Sarah on Social Media

Like Sarah, I used to think that social media such as Facebook only had utility only as a way for far-flung friends to stay in touch, share pictures, chatter about social life One could also amuse oneself and others by developing a clever and/or self-effacing persona.

Twitter changed all that for me. It revealed the power of personal learning networks. It allowed me to connect and breathe outside of the necessarily confining walls of school building. I can literally say that without social media, I'd still be doing my old "sage on stage" routine in the classroom.

Still, when Sarah's cbl group turned to Facebook as their means of "improving our democracy through an authentic medium", I was skeptical. I privately thought that they were "dumbing down" their project. My bad! As Sarah explains, what could be more "authentic" for young voters than Facebook.

Each of my project experiences has taught me important lessons along the way!

P.S. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day the Drive-thru will have new posts twice a week.

Enriched by Networks

I'd be a different and poorer person without my PLN . In the last couple of weeks, I've

*Collaborated on Challenge Based Learning with an amazing educator in Nebraska.

*Shared secret techie anxieties and laughs with a middle school teacher in Colorado.

*Chatted about M-Hub with a doctor in Africa.

* Joked about the Tigers with a beat reporter as he covered the game.

* Joined a wonderful new and improved ADE community site. Apple challenges us, but makes us feel good about ourselves.

*Swapped music and blogging tips with a University student.

*Learned about cloud databases from a generous mind in Great Britain.

*Suggested a question to a beat reporter for an NBA press conference. He says he will ask it.

*Asked for advice about web sites from a journalist in China.

*Read interesting blogs, commented on interesting blogs, and written ... blogs

P.S. I've been collaborating with a peer on researching copyright-free music for student projects. Decided to add some Magnatune music to the site. Please indicate in poll whether to keep or ditch.

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"Yellow Flower" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by introspectivo - Muito ocupado / Very busy's photostream

Nature or Nurture? What Makes Some Teachers, Reactionaries?

The women and men who go into teaching tend, as a group, to be both extremely dedicated and extremely risk-averse. The stability of their profession is a very important part of its draw.
Susan Collins

Most folks in education have . . . a difficult time imagining what they've not experienced. So it's hard to imagine how things can be done differently, whereas in business you have to constantly innovate in order to survive.
Randy Moore ( The Global Achievement Gap, p.144)

A couple of years ago. I was attending an English Department meeting at the request of the chair. Department members were upset about changes being opposed from the top. I heard reasonable arguments against the reforms, but the passion against change was disproportionate to the issue. The intensity seemed rooted in something much deeper and emotional. I was perplexed by this and said something about the attitudes being "reactionary". Some looked shocked, even hurt, as though I had cursed them. "Reactionary" obviously clashed with political ideologies or disposition toward reforming something other than their own curricula!

Maybe, I took a cheap shot, but I think it was right on. And it is true for many intelligent, engaging, and interesting teachers, today, who are fiercely, even blindly resistant to the changes threatened by technology.

Recently, I was sitting with my current academic department and found myself in a bubbling cauldron of fury against technology: When does administration expect us to learn this stuff?. . . . These kids are forgetting how to communicate face-to-face. . . . I don't want to change!

After listening to this for a while, I made a few points as diplomatically as I could:

*Not choosing to leverage our technology in a 1:1 private school puts us at a competitive disadvantage.

*We are never going to be able to recapture for their students some golden yesteryear of school that our memories hold dear. Texting, Facebook, YouTube, et. al., are already part of the mainstream culture.

* We need to change so that we could help our students compete and succeed in tomorrow's higher education and work environments.

Next school year 20% of my assignment will be devoted to shifting our school curriculum to a more student-directed model........Sometimes I wonder if I won't be trudging down to the rock quarry with a ball-peen hammer. (Wish me luck....unless you stand with the reactionaries!).

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"Youth Escort" Flickr CC Photo by TheoJunior

The Latest M-Hub Hubbub

For those of you who have been following the progress of M-Hub, here's an update:

* Over 20 staff, students, and administrators have attended our two general meetings.

* We have held three core leadership meetings, two platform meetings, and one club life meeting.

* We have a logo (see side panel)

* We have a mission statement (M-Hub connects the Mercy community through personal networks, furthering the learning of our students).

* We have been recognized with official "club" status at the school. We sought this in order to involve more students in the project and root ourselves more deeply in the school culture.

* Most importantly, we have made tremendous strides towards identifying a platform upon which we can build our network. After meetings with staff from our Tech Department, Advancement Office, and our web designer we are guardedly confident that the M-Hub site can be built with drupal (the same back-end system used by the White House site!) and accessible to our students with their school IDs.

We have meetings scheduled this spring to discuss formats for our data collection. We also want are working on security and user policies. At this point we are confident that we can start collecting, recruiting, and building for our ambitious project in September.

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Screen Shot from Apple Challenge Based Learning M-Hub page.

Unintended Consequences

Sometimes the lights all shining on me

Other times I can barely see

Lately it occurs to me

What a long strange trip it's been.

From "Truckin'" -- Robert Hunter

I'm fascinated by how many times I've headed off in a direction with educational technology, only to end up in an unexpected location:

* The Web Warriors. A year ago, Rick Strobl and I began a web site to aggregate some of our favorite web tools. Rick did most of the work, and I had the hazy idea that the site would help promote with my ambition to make presentations outside of my school. How ironic then that the site would become such a dominant feature within Mercy's sophomore curriculum. For English and American Government most tenth graders are required to produce podcasts. The majority use Audacity, a free cross-platform sound editor. Rick installed tutorials and key download link for the application at our site. Now nearly every Mercy High School tenth grader goes visits the Web Warriors. Not exactly how I envisioned this working, but pretty cool all the same.

* After returning from the 2009 ADE Summer Institute, I was determined to try Challenge Based Learning with my American Government classes. I wasn't sure how well it would work, but I went ahead and wrote a proposal for a CBL presentation at 2010 MACUL. When I plunged into designing the CBL projects I expected it to radically effect my courses and students. What I did not anticipate was how much the students' ambitions would influence how I looked at networking and research. When my students began to fearlessly contact lawyers, judges, academicians, doctors, insurance agents, campaign managers, military officers, etc.; I decided to take networking to another level with M-Hub. My plan is to place students in touch with staff (past and present), parents, and alumnae for purposes like academic research or career guidance. The experience of engaging in CBL actually kicked me up to a new level of passion about and commitment to guiding students as they learn how to network.

I have no idea what strange destination the M-Hub Project may lead me to. But thus far, my tech treks have given me one helluva ride!

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Screen Capture from Web Warriors

Seeding a Discussion with a Podcast

I have blogged about podcasts many times. After all, podcasts were essential in my decision to go bookless in my American Government class. But, I have also used podcasts for English which have utility for almost any course where teachers are pressed for time.

I always feel a time crunch in my Literature into Film class. After all, so much class time is spent watching the films. So the longer I teach the class, the less time I seem to spend discussing the literature. But some works, like One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, truly warrant some class analysis.

So for today's class, I have "seeded" our discussion of the novel by creating brief podcasts sketching out themes or symbols in the work. These presentations end with open ended questions for the students to consider. I assign the podcasts over night, and then jump right into the questions. "Cutting to the chase" allows me to avoid the tough choice between of dropping a film or skipping interesting discussions of the novels. Here's a sample:

One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest Podcast

Perhaps you are finding yourself in a time crunch as the semester winds down. I hope this helps.

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"Free Spices" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by jasekemp

Raising the Bar and Beating the Cheaters

This week, I had three separate and intense conversations with other teachers about students plagiarizing sources and copying each others' homework. It's rampant in my school. And what's most alarming to me is that it's not even covert. I see students openly swapping assignments with one another and talking about what's on a given teacher's test.

I am not getting all high and mighty here. Recently one of my student's openly plagiarized from IMDB on a video. The kids were assigned to critique a film they had watched independently. She read plagiarized stuff. When confronted with a zero, she asked me to "cut her some slack" because she had only plagiarized part of the script and besides she has asked a friend for help and he fed her plagiarized stuff. Unbelievable.

As far as I can tell, it's all about gaming the system. The energy is put into finding short cuts and defeating those who would control their lives. It becomes almost second nature (Sparks Notes for any book) and even good-natured. (Everyone does it, so it's ok).

While I hold out no possibility for ridding the educational system of slackers and cheaters (students or adults), I do think that project learning helps to make a lot of this nonsense irrelevant, by placing the focus back on learning something. I've now tried several different projects based on the principles of Apple's Challenge Based Learning. The following elements help to eliminate cheating:

* Set the bar high with a challenge (and keep it up there!)

* Put the students in control of the project.

* Let them set the goals

* Refrain from telling them they "can't" or "shouldn't" unless absolutely necessary.

* Encourage them to think outside of the box.

* Hold your breath and hold them to the goals they set for themselves.

Of course I still get some dead beats, but since the projects are multi-dimensional, cheating provides few short cuts. If they are interviewing experts, producing media, and making a presentation, who exactly are they going to cheat from? But they'll either become engaged or not....and gaming this system is just way too hard for a slacker. And for those who really got into it, the learning is very authentic.

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"Mannheim Track Meet" Flickr CC Photo by heraldpost