Awake & Curious

On this hot summer day in my special education elementary school I had a number of discussions with my students during lunch. Two of them in the 4th grade wanted to send pictures from one PSP to another. I don’t know if it can be done, at least not in my school because they can’t connect with our wifi. Password protected. God forbid the NYC DOE gave connection away for free. But they wanted to know how to get their Psp’s to ” talk ” to each other.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with a a fourth grader on a cold day this winter, he was telling me all about the Iphone this had to be January or December, and how he wants one. He knew it was going to be like the touch screen Imac in our lab. I was fascinated and not surprised. He actually said one day all computers will be phones. I had a little ahaa moment . This is their langauage. They speak it with ease. Technology is for them first nature.

I even think they hide their knowledge to an extent becasue they are not speaking to one of their own . It reminds me of growing up in the seventies and having a large arsenal of knowledge about certain rock performers in my case the Who, Frank Zappa, Clapton, Pink Floyd, Jimmy Hendrix, Muddy Waters, ect..

I would never have spoken openly with my teachers about my musical tastes because, well I was passionate about music. I knew my teachers would not understand, ” they did not speak my language and they were not “one of us”.

The astonishing thing is that criteria or the special knowlege that my inner city special education kids use to define or designate someone as “one of them” is not the knowlege of Rappers or Wrestlers like it was 5 years ago, but knowledge of Myspace, blogs, other social networks, Youtube, or how to pick up the local wifi to connect your PsP’s.

In direct contrast to my student”s mastery of this  specialized knowlege many of the teachers (and some of the administrators ) I work lack rudimentary tech knowlege , and have no desire or plan to change this fact anytime soon.

Amazing, I write grants that talk about “ 21st century learning skills” and my students need for instruction, curriuclum aligned with, and instructors prepared to impart these skills to them, and if you give me this money we will create students prepared for the present/future blah blah blah .

But it is a lie.

My students are getting the experience to create social networks, collaborate with others who do not share their physical space, utilize visual media to commuicate, ect…. . They are somewhat ready for the 21st century. They have some of the “specilized knowlege” they will need to traverse the 21st century. The thing is they are not acquiring any of this “special knowlege ” in their classrooms. Indeed this special knowledge these students have is making school and the boredom of teacher’s chalk and talk completely irrelevant to the students who fill the seats in their classrooms.

How do I change that? How can I get teachers to see that things have changed and the way they are teaching is not good enough or ok anymore? Don’t worry I don’t expect the answer, but it is a hell of a question.

Alan November the Koo l aid guy!

I am back. Back from the dead. Back from November learning. It has been 120 days since I blogged here. A little lax in my blogging don’t ya think?
Any way lots happened in that time. I wrote several grants, some I received, some I am waiting to here about. Two I am writing presently.

Penny finally died .

She was my father’s dog, I had her for 12 years after my dad died, she was 20 + years old. That was big for me. I worked hard for months making her comfortable and she finally said adios mi amigos on June 8th .

The next day was our, (373R’s ) film festival. Which are two reasons I did not blog. The film festival and taking care of penny was exhausting. That grant writing, teaching, graduation sideshow, yearbook production, and managing our school’s biogs, not much time to reflect on the state of education.

So 120 days after my last post and back from Cult November, the ed conference that gave birth to this log, and what do I think now? Well I am excited. Still. I got some great ideas from the conference. Things I can do . I have been playing with scratch for days. Mitch Resnicks from MIT’s invention with some other incredibly bright people from MIT, but if you want to understand scratch Ewan Mcintosh, ( one of my favorites at November’s tech soirée this year) describes what Mitch is doing and just about everyone else at the conference is doing rather eloquently in his biog . If you didn’t get to go the conference, well Ewan’s notes are pretty fabulous.

I also plan on organizing an on line film festival next year. Maybe if they will have me with Marco Torres students, as well as Ewan McIntosh and some  other people. My idea is we could create a mutual blog, submit films and have our kids review them from all over. Even see if we can get the ever elusive A. November to review some films. I will of course write a grant about this so any ideas about funding sources are appreciated.

Third idea I had is to have a small group of students participate in Dr. Yong Zhao Chinese second life site. One of the grants I wrote this year (if we are funded, come on Michael Jordan show me the money) involved an in school residency from our local Chinese scholar garden. Dr. Zhao site (not up yet as I understand it) teaches people about Chinese culture and how to speak Chinese if you would like, by immersing students in a second life in China. I thought the class who gets the residency with the Chinese scholar garden could create a blog about life in China via experiences on the second life site, what a great social studies experience that would be.

Speaking of Dr. Zhao he influenced my thought greatly, as did Ewan McIntosh. I am still processing a lot of what they said. Dr. Zhao’s take on Friedman’s ideas of just what a flat world will mean was less ominous than most, but his views of the new world order are still daunting. I think a lot of the November attendees were a little threatened by his assertion that teachers are a lot less important in the new learning equation than they may think. In his session I shared that in my own experience, I had learned mostly everything I know not in a class, or from a teacher, but on my own. He beamed at this and later thanked me for the comment when I met him at lunch.

Another thing I want to mention is Marco Torres and his amazing students, who attended the conference and were more impressive than he was. These kids now in college are still in “class” with Marco, some 4 years after high school had ended. A. November is always going on about redefining what schools are , or mean. Well Marco has redefined school with this group of young people . They have graduated from high school,( quite a feat in itself if I understand correctly in the 5000 student high school in an poverty stricken area that they come from) and they are still learning together, teaching others, (hundreds of us at the conference.) . Now that is a good example of how a school should or could operate. Life long learners, learning together.

Well that is all for now, thank you to Alan and your staff for this years dose of Kool aid lets see what effect it has on my life at 373 R this year. I will try to blog before another 120 days go by,but no promises.

[BLC 07]