A Baker's Half-Dozen

Chaval Brasil via Compfight cc

To Siri, With Love-- How One Boy With Autism Became BFF With Apple’s Siri

Gus had never noticed Siri before, but when he discovered there was someone who would not just find information on his various obsessions (trains, planes, buses, escalators and, of course, anything related to weather) but actually semi-discuss these subjects tirelessly, he was hooked. And I was grateful. Now, when my head was about to explode if I had to have another conversation about the chance of tornadoes in Kansas City, Mo., I could reply brightly: “Hey! Why don’t you ask Siri?”

http://tinyurl.com/po7a84c

Wasting opportunities at ed tech conferences

We have entire ed tech conferences dedicated to the latest and greatest tools,apps, and extensions. Educators sign up for them in droves, often paying $200 to $300 per head to attend. They’re fun, they’re cool, and some organizations are making a LOT of money with this model. But next time you’re at an ed tech conference, ask yourself “Are these offerings really moving the needle in terms of systemic change in classrooms, teacher practice, or school systems?” (which is what we need).

http://tinyurl.com/k89yqpy

OS X Yosemite Launch Brings Fully Functional iCloud Drive to Mac and iOS

iCloud Drive can also be used in a similar manner to Dropbox, Box, and other cloud storage services in that any type of file can simply be dragged and dropped into the iCloud Drive folder on Mac or iCloud.com and be synced across devices. Access is a bit more limited on iOS where there is no iCloud Drive app allowing access to all files, but the service still allows users of iCloud Drive-enabled apps to view and save files related to that app that are stored and synced with iCloud Drive. 

http://tinyurl.com/nz4exuy

3 ways connected educators transform learning

“We’re an unselfish lot,” [Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach] said. “We constantly sacrifice our needs and desires for others because it’s for the kids, right? If we’re going to serve the kids, we’ve got to make time for educators to talk to one another.”

http://tinyurl.com/k2g6527

Microsoft Wins a Spot on the N.F.L. Sideline

As the N.F.L. heads toward midseason, the toughened tablets, which download high-definition photographs of plays moments after they occur, have blended into the sidelines. But their development offers a window into the relationship between the N.F.L. and its business partners, particularly those vying for one of the few spots on a field that tens of millions of fans see every week.

http://tinyurl.com/l7qrmns

The Teacher’s Guide To Pinterest

Pinterest has quickly become one of the biggest ways for teachers to share resources and information short of Twitter. It lets you build ‘boards’ and easily ‘pin’ parts of the web (text, images, videos, websites, etc.) onto those boards. Simple enough, right? Here’s our Teacher’s Guide To Pinterest that gives you a few more ideas about how to properly use Pinterest in an education setting. Enjoy!

http://tinyurl.com/kp9nare

Elegy on "Classroom Teacher"

Recently I wrote presentation proposals for MAME 37 and MAPSA. On one of the forms I was asked to indicate my professional role. Perfunctorily, I began to enter "classroom teacher." But then I realized how ironic this phrase was considering the topics of my proposals:

Using Apple’s Challenge-Based Learning to Build Learning Networks

Building A Knowledge Hub for Your Learning Community

Challenge Based Learning removes the teacher from the role as dispenser of knowledge and places him or her into the role of guide.In my experience, most of the learning takes place outside of the classroom for my projects. Students use the school schedule and space for meetings on logistics.

Professional teachers also have a role in knowledge hubs, but their expertise is not utilized in a specific "room" at a scheduled time. Students are encouraged to network with any teacher, not just "their teachers". Students are likely to confer with teachers on subjects they are not even assigned to teach in any classroom that school year.

It is my hope that "Classroom teaching" may soon become a kind of anachronism like "steam shovel" or "dial tone." We still us the phrase, but those shovels aren't powered by steam and few people access a tone by "dialing" a phone. With today's technology we don't need to conceptually confine authentic teaching to classes or rooms.

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MHS tenth graders engaged in challenge project

Group Accountability during Challenge Projects

I have now put 85%* of our school's class of '12 through modified Challenge Based Learning projects. The experience, has given me a handle the biggest general objections to group work: How can you evaluate individuals fairly? How do you prevent "free riders" who benefit despite doing little work? Even worse, is it fair to penalize the entire group if a member or two entirely drop the ball?

In response to past blog posts, I have received two suggestions for dealing with this issue: 1) Weekly conferences and or self-evaluations to monitor individual contributions. 2) A detailed accounting at the conclusion of the project as to who did what.

I applaud any teacher who doesn't simply turn a blind eye to the problem and either wimps out by not applying any standards to group work ("A's for all!") or supposes that the students should "just work it out, just like the real world". (Hello, in the real world your employer has not retained employees with zero work ethic). But I have found the weekly interventions too time intensive for both teacher and group. And in my opinion both approaches put center the teacher's role in the project more than is desirable.

Here's how I handle group evaluations these days:

*As students select their groupings, they are informed that any ensuing "group chemistry" issues will be addressed with a group sit-down.

*Students write group goals at the outset and are instructed that these must be measurable.

*At two intervals, I require each group to create a specific work schedule that creates a road map to completion of their goals. At this time they must also log individual responsibilities that all members have agreed to

* These goals and schedules are logged onto Google Docs that the groups share with me. I give them feedback on their goals and insist that their expectations be concrete.

*At the end of the process, the groups complete assessments of their goals. They are urged to note individual break downs and heroics. Individual members are told that they may append a dissent to the group report (This is rare).

This school year, I received no interventions or complaints from parents. Only two students approached me during the process to "tattle" on other students who were supposedly not doing their share. I listened to the students but insisted that they work within the system, trusting that no group would be brought low by a dead-beat member.

Such dead-beats were regularly identified in the group assessments. In some cases these individuals agreed that they had dropped the ball (and were penalized accordingly). In other cases, the entire group took responsibility for procrastinating and putting individual members in a situation where success was unlikely.

The group assessments and presentations were refreshingly honest, reassuring me the project had taught the students about more than just their topics. They also learned about working with other people.

As I move forward, I will definitely continue handling group evaluation in this way.
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*American Government is required of Mercy sophomores and I was assigned six of seven sections this year.

Image above is a CBL slide for my M-Hub presentation on April 20, 2010.

Celebrating Failure

"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm."
- Winston Churchill

After thirty-five years in education, I have learned to walk away briskly from failure.

Anyone who tries new things will make mistakes, and if you are my age, you realize that you are wasting precious time if you A) invest more of it in a losing cause B) brood over "ingenious" ideas that do not catch fire with others.

So, I am going to now officially categorize The Blog Squad as an official dud. Last May, I envisioned the Squad this way:

What I would like to establish is something like a "Blog Squad" which would offer message board help to students who are having specific challenges with wikis, web sites, podcasts, blogs in our classes. Believe me, tons of little issues arise with projects using Web 2.0 apps, and they occur when class is not in session. Usually the problems are easy to solve and do not warrant tying up valuable tech department or class time. I envision that the "club" would initially recruit kids who are adept at Audacity, WikiSpaces, Google Sites, and/or Blogger and give them "genius" (apologies to Apple) status as problem solvers.

But I also promised . . . .

I am also not afraid to declare that I have failed. The plan will die a quick death if a critical mass of users is not achieved by mid-semester. . . .

Well, here is the declaration: I failed.

I tried to run the Squad through a Ning . Faculty and students signed up in droves. . . .But they did not return. I was pretty much the only active participant on the Ning. (No surprise on that score!). But I also realize two other factors. 1) Face-to- face meetings are probably necessary to fire up enthusiasm for a virtual project like this. 2) Students need or expect immediate help for their tech frustrations, and on-the-spot assistance is simply not feasible within a conventional school schedule.

Before bidding adieu to the Squad, let this be noted: when I sent out the call, fellow staff members actually came to my classroom to offer hands on technical help (Ann, Will, Cheryl -- you were awesome). And I have since learned that the best way for students to get on-the-spot help is to place them into groups during project launches and let them teach each other.

Thus, by no means was the Blog Squad a total loss. But instead of trying to pump life into this inert Ning, I'm going to walk away from it and try to apply the lessons learned to my new passion: The Knowledge Hub Project: Unlike Blog Squad, I am evangelizing M-Hub through face-to-face gatherings and identifying student leaders who will hopefully keep our momentum going through next year and beyond.

I'm giving this my best shot. But . . . . If next spring, we are dead in the water, I will abandon ship and venture off in a new direction in a different virtual vessel.

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"lydney cannon festival" Flickr Creative Commons photo by the longhairedgit.

Hub-Cap

The M-Hub Project is officially launched. Twenty of us shared ideas for building a digital platform that would network our extended school community. The idea is to help students learn to build personal learning networks from "the inside-out".

The students had terrific ideas for using the hub. They also impressed the adults with their sophisticated suggestions on the technical side of the project. Staff in attendance represented the Art, the Media Center, Counseling, English, Tech, and Religious Studies. An alumna joined us en route to the Horn of Africa where she will work to cure tropical diseases. Needless to say, we had a rich variety of perspectives.

Perhaps the best sign of the meeting: When I arrived home from the meeting, I had three emails waiting from attendees that bubbled with more ideas for our enterprise.

The next step is to build a leadership team with the students. I want to meet with them next week. Another general meeting is scheduled for May 11. The topic? A platform for our network! I will keep you posted.

Visit the Marlin Knowledge Hub Project Site
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Photo by L. Baker, April 20, 2010.

The Knowledge Hub Project

My last three posts have led me to the launch of M-Hub. As explained in The Inside-Out Knowledge Network, our schools generally do not A) teach our students to network B) utilize expertise within reach of the school and local community.

I propose setting up a "knowledge hub" database with spokes that connect to staff (past and present), parents, and alumnae. We will also identify other professional and academic "experts" in the extended community who are willing to serve as "nodes" on our learning grid. M-Hub will allow our students to shake off the conventions of school calendars, meeting times, and classrooms. The M-Hub will be designed to network passionate learners and serve as a model of collaboration. Its greater purpose will be preparing our students for life-long learning beyond MHS.

I believe this is called a stretch goal. But why not dream big? The first meeting is scheduled for tomorrow and I've invited dreamers to come and help choose a platform for our database. Naysaying will not be featured on the agenda.

I have set up a web site which describe the philosophical underpinnings of the Hub.

Any member of our school community will be welcome at the meeting and may join the virtual discussion at our M-Hub Project Ning. (If you wish to join the ning, please contact me by private email). So far, the Ning has attracted a very nice blend of students, staff, and alumnae.

You can be sure that you will hear more about M-Hub at the Drive-thru!

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Screen shot of M-Hub web site. Visit for more information.

Rewiring the Learning Networks at Schools

In my last post - Rethinking the Confines of Teaching and Learning - I argued for broadening our perspectives about how students should access specific information. I described my friend, Tom Schusterbauer, who recently retired. He still communicates with former students through Facebook and a book club, but despite his exceptional knowledge and teaching skill, he's now more or less off the learning grid of my students. If Tom and other retirees still love kids and are passionate about the stuff they know, why can't they be accessible to learners through the many powerful technologies that we have?

Even more perplexing is this consideration: Why aren't students urged to use these same technologies to connect with persons in their own school building? I have peers who are stone cold experts in a wide variety of topics. I don't teach Brit Lit or Shakespeare anymore, but I know more than a little bit about Charles Dickens and Elizabethan theatre. I haven't forgotten all that stuff just because my semester teaching assignments have changed. Several of our students are studying Dickens and Shakespeare this semester. Each one has a laptop, so her ability to communicate with me is literally at her fingertips. How many have contacted me? None. Why? Because to do so would be unconventional.

Convention dictates that a teacher is only an "expert" while teaching an assigned course to a particular set of students in a particular room at a particular time. What a dreadful way to prepare our students for life beyond school! Their careers are likely to require them to network, using mobile communication on a global scale. And I'm guessing that their employers will expect them to access information from folks who know things. Immediately. This is undeniable, isn't it?

Thus, it makes sense to me that we help our students learn to build learning networks. And rather than simply point them toward the Internet, why don't we teach them to pose good questions to real people in real time? Furthermore, we ought to guide them to begin networking within a familiar social community. I call this, working inside-out.

Case in point: When my sophomores conducted research for their challenge projects, I urged them to think outside of the box. Consequently, they ended up interviewing lawyers, judges, doctors, and military officers in order to learn about "equality under the law." One particular group chose a very tough topic to research-- equal rights for teens. They had developed some intelligent lines of inquiry, when they "googled" for answers they ended up with very squishy information. They did much better when they thought about what "experts" might be in their circle of acquaintances. When they interviewed a local insurance agent and one of our guidance counselors, they got right down to the brass tacks. I've included a video clip of the guidance counslor interview, which they ended up posting (with her permission of course) to their wiki.

Guess what. With this kind of "research" I don't run into "copy & paste" or plagiarism. Instead, it produces critical thinking and collaboration.

I'm leading up to a proposal for school "knowledge hubs", but jumping to that, I have more to say about networking inside-out. . . . In Friday's post.

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Thanks to Ms. Trisch Brown for giving me permission to use this clip.

Rethinking the Confines of Teaching & Learning

You may recall that last year I featured Tom Schusterbauer in "Sage Schuste Seduced by Cyberspace", describing him as "a gifted teacher who has impacted literally hundreds of students by touching their hearts. I've never encountered anyone who more passionately teaches about literature and life." I also marveled that this self-proclaimed technophobe would be having such a tremendous impact on Facebook, sharing his reflections on life with hundreds of "friends-- primarily former students. And he's still going strong on Facebook!

A couple of weeks ago, Tom Schusterbauer commented to one of my blog posts: "And I Quote....". The theme of my blog was the educational system's resistance to forces shaping the world outside it. As a recently retired vet of 41 years in the classroom, Tom remarked:

It is difficult to partially leave a system which you know has worked . . . It is difficult to find the time and the energy (especially for one who has been teaching for decades and in a discipline where so much time is spent in both prepping and correcting) to explore and modify. . . . the goal is to take what has worked and make it work better and more dramatically.

My knee-jerk reaction to this is, well Tom, we must change despite the "difficulty". But that would have been overly simplistic and would not have acknowledged the wealth of knowledge and insight Tom has amassed from all that time prepping. He is exceedingly well versed on such varied topics as the Holocaust, Abraham Lincoln, J.D Salinger, Anne Tyler, jazz, film noir, composition). Despite his high profile on Facebook, this treasure trove of knowledge was more or less unplugged from the educational "system" when Tom he quit punching in at the time clock. But he still loves teaching and sharing about his passions. And memory erasure was not a prerequisite for receiving his pension.

An aside: Once when the Media Center was making tough choices over which expensive resources to add to its collection, I suggested that the faculty could contribute "free" podcasts on race relations, Charles Dickens, mythology, the Elizabethan Age, and other subjects we had immersed ourselves in over the years. Such podcasts, I argued, would be legitimate sources for the kinds of research assignments we conventionally give students. Students would still have to wrestle with the information and synthesize it for their reports or presentations. My suggestion was not taken seriously, but I still think it was a pretty good idea. Isn't it too bad that some of Tom's legacy has not been bottled this way for present students to discover in their research?

Today there are even more dynamic ways to connect Tom back into our students' learning networks. Why not plug him back into the knowledge grid through email, texting, video conferencing, or perhaps, a phone call?

Even more peculiar is this consideration: Why aren't actively employed teachers considered as potentially valuable "nodes" in the learning networks of all students? Why, with the tremendous communication technologies at our fingertips, do we hang onto mindsets that "classroom teachers" are pretty much confined to serving designated students who are scheduled to show up in their rooms for the duration of a "course? This no longer makes sense to me and I've decided to take action with something I am calling a Knowledge Hub Project. More on Wednesday!

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"Schuste" (with his permission) as photographed in '09 by Haley D.

Weekend Take-out at the Drive-thru

Katherine Mangu-Ward-- Putting reading materials and lecture notes on the Internet, like many teachers do today, is just the first step; it's like when, in the early days of movies, filmmakers pointed a camera at a stage play. Kids are still stuck watching those old-style movies, when they could be enjoying the learning equivalent of "Avatar" in 3-D. Thousands of ninth-grade English teachers are cobbling together yet another lecture on the Globe Theatre in Shakespeare's day, when YouTube is overflowing with accessible, multimedia presentations from experts on Elizabethan theater construction. . . .

George Siemens-- We are at a point where we ought to be conceiving new models driven by the affordances generated by networks, technology, openness, and social software. Instead, many systems are at the equivalent stage of being pushed down the hall in a wheelchair at a senior care home.

Ellen Kumata (as quoted by Tony Wagner)-- Our system of schooling promotes the idea that there are right answers, and that you get rewarded if you get the right answer. But to be comfortable with this new economy . . . you have to understand that you live in a world where there isn't one right answer, or if there is, it's right only for a nanosecond."

David Pogue on iPad-- Hulu.com, the Web’s headquarters for free hit TV shows, won’t confirm the rumors that it’s working on an iPad app, but wow — can you imagine? A thin, flat, cordless, bottomless source of free, great TV shows, in your bag or on the bedside table?

National Educational Technology Plan (as quoted by Will Richardon): In connected teaching, teaching is a team activity. Individual educators build online learning communities consisting of their students and their students’ peers; fellow educators in their schools, libraries, and afterschool programs; professional experts in various disciplines around the world; members of community organizations that serve students in the hours they are not in school; and parents who desire greater participation in their children’s education.

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"Take Out" with generous permission of americanvirus

And I Quote . . . .

Tony Wagner: Most high school educators do not feel a real sense of urgency for change--perhaps because their work isolates them from the larger world of rapid change and they've lived through too many failed education fads.

George Siemens: When [social] connections calcify and become dogma and rigid structure, they fail to represent the chaotic and continually shifting world outside.

Faire Alchemist: The future of education is bound up in the ways that we relate to our alumni via the social connections of the Net. Because the future of education isn't about the classroom; it's about the world. And your alumni are the bridge between the two.

Nicholas Bramble: Educators should stop thinking about how to repress the huge amounts of intellectual and social energy kids devote to social media and start thinking about how to channel that energy away from causing trouble and toward getting more out of their classes. After all, it's not as if most kids are investing commensurate energy into, say, their math homework.

Terry Freedman: Using social networks, and by implication other Web 2.0 applications, is more and more starting to be an economic imperative. Schools which do not recognise this, and act on that realisation, are doing a disservice to their students .

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"The people in charge" Flickr Creative Commons photo by Scott McLeod

CBL Video - A Different Kind of Project

Alissa emphatically points out important differences between an Apple Challenge Based Learning Project and conventional group assignments. Until I tried a CBL, I was always frustrated by the artificiality of "project" assignments which were basically designed by the teacher and completed for the teacher. In those kinds of projects, students simply jump through hoops.

In my government classes I have often tried many different types of current events projects. But the results were often depressingly superficial. This school year I have tried cbls with both my AP and sophomore government classes. As Alissa reflects, the results were refreshingly different.

Five Tenth Graders Jump out of the Box

So why are these tenth graders smiling? Perhaps it is because they know they will astonish their American Government teacher in a few days.

They were doing research for the Big Idea, Equality, as part of a modified Challenge Based Learning project. They chose to focus on immigrants, and their goal was to communicated information about this topic through multimedia on a wiki.

Initially, I discouraged them from interviewing because I was concerned that these interviews might net more emotional or historical information than an understanding of the law itself.

Undeterred (and without my knowledge), these same five girls googled a local law firm which specialized in immigration law. They made a cold call to the firm and landed a personal interview with the principal member of the firm. Treated with great respect, they were given full scope for their questions and were even allowed to post the interview as a podcast on their wiki. Along with the podcast, they posted a Flickr Slide Show of their visit (WikiSpaces has a cool widget for doing so). Now, you can see why they were beaming!

This was just one feature of a terrific multimedia wiki on "Immigrants and Equality". Their teacher was mighty proud of them for their resourcefulness .... and their moxie!

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Photo by Whitney J.

Watching the Hierarchy Disintegrate

George Siemens recently wrote a very thought-provoking piece called Struggling for a Metaphor for Change. I haves sampled from one portion of it where he lists "broad trends influencing our relationship to knowledge":

An expectancy of relevance and currency of knowledge, for a cycle of years and decades, has now been reduced to months and years for many disciplines. A picture released by an observer in a disaster zone (war, hurricane, earthquake) is worth many times more than the commentary of an expert. Knowledge can be woven, connected, and recombined in limitless ways…creating the possibility of personalized networks of knowledge. We have moved from hierarchical to network. It is end user driven.

What does this mean for us "teachers"? Well, obviously our usefulness has diminished as dispensers of information. The sooner we begin to see ourselves as network enablers or personal learning enhancers, the better. We also need to recognize that the formal lines that have structured the life of the classroom are fading. Academic "departments" make less sense. How relevant are the school schedules and school buildings themselves? I sometimes wonder if educators have become so consumed with activities only indirectly connected to learning that they have taken their eyes off the ball. Many schools are trying to wall off the students from social media and filter internet access in the most extreme ways. One way of looking at this is the old regime trying to maintain its hold on power (knowledge). And you know, the farther up the hierarchy you go in many instances, the less aware they often are about what happening down here on the ground.

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"Grass Network" Flickr Creative Commons photo by cperaza_ca

Drive-thru Take Out Special-- Hot Links

This weekend's Drive-thru special is a serving of "hot links". Spicy, hot, tasty.

Diigo Education
Faithful readers of this blog know that I am a Diigo enthusiast. With its highlighting and sticky notes it is a fabulous personal research tool, and it offers revolutionary possibilities for collaborative research. Diigo also offers a special account for teachers. which allows you to ...

• create student accounts for an entire class with just a few clicks (and student email addresses are optional for account creation)
• set up Students of the same class automatically as a Diigo group.
• provide students with pre-set privacy settings so that only teachers and classmates can communicate with them

Dangerously Irrelevant

Scott McLeod's at Iowa State collects some great stuff at his Dangerously Irrelevant site. He consistently dishes up good stuff. Click the above link and you will be directed to an interesting set of quote, like this one: "Information and knowledge are absolutely fundamental to what education is all about . . . and it would be impossible for the information revolution to unfold and not have transformative implications for how children can be educated and how schools and teachers can more productively do their jobs."

A Virtual Revolution is Occurring at College

The Washington Post recently published an article predicting that "this year may be part of the last generation for which 'going to college' means packing up, getting a dorm room and listening to tenured professors. . . . Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet." Can secondary education be far behind?

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"Take Out" with generous permission of americanvirus

Reflections on a Very Special School

After a hundred and twenty blog posts about today or tomorrow, it's time to reminisce about the past.

In many ways, the most remarkable school I ever witnessed in operation, was Riverview School in Cape Cod, MA. This is a high compliment, because I have attended, worked at, and visited awesome schools. My memories of Riverview are now dated. My son attended a few years ago, so I am not up on the present program first hand. But by all accounts it is as great or greater than when Chris (our son) was an enthusiastic member of the Riverview community.

When Chris entered the post secondary program at Riverview, Rick Lavoie was head of school. Rick is a nationally recognized expert on learning disabilities and two features of his approach to education made very strong impressions.

First, the "social autopsies". When students had experienced a socially perplexing situation, staff at Riverview was trained to conduct a "social autopsy" with the students to sort out the missed social cues or to coach the kids on how they might handle a similar experience, next time. This was certainly an invaluable approach to pupils like Chris, who has autism. But what a great idea for any realm of schooling!

Secondly, and more relevant to this blog was the idea that the entire staff was part of the educational experience of the students. They attended all of Rick's workshops and received training in the educational philosophy of the school. Consequently, the school culture at Riverview hit a visitor the moment he or she set foot on campus, and visiting was a profound experience. From the head of school to the maintenance staff, one encountered the same educational priorities and values.

This is why I keep returning to the idea of school culture in this blog. I'm convinced that meaningful technology integration can only be achieved at a school if every adult in the school plugs into learning networks along with the kids. It does not depend on teaching methods, alone. Surely its essential that teachers buy in, but in a school other staff members can't exempt themselves from modeling the use of transformative technologies. In order to help our students embrace the challenges of the future we need to be all in on these challenges ourselves.

Follow Your Passion....Connect Your Dots.

My blog title, "Follow your Passion....Connect Your Dots" comes from some notes from the ADE Institute that I tapped out on my iPod Touch. (I'm not sure who said it, the context, or even if it is exact). The metaphor speaks very strongly to my experience.

Connecting with Others (Input)
I was one of the first people in my professional circle to really "get into" a listserv. Shakesper was a revelation to me. Having online exchanges with the giants of academia like John W. Velz and Stanley Wells was unspeakably exciting for a high school teacher like myself. Now, I do the majority of reading for news, sports, education, and tech based on the blogs and articles that come my way from my RSS Reader and Twitter.


Connecting with Others (Input)
The Opinion Drive-thru was originally a political blog. During the Obama nomination campaign I actually posted blogs simultaneously on my Obama page where it was more frequently read. Sometimes I posted podcasts. Sometimes I posted on educational subjects. (Usually I didn't post at all). But these were my fledgling efforts to connect-- narcissistic to be sure, by fulfilling a need to reach a wider audience. A year ago I got my Flip camera and began to learn iMovie. Now I have a YouTube channel. I make movies with Keynote, PhotoToMovie, and iMovie. For the past four months it has been a great hobby and a nice outlet for my ideas, knowledge, and opinions.

A Reflection
Some of my friends seem to be suffering from the insularity of their school. They are tired of the same old office politics. They strike me as paranoid and deeply anxious, suffering cases of classic "burn out". Connecting with others has spared me this fate. As I started my thirty-fifth year of teaching, I realized that I no longer saw my work as exclusively taking place in a building or classroom. I have the strongest self-image that I have possessed as a professional: I see myself with a unique set of abilities for integrating the Read/Write web with curriculum. I enjoy this sense of uniqueness and like sharing it with an inner circle of colleagues and with fellow educators around the globe.

I wake up most days looking forward to connecting more dots-- not a bad way to meet the day.
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"Connecting the Dots" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Irina Souiki

Baker Manifesto (part 3)-- Bridging the Great Divide

In parts one and two I explained how I have come to embrace George Siemens' educational model of Connectivism. But my past blog posts,
have noted that many educators resist the technologies which make the best features of Connectivism possible. And too often tech evangelicals actually motivate the resistors to dig in. Consider the following blog exchange that debated whether cell phones should be allowed in the classroom:

Ira:
None of this is new. Socrates and Diogenes opposed literacy and writing on the same grounds you oppose phones - they disrupt the learning environment - the cognitive authority environment - preferred by the teacher. Monks opposed Gutenberg technology on similar grounds. Schools long fought the use of film and television, even typewriters. Today, educators continue to fight against utilizing the technologies of communication which define our age. An endless retrograde action which ensures that "ability" and "disability" remain traditionally defined and that power never changes hands.

Marcelle:
So what you are espousing is that the world bend to the student? That the teacher, with all their knowledge and experience, knows less about what a student will need to learn what the teacher knows? Sounds arrogant to me. You make it sound as if no learning can take place if the student can't have their mobile. What did students in America do before 2005?

The vehemence reflected in these views is not unusual when it comes to technology integration in schools. So how could such disparate views ever be reconciled in a school building?

I actually think that the Connectivism model itself goes far toward crossing this great divide. I was struggling with this issue when preparing a staff development proposal for my school administration, last winter. After Siemens reviewed my white paper, he pointed out,

We have different groupings of people when we take different perspectives. A "naysayer" in technology may be a "pathfinder in pedagogy". . . .The development of technology use (PD) and culture is important, as you state. It's worth drawing distinctions between the different roles we play in fostering change...and the stages we need to consider.

Connectivism holds out the prospect that each member of a learning network (for instance, a school faculty) could contribute at different points to a learning challenge (for instance, whether/how to use technology). Siemens hypothesizes that

A tipping point occurs when [an idea] has created a strong enough network to begin to influence the entire thought process.

He proposes "using . . . the IRIS Model for creating change around technology in organizations: "Innovation, Research, Implementation, Systemization."

I think that Connectivism not only offers a model of student instruction-- it is provides a process for changing a school's entire technology culture. I envision innovative pilot programs planting the seeds of change within a school or district. If the innovation is properly hooked into the network, change can occur within networked teachers, who can then help kids build their own learning networks. This is a pardigm shift to be sure, but it's one that can evolve if a collaborative environment is cultivated, allowing the school to become a vehicle for all members of the network to obtain and share knowledge from a virtually limitless number of connections.

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"Rio-Antirio Bridge" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Ava Babili

Baker Manifesto (part 2) -- Connectivism

As I indicated in part one, my interest in and authorship of Web 2.0 educational activities has led me to George Siemens' evolving model of "Connectivism".
Here's a sampling so that you get the gist:

*The strong reflexive and iterative aspects of learning contribute to its frequent misclassification as largely a content consumption process.

*Learning is not the content consumption process the formal education system perceives it to be.

*Instruction is currently largely housed in courses and other artificial constructs . . . Moving towards a networked model requires that we place less emphasis on our tasks of presenting information, and more emphasis on building the learner’s ability to navigate the information.

*Blogs, wikis, and other open, collaborative platforms are reshaping learning as a two-way process. Instead of presenting content/information/knowledge in a linear sequential manner, learners can be provided with a rich array of tools and information sources to use in creating their own learning pathways.

When I asked George to review the Staff Development Plan I submitted to our Technology Integration Committee (and administration), he responded with an incisive review that he said I might share. In my next post I will place this review in the context of what I consider to be a great divide between those who see learning as presenting information and those who perceive education as navigating the information flow. Stay tuned.

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"Connexions Digital Networks" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by cstmweb

My Ed Tech Manifesto (part 1)-- Creeping toward Connectivism)

I have never really contemplated my "educational philosophy." Even on my first job applications out of college, I fudged that section, blurring principles with methods. This is in part because I am a practical person. I'm willing to compromise and change course. When I coached basketball, I adapted my approach to the players rather than teach them my offensive or defensive "philosophy".

Also, my formal introduction into educational philosophy and was a bit of a disaster. Rebounding from the Sixties, my profs were all about completely open schools and Teaching as a Subversive Activity. Once my grad assistant teachers simply brought two children to our class, and we watched them play for half an hour. The profound lesson of this escaped me. I think it had something to do with not letting these poor innocents become just another brick in the wall.

So why would I start musing about educational philosophy in my thirty-fifth year of teaching? Well, as usual for me these days, it's the unintended consequence of my tech activities. Through the Fall of '08, I had been consumed with the classroom ramifications of the read/write Web. Then, in winter '09, I grappled with writing a staff development proposal for our tech integration committee. In it I called for changing the school culture by establishing school wide social media"projects":

Staff would engage in the same kinds of collaboration experiences we wish to provide our students. And really, if the school is committed to the program, no one should be exempt through special pleading of being "too busy."

Since writing those words I came across a statement by faire alchemist that nailed what I was going for:

. . . .computers have been around for a long time. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the network itself. We're talking about the paradigm of immediate global connection. [We need to] engage this thing for the benefit of the students who are already living their own lives in this digital domain,

When I was drafting my staff development plan I shot it off to several experts, requesting feedback. A thoughtful, nuanced reply came from George Siemens. His paradigm of "connectivism"-- hit me right between the eyes. . . .and is the subject of part 2 (September 16 post).

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"Skirt on a Box Bike" Flickr Creative Commons photo by Mark Stosberg

Searching for Authentic Learning in S-7

I am planning my challenge based social studies projects for the coming school year with several objects in mind. Paramount among them is striving for authentic learning.

Marilyn M. Lombardi (Duke University) says that researchers have distilled the authentic learning experience to ten design elements:

Real-world relevance
Students identification of tasks and subtasks
Sustained investigation
Multiple sources and perspectives
Collaboration
Reflection (metacognition)
Interdisciplinary perspective
Integrated assessment
Polished products
Multiple interpretations and outcomes

I think this is an exciting approach to curriculum, but I expect significant student resistance. They are conditioned to figuring out what the teacher wants, and some of the most motivated students simply want the teacher to tell them what to do, so they can do it and possibly exceed the teacher’s expectations. How will things go when I ask the students set their own expectations and complete their own assessments? Will they balk at collaboration? How much assistance will they need to critically assess their sources and develop probing questions for their investigations?

On the other hand, I think the “real world relevance of the challenge based projects may be highly motivating them. I’m sure that I will learn more than they will, next semester.You can naturally expect that my reflections on what happens in S-7 will show up at the Drive-thru in a couple of months.
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"Authentic" Flickr Creative Commons photo by ara_p