New to Blogs and how we respond

Funny. I really liked listening to Will Richardson at the Etech conference down in Columbus in Early March, 2007. It really got me thinking and, even though I've been involved in this technology thing since we got our first Vic 20's in our school, it never ceases to amaze me how, teachers communicating together, sometimes reminds me of trying to talk to someone up-wind in a 50 mph thunderstorm.

At 8:31 am Sunday morning, April 14, 2007, Will posted a response to an article and his posting, One Laptop Per Child Begins, talked about getting $100 laptops into the hands of 3rd world children to level the playing field. Richardson states that, "As Chris notes, it does make you wonder what it’s going to take to make this happen in this country as well...what’s it going to take before we understand what No Child Left Behind really means?"

I read the blog responses, I added my own response (look below) and the funny thing is, I think only a couple people were really responding to what each other said. It was like...well... like talking up wind in a thunderstorm; no one was hearing each other.

It seemed, too, that unless you wrote a book, no one really wanted to respond to what you were saying. I guess we're all sucking up to the "popular" and "famous" in the web 2.0 world. There is a blog pecking order and, since I'm new to blogs...I'm on the low end of that pecking order. (I guess some will call it sour grapes).

So, in case anybody of unimportance or someone lower in the pecking order than I am ever reads this blog, I'm going to post my "Will Richardson Response" to the newly, coined OLPC (one laptop per child) initiative that has been put in place.

By the way, I was up early that morning; my response was number 4 on Will's OLPC response list. That was exciting. I felt like John Candy in that 1984 movie Splash, where Candy gets his letter to the editor published in a magazine. (Gee, I forget the name of the mag). I'm running around with my keyboard waving in the air yelling, "It's on his blog...it's on his blog!)

So, to answer the One Laptop per child question posed about "what's it going to take" to get people in the United States to recognize the importance of getting technology into the hands of every U.S. student, here we go.

One would think that, if school districts, boards of education, and teachers could really see the importance of getting these tools into the hands of all students in America, it would get done in spite of the cost. And if we, in education, could change the way that we teach if every student had laptops, then we could probably make the sacrifices to find the finances to buy laptops, even more expensive ones, and get them into student’s hands.

For example, we could cut into a textbook budget for a year, learn to use free internet sources, drop boxes, paperless assignments, or other things that would help us find the money. We certainly wouldn't be hurt by using web info that has to be more up-to-date than the textbooks we use, and take that money saved for a year and spend it on 21st century tools.

So, what does it take. I think everyone realizes that. As the cliche goes, "It ain't rocket science." It takes systemic change, and human change, one person at a time, one small group at a time, and one heck of a communication job to get the point across to all entities involved that technology, used correctly in the right learning environment, can make a difference on what students learn. We need to gather more data that proves all students meet proficiencies through engaged, technology-enhanced, well-designed learning experiences and get that message out there to the people in charge of decision-making. It's a slow but necessary process and it's got to start somewhere. You can put laptops into the hands of millions, but if the people who count don't know what to do with the technology wants its placed, then, well, it's just like my first year of teaching when I walked into a Cleveland Elementary school, looked into a back storage room and found thousands of dollars of Title I equipment in that room with an inch of dust covering it all. Never used; never missed.

What would be really cool is if we could get all of these educational consultants all on the same page. Could we get them to quit their isolated approaches of "I know what’s best for education" and "Follow" me down "the yellow brick road" to Education-Oz where life is cheery and learning is maximized and it will only cost a small stipend. (Just take a look at all the web pages of everything from assessment specialists, value-added, 9 steps to student achievement, right brain/left brain/no brainers... everyone has the answer, but every answer can only be seen if you buy a membership to uncover the master wizardry of "their thing", and only one answer will work, so don't waste your time on others, and here, behind the magic curtain, is the Truth that you've been seeking...that will be $150.00, please.)

With organizations like George Lucas Educational Foundation and Partnership for 21st century skills, who seem so closely aligned in their framework and philosophies, it would seem that, if all the ed consultants across our nation really cared about changing the educational world for the better, they could band together under one umbrella, convince people in power how to effect change, and they would still make their money helping teachers and administrators learn how to adapt to our new, flat world. The Partnership for 21st century skills or a George Lucas Edutopian foundation, these are good organizations. There philosopies are very similar and they encompass all of these private consultant philosophies. (Why don't these two groups join forces. Bill and Melinda Gates, Dr. Phil Schlechty, don't they all basically want the same thing and aren't their beliefs basically the same?)

Once aligned, as a group, we could all make a difference. In Washington, D.C., in state legislatures, in local school districts, and in colleges where new and experienced teachers are trained, we could, as a group, communicate with everyone who is involved in education and prove with new research and data what common sense tells us; that people (students and teachers) can be engaged to learn if we create the right experiences, assist the right guidance, and help them by providing the right equipment to get the job done.

We always need consultants and we always need their help and support to get the word out and to help teachers; theres plenty of money around. The only difference is that now we work together instead of separately. We get organized. We use the same education language. If we stand together, we can effect change. We help each other instead of competing; we use the same, successful teaching skills, we get support of the non-educational community. We could get every teacher up to speed with the way subjects need to be taught in this advanced technological world and to more technologically savvy students. We could call the movement, No Teacher Left Behind.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that, the $100 dollar laptop isn’t the problem. It wouldn’t matter if it cost $1000. We in teaching are certainly part of the problem. Until we can get educators more concerned and more knowledgeable about what student’s really need to know as they enter the adult world; until we get legislatures more in tune with the same important knowledge, until we get our own special interest group with teachers, administrators, and consultants leading the demand for change, then we’ll still be here, 50 years from now, wondering why we can’t get the “$5.00 expandable cell phone/laptop/snickerdoodle” or whatever the technology will be, into the hands of our students.

And if we do get that equipment into the hands of the students, hopefully, we won't be wondering, as teachers, "Well, now that we have it, what do we do with it?"

Look Mom, no hands; Starting the Math Wiki without training wheels

There is a wiki part 1





So we've already started the math wikipage and without training wheels. The purpose of this blog is to act as counsel to anyone who wants to start a wiki page and a few things to look for. Since we're doing this without training wheels, I'm sure we'll find a lot of problems that will crop up and, of course, we're not sure about any success; we are making our best guess that, any work students will do on this math wiki, will be better than no work.

The goal we decided on was to take all of the Ohio math indicators for 7th grade and have students teach it the way they think it should be taught. We (Mrs. McMahon. and I) tried to set up some guidelines, requirements, and a sample page in the limited time we had to plan. We both have 6 classes of 7th graders and I, as the techie class teacher, have most of her math students.

Mrs. M. named the wiki and came up with the original description of the task at hand. I added my perspective on the project after reading Mrs. M's, and I added an mp3 and an embedded youtube video, so that the students could see the possibilities.

We knew that, because of scheduling and after-school conflicts, we really weren't going to have much more time to plan together. Since testing is coming up soon, we figured that any re-visiting of math indicators outside of math class would be better than no re-visiting, so we decided to just jump into the project and if a couple kids got something out of it we would be further ahead. We also believe that this project fits all of the ISTE standards as proposed in their Jan. 07 draft of technology standards.

So thus begins the project called:

A Student's Point of View: The Ohio Math Standards

I had already gotten the free educational wikispace from wikispaces.com and named the url for the page. During our techie classes, I did a random, visual survey, just to see if any of the students had done wiki pages before or knew what they were and, surprisingly, no one had. But, even more surprisingly, more than half of our students had myspace accounts.

While Mrs. M. was introducing the project in math classes, I began doing a similar intro in my classes, but, to be honest, my intro was more wiki and safety oriented than math oriented. I talked about a TV news investigator series about how a reporter found out addresses, sports, and other family activities, including dates and times, at a myspace account of a high school sophomore or junior. He met her at her house one day and told her so many things about her that she swore she never put on myspace. The reporter said that she didn't, but all her visitors did.

I think kids were surprised at the story, but, I'll have to do a questionaire at the end to see if my observation was accurate.

Then we jumped right into the assignment: Student chooses a math indicator (that the student doesn't know), learn everything about it, and teach it the way you think it should be taught. Luckily, everyone knew about the new TV show, "Are you smarter than a 5th grader", so it was easy to say that, from that show we've learned that parents aren't as smart as us so, we should teach the math concept as if we were trying to teach our parents. (I haven't heard the parental complaints, yet. I just hope there's a sense of humor out there.)

I told the students to check how well they teach the concept by asking their parents to read the wiki page and get their opinion. Hopefully, they do ask their parents because any affirmation they give to the importance of the assignment could increase engagement in the project.

A slight digression

Anything Schlechty that we can do we'll squeeze in. Our middle school went through Schlechty training back in the late 90's as part of our Schoolnet Raising the bar, 3 year project. Sometimes it's sad how some perfectly sound principles of education are abandoned because of a new fad that comes along, but that's for another blog entry.

So, here's my Schlechty checklist for the project

☛ Content and substance ( math indicators and iste indicators)
☛ Organization of knowledge (We are hoping that the modeling we've done, the guidelines, the demo of how to find keywords in the indicator and searching the web, and the pre-instruction on the indicators done in math class, will stimulate active participation, self-instruction, and, with the novelty/affirmation and other Schlechty elements of engaged learning, that the students will persevere until the task is complete.)
☛ Product focus ( meaningful to students, we hope that this is by virtue of "teaching each other the way you think it should be taught," that the world will access this wiki, tests coming up in May, and that each student will be visiting and learning from your page)
☛ Clear and compelling product standards (This is a weakness from not enough planning. We've given a demo of what it could look like and guidelines/checklist on what we would like to see in the presentation of the wikipage, but we need more. Us teachers needed to work through a concept together to be more specific on the final outcome. Maybe what we have is enough...)
☛ Protection from adverse consequences for initial failures (this is in the process. In other words, we need to visit pages on a consistent basis to make sure that the student is on a successful path. We are doing this, but, as the project moves on, we'll need to communicate to every student, which is difficult just like any assignment is difficult to give immediate feedback on. Hopefully the teachers will succeed).
☛ Affirmation of the significance of performance (we have had a couple visitors to our pages from outside our little world after only a day on the project. We'll try to get parents viewing the pages, also.)
☛ Affiliation (Students can work with partners)
☛ Novelty and variety(Students teaching the concept, use of wiki, podcasts, vodcasts and other audiovisuals)
☛ Choice (Students can work with partners, indicators chosen, how to teach the concept, audiovisuals used).
☛ Authenticity(Finding how the concept is used in real life, teaching others in school and all who access the wikipage.)

So following this post will be other postings on the progress of this project. I need to get this down now that I've got a spring break and can have some time to reflect on the start of the project. We've had a couple problems already, which I'll put in my next post.