A Window on the World: Blog Day

"Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind."
Wallace Stevens, Domination of Black

It has only been two months since I began blogging. I have reflected on my professional life, made connections with educators and librarians in faraway places, and gained a nodding acquaintance with tools and applications whose existence I had not even suspected before.

My window has opened wide, indeed.

Carolyn Foote (Texas) has mentioned Journeys as a blog she would recommend, and I wholeheartedly return the favor: her Not So Distant Future explores the daily concerns of the teacher/librarian trying to move students in the direction of information fluency.

Beyond School's Clay Burell (Korea) has active student bloggers who participate in collaborative global learning projects. If our district technology cooperates, I hope to join in the fun, half a world away from our tiny rural school.

Also on another continent, Jo McLeay (Australia), of The Open Classroom, conducts Web 2.0 workshops for her colleagues and nurtures creativity through her class blogs.

Back in the U.S., Joyce Valenza (Pennsylvania) provides insight about 21st century searching, teaching, and learning on her NeverEndingSearch Blog.

And Sylvia Martinez (State of Washington) works through the Generation Yes Blog to help schools throughout the States integrate technology into the curriculum. Her advocacy of "student voice" is both eloquent and compelling.

This is just a sampling of the blogs I read daily, my self-directed professional development program.

To these individuals, and all the other intelligent, passionate writers who share their thoughts with us, I offer my sincere thanks.

"We are so often caught up in our destination that we forget to appreciate the journey, especially the goodness of the people we meet on the way. Appreciation is a wonderful feeling, don't overlook it."
Author Unknown

A Poem for Autumn

"The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel-
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze."
- September, John Updike

A Day at the Races

"The essential joy of being with horses is that it brings us in contact with the rare elements of grace, beauty, spirit, and fire.
-Sharon Ralls Lemon"

Saratoga Racetrack, August 27, 2007: Clubhouse and Paddock. One last fling before school resumes!

Play

“Play is the highest form of research.” -Albert Einstein

Ben Dobbin, in a recent AP article, profiles The Museum of Play, located in Rochester, NY. It is impossible to read this story about children learning while having fun without wondering how to inject the same feeling of joyful discovery into a classroom environment.

Dobbin quotes museum director G. Rollie Adams, who declares that "Education should be engaging and challenging and exciting. That's when people learn deeply, learn things they're going to remember for a long time."

A recent survey conducted by MTV and The Associated Press, found that young people (13-24) "are generally very happy, optimistic about the future and have goals in place to achieve a happier tomorrow". However, of those attending school, 37% responded that school contributed "a lot" to the stress experienced in daily life; 25% listed school as the top stress factor (as compared to "family" at 11%).

Konrad Glogowski reminds us that "Building an environment for the students is likely to result in failure: environments and communities need to be build with the students, with their full participation, through their work and their interactions with and about texts." He goes on to state, "as a teacher in the 21st century, I am taking a stand: I want to have a classroom where my students can enjoy learning experiences.”

Glogowski's perspective is not a new one: the Greek philosopher Plato advised “Do not keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play.” Psychologist Erik H. Erikson said that "the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery.” Beloved childhood icon, Fred Rogers, felt that "One way to think about play, is as the process of finding new combinations for known things—combinations that may yield new forms of expression, new inventions, new discoveries, and new solutions....It’s exactly what children’s play seems to be about and explains why so many people have come to think that children’s play is so important a part of childhood—and beyond."

Since students tend to regard computer time as "play" many educators are turning to wikis and blogs to inject a sense of fun into the learning environment. Inspired by colleague Jo Mcleahy, English teacher Bernie Peeler set up a class blog and, despite the inevitable technical glitches, was able to report "a lot of happy and excited faces in mastering, at least in a limited way, the art of blogging." Jennifer Dorman's wiki includes a Voki and numerous links to tech tools that will enhance and extend the classroom experience while making it an appealing site for student interaction.

A more "radical" method of pairing fun with learning is through gaming. Educational guru Marc Prensky makes a compelling argument for the instructional use of games: “Ours is now a world that demands that people know how to learn new things–especially technical things–quickly and well; that they know how to collaborate, especially with people not just like themselves; and that they know how to think strategically and laterally as well as linearly and logically. These are all skills that good video games demand and teach.” Doug Johnson
listed reasons why games should be allowed in the school library; John Rice publishes a blog devoted exclusively to educational games research.

After looking at the tools students already use in their daily lives, Sue Waters wonders "Will Mobiles [PDA, ipod, mobile phone] be THE Tool of the Future?" Megan, of the Generation YES blog mentions a Schools Fantasy League that engages kids by tapping into their interest in sports.

Chris Lehmann, Principal of the innovative Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA, insists that all children can learn. "We're trying to build a school for a diverse group of learners. We're trying to prove that there are multiple ways for students to succeed and learn."

Perhaps one of those "ways" is through play. Learning while having fun.


“[Students] approach learning as a ‘plug-and-play’ experience; they are unaccustomed and unwilling to learn sequentially–to read the manual–and, instead, are inclined to plunge in and learn through participation and experimentation. Although this type of learning is quite different, it may be more effective for this generation, particularly when provided through a media-rich environment.” — James J. Duderstadt and Farris W. Womack, The Future of the Public University in America: Beyond the Crossroads


This post was inspired by Carolyn Foote's "For our sons and daughters".



Photo: "The Sandbox" by Ricardo Carreon

Mini Me

The little lady on the bottom right of my page was created at Voki. Megan E., of the Generation YES Blog, spotlighted this site today, and it's just as much fun to use as she claimed!

After registering for a free account (no fee if you're not using the Voki for business purposes), you customize an avatar, then record a message in your own voice. My introduction is pretty bland, but since I intend to show it to my students, I decided that cutting edge was not the direction I should take.

It was quick and easy to do. My husband likes the interactive aspects but wondered why my alter-ego has straight hair while my real hair is reacting violently to today's humidity. Maybe I should create another Voki for virtual nagging!

Saratoga Morning

"If a horse has four legs, and I'm riding it, I think I can win"
-Angel Cordero

This morning I watched racehorses work out at Saratoga. There were no colorful silks and caps, no wagers placed; just jockeys and horses going about their business under the watchful eyes of owners and trainers.

Monday I'll return to join the crowds in the grandstand and cheer for the entries, who carry mighty dreams on four impossibly slender legs.

But today it was jeans and dust and purposeful exercise on an oval track.

See more photos here.

Everthing I Need to Know About Teaching I Learned from Rock and Roll

Make it relevant:

"When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
Its a wonder I can think at all..."
-Simon and Garfunkel, Kodachrome


Differentiate instruction to accommodate all learners:

"He stands like a statue
Becomes part of the machine
Feeling all the bumpers
Always playing clean
He plays by intuition
The digit counters fall
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball"
-The Who, Pinball Wizard


Maintain discipline:

"A little respect (sock it to me, sock it to me,
sock it to me, sock it to me)
Whoa, babe (just a little bit)
A little respect (just a little bit)
I get tired (just a little bit)
Keep on tryin' (just a little bit)
You're runnin' out of foolin' (just a little bit)
And I ain't lyin' (just a little bit)
(re, re, re, re) 'spect"
-Aretha Franklin, Respect

Create a positive learning environment:

"Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation"
-The Fifth Dimension, Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In

"Without music, life is a journey through a desert."
-Pat Conroy

"And we'll go dancing, baby, then you'll see
How the magic's in the music and the music's in me"
-The Lovin' Spoonful, Do You Believe in Magic

Invite and Share

"Come on and walk right in, set right down.
Daddy, let your mind roll on." - Rooftop Singers (music)

In Wikinomics, authors Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams describe an economy in which "ordinary people and firms are linking up in imaginative new ways to drive innovation and success". Through "peer production", consumers can join in collaborative ventures, helping to create new technology tools and applications. "Individuals now share knowledge, computing power, bandwidth, and other resources to create a wide array of free and open-source goods and services that anyone can use or modify."

With so much available for the taking, how can companies show a profit? Tapscott and Williams quote Tim Bray, director of Web technologies at Sun Microsystems, who says that "expanding markets create new opportunities.” Knowledge producers must assess the market, then "innovate, differentiate, and compete".

Which brings us to InviteShare. TechCrunch founder and editor Michael Arrington was tired of having to scrounge up invitations to beta sites for his readers. Jeff Broderick, a computer programmer and web designer at EkinDesigns, created the solution: a site that connects users who want access to new Internet offerings to subscribers who have extra invitations to share. Start-ups benefit from increased traffic and exposure on the website.

Broderick created a new product (reviewed here), Arrington solved his problem, technophiles will be able to try out the beta tools they lust after and fledgling companies get some feedback and PR.

"And I think to myself, what a wonderful world..." -Louis Armstrong (George Weiss / Bob Thiele)

The Lake Wobegon Effect

me·di·o·cre: of moderate or low quality, value, ability, or performance: ordinary, so-so

In his Eight Random Facts meme, Tim Stahmer tells us that "another of my dad’s relatives was Roman Hruska, who served as a senator from Nebraska. He was noted for defending a Nixon nominee to the Supreme Court who had been called a mediocre judge by declaring that the mediocre are 'entitled to a little representation, aren’t they?'. I’m so proud."

Intrigued, I followed the Wikipedia link to retrieve the entire quote:
"So what if he is mediocre? There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they? We can't have all Brandeises, Cardozos, and Frankfurters and stuff like that there."

None of us want to be regarded as "mediocre", even though one of the synonyms is "ordinary". "So-so" is yet more damning in its suggestion of lukewarm blandness.

But can everyone be like the inhabitants of Lake Wobegon, where "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average"? John Cannell's "The Lake Wobegon Report: How Public Educators Cheat on Achievement Tests.", published in 1989, made public the statistically impossible finding that all states claimed average student test scores above the national norm. According to the entry on Word spy, "This effect is most often seen in educational test scores, where some teachers, schools, or school districts claim that all of their students score above average, a mathematical impossibility."

Is it possible for all students to be "above average"? NCLB is based on the belief that "high expectations and setting of goals will result in success for all worthy students". Success is one thing, but can everyone be "above average"? Is "superior" the new "average"?

"All human excellence is but comparative. There may be persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest." -Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), British novelist

Making Learning Fun

Clay Burell describes his teaching style as "relaxed, non-authoritarian, relevant, high-energy, philosophical, wonder-aimed, and encourages principled non-comformity and laughter."

In the spirit of this excellent philosophy, I have been paying around in ToonDoo, trying to create some lesson-enhancing cartoons.

All of our teachers are being required to post an Essential Question while we teach. Since the students might not be familiar with this term, I came up with the following two cartoons:





If we can access the site at school, I'd love to have my students create their own EQ cartoons.