regardless of discipline:

If a student likes math, let him/her reflectively write, on a much
higher order of thinking than getting the facts right, about math. And
keep writing. For months, a year, years. As that writing progresses,
those mentors--composed of a writing specialist and a subject-matter
specialist (e.g., English and math teacher)--would periodically
conference with the student about his/her exploratory, reflective
journal-journey down the math path.


Ten-to-one, that student will eventually write his/her way down all
sorts of side-paths into math history (cohort pulls a history teacher
in for a conference), biography ("Why did Descartes invent calculus in
the first place?" the blogger will one day wonder), science ("How does
calculus work in the practical world?"--and cohort maybe sets up a
Skype conference with an engineer from the real world to chat about
that), etc. On and on.

Clay's idea that at the end of 4 years, the students would have experience, much as a professional writer would, in creating content that has value to them, and because of its connective nature, to others globally as well. I cannot imagine the value to the student that 4 years of reflective writing within the school atmosphere would have on them as they walk out of our schools.

To end this rant, Warlick posted today about the nature of student work in "school 2.0" v. student work in "school 1.0:"

Many kids are now doing their work in blogs and wikis. They have readers and commenters. They are engaged in conversations about their work. They are invested in their work. The rest of our children work on work sheets that are seen only by their teachers. They have nothing invested in those pieces of paper.