Ten Education Quotes for Today

"I failed my way to success" 

-- Thomas Edison


"What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge
in pursuit of the child."
--George Bernard Shaw


"Technology: Opening Minds with a New Set of Keys"
-- Anon

"Part of the American myth is that people who are handed the skin of a dead sheep at graduating time think that it will keep their minds alive forever."

-- John Mason Brown

"Nothing is ever achieved without enthusiasm."
--' Ralph Waldo Emerson  

"We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge."
 --John Naisbitt


"The illiterate of the 21st century won't be those who can't read and write but those who can't learn unlearn, and relearn"
--Alvin Toffler

"Schools are among the very few institutions that have remained almost entirely unchanged for most of this century."
-- Judith Aitken 

"Every organisation has to prepare for the abandonment of every thing it does. Be prepared to abandon everything, lest we have to abandon the ship."
--  Peter Drucker

"The principal goal of education is to create [human beings] who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done."
--Jean Piaget

Best of 2009: Retiring? No, Reinventing!

This week I am re-posting my favorites from 2009. This one first appeared March 29.

"Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now"
-- from My Back Pages by Bob Dylan

This year, I have frequently been asked the question, "When are you retiring?" The main reason for this question is fairly obvious. My good friend and office mate announced his retirement early this school year. Never mind that I am seven years younger than he is. What with my balding pate, I probably look older. Besides, I have taught 34 years and for many teachers it's "30 and out".

But I'm not remotely ready. As I told Ann J, early this year, I have the sense of being on top of my game like never before. I've always sought change in my professional life. At first it was new preps in the English Department (at least 11 different courses). Then in the mid 1990s I began teaching American Government. And as this blog attests, the latest version of me is that of Web 2.0 evangelist. My new favorite thing to do at school is conducting staff development workshops on the magic tricks which I have discovered. Being selected as an '09 Apple Distinguished Educator is not the culmination of that new obsession, but the beginning of something even more radical and exciting in my life. I'm not sure where it will lead, but certainly not to early retirement. I've never felt more excited about my professional life.

This post was adapted from a recent Facebook note.

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"Carnival Father Time 2" Flickr Creative Commons Photos by dou_ble_uou

Crazy Eights -- Eight Favorite Blogs

Back in May, I recommended ten RSS Feeds. Here are eight more from my Reader that I think offer something special, depending on your interests

*SeanNash is a biology teacher and "instructionalist coach" in Missouri. He is also a terrific writer who lucidly communicates his enthusiasm for technology and teaching in nashworld.

*faire alchemist, the paperless teacher of classics has boundless energy and extremely provocative ideas-- pure dynamite. He's edgy and out there. though he posts a little too much for my tastes I check them all out at TeachPaperless.

*For a more main stream turn at ed tech, follow Liz Davis's The Power of Educational Technology. Her ideas a always sound and she clearly is a great Director of Academic Technology at Belmont Hill School.

This is the most cerebral recommendation, but I am a George Siemens devotee and if I have made anyone curious about his educational model, you'll want to follow him in Connectivism.

This is a niche recommendation. I teach film, but rarely go to movie houses anymore. I watch dvds by the dozens, instead. Most of these come from Netflix and the library, but I am hooked on Criterion flims and have a small collection, favoring Akira Kurosawa and film noir classics.
The Criterion Contraption. Matthew Dessem has the object of viewing all the Criterion films and reviewing them one by one. His reviews match the high quality of his subject matter.

Pat Caputo's Open Book remains my favorite Detroit area sports blog, but John Niyo of the Detroit News does a terrific job blogging on pro football. If you are an NFL fan, place his Lions Blog in your reader, posthaste.

If you are an Apple aficionado like I am, you will definitely want a daily hit of Cult of Mac.

I recommended The Big Picture from the Boston Globe before, but it is so good that it bears repeating. The high definition photos are invariably fascinating.

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"Management Decision Making Tool" Flickr Creative Commons photo by rbieber

Clinging to the Industrial Age

Heare are three great quotes, all concerning resistance to change.

From Dangerously Irrelevant:

The personal computer has been around for about 30 years. For most of us, the Internet has been around for about 10 years. And yet we still have a sizable percentage of teachers and administrators who can barely work their computers. What does this say about us as educators? As employees of supposed learning organizations who purportedly are all about 'life-long learning?'

From Craig's Blog, quoting David Warlick:

No generation in history has ever been so thoroughly prepared for the industrial age.


From Academic Evolution:
Academia wants to have the Internet, but not let it change its exclusive knowledge management practices. It wants to exploit the advantages of online communication without letting such communication challenge its expertise model. But you can't have it both ways. You can't participate in a medium fundamentally built around the concept of openness if you insist on a closed model of expertise and knowledge control. You can try (and academia is trying), but knowledge will simply route around the bad nodes. It comes down to this: the more academia wishes to enjoy the benefits of the digital medium, the less it can hold on to restrictive and closed practices in the production, vetting, dissemination, and archiving of information.

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"Industrial Age" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Skycaptaintwo

Reflections on "Information Rich & Attention Poor"

Today's post centers on Peter Nicholson's Information-rich and Attention-poor (Toronto Globe and Mail). The samplings below provide a context for my reactions, but the entire piece is worthy of contemplative reading:

The three technologies that have powered the information revolution – computation, data transmission and data storage – have each increased in capability (and declined in cost per unit of capability) by about 10 million times since the early 1960s.

This has unleashed a torrential abundance of data and information. . . . .The primary consequence is the growing emphasis on speed at the expense of depth. This is simply because depth and nuance require time and attention to absorb.

There is also under way a shift of intellectual authority from producers of depth – the traditional “expert” – to the broader public. This is nowhere more tellingly illustrated than by Wikipedia, which has roughly 300,000 volunteer contributors every month.

The result is the growing disintermediation of experts and gatekeepers of virtually all kinds. The irony is that experts have been the source of most of the nuggets of knowledge that the crowd now draws upon in rather parasitic fashion – for example, news and political bloggers depend heavily on a relatively small number of sources of professional journalism, just as many Wikipedia articles assimilate prior scholarship.

. . . . Access[ing] efficiently what you need, when you need it. . . depends, of course, on building up a sufficient internalized structure of concepts to be able to link with the online store of knowledge. How to teach this is perhaps the greatest challenge and opportunity facing educators in the 21st century.

The hyperlinked and socially networked structure of the Internet may be making the metaphor of the Web as global “cyber-nervous system” into a reality – still primitive, but with potential for a far more integrated collective intelligence than we can imagine today.

Reactions:

*I think the article emphasizes to educators how poorly we are served by the notion that students are techno wizards and only need to be liberated by their keepers to roam the Net in order to optimize their futures and serve society. Instead, teaching them how to access, assess, and pool information is of paramount importance.

*Though Nicholson argues convincingly for the continued need for trained journalists and academic experts, it certainly calls into question the usefulness of traditional academic "departments" and anything that resembles the traditional newspaper.

The article reinforces my opinion that teaching technology in a vacuum is nearly as great a waste as requiring students to memorize information from textbooks-- information that is accessible with a few keystrokes. Both a liberal arts education and the ability to operate within the global network are absolutely essential....and I will have more to say about this in my next post!

This article came to me through my personal learning network. The recommendation and link came from two different sources. In the olden days (two years ago?) I would have depended on a newspaper or magazine to bring Nicholson to my attention, and then search for it in a library database (quite unlikely). I'll be running a staff in-service on pln's in a couple of weeks. More fuel for the fire.

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"Atrappée dans l'information #1" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by ton3vita

Finding Authentic Audiences

The best education prof I had in grad school was Dr. Fred Goodman. Once he told us once that if classrooms were open to public audiences, that we'd see teachers with clipboards, stop watches, and whistles; just like football coaches. I could completely relate. I thought how conscious I was of using every second of practice time as a basketball coach and how casually some teachers treated the first two or three weeks of school with "easing students in." We've all had teachers who spent large portions of class time telling us about how they spent the weekend or what they watched on television. Would they do this if the class had to perform under the lights on Friday, night? Probably not.

I think public performance should have a prominent place in best teaching practices. As I've noted in Why Blog?, expressing my opinions in a public forum serves to refine my thinking and even hold my feet to the fire of innovation. I've certainly found in teaching an AP course, that knowing the students' scores will be a matter of public record, has a way of focusing one's mind as a teacher. Last spring, I started to set up online exhibition spaces for some of my students' best work and submit these links to our school's online community newsletter. I joined the "Authentic Audiences" challenge based learning group at the ADE Summer Institute, last July, inspiring the title of this post and allowing me to get others' ideas about this topic. I'm absolutely convinced that schools should be aggressively seeking audiences for students.

But what to do in the mean time? Well, I've decided to drop it in the students' laps. My AP Government challenge based learning project requires them to identify an audience and to create an "authentic medium" for reaching it. Cop out or break through? I'll know in a couple of months and get back to you, then!

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Flickr Creative Commons Photo of the Big House in Ann Arbor by jeffwilcox

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

Parent Night, Multimedia Style

Like most schools we have an open house early in the school year. Ours is called "Parents Night", which primarily involves the parents following their daughter's schedule , spending about ten minutes with each teacher.

We generally have a good turnout, so most of us try to bring our "A" game. In recent years, I've tried to add some flavor. When digital photo frames were new, I took a photo of each student in my home room group and had the frame running when their folks came by. Last year I used iPhoto and projected the album on screen with a data projector. This show was accompanied by music as the parents arrived. I could tell most folks liked it.

But last night, I went much farther. In addition to the photo slideshow for homeroom, I created a Keynote presentation for each class. The first slide is a photo of the class. This was easy to manage, because everyone was enthusiastic about being photographed on the first day of school. The slideshows took a couple of hours to whip up-- a little longer because I included some audio files. Here's a pdf version (sorry, no audio).

Parent Night Slideshow

Why take the trouble to do this instead of just showing up and giving my spiel as usual? Because, indeed, the medium is the message. I wanted the presentation to be dynamic and memorable. I wanted to give the parents of taste of why I am trying to crank up the technology in their daughter's class.

As it turned out, I will definitely do it again. Amazingly, the presentations had almost perfect timing (pure luck). And the parents were pretty darned locked in. Next time around I will do the "about me" segment as a quick animation build and focus more of my very limited time on the curriculum. I think it's quite likely that I can reuse much of the formatting and even some of the slides, next year. Bottom line: The extra time prepping for "Parents' Night" was time well spent.

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

Why Blog?

When I first started blogging at the Drive-thru, my intended focus was political. I suppose I intended to air out the issues of the day, spark debate, and gather an audience. That didn't last long. I simply didn't feel like I was adding much new to the topics that had already been chewed over before I got to them.

When I shifted the Drive-thru to an instructional technology focus, I still hungered for an audience and hoped to-- at least within my own building-- foster discussion on a subject that had really captured my imagination. I track my readership numbers pretty carefully and feel a special surge of motivation when the posts attract comments. But I have come to realize that blogging has important value to me regardless of how widely it is read or how much social interaction it generates.

Blogging actually helps me stay committed to my experiments." While not exactly a matter of "keeping me honest", the public record created by blogging helps me to carry out my intentions. If I mention at the Drive-thru that I am trying a new techie trick, invariably I report back, even if I wiped out. Being willing to risk and experience those failures is critical to innovation.

Blogging on a regular schedule also encourages me to read more widely and turn over more rocks, looking for posting ideas. It encourages me to try new tools and pilot new strategies in the classroom. In this way, feeding the blog has actually contributed to my professional development.

Most importantly, like a journal, the writing in the Web log forces me to think hard about what I believe about education. Next week, I am returning to my three posts a week schedule (M,W,F) and I am going to begin with a three part "manifesto" of what amounts to my ed tech philosophy. Certainly this is not a subject likely to increase my readership, but it's been a great mental exercise. With over a hundred ed tech blog posts under my belt, I am ready to bite off and chew some educational philosophy at the Drive-thru.

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"We Love Blog" Flickr Creative Commons photo by kawade

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

Whistling a New Tune on ebooks

When my school first took the plunge into a 1:1 laptop program, the thought of going to ebooks scared the bejabbers out of me. Of course at that time, most publishers (and still many) simply offered pdf versions of the books-- lacking agility and even readability. Often the cost of these electronic versions matched their paper siblings.

I am whistling a different tune these days, offering my AP American Government students the option of purchasing an ebook version of our new text, American Politics Today by Bianco & Canon. The publisher, W.W. Norton charges half price for a year's license to this online text. Its reader merely requires an up to date browser and Adobe Flash Player plug in. It has an atractive and highly readable screen presentation. I enjoy magnifying the text on my computer screen and incurring far less eye strain than the paper counterpart. There are printing restrictions and the inconvenience of needing an online connection. But advantages include "highlighting" and note taking on the pages. I love it, and look forward to getting my students' reactions, which you can be sure I will share in a later post.

I recently read with interest that McGraw-Hill and Cengage are now experimenting with offering rental text books for the coming semester. Perhaps this has been spurred by the Recession, but it seems like a stop-gap measure. It's clear to me that most students will soon be downloading textbooks on Kindles, Sony Readers, iPod Touches and the like. If someone like me, initially so biased toward ebooks, can be converted so easily, I'm predicting that the textbook switch to ebooks-- at least at the college level-- could occur as quickly as consumers went from VHS to DVD.

P.S. Click to sample an ebook chapter of my new text.
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Screen Capture of American Politics Today (W.W. Norton ebook reader).

Negativity, Rigor and Revolution

This and that. . . .

*I've written in this space before about the passive-aggressive ways that negative educators derail change, so what Sean Nash had to say on the subject, really resonated:

negativity used as a strategy to push back from the table (whether conscious or unconscious) in order to avoid change or conflict is a very toxic thing. Life is too short and too difficult as it is. Stirring up extra negativity in such a challenging career field is more than a waste of time.

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*Based on conversations Tony Wagner had with "several hundred business, nonprofit, philanthropic, and education leaders," he new criteria for defining rigor in our schools:

1. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

2. Collaboration and Leadership

3. Agility and Adaptability

4. Initiative and Entrepreneurialism

5. Effective Oral and Written Communication

6. Accessing and Analyzing Information

7. Curiosity and Imagination

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* Fred Wilson argues for "hacking education", calling for a "revolution of the ants." Powerful interests are dedicated to maintain the status quo, but Wilson convincingly argues that the old is successfully being subverted by the new:

The existing large institutions in the world of education are the public and private schools, the colleges and universities, the testing institutions that inform them, and the unions and political system that support them. I want to help take all of them down and build something better in its place. . . .

The tools to do this are right in front of us; peer production, collaboration, social networking, web video, voip, open source, even game play. I think we can look at what has happened to the big media institutions over the past ten years as a guide to how to do this. We will use a "revolution of the ants" to take down our education institutions and replace them with something better. We all have to start participating and engaging in educating each other. . . .

As always, comments are welcome!

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"Negative energy" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by darkwood67

The Times They are A-Changin' (or not)

Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
-- Bob Dylan

Will Richardson's outstanding "Tinkering Toward Utopia" blog post contemplates the challenges of achieving meaningful change within our schools. Please read it as I've only pulled out one quote from Phillip Schlechtly's book:

As long as any innovations that are introduced can be absorbed by the existing operating systems without violating the limits of the social systems in which they are embedded, change in schools is more a matter of good management than one of leadership. . . .In these cases, while it is sometimes difficult to break old habits, usually after a brief period of resistance, old certainties are abandoned and new certainties are embraced. For example, teachers now routinely use PowerPoint slide shows where once they used overhead projectors and slate boards. The reason this transition was relatively easy to accomplish is that it did not change the role of the teacher. . . . But when innovations threaten the nature and sources of knowledge to be used or the way power and authority are currently used and distributed–in other words, when they require changes in social systems as well as operating systems–innovation becomes more difficult. This is so because such changes are disruptive in inflexible social systems.

I believe this to be true-- our schools' cultures will need to changed in order to adopt the kind of connected, personalized learning environments that many of us envision. But it's important that those who are reluctant not be scolded and threatened. They'll just hunker down. They must be shown that it's easier than ever before to jump into the Read/Write Web and become acquainted with popular sites and applications. One can branch out from there. Furthermore, as much as I hate "death by PowerPoint" the latest versions of presentation software (Gosh, just check out Apple's Keynote) allow for terrific creativity, multi-media, and web integration. This is a far cry from slate boards.

We CAN also insist to our friends and peers that the important tools which will make learning easier for our students, even if we have to stretch ourselves a bit. Most teachers care enough about the kids to be concerned about giving them the best. At this point, perhaps the best we can hope for is an environment where experimentation and innovation is encouraged "at the fringes", providing successful models for enticing other teachers. Then, other members of the community need to be connected to those driving change.

As I've argued before, leaders must work to support (and model) this kind of exploration by the risk takers in the school community. Laying out guilt-trips is quick and easy (and won't accomplish change). Take a look around. The connectivity afforded by the Web is transforming many of the old institutions at a rapid pace. Educators must accept this and do their darndest to find the best ways to lead this transformation by engaging with it at whatever level possible.

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"Bob Dylan-- The Times They Are A-Changin" used with kind permission of 8270037.

Ed Tech Leadership & Transparency

I've been holding onto a couple of quotes for several weeks, but they keep coming back to me, because they help to explain why Web 2.0 has changed education far less than other areas of society.

The first quote is from Will Richardson:

Schools . . . have a responsibility to help kids lead transparent lives online in ways that prepare them for the highly complex relationships they will be having in these virtual spaces as adults. But to do that, schools have to get more transparent themselves.

The second quote comes from fellow ADE '09, Scott Elias:

Of the 52 ADEs that were selected this year, there are teachers, school technology coordinators, college professors, and district-level tech folks. But as far as I can tell, I’m the only school administrator. What’s up with that?

We’ve got amazing teachers doing great things in the classroom and we’ve got district people with good intentions. . . .

Building administrators are the vital link in this chain. How can we get more of them thinking about change? How can we expect our teachers to think ahead if so few administrators do?

It is one thing to read about ed tech, cheerlead and cajole. But how many school leaders are willing to change their own habits and and model their new habits for their staffs? Do administrators use Web tools to communicate? Do they network with other educators through Nings? Do they blog? Do they Tweet? If they don't, then regardless of their best intentions, how can they truly lead their staffs to do these same things?

Changing the culture of a school is necessary to truly take advantage of the read and write Web. It's easier to buy the equipment and furniture than it is to change the culture of a school. But teachers pumping PowerPoint through data projectors and students taking notes on laptops is not change. Such change will only occur if the adults, and particularly those at the top, exemplify a zest for learning about and engaging with the new powerful tools which are radically changing the ways people learn and communicate.

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"transparency" Flickr Creative Commons photo by sleepingbear

Shell Shock in the Trenches (part 2)

Shell Shock (Part 2 of 3 - " Year in Review from the Trenches")

I'm not the first teacher to suffer from shell shock, and during my adventures with tech, I've sometimes wandered the classroom battlefield, dazed and confused.

Most numbing is the continual collision with school culture. Despite operating in a 1:1 school and having put nearly every shred of instruction and material online for my bookless course, a sizable number of my students don't readily tap into the pipeline. As I've remarked before, developing online projects has not sparked intellectual curiosity to the degree I might have hoped for (see The Digital Natives Aren't that Restless). But at our school, there is something else going on. 1:1 has not meant fewer P.A. announcements or less paper. And since students know announcements will be made redundantly (and deadlines nearly always extended), they have little incentive to attend closely to email, web sites, etc. Ironically, in class when the P.A. is squawking, the kids are glued into their screens, ignoring it (My temples are starting to throb). Why can't we all support technology in this area at least?

2) My fellow faculty members may be pardoned if they are suffering from Larry-fatigue. I've been honking on about the wonders of Web 2.0. But some of what I've encountered within the building and even in my own departments is passive-aggressive. I make a presentation, no comment. I win a tech distinction, no reaction (that's cold). I guess I have betrayed some unspoken loyalty to chalk and board. In a detailed, staff development proposal for administration I warned of the obstruction of naysayers. Well, the report got lost in the shuffle, but not the nay-saying. Sort of grinds one down.

3) It was tough to see tech integration cut in our building. I understand that the budget is tight, but without vision and planning we will not truly engage in online learning. This speaks to priorities. We have the hardware, but despite popular mythology, the kids will not teach themselves with them, simply because they are keen on Facebook.

4) I have only myself to blame for this one. It's the blog. I've tried to encourage comments, and I haven't really succeeded. Clearly I am operating at cross-purposes by journaling, sharing, and trying to provoke conversation all at the same time.

5) I loved doing the in-services in my building last Fall. That's history. I aiming seeking new audiences, so good will come of it in the long run. But I've been in No Man's Land for the last few months.

6) This spring I taught AP Government and Film, But the three classes of 87 sophomores in American Government were the ones that put me into full shell shock mode. Foolishly, I targeted them for my most innovative methods. But I became overwhelmed with their 87 web sites. This like the other setbacks chronicled here was largely due to my unrealistic expectations banging into reality.

There are some valuable lessons here, so I will gather my forces and close the school year with -- part 3, "Over the Top! and into the Future"

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Thank you, Mark Berry - Photographer & Graphic Designer for permission to use your fabulous photo, "Crop Circle Maker-- Matthew Williams"

The Web Warriors Collaboration

Friday, I ranked My Vast Tinker Toy Playground as one of my favorites posts. In a nutshell, it reflects that my web interests usually shoot off in multiple directions simultaneously. They then connect and mutate in ways that I never could have imagined when I embarked.

Case in point-- The Web Warriors. Web Warriors was originally conceived as an extracurricular club for students at my school who could network with design professionals and provide service for the school community. I broached this subject with web designer and Facebook friend, Rick Strobl. He became quite enthused and immediately developed a logo, which somehow made the club seem more real, despite having no members!.

The convergence of FaceBook, blogging, and the cold, cruel world pulled my original conception of the Warriors apart and reassembled it tinker toy-like into a very different shape. The tepid response from teachers, students and administrators convinced me that a web design club was not in the cards. My faithful reader knows that I rebounded with the idea of a Blog Squad, instead. (Much stronger response from teachers and administrators). This mutation is going forward.

But wither the Web Warriors? Through our heated Facebook correspondence, Rick's protean energy, and Weebly; the Web Warriors is now a web site, instead of a school club. For the time being, Rick and I are the only two warriors in the tribe, but in a matter of a few days we have put together a pretty large Web 2.0 shed of our favorite tools and toys. You are welcome to visit and borrow any of them. Better yet, join our virtual club and contribute a tip or two of your own. How do you visit? Just click our good, old logo, below. It's the only aspect of the original plan that has not changed at all!

Ten by Ten Top Techs

As the end of the school year approaches I've been tempted to make lists of this or that, so why not go all out and make a 10 x 10 list?

My Ten Best Blogs this Semester:

Wrap that Red Herring in Paper

At Long Last...ebook Joy!

A Vast Tinker Toy Playland

Hyperlink Heaven

Techno Topsy-Turvy

Sage Schuste Seduced by Cyberspace?

Tooting Your Horn

To Leap Forward or Hunker Down?

The Digital Natives Aren't that Restless

Teaching Literature Unbound

10 Lessons I've Learned at Age 55

Tweetdeck Top Ten: @bridgers, @cultofmac, @englishcomp, @jackiegerstein, @markwagner, @Milw_Mac_Guy, @ScottElias, @mcleoud, @potsie, @TweetingTigers

10 Necessities of Education Reform by Judy Willis

The 10 Commandments of Power Point. How can people possibly think that reading PowerPoint slides to an audience is an effective way to communicate? This post by David Pierce is a must read for those who use (abuse?) PowerPoint or teach it to others.

My 10 RSS Feeds Knowing that I would just get depressed if I loaded more and more feeds into my Google Reader, I always limit myself to ten. Click here for my current feeds.

My 10 Largest Delicious Tag Bundles: finish, blog, tenthings, google, dadcalx, AP, mhs, 13, technology

10 Reasons to Tweet: The nine I wrote about in Why Twitter? plus this obvious one that I forgot: # 10 Twitter is perfectly suited for mobile communications.

10 Sites I Check Daily

10 apps or sites that I've enjoyed learning to use this year: GarageBand, iMovie, QuickTime Pro, Google Docs, Audacity, WikiSpaces, Google Sites, Twitter, Presentation.

10 Compelling Reasons to Teach with Technology

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"The 'Ten Truck' FDNY' Flickr Creative Commons Photo by stevejonesphoto

Web 2.0 Simuation Post-Mortem

Part 2 of 3

In part one (Taking a Deep Plunge into Google Sites) I outlined my new, tech-improved Congressional Simulation:

All of the game documents were distributed through Google Sites. In addition, each of the students created her own Google Site and was responsible for building the site with a character profile, daily journals, a summary podcast, and a "score sheet". The podcasts were created using the free audio recorder, Audacity. What is more, separate simulations were launched in three sections of American Government, involving 87 students, total.... (Click for the the full project assignment).

Here is an evaluation of the highs and lows:

* Technical Issues Trying to bring 87 students on board is, well, trying. Eventually everyone got going, but I was amazed at how many students did not check their own uploads. I would go online to check the work and encounter a problem, creating a series of email back and forths that tested my patience. My next post will propose one remedy to this problem.

* Accountability I have to figure out how to hold students accountable without repeatedly returning to the sites at various steps along the way. This was exhausting. But fifteen year olds still need progressive due dates to create a complicated final product. In our school procrastination is embedded in the culture, and to allow students to complete all the work in one gush would turn the whole enterprise into a fiasco. The time stamping provided by Sites' "File Cabinet" page may be a solution. Knowing their work will have a time signature may sufficient incentive for the majority to meet the due dates.

* Uniformity I was anxious to encourage creativity so it never occurred to me to have the students create uniformly named web pages for their files. This cost me considerable time searching for the work, particularly since Google Sites has a weak default navigation system.

* Podcasts The podcasts for the simulation were outstanding. It took forever to listen to all of them, but I could not have been more pleased. Students had trouble exporting files from Audacity and then uploading them. I think more time in class will be needed to work on this. My plan B was to have the students use flash drives, which became a clerical nightmare.

* Video The Presidents in the three classes were required to post video State of the Union messages. These were wonderfully creative. I might make video extra credit for the other players, next ttime.

* Creativity Many of the students "got into it" and developed creative sites as I had hoped. If you would like to sample one of the best all-around sites, click the Harvey Sartori screen capture in the upper right hand corner and you will be transported into our '09 simulation.

* Fun Though I was worn out by the process several students confided in the podcasts that they had learned a great deal while having fun. This was gratifying. I will conclude Part Two by offering this excerpt from Alison's podcast.

P.S. Part 3 proposes a "Blog Squad" to troubleshoot the little day to day problems that arise during a complicated Web 2.0 project like this one.

Taking a Deep Plunge into Google Sites

Part 1 of 3

Back on Jan 23, I presented an in-service to our English Department on Google Docs and Google Sites. At that time I had lots of experience with Docs, but had only fiddled around with Sites in anticipation of the big project I would launch in March. So, for the in-service I constructed a demo site and packed it full of multi-media applications.

Shortly after my presentation, one of my colleagues began using Google Sites, but it was not until April that I found myself up to my ears in them. This week's three posts will relate to that experience.

I have described my simulation in this space before. I began teaching American Government in 1993, and my Congressional simulation has been with me for the entire ride. It evolved slowly from semester to semester. But this semester I converted it into a web experience. All game documents were distributed through Google Sites. In addition, each of the students created her own Google Site and was responsible for building the site with a character profile, daily journals, a summary podcast, and a "score sheet". Podcasts were created using the free audio recorder, Audacity. What is more, separate simulations were launched in three sections of American Government, involving 87 students, total. I only collected one sheet of paper from each student, instead of the two shopping bags I usually hauled home. This was radical change: lots of apps, for lots of students playing a complicated game. (Click for the the full project assignment).

Part two will be the project post-mortem. And as you expect from the Drive-thru, I will share both the tech agonies as well as the tech ecstasies. In the mean time, you are invited to sample one of the finished Sites. Just click the adjacent screen capture of "Rep. Jerry Jarvis". Jerry is a fictional character created by one of my sophomores, Meghan.

Enjoy.