Digital Anthology update

Last year, my major project for the summer was for my AP American Government and Politics class. I posted this plan at that time:

I am using Google Docs to collate my materials. The hyperlink feature (see Hyperlink Heaven) allows me to pull all the resources into one space. After seven years I have a pretty clear idea of the kinds of topics I want to include for my students. As I pull together the resources, I also compose critical thinking topics, which I compose in a different color text)

Next school year, besides saving my students fifty dollars, I will break by anthology into course packs which correspond to each unit. Students will have direct links to the resources with attendant topics to write, vlog, blog about (according to instructions).

The plan succeeded in nearly every respect, and I promoted the concept at MAME 36 and to our school staff on in-service day.

But since the strength of the anthology is its ability to stay current with events, it was time for an update. While I did add materials on the fly during the school year, I usually just bookmarked them for later consideration. By last month the bookmarks had accumulated to over fifty, and I felt like a slacker. But I'm glad that I procrastinated. As I sifted through the bookmarks last week, I found that many of the articles which had seemed very interesting a few months ago, already had lost their zest.

The anthology is organized into seventeen chapters which correspond to our text (available as an ebook of course!). I added material to eight of the chapters and deleted many old pieces, so I am pleased with the new level of currency. But I also have two regrets:

1) I could sense as I was adding some interesting sources to the later chapters of the anthology that they would probably not seem so great when we are finally ready for them in 2011. But the day to day time-consuming tasks of classroom teaching make it pretty difficult to freshen the anthology a priority during the school year.

2) I only added two multi-media resources to the updated anthology. This was also due to very practical reasons-- it is much easier to browse an article than a chunk of television program or a podcast.

Despite these regrets I am happy to share a slice of the 2010-11 Digital Anthology. (The red text describe the assignments which correspond to the resources.)

Chapters 8-10 of Baker's Digital Anthology for AP Gov

Feedback is welcome!

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Screen Capture from MAME 36 "Digital Anthology" presentation.

I Love Being Lost in La Mancha

Ordinarily creating a study guide for students is a bit of a chore. However, I've always enjoyed fashining guides for my Lit into Film class. When Tom S. and I created the class a few years ago, we both thought it was pretty important that students have a guided viewing of the films, so that they would be prepared for discussion. Since we selected films that we really liked, it was no chore to comb through them for good discussion topics.

Two years ago, I began to convert my guides to Google Docs with hyperlinks, so that they popped out with YouTube and jpeg examples of film techniques that were merely defined in prior semesters. Putting the guides on Google Docs also allowed me to link them easily to Moodle.

This summer I have begun to improve the guides by using the screen capture software, Volia. I recently completed a study guide for Lost in La Mancha, a film directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe which "chronicle[s] the making of a movie that was never actually completed . . . Terry Gilliam's repeated (and repeatedly failed) attempts to bring the story of Don Quixote to the big screen." It's a wonderful documentary, a genre unappreciated by most students.

Voila has permitted me to inch through the film and pull out illustrative images from La Mancha. Viola allows for publishing directly to iPhoto, where I edit them before import the photos into the guide. I am very pleased to show off my handiwork and look forward to more summer fun with Voila:

Lit into Film Study Guide for Lost in La Mancha

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Terry Gilliam on location in Spain-- Voila screen capture from Lost in La Mancha.

Frustration, Disappointment and Failure

At the ADE Summer Institute we were urged to embrace failure and a natural part of the quest to innovate. I understand the notion, but it does not make the consequences any less painful if you have invested time and effort into a project. Perhaps by sharing my frustration, disappointment, and failure; someone will have some helpful feedback or at least be spared a similar experience.

Frustration
I urge my cbl project groups to map their progress using Google Docs. They are required to include me as a collaborator so that I can add notes and provide guidance. I get the strong impression that usually one group member tends to dominate the authoring. Worse, the comments I make don't elicit any back and forth. A couple of students waited until class to see me about the comments (What happened to email?), in both cases worrying that they were being "marked down". One erased my comments before the rest of her group even saw them, and then asked me if she had fixed the problems, sort of missing the point of collaboration.

I'm hoping this situation will improve after the students become more acquainted with Google Docs and the benefits of collaboration.

Disappointment
Build it and they will come....That certainly is my experience with the Blog Squad Ning. The purpose of this virtual club is to afford students the chance to help other students with commonly used technical tools. I gathered names last spring and issued invitations. Students immediately signed up this Fall. I began a couple of discussion threads and groups. Then . . . . nothing. I am reluctantly conclude that to ignite the group we a physical meeting or email bombardment may be necessary. The members are not used to being attentive to the Ning. This is ironic, because the reason I jettisoned sponsorship of a more conventional club was that students seemed to assume I would be its major force. Now I find myself in the same position with the Ning.

Failure
A) I was very excited about offering my AP students an ebook option for their text, this year (At our private school the students purchase books). It has nice features and is half the cost its traditional text. Strangely, only about 15% opted for it. This I simply do not get.

B) Last spring I offered film students the research option of writing a digital research "paper" with hyperlinks rather than using the conventional MLA model. The result? I got dreadful citation and reference with both options. And I mean, really bad.

Have you noticed than in all of these I've mistakenly assumed that students will adjust readily to digital media?

P.S. While I haven't yet sewn any silk purses from these sow ears, at least they have given me blog content!
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"Angst" Flickr Creative Commons photo by tizzle

Notes from S-7 Base Camp

My cbl projects continue apace. As noted in Leaving the Comfort Zone, I launched a a modified cbl in my sophomore American Government classes and a more full-blown version in AP American Government and Politics.

We are still early in the process. I have been urging the students to think hard at each stage and open up their minds to a varety of resources.

I have a few early observations:

The AP groups are really engaged with the project, but they are very task oriented and straining to blow through the early steps. I have been mildly intervening to stop them from planning their solutions before they really understand their questions and have done their research. Today, they were incredibly self-directed in class, but also emailed me with some questions later. While none of them had ever worked with a Google Doc, they seem comfortable with the collaborative documentation.

My three sophomore classes are a different kettle of fish. For one thing, they seem less daunted by the new technologies. Thus far they have been engaged, though more easily distracted by the novelty of co-editing on Google Docs. They have been far more superficial in terms of the types of questions they ask me:

"What is your email address?"
"Where do I find the [doc] invitation?"
"Can I hyperlink in Google Docs?"
"Are we being graded as a group?"
"What do you mean by multimedia?"

While They have been very responsive when I stop by the group and stir the pot. But I would have to honestly say that they have not shown much imagination and resourcefulness. . . . yet. But it's early!

I'm enjoying the experience and will keep you posted.
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Flickr Creative Commons Photo by twiga269 ॐ FREE TIBET

The Old Guy Goes Multimedia

For want of the correct adaptor, I was prevented from showing my Keynote presentation on "Apple Solutions for the 21st Century" at Madonna U. last week. Instead, I improvised, going directly to the Web for a "show & tell" of some online concoctions I've whipped up for my high school courses. I took a more or less chronological approach. It made me realize how I had evolved over the past 18 months. My progression is outlined here:

It all started with podcasts by phone. I made mp3 lectures with Gabcast for my Government class, and I began to require my students to report by podcast as well.

About 14 months ago, I began to integrate hyperlinks into my film study guides, illustrating concepts with photos and YouTube examples.

Exactly a year ago, I began using the Flip Mino I received for my birthday. I turned the camera on myself and started to record video directions for absent students. More significantly, I loaned the camera out to my AP Government students, so that they could vlog opinion pieces. Then their classmates blogged about these vlogs. The blogging feature of iWeb was perfect for this little enterprise.

In November, '08, I began to edit video movies with iMovie. I was very intimidated by this great software, but once again Atomic Learning helped me out.

In February, 2009, I taught my sophomores how to use wikis so that they could host their own multimedia resources. Many groups conducted interesting interviews and created short video pieces. Using iWeb I began creating exhibition pages for my students' multimedia work. I then shared the link with the editor of the school bulletin, The Mercy Memo.

I began podcasting with GarageBand. What an upgrade over Gabcast! ( Thanks for the tip, Andy Mann). And thank you, Rick Strobl for suggesting at Schuste's retirement party that I animate jpegs with PhotoToMovie. This was the best $50 I ever spent on software. Combining GarageBand mp3s with jpegs and turning them into movies has been a fun summer pastime.

Discovering that I could search for Library of Congress public domain photos on Flickr, further enhanced my ability to animate jpegs for instructional purposes.

I finally learned how to use Keynote. I had no idea that what I took to be slide show software could present so many multimedia options. This is my July and August preoccupation-- making moves using GarageBand (for soundtrack) and Keynote.

While I can't prove that my students are learning more after being fed with this stew of media, I know that I have, and I believe that I am modeling communication skills that they will need in their careers.

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"Multimedia Message" (The cover of the May/June Communication Arts Magazine). Flickr Creative Commons photo by mwilke.

Summer Play with Jpegs

Jpeg Joy
I've kicked off my summer vacation with a flurry of jpeg activity. Before I begin my show 'n tell, I should remark that I received lots of classroom compliments for the iPhoto calendar I whipped up for S-7. This creation came in the wake of the "Ann Arbor" Images book that I described in My Friend, Flickr. Also I am pleased to report that I have now converted all my Lit into Film guides into hyperlink format (See Hyperlink Heaven).

Recent Developments!

For the past two weeks I have been dropping jpegs into movies. My first effort was a film review of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. I enjoyed dropping the jpegs into iMovie so much I have the notion of adding a "Five Star Review" to my web site each month. When I told fellow Web Warrior, Rick Strobl, what I had been up to, he tipped me off on an application that sent me off on a bender. I've completed my last two jpeg movies with PhototoMovie (Check out the free trial). In an afternoon I completed an eight minute movie for my film class on documentaries. Basically it's a podcast with jpeg illustrations. Obviously, for a film class, this has tremendous advantages. But I also wish to try it with my government classes and will check back in next week after I am done raiding the public domain jpegs at the Library of Congress!

Web 2.0 Summer School (or Camp!)

This post is for teachers like me who generally plan some kind of "work" project for the summer, imagining how good it will feel to salt some big something away for the next school year, but vaguely dreading a tedious task. It's easy to imagine that "technology" might be such a project for a teacher who is anxious to bring a meaningful internet activity with his or her classes.

If so, I suggest that you relax, find something limited in scope, and explore areas that may have lifestyle benefits even if they don't work out for school.

I've put together some possibilities that are QRS- quick, rich simple.

* Open a Flickr account and spend a couple of hours collecting photos on a subject of interest. When I began to search for pictures to publish in my Dad's Ann Arbor Memories book, I became absolutely intoxicated with this resource for personal and/or classroom use.

* If you don't have a Google Account, open one. Go to Docs. Then spend a couple of hours uploading a handful of your most heavily used documents. After they are uploaded, "share" them by publishing them as web page. Be sure to check the "automatically republish when changes are made box". Now you have some options. You might want to book mark your documents. Better yet, link them all to a single table of contents which you also publish and bookmark. The publishing feature of Google Docs has probably impacted my work life more than any other tech application (with the exception of web browsers). I think the experience of playing with Doc htmls will open up your eyes to some great info sharing possibilities.

* Record a lecture with Audacity (or better yet, GarageBand). Choose a topic that is tried and true. If it is longer than eight minutes, plan to break it into parts. Audacity is a free download and if your computer has a built-in mic, all you have to do is press the red button on the application and record. Upload the file(s) to Moodle or some other storage site like box.net. When lecture time rolls around next school year, have the students bring headphones to class or listen to the talk as homework. You'll have discovered the joy of podcasting.

* I won't repeat my Why Twitter? post here, but I have a fast track suggestion if you want to jump into Twitter with both feet. Sign up for an account. Decide what kind of information flow you want. Identify a couple of heavily followed Tweeters in that area, and then "follow" who they are following. For example, I do Twitter for Web 2.0 teaching info. The majority of those I follow provide quality tweets on Web 2.0. If you poached my list, you would get the same flow of information to start and then you could tailor it to your interests. (You don't need permission to follow others on Twitter).

* Enjoy learning about religion, history, math, science, literature, etc.? As summer homework, download some courses from Yale, Stanford, Michigan, or Oxford. Put then in your iPod and listen to them while you garden or walk. Where do you get them and how much will this cost? These lectures are free and available by the dozen on any topic at iTunes U.

* Researching a vacation or prepping a new topic? The next time you complete your research try Diigo. Get used to using tags and enjoy the highlighting and sticky notes features. Better yet, see if you can collaborate with a friend or colleague on this project and have the experience of sharing bookmarks, highlights and notes.

* Many of my baby boomer friends have been bemoaning the demise of their daily newspapers. Have you tried setting up an RSS Reader, yet? Most of your favorite newspapers have set up some rss feeds for their columnists and bloggers. (Locally, the Detroit News has been most successful transitioning their writers to blogging). Of course a Reader has the advantage of pulling blogs from sources all over the internet. Once you start, it will be hard to resist the urge to overload. Educational uses? Hey, teachers deserve a few moments of quiet time with their "newspaper" in order to be at their best with their students.


P.S. If you wish to explore more easy to use tools, check out the Web Warriors.
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"Summer Relaxation" Flickr Creative Commons photo by Third Eye Studios

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

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.

Teaching Literature Unbound

Teachers' Lounge Series, part 2 of 4

Mike and I have been close English Department and personal friends for over thirty years. I also teach social studies, and recently was sharing one of my new tech adventures in American Government class. Mike remarked that tech suited social studies as a discipline better than English. I automatically agreed. After all, one of the reasons that I chose to redesign gov' as a bookless course was because information was so readily available on the Web. Not that I have kept my English classes tech-free. In January, I presented an in-service to the department on the wonders of using hyperlinks in study guides and suggested uses for Google Docs/Sites with English classes. Since then Fran has launched a very cool collaborative project for her Women in Lit class.

But a recent experience has caused me to reconsider my agreement with Mike. While I was sitting in an airport over spring break, I noticed that I had a new Twitter "follower." When I checked the profile I discovered Jim Burke's treasure trove of Web 2.0 resources, not the least being his English Companion Ning (Join!). Days later, I read a simple tweet by Jim: "Is this the future of book?" By clicking the link he provided, I came upon a vision that could provide succor to our department, chronically troubled by book availability, and now vexed by curriculum corseting. Jim's Weekly Reader-- A Digital Anthology points the way for English lit teachers to more freely choose literature and free themselves from a dying medium (see Book End). What if our freshmen or sophomore team teachers collaborated on digital anthologies? The collections would grow, stay fresh, and become wonderfully diverse. Too much "work?" Not for the voracious readers in my department!

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Diigo is a little more futuristic as a classroom application, but it signals the end of research as most of us learned it. It will knock your socks off. In addition to allowing collaboration on bookmarks in a wild variety of ways, Diigo allows its users to share highlighting and annotations. This has tremendous possibilities for student research.

As Phil Butler points out,

Diigo allows users to add, gather or extract from pages of information and then share or work with others to further refine knowledge. . . . At Diigo . . . the atmosphere is a “thinking” one rather than a reactive one. Diigo takes all the standard Web 2.0 user tools and focuses them on connecting people with knowledge and then community.

I have already started highlighting and annotating electronic documents with Diigo. I wonder how long it will be before our students will begin building and sharing their own research databases of documents and annotations for their "papers." A video overview is posted at Diigo's site, but I prefer the one created by Liz B Davis. Checking out the demonstration of Diigo which she created with Jing will provide the bonus of allowing you to see the instructional potential of screencasting.

I know that my resourceful colleague, Lynn, hopes to explore Jing soon. The idea that one of my colleagues might soon create a Jing tutorial for students on how to to use Diigo with digital Readers puts me in Web 2.0 nirvana.


Part 3 of this series will be posted Wednesday-- Transcending Words (and copyright!)

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"The Teacher's Desk" Flick Creative Commons Photo courtesy of bitzcelt

Collaborating on Math

Teachers' Lounge Series, part 1 of 4

I was extolling the virtues of Google Docs in the lunch room when my math teacher friend, Tony, pointed out that when he uploaded files to Docs they lost their format, thus rendering his charts and diagrams useless. I need this kind of feedback as I try to grasp the implications of Web 2.0 beyond my own disciplines of English and social studies.

Since that conversation, I've kept my eyes open for collaborative instruments that might be useful for math teachers. It would be presumptuous for me to evaluate teaching tools. My daughter earned AP credit after taking calculus from Tony, so I'll gladly leave methodology to him and his colleagues. But by keeping my ears open for tweets and recommendations from my Web 2.0 advocacy pals, I've come across three resources that I would like to pass along:

If one is looking for online calculators, sample wiki sites and a smattering of this or that, check out Web 2.0 Math Tools. The site has a nice aggregation of math teaching aids.

Hippocampus provides a potentially very helpful set of resources because they correspond to the chapters in many popular high school texts. I've recommended this to our social studies department, but the math sections look just as good or better, and provide detailed slides on subjects ranging from Algebra 1 to advanced levels of calculus.

Teachers who register for slideshare (its free) may take or add slides freely. The last time I checked, there were 170 slide shows posted by geometry teachers. This is a case where I actually thought the math resources were more intriguing than most other subjects. Nevertheless, I registered and conveniently connected it to my Linked In. (I think it would be worthwhile to post a slide show resume there).

Both of the previous recommendations pale in comparison to the gem which came to me via Twitter. As one who has tried his own bookless course, I was quite interested to learn of the Math Open Reference Project. The goal of this project is to provide high quality teaching content with such technical advantages over the traditional textbook as accessibility, interactivity, lower cost (free), hyperlinks (yea!) and instant feedback on quizzes. The first phase of the project will be the completion of a geometry reference. It occured to me that a math department of a school could easily collaborate in a similar way on a smaller scale. I pieced together my bookless curriculum one module at a time. A team collaborative project would have multiple benefits regardless of how narrow or ambitious it became.

Please feel ree to inveigh against these resources or contribute others in the comment section!

On April 27, part two, "Teaching Literature Unbound"

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"Slide Rule" Creative Commons photo by Roger Smith

Who Says You Can't Tweet in a Blog?

If you don't "follow me" on Twitter you have not been privy to these "retweets", so I'll share these gems here:

Newspapers & Thinking the Unthinkable I have been following the rapid demise of daily newspapers with morbid interest. This blog by Clay Shirky is the best piece I have examined on the subject. When you read it, imagine that he is discussing how the communications revolution is changing schools rather than newspapers:

When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to. . . . When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse.

Card Catalog, 2008

Artist Tim Schwartz has made a wonderful visual statement about the old order of organizing information colliding with the new. Visit his brief performance video and watch him open his seven foot card catalog drawer of 7390 iPod songs organized in reverse chronological order of how recently he listened to them.

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PBS Teachers

If you are curious about digital education, but the terrain simply seems to alien to you, I recommend that you register at the PBS site and investigate their projects, networks, and professional development links. This well-designed, familiar location allows the teacher to focus on materials for all grade levels and disciplines. The materials and strategies range from the very basic to the highly sophisticated. I have placed the Media Infusion blog in my RSS reader. The March post, Mashups, Remixes, and Web 2.0: Playing Fast and Loose with Shakespeare contained several fascinating suggestions for using Web 2.0 in order to explore one of my favorite plays. I particularly liked the following idea:

Illuminating a passage from a play with hypertext is a basic way to get students to do a close reading of a passage. In the process of selecting and hyperlinking the perfect image, audio or video clip, or Website, students tell me that they focus on the words in the text in a way they never would by merely reading it.

Whether you teach Math or English, elementary or high school this site will almost surely offer you a gem like this as well.
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Screen capture of "Card Catalog 2008" with permission of Tim Schwartz

Film Tech

I have always absolutely loved teaching my Literature into Film class. The opportunities for variety are endless, and it's hard to make a really bad choice of film. Through recent years, technology has had a dramatic impact on the course, and always for the better.

Switching from VHS to DVD format totally changed my teaching approach as did the proliferation of data projectors in the school. Now most class discussions are based on watching an array of film clips, something that was impossible to a significant degree with the video tape that required so much time to wind forward or back. The data projector allows us to examine the frame in outstanding detail.

When I updated my study guides for this school year, I embedded them with hyperlinks. Now they pop out with YouTube and jpeg examples of film techniques that were merely defined in prior semesters.

I have also decided to overhaul the big course project, a comparison of two films. This year students will be required to compare a film and a later adaptation. The project will be composed of three components:

1) Detailed notes on both films

2) A comparison / contrast paper

3) a review of one of the films.

For 2009, I will introduce two major 21st centruy components to the project.

For the paper, students must do some research on the director of each film and use it in the introductory paragraphs. In the past, I have encouraged online research cited with the use of the usual MLA format. This time, I am urging them to opt for the alternative of turning in their paper electronically in a Word, Page, or Google Doc format with hyperlinks to the sources. As I have indicated in Hyperlink Heaven, I think that this is the research model of the future.

Encouraged as I have been by my AP Gov vlogs, video will now be used as well in this class. Students are now directed to make a three minute video critique of one of the films which will then be posted to MobileMe (Thank you, Apple, for the free subscription). The class will be able to see each others' videos at this site.

Finally, I have invited one of the other film teachers to collaborate with me in posting some of our film students' most inventive works (such as the best videos) on a special web gallery space that I create for the purpose. This is my little way of furthering one of the goals for our school that I suggested in Staff Development, Part Three.

I'll report back on the success or failure of these innovations in a couple of months.

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"Sanjuro" Flickr Creative Commons photo courtesy of p373

Hyperlink Heaven

I have rediscovered my love for writing. I remember crafting a major paper on the late novels of Charles Dickens during my senior year in college. It was a strangely luxurious experience as I drafted and redrafted my treatise. When I was in my twenties, the principal asked me to help compose our application for "exemplary school" status. I was honored and actually enjoyed trying to find just the right words for this composition.

I'm not sure exactly what "day the music died", but its been at least a thirty year hiatus since I've actually enjoyed a writing project. Oh yes, I have continued to teach writing and I have continually written for work. But it has been work.

Recently, I rediscovered the joy. The key? Hyperlinks! I am intoxicated by the way they allow me to add another dimension to my expression. In fact, though I know I should restrain myself from overusing them, I still compulsively hyperlink whether blogging about vlogs, proposing a staff-development plan, or preparing a collaborative project for my students. I am excited by the way hyperlinks have animated the study guide for my film class. I actually enjoy searching for the links, just as I have done in this paragraph.

Now for the dark side. I have developed a sense of indignation over traditional "research". As I indicated in Oh, How I Miss Ibid. . . . , I can't imagine anything more outdated than "Works Cited" when hyperlinks allow us to jump directly to the source. I also think that presenting research on paper verges on the preposterous. Learning to search, discriminate among sources, and then remix them. At my school, our students have laptops have more access to information than we could have even dreamed of ten years ago, but my department is still paying tribute to the antique "accoutrements of scholarship". It staggers that hours of instruction are still spent on teaching a teaching a traditional "research paper" in the year 2009. Teachers chronically complain that they don't have time to learn about Web 2.0 technology. Well, gang, here's some time for you: chuck the research paper of yesteryear and let your students compose with hyperlinks.

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"Moleskin Concept Diagram 1" Creative Commons Flickr Photo by jazzmasterson

Staff Development, Part Three

Final of Three Parts

In part one of this commentary I characterized a typical teaching staff by their receptiveness and integration of new technologies: Pathfinders, Jumpstarts, Too Old / Too Lates, and Naysayers. The research I have down bears out this divisions as typical within any organization facing significant change. In part two I presented a proposal for moving from a scattershot approach to staff training to a more structured emersion in order to create a greater number of Pathfinders.

As Theodore Creighton asserts, "For any movement of change to . . . positively impact teaching and learning, a large number of faculty and staff must be involved in the movement." My school has reached this crossroads. In 2009-10 all students in the school will have immediate access to extremely powerful information gathering and networking tools throughout the school day. We have the opportunity to be in the vanguard of educational change. But a recalcitrant staff has the ability to undermine the best attempts at curricular change, marketing campaigns, and even retention of younger more technology savvy staff. I think all but the least resistant could be enlisted in a team effort to provide better resources for the entire school. After a modicum of training we could participate electronically in building these valuable projects without creating special meeting times and schedules. 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." I suggest that after we have reaseched tipping point of pathfinders (see part two) a set of interdepartmental projects be initiated. The possibilities are limitless:

* Creation of a virtual exhibition space for student performance / exhibitions.

* Create a virtual media center of video and podcast resource material collected from "experts" in the school and neighborhood community.

* Collect virtual museums of hyperlinks/videos/photos on subjects which cross department themes.

* Compile social bookmarks and Dyknow best practices for types of class (e.g., AP) or teaching styles.

* Build a directory of school blogs and blogging resources.

* Create 21st Century research guides and resources.

* Design independent study modules for students with unique interests or needs

* I read with interest "Well Connected Parents" in the 1/30/09. Washington Post. A 21st Century school should be interested in getting ahead of the curve with a social media design which includes parents.

As I reflected in Tinker Toy Playland, educators must deconstruct old concepts of curricular subjects and units. The interdepartmental projects I suggest could advance meaningful dialogue about research, learning styles, and digital literacy as they apply in a world where Everything is Miscellaneous. Craig McLeod takes his IT blog title, from the following quote: "Our intelligence tends to produce technological and social change at a rate faster than our institutions and emotions can cope with. . . . We therefore find ourselves continually trying to accommodate new realities within inappropriate existing institutions, and trying to think about those new realities in traditional but sometimes dangerously irrelevant terms" (War: The Lethal Custom). With a relatively small investment in human resources a school could guide its stakeholders toward some to some extraordinary experiences.

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"Bruno e Sandra com seus MacBooks Pro" Creative Commons Flickr Photo by Marco Gomes
Thank you, Theodore Creighton for reviewing the full document from which this post is adapted.

A Vast Tinker Toy Playland

I have shifted my perspective on curriculum in two major ways. I now think of my courses as Tinker Toys which I construct and then reassemble each time I take out the course and play with it. This is a major conceptual change for me. Previously, I thought of courses as made up of units -- blocks of instruction about the Supreme Court or Hamlet. I strove to construct the perfect combination of activities, assignments, minutes, and days for each unit. A "new prep" meant trying to compile materials for the creation of a product that would serve my students well, semester after semester. This view guided me as I developed my online course in American Government. I set about replacing the prepackaged units of the book with comparable online materials. If you had clicked into Moodle last year, you would have seen giant chunks of postings under broad topics like "The Constitution." But as I recently commented at QRS Gateway, I just finished deconstructing those giant blocks of Moodle, and my curriculum is now far more accessible and dynamic. I can update instantly thanks to the publishing features of iCal and Google Docs which integrate seamlessly with Moodle. More significantly, the hyperlink options of iWork and Google Apps allow for interconnecting the pieces of instruction beyond my wildest Tinker-Toy-on-steroids dreams. I can remix my course with the same delight as creating a new playlist from iTunes.

Secondly, I have fully embraced the idea of the Creative Commons. Instead of seeing my lessons as private treasures, I have literally unlocked everything I have posted to Moodle (no more enrollment key), and I am linking my newest projects to the in-service resources I freely provide to my peers. I have also begun to publish best practices to networks like ALI and CUE. No longer do I see my teaching materials as paper to be filed in the physical world of folders and locked cabinets. My digital curriculum is unbounded by classroom walls and scheduled periods. And the social media I have injected into class projects have enlisted students as co-authors of the lessons. My reason for sharing is not based on arrogant presumption or simple altruism. It is driven by my confidence that I possess a unique combination of knowledge and skills that make my teaching special, not the materials. I am changing and learning. As I do, I feel more alive and essential than ever.

My 21st Century Stimulation [sic]

I began teaching American Government in 1993, and my Congressional simulation has been with me for the entire ride. The idea came from a product called, "Committee" by Interact, but from the beginning I made modifications. It evolved slowly from semester to semester with two enormous convulsive changes along the way. One year I completely updated all the legislation, and another year I recreated and expanded the entire cast of 35 imaginary characters.

Most students love playing "The Game" as they usually call it. And every semester a few will journal about it and mistakenly refer to it as a "stimulation". I still chuckle.

I have recently conducted another radical revision due to the convergence of three factors:
1) "The game" is getting a little stale for me.
2) I have never liked having the players' roles and goals prescripted for them.
3) I've found some great Google tools that will help me and open up the game and make it far more dynamic.

The latest version of the game will revolve around Google Docs and Google Sites. This will provide students with the easy ability to use templates to build their roles and goals. The sites will allow students to post and share some work. I will also be able to make the project 75% more paperless (See Red Herring and Black Book Bag).

Check out the latest '09 Version of the Game. I'd love to have some feedback. And feel free stop by and observe the interaction when we are hip deep in the next semester. Wish me luck!

Oh How I Miss ibid. and op.cit. . . .Not!