Bud the Teacher

Need to Know

    Lee LeFever is a master at sharing complex information in simple, easy to understand ways.  No surprise, then, that he's able to assist in sharing some valuable information especially essential right now. 

    Let's be careful out there. 

Time for Twilight?

    I haven't read the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer yet - but the books came up in conversation three different times today - in three very different locations - so I figure I should at least take a peek.  Who couldn't resist this (from the author's description of the origin of the series):

In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that A) they were falling in love with each other while B) the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately. For what is essentially a transcript of my dream, please see Chapter 13 ("Confessions") of the book.

Perhaps the best part of Twilight showing up repeatedly is that the last reference is an IM I intercepted today between two middle school students - one surreptitiously using the web to pass along a link to the author's website.  Too cool. 

IB TOK Blogging OK By Me

    My friend and colleague Jason is beginning some new blogging work with his students.  You might be interested, particularly if you teach IB Theory of Knowledge.  (One great thing about the IB Diploma pPogramme is that all students must take an epistemology course.  I wish that everyone took a class about how we know what we know. Here's more info on IB's course.)  Here's a bit of info:

I'm having the students each host the blog for a week in an attempt to get them to record for me how people are responding on the blog. All of my expectations, including my "Blog Log", are found here.

Now that my students are thinking, writing, and recording for me... it all begins.  Now we'll just see where it takes me.


In other classroom blogging news...
In 2 weeks or so, a new TOK blog will be set up for an international audience. Schools from Colorado, Chicago, Munich, Singapore, the UK, and Equador will be talking to each other. I'm still in the process of formalizing how that will look but I'll post more info. when I know.

As a plus and an aside, here's a teaching resource for one IB TOK teacher's courses, an online community for IB students and graduates, as well as a weblog ring of IB students.  Interesting stuff.

The Rest of My Whispering on Textbooks

    I always hate being at technology conferences that focus too much on tools and not enough on learning.  I'm pleased that this conference wasn't one of them.  I attended one "tools focus" session, and that seems like the right ratio for me this conference. 

    Over the past three days, I've had some great conversations with folks from my district about tools and strategies and learning and teaching and "21st Century Skills" and lots of other buzzwords and whatnot.  But the big takeaway reminder for me at this conference is the reminder that most of what I want to do with students, and most of what I think the folks that came with me want to do, too, is to promote the progressive ideas of the 19th and 20th Century and (hopefully) the early 21st Century.  Conversations with Chris Lehmann really helped me to re-focus that in my own head (Thanks, Chris!).  We might not say it that way, but really, amidst all of the talk of computers and interactive whiteboards and Internet access, I think we want to create rich spaces full of relevant information for our students and teachers to be able to interact with and contribute to and ask questions of and be in awe of and concern about.  Sometimes, that means using computers.  Other times, it means using paper and pen(cil).  Still others, crayons, or perhaps clay or chemicals.  Or guest speakers.  Or whatever. 
    I think we just want to be able to offer teachers and students and administrators options for how to make their learning goals happen. 
    I was talking with one colleague this morning about textbooks and why we can't yet get rid of them.  I was having this conversation in whispered tones during a keynote speech, so I wasn't able to articulate my points as well as I'd like.  Since I know that he's now a subscriber of this blog (Hi, Jeremy!), as well as a soon-to-be new blog author himself, I thought it would make sense to further elaborate here. 

    I'd like to shut down the textbook flow tomorrow.  Textbooks are un-authentic ways for us to distribute information to teachers and students.  But, rightly or wrongly, they're the tools that we have.  In our current paradigm (I know - buzzword - but work with me here), they are also the tools that are not considered frivolous or unessential.  In a better paradigm, we would have ubiquitous access to the information streams around us.  We'd have a meaningful 1:1 program for every student.  We'd not have to beg, borrow and steal to provide sufficient bandwidth to all of our classrooms.  But we're not there.  Yet.
    As a language arts teacher, I preferred to use real-world, authentic texts with my students.  Newspapers, novels, magazines, literature anthologies and many other authentic texts are far better tools for helping students to navigate the information of the human experience, as well as the world of the media and popular culture.  These texts are real and not specifically designed for educational purposes - and I think that's a good thing.  We need to teach and learn about interacting in the world. 
  Specifically, as I think about providing the most information to students as possible, I think about the Internet.  (I bet that's no big surprise.)  The Internet is a full-on fire hose of information that I would much rather be using with students.  That information can be authentic, at least more so than a textbook can be. And we can take that information and fiddle with it before, during and after it hits the classroom in ways that maximize the authentic-ness AND the educational value of it.  Our students can and should be a part of this process, too.    1:1 shouldn't even have to be an argument.  But it is. 

    So when I say that I want to get rid of textbooks, but that I can't say let's get rid of them yet, that's more of what I'm trying to talk about.  We need to provide lots of good raw information to our students so that they can do all of the wonderful things that we want them to do.  Then we need to help them connect to and with that information and each other in some really authentic ways.  But since we can't provide that information authentically, for too many logistically complex reasons, we're stuck with textbooks, at best an inefficient information delivery system.  For now.  I hope we can change that soon.  I really don't believe it's that hard to do - once we decide we should be doing it.

T+L Day 1

    I'm writing this morning from the first general session of T+L, listening to the multitude of announcements that usually make up the bulk of first such sessions at conferences everywhere.  So far, I've seen some cool student PSAs. 
    I'm looking forward to a few days of conversation with colleagues from my district and from other schools around the country and world.  If you're here, too, drop a comment here.  I'd be curious to know where you plan to spend your time at the conference.  (Okay, I'm also interested in picking folks' brains - never been to this event before.  What's the good stuff that I shouldn't miss?) 

  I'll probably (and already have been) be posting regular updates via Twitter, my choice bits tool of, ahem, choice, at least as long as my battery hold out. 

Worth Watching. And Thinking About.

    I tweeted this.  Then Dean posted it.  And he's right to do so  - I'm forgetting to blog in the wake of Twitter.  And that's a bad thing - worthy of a podcast in the near future.  Will's having the same trouble, it seems, as are others in my network(s).  Things are getting ever-more complicated.  And that's a good thing. 
    Anyway - I think this video is of interest to many - both because of the way it was made - which I like very much - as well as the accompanying post on the statistics behind its creation.  What a great model for transparency in creation - as well as a good piece for conversation.  Enjoy. 

Get Ready

   

K12Online 2007 begins tomorrow (or today, depending on your time zone)  - and really doesn't end.  Since the content is perma-hosted, it's always available as a learning tool.  It's good like that.
    Looking forward to the learning.  I hope you'll be there.