Bud the Teacher

Connected

Jennifer Jones tweeted a link to this video this morning, and I think it's a fine example of what a connected organization, in this case Abilene Christian University, and connected teaching and learning,  can look like. 

We're getting to a stage in the learning game where we should be thinking about ways to help students create connections to each other and to their learning.  Handing students and teacher a device that connects students and serves as a platform for the teaching and learning in a system just makes sense, even though it's not always a socially or culturally or politically accepted idea.  That needs to change.  Soon.  I feel like the political climate for 1:1 (or even 1:3, or 1:10) continues to improve - but we're still in a transitional place between analog and digital instruction. 
    I can't say that the iPhone is THE device - I couldn't imagine writing anything of substance on the iPhone or any other tool without a reasonable keyboard - but I understand why they featured it, as I do think it's a game-changer, in terms of its functionality and ease of use.  Of course, there are plenty of other game-changers coming to the table at the moment.

A Blast from Someone Else's Past

    A little while back, Dean mentioned a tweet I made that got him thinking.  I'm still thinking - about what's already out there and what we can learn from it, instead of racing forward to the next new thing in a hurry.  I feel myself skating from content to content and application to application - without enough time to process, to understand.  To learn.  Frustrated with myself, I'm finding myself deep in the archives of bloggers that I trust and respect at the moment, looking for  .  .  .  well, I'm not sure what, but I think it's important.  I've much more to say about that - but in the meantime, here's a blast from someone else's past.  I found this line delicious:

I’ve got weblog fever in a bad way, and I know JUST enough about making them work to make them dangerously intriguing.

The author?  Will Richardson.  August 2002. 

Save the Date

  Save the Date 
  Originally uploaded by Bud the Teacher

King on Rowling: The kids are alright

    This is a little less timely than I would have liked, but I've been working through quite a hefty "to read" pile.  (You can check out my online "toread" pile, if you'd like - if anything on there's no good, let me know so I can save myself the trouble!)
    I've quite enjoyed reading and re-reading Stephen King's piece "The last word on Harry Potter" from Entertainment Weekly, where he writes a regular column on pop culture.  In the piece, he speaks to the successes of J.K. Rowling's series as well as her strengths as a writer.  (One big one, according to King, is she allowed her characters to get older.)  He also writes about how strong many kids' reading habits actually seem to be, and closes beautifully:

But reading was never dead with the kids. Au contraire, right now it's probably healthier than the adult version, which has to cope with what seems like at least 400 boring and pretentious ''literary novels'' each year. While the bigheads have been predicting (and bemoaning) the postliterate society, the kids have been supplementing their Potter with the narratives of Lemony Snicket, the adventures of teenage mastermind Artemis Fowl, Philip Pullman's challenging His Dark Materials trilogy, the Alex Rider adventures, Peter Abrahams' superb Ingrid Levin-Hill mysteries, the stories of those amazing traveling blue jeans. And of course we must not forget the unsinkable (if sometimes smelly) Captain Underpants. Also, how about a tip of the old tiara to R.L. Stine, Jo Rowling's jovial John the Baptist?

I began by quoting Shakespeare; I'll close with the Who: The kids are alright. Just how long they stay that way sort of depends on writers like J.K. Rowling, who know how to tell a good story (important) and do it without talking down (more important) or resorting to a lot of high-flown gibberish (vital). Because if the field is left to a bunch of intellectual Muggles who believe the traditional novel is dead, they'll kill the damn thing.

Worth your time.

Going a'Conferencing

    While so much of my network is off in Atlanta, the rest of us have to keep on working.  I'll be spending the next couple of days at the 21st Century Learning Navigator Conference put on by the Council on 21st Century Learning.
    I hope it's useful.  I'm looking forward to digging in with policymakers and other educators. 
    If you'll be there, drop me a line. 

Talking Tech

    I'll be joining the fine folks at Teachers Teaching Teachers folks tonight to discuss some ideas and issues around supporting teachers as they take their students online.  It'll be a good conversation about partnerships, second wave adopters, and lots more.  If you're so inclined, consider joining us at 7pm Mountain in the EdTechTalk chat room. 

Media RoundUp

    Lots of good stuff has either slid through the podcatcher or across the TV screen lately.  Thought you'd be interested in these two.

Frontline is looking very seriously at the future of news as well as what it means to keep secrets in a four part series called NewsWar.  A teacher's guide is in the works and you can already view some of the show online.  (Frontline also keeps a collection of episodes online for viewing.  I love PBS.  And WGBH.)

Open Source the radio show recently did an hour on the One Laptop per Child program.  I'm wondering how to get one of those machines in hand so that I can fiddle a little bit -- but I'm guessing that won't happen anytime soon.  One concern I have about the program is the notion that the computers are a magical solution.  I hope no one expects that simply distributing laptops will create a better educated world.

Publishing Opportunities

    In one of my roles as the co-editor of the New Voices column for English Journal, I regularly have space in a print publication to discuss how particular issues or topics in language arts instruction at the secondary level affect or are affected by early career teachers.  There are several upcoming calls that would be appropriate for writers from this community to address, so I thought I'd better pass along the calls here.  If these interest you, and you'd like to submit a manuscript, or ask any questions whatsoever, please do.  Take a look.  It's my job to help you get published, not to keep it from happening.  In addition, you don't need to be an early career teacher in order to write with me -- you just need to be relevant to early career teachers. 
    You can find more upcoming calls, or more information about requirements, at EJ's website.  If you're interested, I'd need to hear from you by the postmark deadline on these calls.  But I've got some additional time flexibility, so if you're interested but need a little extra time, I can make that work, too.:

New Literacies

Postmark Deadline: January 15, 2007  
Publication Date: September 2007          

As our vision of what counts as texts enlarges, educators are increasingly interested in not only meanings but also representations. We find a variety of ways of labeling our interests in this broader area of meaning-making—multimodal literacy, media literacy, new literacies, multiliteracies—each with slightly different meanings and uses. For this issue, we are not interested in pinning down a particular definition or set of assumptions and approaches. Instead, we are interested in knowing what you do to help students recognize new textual media, understand how texts are created, and think critically about how representation influences meaning and value. We invite you to consider the following questions or create your own. In all cases, we are interested in the research and/or theory that support your practice.

         

In what ways have you expanded the texts you include in class? What roles do graphic novels, video and film, blogs, sound files, visual art (graphic design), or other texts play in instruction? How do you help students understand why certain texts have been valued and others dismissed? In what ways do you engender understanding of media production and consumerism? What multimodal representations do you encourage students to use and critique? What projects or demonstrations do you use to create and assess students' multiple literacies? How do you employ and/or critique digital technologies? How do you address ethics?

Transforming English Teaching                                

Postmark Deadline: March 15, 2007

Publication Date: November 2007

         

To transform is to change substance and form, or to re-create by reconceiving, resituating, reimagining. Because teachers are always in the midst of change, we know that not all change is transformative. True transformation results in changed perspectives and practices, even new paradigms. For this issue, we invite you to write about transformations in teaching English language arts in the past, present, and future, with an emphasis on how and why such transformations are significant in the twenty-first century. We also seek manuscripts that show how you help students use the English language arts to transform their world.

         

How has the profession been transformed by historical moments, such as the formation of NCTE in 1911, the Dartmouth Seminar in 1966, or the English Coalition Conference in 1987, and what is the current significance of such a historical event? How have the provisions and implications of NCLB affected English language arts curriculum and instruction? In what ways have those changes been transformative, or how could they be? In an era of high-stakes testing, how are we teaching beyond tests to help adolescents deal with the challenges of being teenagers in difficult times or learn lessons that will help them live productive lives after graduation? What are English language arts teachers doing to address achievement gaps experienced because of differences in gender, race, class, and language? How is teaching for social change or justice a transformative approach? How have you used technology to transform your teaching and students' learning? What transformations are essential, and how can we make them?

MacArthur and A Little Cash

    I received a press release in my e-mail on Thursday night, but I ignored it until yesterday.  Here 'tis:

On behalf of the MacArthur Foundation initiative on digital media and learning, we invite you, your colleagues, and your students to join us in two online forums which will run from Monday, October 23 through Friday, Nov. 3rd.

The MacArthur Foundation seeks to create networks of interested scholars and practitioners as they move toward a substantial investment in the area of digital media and learning. Our specific working group is identifying consequences of digital media use that might be unanticipated or unexpected, which we will examine in-depth in a book of essays to be completed next year.

We are undertaking two online discussions over the next two weeks. The first seeks to explore the possibilities and limits of using digital media in the K-12 classroom by engaging with teachers who face such questions every day, particularly since this group is a significant stakeholder in the issue of digital media and learning. The conversation is framed around three questions:

1. “If you were free to use digital media to teach in any way you wanted, how would you use it?”
2. “What currently limits your use of digital media in the classroom?”
3. “What has surprised you about you students' digital media use?"

The second forum is designed to encourage youth to respond to ideas being formulated by our researchers. If possible, we’d love to hear from your students.

Responses generated through these forums will enrich our research and may be included in our published volume and in other MacArthur materials.

To join us, please go to one of our online discussion forums at:
For Teachers: http://community.macfound.org/openforum?go=z1082179
For Youth: http://community.macfound.org/openforum?go=z1082180
The first time you visit the site, you’ll need to create a user name and password (simply click on “Join”); once you register, you’ll be directed to one of the forums.

Further background: The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recently announced plans to build the emerging field of digital media and learning, committing $50 million over five years to the effort.  The Foundation will fund research and innovative projects focused on understanding the impact of the widespread use of digital media on our youth and how they learn. See www.macfound.org/digital for more information.

Please circulate and/or blog this information as you see fit, with apologies for any cross-postings, and don't hesitate to contact me should you have questions.
 
All best,
Tara McPherson
Editor, volume on Innovative Uses & Unexpected Consequences
Associate Professor, USC School of Cinematic Arts

    Any time folks ask my students to participate in questions that might come back to directly affect them, I'm interested.  The timing on these fora (or it is forums) is also perfect -- they'll be running concurrently with the K12 Online Conference.  This MacArthur initiative is very, very interesting, although a bit confusing to navigate via their collection of sites and whatnot.  I'm trying to understand the implications, but I don't.  Yet.  (I did, however, discover this interesting Spotlight blog.  Some pretty smart folks writing there, even if I don't yet grasp why.)
    Tom makes some good suggestions about aims for educators in this endeavor:

I would propose that it should be our goal to extract two things from this initiative:

1. That future grant cycles include some teacher-initiated projects, with the initiative providing development and research support;
2. That those projects release any code written under an open source license.

He even offers to help write some software with folks.  I think I'll definitely need to pay attention to the MacArthur initiative, even though I don't yet understand what it all means.  Five years and fifty million seems, well, like there might be plenty of opportunities for good things to happen.

Bill Moyers on Net Neutrality

    I haven't watched it yet, and I'm not sure when/if I will, but I thought I'd pass on that Bill Moyers did a PBS special on Wednesday night about net neutrality.  It's part of a larger series on modern citizenship that looks downright interesting.  All of the series, like other PBS programs, is available online for viewing via stream.