Bud the Teacher

It Was Just So Quiet, You Know?

    Today was the first day of school for most of the schools in my district.  I spent the day in my new office, working on a couple of projects and getting trained on some others.  Not a lot of chaos in the office building.   No students wandering in and out all day.  Nothing but my work on which I was able to completely focus, uninterrupted. 
    It was a little creepy just how quiet it was.
    I knew that this week would be hard, as students came back and I didn't have any, but I was truly taken back by just how distant I felt from the world of "school" today.  Very little correspondence or conversation with classroom teachers today, either, as they were completely engrossed in the trappings of their classrooms. 
    While I am eager and happy to be serving teachers, truly an important task, I had my first bit of teacher envy today.  I was a downright jealous of those folks meeting and re-meeting students.  I missed the energy, exhilaration, nervousness and outright fear of beginning classes and starting down the learning road. 
    Weird, huh?  But I'm coping.  I hope your first days are good ones, as frenetic as you can take.

It IS About the Tools, Sometimes

    I've been reading lots of folks lately writing to the effect that this whole read/write web world is not about the tools, it's about how we use them.  I agree with that notion.  Mostly.
    In some of the conversations I've been having recently, I've been arguing that, at least at some level, the focus should be on the tools, for a couple of reasons.  One, we need to have a handle on what the tools can do so that we can apply them to our particular teaching and learning situations.  If I don't know how to publish to the web (or that it's completely safe for students to do so), then I can't consider it as a possibility in my classes.   Further, if I don't know that most wikis won't allow for same-time multiple edits/editors, then I won't realize (until it's too late) that having everyone edit the same piece of text in class is just won't work. 

  The second reason is a little trickier, but was really brought home to me this week as I was involved in some training on a web-based gradebook. 
    This particular tool, the one that our district provides to teachers as an electronic gradebook, appears to require a letter grade as an output.  What I mean is that, as it's currently configured, the only possible output for a student grade is a percentage tied to a letter.  While we could tinker with what percentages resulted in what letter, that was all the tinkering that we could do.  So this particular tool (certainly, not a read/write tool, but a technology tool nonetheless) only allows for a particular type of output.  Not using letter grades is not an option with this tool.  (I know - I've really, really stated that - but I think it's very important.)

    While I'm not going to make a case right now for eliminating letter grades, I want to point out that, if my school system decided tomorrow to eliminate letter grading, we couldn't.  Our computer system would not "allow" it. 
  Currently, many of our middle schools have assessment systems that are standards based and don't involve letter grades.  The software that creates those is aging and might not be compatible with the new system.  See the potential for a problem?

    I'll end this post for fear of beginning to lose my point, which is this:  Sometimes, it is about the tools, and about how those tools shape what is and is not "possible" in particular situations.  The tools and their use (or misuse) can completely drive a classroom or management scenario.   Pretending that it is never about the tools, and is only about the pedagogy or philosophy, is shortsighted and ultimately problematic. 

Explore. Discover. Share.

    Barbara Morgan taught a lesson to students from space earlier this week.  This was the highlight quote for me.  I think she perfectly captures the essence of teaching and, for that matter, learning.  From the article:

Asked how teaching compared to being an astronaut, Mrs Morgan, 55, replied: "Astronauts and teachers actually do the same thing. We explore, we discover and we share.

"And the great thing about being a teacher is you get to do that with students, and the great thing about being an astronaut is you get to do it in space, and those are absolutely wonderful jobs."

Sum it Up in 4?

     I should be participating in the 4 slide contest over at Dan's, but I'm not, in part because I don't have the time and in part because I know I don't have the skills.    Period.  But perhaps you do.  Go get 'em.
  I completely agree with Dan's contention that it's a challenging thing to do.  I'm looking forward to seeing what folks come up with. 

When Does Individual Responsibility Kick In?

   

    Chris wrote a post today about the perils of using third-party services for hosting content:

in two clicks, he or she has seen images of a rave party with suspected drug use, and if he or she clicks on the home page,  we see anything from a caricature of Bruce Willis smoking to a sultry anime lady who is barely dressed to other inappropriate material. I can just see an otherwise innocent student (can I remind you my students are 11-12 years old?! and yes, some are quite innocent) seeing this!?

It’s not worth my job.

    And while I see his point, and have sometimes felt the same way about Blogger, what with its "next blog" link, I guess I'd like to carry the logic out one or two steps further. 

    From Google, a search engine that I teach people how to use, I can,  by typing only a few letters or words, instantaneously get to pretty much anything else on the Internet, from cute, language confused kittens to, um . . .well, some pretty awful stuff.  Should I not use Google, either, because there's potential there that students might find something "harmful?"

    Where's that line between student responsibility for their actions and a teacher's responsibility to not be negligent?  I completely understand Chris not wanting to discover that he's on the wrong side of it - but I also hope/wish that American society understood the difference. 
  This is an old question, one that's come up repeatedly in discussion of tools like Flickr, Blogger, MySpace, Facebook, and countless others.  While I see the advantage to consider creating a separate world of content that's only for educators and students (and I've been involved in these sorts of projects), I think, long term, that's no better than turning off the Internet.  I struggle with this, as I don't ever want to put a student in harm's way, but I think isolation might be a greater harm than accidental exposure.  I don't know for certain, and in my practice, like Chris, I tend to play it safe.  Inf act, I didn't link to the language confused kittens above because there are some images in that collection, too, that are not "okay" at school.  I'm not altogether comfortable with the fact that I self-censor in that way - but it's worked okay so far.  (Or has it?)

  This is why we need to teach students how to act responsibly online and to figure out when we turn which parts of the "system" on (or turn the filters off/down)  so that, by the time our students graduate, they have been inoculated against all the bad, icky, not-so-good for you stuff that's out there.  (And, we also need to realize that, far too often, one man's "bad, icky" is another man's "AOK," which doesn't really simplify anything, does it?)

    Otherwise, they're all just cannon fodder the moment they find an unfiltered stream.  And that's not okay, either.

The Podcast: Post-Dinner Driving

    In today's podcast, I reflect a bit on the power of connections, meeting with friends, "starting over" as a blogger, and a teeny bit of what I'm up to in my new position.  Enjoy!

Links from the 'cast

• Darren
• Karl
• Space Shuttle Endeavour
• DrupalEd
• My Twitter