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.

The Podcast: Conversation Stream

   

This podcast, recorded on my way home from Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation, is just a stream of consciousness reflection on the day.  I am humbled to be in community with so many wonderful , talented and devoted educators, both here in Colorado as well as around the world. 

The Podcast: Thinking about Data and Podcasting

   

This podcast, one of several I recorded today at the Colorado Podcast Summit, is a conversation from the end of the day with several podcasters and other educators, discussing data, action research, and podcasting.  I thought it was an interesting conversation - I hope you do, too.  The discussion was moderated by Brent Wilson, a professor at CU-Denver.  Enjoy.

The Podcast: A Project of Projects

   

Tonight's short offering is a thought or two about an idea I had today.  Aggregating content is nothing new - but makes sense when you need a "new" project.  We could all use a few more connections to the good work we're up to.  Would love to hear your thoughts, or anything you're up to in this vein.  Enjoy.

I Know It's Not New . . .

    The conversation(s), I mean.  You know, about how teachers need to be engaged, too, in order for their passion to come through.  Gardner Campbell posted this quote by Jerome Bruner that was a good reminder of the fact that, while the tools and the opportunities to connect and talk are new, not so many of the ideas about school and learning and teaching that some folks, myself included, are (re)discovering:

2. Jerome Bruner, from the Preface to the 1977 revised edition of The Process of Education:

Let me turn finally to the last of the things that have kept me brooding about this book–the production of a curriculum. Whoever has undertaken such an enterprise will probably have learned many things. But with luck, he will also have learned one big thing. A curriculum is more for teachers than it is for pupils. If it cannot change, move, perturb, inform teachers, it will have no effect on those whom they teach. It must be first and foremost a curriculum for teachers. If it has any effect on pupils, it will have it by virtue of having had an effect on teachers. The doctrine that a well-wrought curriculum is a way of “teacher-proofing” a body of knowledge in order to get it to the student uncontaminated is nonsense.

Amen.  A double amen to the conclusion of his post (you should really read the rest):

I yearn for that effective surprise and for the cognitive economy of powerful symbols, for the structures and the illuminating honesty, the theme parks and the sandboxes, to make of courses of study episodes of buildable wonder.

Now, he's a university professor talking about university courses.  But I want my daughters' kindergartens to be "episodes of buildable wonder."  Don't you?

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. 

K12Online. Slow & Reflective.

    I'm pretty excited about tomorrow.   Tomorrow, I begin this class:

The K120 Online Conference is an online offering of presentations created by educators and centered around new applications and new technologies. It's a way to address both teachers' needs as well as the opportunity to connect to an online network of professionals that can be drawn upon for future professional development activities.

There will be four face-to-face sessions of this PST. In between each of these sessions, participants will be expected to engage two sessions from the conference, for a minimum of eight face-to-face hours and eight online conference hours.

Each participant will write a two-page reflection and keep a log of the sessions attended. The final face-to-face session will be a facilitated discussion about what was learned, the benefits of the conference, and the next steps for those involved in terms of taking their learning back into their classrooms. This discussion will be recorded and released as a podcast.

I'm excited about the class because it allows me to do two things that I think are pretty important: 
1.  Introduce smart people to new tools and opportunities.
2.  Take our time and do it right.

    I think so many of the professional opportunities that teachers are afforded are races, mere dips of a toe into the waters of potential.  There's lots to do and not enough time to do it.  Time is a precious, precious resource that is in short supply.  I also think that many of the tools that are influencing my network, and , frankly, me right now, encourage haste and speed and the like.  Twitter, on the short list of my favorite read/write web tools, can be reflective, but perhaps not richly so.  I wrote a tweet the other day that hasn't left my head.  I was thinking about how busy I've been lately - racing from one really interesting project to the next, knowing that the excitement wasn't a good replacement for the lasting learning that I knew just wasn't happening for me:

          Not much reflection, though - just lots of doing.  That's not sustainable.  Or worth sustaining.

I want sustainability.  I want reflection.  I think others want it, too.  we don't learn by racing.  We learn by doing and reflecting and questioning.  It's a recursive cycle, and one that doesn't happen enough for me.  I wonder if it's become too easy to communicate, in some ways.  Do I get so busy communicating that I haven't bothered to say anything?  (Does that even make sense?)
    Which leads me back to tomorrow.  (Man, I really, really buried the lede in this post, didn't I?)  Tomorrow, I begin a facilitated, slow and thorough look at the K12Online Conference, both the 2006 and 2007 editions.  Over the next four months, in two hour chunks, I hope to study and learn from the presentations of the last two years.  I want to dig in to the content that I felt whipped by so dang fast in late October when it was released.   This is what the conference invites, as  all the sessions are archived. 
    So we will.  I hope to use the class time as discussion time to talk about the different presentations, as well as an opportunity to think about how these different sessions might offer some ideas for change in our classrooms here in my district.   I'll be asking participants, on a voluntary basis, to share their favorites with the group in 15 minute "spotlight sessions."  These, I hope, will foster conversation and inquiry into new tools and classroom strategies.
    I'm interested, too, in looking for ways to connect folks from all over to my district's virtual classroom.  but before I do that, though, I want to meet the class and make sure they're comfortable with that.  Stay tuned for further developments. 
    If you've any advice, or even a "must see" presentation recommendation for these first time K12Online Conference attenders, I'd welcome it in the comments - we'll share your tips during our first session. 

A Belated Answer

    About a week ago, Brian posted:

Paul Hamilton  left this comment on my last post:

This week, I did a workshop for classroom teachers on using blogging in the classroom as one UDL approach for ALL learners. There were questions about the quality of posted student writing. So, here are my questions to you. Do you approve and/or edit every student post? How much editing do you do? How time consuming is the process? (I notice that you were working at it on a Friday evening!) Do you have any related tips for teachers who are holding back out of concerns in this area?

Since I'm not sure about the statute of limitations on blog responses, I'm going to answer now, as I was asked at the end of the post. 

    I've run blogs where I approve everything and others where my students had all the control of what got published and when.  I always approved material for our student newspaper (now defunct, sigh), in part because I wanted an opportunity to do revision and editing with each student, and in part because I thought the professional nature of the newspaper made sense for such controls.  When I taught speech via blogs, I was willing to let my students decide what they published and when.  We discussed appropriate behavior as well as that if they weren't sure about whether or not to publish , they could certainly seek the advice of their fellow students or their teacher.  Since their blogs were more for reporting research than they were for formal presentation, I tended to cut the students some leeway when it came to the "rules."  If it was readable, and approaching formal English (or, if you prefer, "acceptable public voice,"), then I let it go. 
    In two years of blogging with students, I asked one student to change a piece, once, and even he agreed, after re-reading, that he shouldn't have hit "publish" in the first place - but that he was frustrated when he made the post.
    The time involved with editing is much the same as with not editing.  I think it's irresponsible for a teacher to require writing and then to not read that writing.  (I don't mean read every word; teachers, though, should at least skim every post a student makes, for a number of reasons.)  So whether or not a teacher is editing prior to publication, or is reading after publication, the time factor is still there.  I would argue for making the time spent editing a student's work with a student a learning experience, akin to a writing conference.
     The trick, when editing, is to help the writer to become a better writer - and not to mask their student voice with your own teacher voice.  I struggle with that one every time I work with a student in a conference. I don't think we should edit every word or sentence for grammar and proper punctuation - but we should attend to egregious errors.  Your own judgment will help you to determine what "egregious" means for your students. 
    I hope this is helpful, even if it's a bit late.  You asked a great set of questions, Paul.  Thanks, Brian, for allowing me to take a crack at them. 

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. 

Technological Literacy? It's Still Just Learning

   Dana nails the issue of "excused" technological illiteracy:

Teachers have to realize at some point that exhibiting ignorance with this sort of pride is not OK. It is OK not to know something and to try to fix that, and I would hope that most teachers would do so. I don’t know everything. That’s true. At the end of my life, I still won’t know everything. I would hope, however, that when I reach the end of my life, I will never have exhibited pride about being ignorant of anything.

Dana nails it because she's not necessarily focusing on a particular skill or skills, but more on the desire of those involved to be in a constant state of learning.

Karl's post, which inspired Dana's (and was inspired itself by Terry's) gets really, really interesting in the comments, particularly as the discussion gets going into literature, and literacy, and technological literacy.  You've got to read it for yourself, but let me contribute that I love both the words and the ideas of great literature.  Particularly poetry, which is, to me, the near-perfect (or completely impossible) marriage of both.   

  As for technological literacy, the US federal government, via NCLB, now requires that all 8th graders be technologically literate.  Well, actually, that's not true - the federal government has required that all states test 8th graders to measure their technological literacy.  Each state gets to define technological literacy, though, as well as the standards that they will use to measure it, which might explain some of the confusion in Karl's conversation.  Neat, huh?

   It's sure hard to teach something that you don't know yourself.  Of course, the question that I'm not going to attempt to answer at the moment is whether or not technology is a content area or something, like reading and writing, that transcends content.  That's a blog post for a different day.   

** If you know the definition of technological literacy that your state is using , jot it down in the comments - I'd be curious to see the range of definitions.  My fingers are crossed that there's not much variance from state.  I know that Colorado is going with the refreshed ISTE NETS as the state technology standards, with some minor revisions.