Small turn out March 1st for what turned out to be a good workshop, in spite of some technical difficulties. The entire network at our school had two complete outages, due to a major problem at Verizon. We had Jim Weinzloff from November Learning. For those of you who have had the pleasure of Alan November as presenter you are familiar with how ” big” he can be in his thinking, and his presentation style. He is an idea man as he stated last year at the conclusion of BLC 07.

This year Alan spent several fruitful Saturdays with about a third of our teachers .  Jim’s style was smaller, but very warm, friendly, and informative. He did some nice work with Google Maps ( which has some cool new features), Sketchup and pod-casting. Our staff really seemed to “get it” that morning. I don’t know if it is because they have been exposed to more of this stuff thanks to a literacy grant from SI Foundation which has footed the bill for this high quality Pd this year, but our teachers followed him with good understanding, and a few of them applied what they learned in their classes the next week.

As I said we had Alan come to our school several times this year, and I have to admit we are seeing small  shifts, mainly in language. Our staff has added the terms blog, podcast, google apps to their professional vocabulary. A portion of them are blogging and many are using del.icio.us and skype at least in their personal lives, and about a third of our staff has been introduced to and use Google apps (some have created their own Google search engines, and use Google docs as a collaborative word processor).

Now as pessimistic as I can be, and have been in the past, I admit it is beginning to sink in and there are small measurable changes.

A few years back when I started blogging coming back from my first BLC conference, filled with piss and vinegar, I also came back speaking a slightly different language then my colleagues. Now many of them are at least familiar with some of the terms and tools like Jing, and pod-casting software such as Audacity and Garageband( we are a Mac environment for the most part)So all and all, a good start.

As an aside, I had the good fortune to be in attendance with Will Rich Yesterday at District 75’s main digs, and he was beyond wonderful. He reminded me resolutely that this is about learning networks, not just cool tools. Connections that make you grow professionally, and personally, often delivered with amazing immediacy. (Case in point MIT Opencourseware,all of MIT’s courses are now available online with video, all kinds of supports for FREE!)Which gives me some direction for next year. Our staff has begun to tentatively sip the from the Cool-tool Koo-laid. But that is just the first step, now the challenge is greater. How can we get them to see that building online learning networks of their own will empower them beyond their imagination? I will blog about Will Rich in the next few days.

So we are crawling forward towards the 21st Century.

This is going to be a pretty disjointed post. I am in a strange place, and it is the first week of school in New York City.
Forewarned as they say, you know the rest, so read on only if you are in the mood to cope with a lack of structure and more than a bit of chaotic rambling.

I have had 24 first weeks of school as a teacher and another 10 as a student (dropped out of High School in the 10th grade).
That is 34 first weeks in the NYC school system. Mind-boggling.
Ramble 1. I think George Carlin is brilliant and funny and pinned the tail on the donkey in this piece.
Chris Sessum mentioned it on his blog. It is profane, (much of Carlin is, and in my book anyone who is that sharp can curse till the cows waltz in the wheat fields) but dead on when it come to the failure of the American Education system. It is interesting to me how accurate his observations are about education, NCLB and our present psychotic fascination with testing.

Ramble # 2. I am also Simpson’s fan. No clip here, so I will try to set the scene: A group of T.V. executives in a “creative” meeting all sitting in front of their own T.V’s trying to come up with an “original” idea for a reality show starring Homer. They all kept feverishly surfing channels on their personal t.v.s, watching shows on other networks saying things like,
” Wait I think I am getting an idea”.

I think this is what the T.V. executives must really do to come up with the idea for these some of the shows . How else can you explain that as of last week I count 3 “new” shows on different networks where the premise of the show is to see whether some dolt can win big bucks by finishing the lyrics to Abba’s Dancing Queen?
Back to the Simpsons, they show the “creative genius” of T.V in formula: replicate a show that has a modicum of success again, and again, and again until all the life is beaten out of it, and T.V. veiwer suicide/murder rates skyrocket. Bottom line they never replicate the initial show, it is usually just a watered down imitation, lacking any substance or entertainment value.

An example of this is Oprah and daytime T.V. Think back when Oprah did a tabloid like shock show,( she did you know in her beginning she was not always discussing the philosophy of “giving” with Bill”the rock star” Clinton.)
In ancient times, before Google and YouTube around (1984) she did the kind of show that was closer to Jerry Springer Or Maury Povitch. Hell she is the mother of Springer and Povitch’s daily misery fests. And if you don’t remember, or believe me that Oprah the Good Witch once rode her broom in a more seedy neighborhood, well, as the popular rant on these shows say, , go ahead Oprah “take the test, take the test” you know their your children!

After Oprah’s show became popular the other T.V. executives had “a creative brainstorm” and daytime talk T.V. with a penchant for Freak show suffering was born. Oprah changed her show’s format. ( But Oprah is the mother of this mess no matter how many schools for girls she finances in Africa. )

This desperate insistence on replicating anything that has had slight success runs rampant in the American Education system as well as in T.V. land. We even have a term for it in education, “Best Practices”. “Best Practices” lets replicate their ” Best Practices”.

That is like saying lets replicate William Faulkner’s writing in Absalom Absalom, or ” The Sound and The Fury”.
Fool, you can’t replicate great writing, you can be inspired by great writing. If you try to repeat brilliant writing you will just write a bad book. There are hundreds of books written by the way trying to “replicate” Faulkner’s “best practice” in his writing and not one of them has.
Good if not great writers on their own terms, wearing their own pants and thinking their own thoughts like Cormac McCarthy have been inspired by Faulkner. (As an aside the Oprah The Good Witch “did” McCarthy and his latest book The End on her book club as the first book of last year, maybe their is hope for Springer and Povitch yet.)
You can’t replicate “brilliant teaching” probably for the same reason you can’t replicate T.V. or books. The players, setting, and time is different. I am no Oprah fan but even I know Jerry Springer is no Oprah, and no one will ever be Faulkner, ever!
Teaching is the same, when I see great teaching and I do in my little brick school house in New York City, believe it or not I do. I don’t copy it, I get excited by it . The thought to do exactly what they have done never occurs to me. Yet “Balanced Literacy, Reading First, and Every Day Math are built on this premise that you can “script” and replicate great/ good teaching and learning.
Ramble # 3: As my final ramble on testing I came across a peice written by a guy name Bruce A. Jilk. He plans schools all over the world.
He has some great things to say

“There is something that learning, because of it’s nature, is not the display of a packaged product. Learning is an inner process that is manifested as continual discovery”
Also this:”Nearly all children are born with creative potential. The drawings, singing, play, and place making of young children is in evidence everywhere. As they move through their years of “development” many seem to lose this creative propensity. We have all seen it when we visit schools. The delightful, spirited kindergarten classroom seems to diminish, year by year until you get to the more somber rooms of the 6th grade and beyond. What’s going on here?

For many reasons the teaching process in the US becomes more focused and controlled as students move ahead. This certainly is done for significant reasons. And with the fed’s passing laws that require testing this will become even more evident. The problem is that this also is limiting the creative channels of children. Typically we, planners and designers, respond to our clients by developing teaching environments that are supportive of this emphasis on focus and control. Recent security issues even push those concerns further. I believe this is what we are expected to do, but we can do so much more.”

To recap: I have spent too many years in school buildings, George Carlin is on to something , I watch the Simpsons, I don’t watch Oprah because I know where she comes from, Cormac McCarthy is a good writer, William Faulkner is a great writer (if you have time stop reading blogs and read them), you can’t replicate or package a creative process, ( and teaching/learning Bozos is a creative process) , You can be inspired by the creative, I am all the time and enough with spending billions of dollars on testing as you don’t fatten a cow by weighing it.

Welcome to the 2007-2008 school year.

Chow!

There is a saying that the way to hell is paved with good intentions. My grandmother, Nana Broderick, used to say it a different way usually to my father when he was trying to fix something, ” please don’t fix it if you are just going to break it “. If you look at American history there are plenty examples of “fixing things only to break them”. One is the failure of Public housing, another is a little piece of legislation called NCLB.

Public housing began (as a result of the National Housing Act of 1937) as apartments for middle and working classes. The Great Depression was in full swing and the corner had not been turned to more prosperous times. It’s early advocates believed the private market would fail all but the most affluent third of the population. Over time, however, those with means have departed public housing, leaving behind what amounts to a modern-day version of the 19th-century poorhouse, dominated — except in those projects reserved for the elderly or handicapped — by single mothers and children. Nationwide, only 8 percent of public housing households are two-parent families with children.

Laudable ideals started public housing. However in truth it was a product. In this case “affordable housing” sold to the American public utilizing tax dollars ( my grandmothers tax dollars she worked two jobs in the 20’s, 30, 40’s and 50′, Schraffts downtown Manhattan and Con Edison) . Public housing offered affordable housing to the poor. People who moved into public housing would be given – houses they could afford. The problem was this had not been thought out carefully. They were fixing one problem while creating a host of others. ( I remind you of the words of Nana Broderick)

Sure they had a place to live and tore done functioning poor neighborhoods to build these “places to live “. What they forgot was the neighborhood. There was no plane for a neighborhood to support the buildings. No local jobs for it’s inhabitants, schools, shopping districts, hospitals, churches, police stations, firehouses, recreation centers etc… Yet millions , the equivalent today of billions tax of dollars today went into making these “prisons for the poor”.

Remember this rule, When millions/billions of dollars are spent in the U. S. there is always big payoff for someone. Sometimes these days it is Haliburton in Iraq or New Orleans, or corporate welfare to McGraw-Hill’s Direct Instruction/Reading Mastery program to the tune of 4.8 billion dollars.

Anyway those of us who have taught inner-city kids who grew up in public housing in the United States are quite aware what a failure and incredible waste of my grandmothers tax dollars public housing has been for the past 50 years. In my own city a city planner named Robert Moses raised “successful” lower income neighborhoods to create these “prisons”

I see a parallel between this and the NCLB standards movement. I realize it is a stretch, but again the American public has been sold a “product” to correct a social ill. Testing, testing and more testing. But it doesn’t end there. They have lots of very expensive educational products They are going to sell you to make sure children do well on these “tests”. That coupled with the not so thinly veiled threats from NCLB that your children better do well on these tests and you have a national disaster in the American Education system comparable to the Public housing disaster of the last 50 years.

Now in schools in this changing 21st century instead of looking at how the world is changing, what new skills the 21st century demands, we are stuck following very expensive pre-packaged educational programs that are after all “researched based” and promise us the only thing that NCLB respects — better test scores. So what if these educational tools are offered at exorbitant prices and completely curtail teacher devlopment,and student thought and creativity, it meets the requirements of NCLB. C.Y.O. A. so to speak.( or as Nana Broderick would have said “Cover your own ass”.

Public housing for all it originators good intentions sentenced generation after generation to a form of “apartheid poverty” that still exists today. I fear the fate will be just as bleak if NCLB ’s testing craze is allowed to go unchecked in the near future. What is worse is this is happening at a time when U. S . schools should be undergoing a revolution based in the demands of globalization, and needs for different kinds of skills, to take center stage in the classroom.

Anyway I return to school tomorrow, and I have the luxury of creating blogs , teaching, film-making, and thinking with our kids. I am not stuck following scripted programs like Every Day Math. In a lot of ways I really feel sorry for our kids, teachers and our country.
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 NCLB,

Public housing began (as a result of the National Housing Act of 1937) as apartments for middle and working classes. The Great Depression was in full swing and the corner had not been turned to more prosperous times. It’s early advocates believed the private market would fail all but the most affluent third of the population. Over time, however, those with means have departed public housing, leaving behind what amounts to a modern-day version of the 19th-century poorhouse, dominated — except in those projects reserved for the elderly or handicapped — by single mothers and children. Nationwide, only 8 percent of public housing households are two-parent families with children.

Laudable ideals started public housing. However in truth it was a product. In this case “affordable housing” sold to the American public utilizing tax dollars ( my grandmothers tax dollars she worked two jobs in the 20’s, 30, 40’s and 50′, Schraffts downtown Manhattan and Con Edison) . Public housing offered affordable housing to the poor. People who moved into public housing would be given – houses they could afford. The problem was this had not been thought out carefully. They were fixing one problem while creating a host of others. ( I remind you of the words of Nana Broderick)

Sure they had a place to live and tore done functioning poor neighborhoods to build these “places to live “. What they forgot was the neighborhood. There was no plane for a neighborhood to support the buildings. No local jobs for it’s inhabitants, schools, shopping districts, hospitals, churches, police stations, firehouses, recreation centers etc… Yet millions , the equivalent today of billions tax of dollars today went into making these “prisons for the poor”.

Remember this rule, When millions/billions of dollars are spent in the U. S. there is always big payoff for someone. Sometimes these days it is Haliburton in Iraq or New Orleans, or corporate welfare to McGraw-Hill’s Direct Instruction/Reading Mastery program to the tune of 4.8 billion dollars.

Anyway those of us who have taught inner-city kids who grew up in public housing in the United States are quite aware what a failure and incredible waste of my grandmothers tax dollars public housing has been for the past 50 years. In my own city a city planner named Robert Moses raised “successful” lower income neighborhoods to create these “prisons”

I see a parallel between this and the NCLB standards movement. I realize it is a stretch, but again the American public has been sold a “product” to correct a social ill. Testing, testing and more testing. But it doesn’t end there. They have lots of very expensive educational products They are going to sell you to make sure children do well on these “tests”. That coupled with the not so thinly veiled threats from NCLB that your children better do well on these tests and you have a national disaster in the American Education system comparable to the Public housing disaster of the last 50 years.

Now in schools in this changing 21st century instead of looking at how the world is changing, what new skills the 21st century demands, we are stuck following very expensive pre-packaged educational programs that are after all “researched based” and promise us the only thing that NCLB respects — better test scores. So what if these educational tools are offered at exorbitant prices and completely curtail teacher devlopment,and student thought and creativity, it meets the requirements of NCLB. C.Y.O. A. so to speak.( or as Nana Broderick would have said “Cover your own ass”.

Public housing for all it originators good intentions sentenced generation after generation to a form of “apartheid poverty” that still exists today. I fear the fate will be just as bleak if NCLB ’s testing craze is allowed to go unchecked in the near future. What is worse is this is happening at a time when U. S . schools should be undergoing a revolution based in the demands of globalization, and needs for different kinds of skills, like to take center stage in the classroom.

Anyway I return to school tomorrow, and I have the luxury of creating blogs , teaching, film-making, and thinking with our kids. I am not stuck following scripted programs like Every Day Math. In a lot of ways I really feel sorry for our kids, teachers and our country.
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 NCLB,

Public housing began (as a result of the National Housing Act of 1937) as apartments for middle and working classes. The Great Depression was in full swing and the corner had not been turned to more prosperous times. It’s early advocates believed the private market would fail all but the most affluent third of the population. Over time, however, those with means have departed public housing, leaving behind what amounts to a modern-day version of the 19th-century poorhouse, dominated — except in those projects reserved for the elderly or handicapped — by single mothers and children. Nationwide, only 8 percent of public housing households are two-parent families with children.

Laudable ideals started public housing. However in truth it was a product. In this case “affordable housing” sold to the American public utilizing tax dollars ( my grandmothers tax dollars she worked two jobs in the 20’s, 30, 40’s and 50′, Schraffts downtown Manhattan and Con Edison) . Public housing offered affordable housing to the poor. People who moved into public housing would be given – houses they could afford. The problem was this had not been thought out carefully. They were fixing one problem while creating a host of others. ( I remind you of the words of Nana Broderick)

Sure they had a place to live and tore done functioning poor neighborhoods to build these “places to live “. What they forgot was the neighborhood. There was no plane for a neighborhood to support the buildings. No local jobs for it’s inhabitants, schools, shopping districts, hospitals, churches, police stations, firehouses, recreation centers etc… Yet millions , the equivalent today of billions tax of dollars today went into making these “prisons for the poor”.

Remember this rule, When millions/billions of dollars are spent in the U. S. there is always big payoff for someone. Sometimes these days it is Haliburton in Iraq or New Orleans, or corporate welfare to McGraw-Hill’s Direct Instruction/Reading Mastery program to the tune of 4.8 billion dollars.

Anyway those of us who have taught inner-city kids who grew up in public housing in the United States are quite aware what a failure and incredible waste of my grandmothers tax dollars public housing has been for the past 50 years. In my own city a city planner named Robert Moses raised “successful” lower income neighborhoods to create these “prisons”

I see a parallel between this and the NCLB standards movement. I realize it is a stretch, but again the American public has been sold a “product” to correct a social ill. Testing, testing and more testing. But it doesn’t end there. They have lots of very expensive educational products They are going to sell you to make sure children do well on these “tests”. That coupled with the not so thinly veiled threats from NCLB that your children better do well on these tests and you have a national disaster in the American Education system comparable to the Public housing disaster of the last 50 years.

Now in schools in this changing 21st century instead of looking at how the world is changing, what new skills the 21st century demands, we are stuck following very expensive pre-packaged educational programs that are after all “researched based” and promise us the only thing that NCLB respects — better test scores. So what if these educational tools are offered at exorbitant prices and completely curtail teacher devlopment,and student thought and creativity, it meets the requirements of NCLB. C.Y.O. A. so to speak.( or as Nana Broderick would have said “Cover your own ass”.

Public housing for all it originators good intentions sentenced generation after generation to a form of “apartheid poverty” that still exists today. I fear the fate will be just as bleak if NCLB ’s testing craze is allowed to go unchecked in the near future. What is worse is this is happening at a time when U. S . schools should be undergoing a revolution based in the demands of globalization, and needs for different kinds of skills, like to take center stage in the classroom.

Anyway I return to school tomorrow, and I have the luxury of creating blogs , teaching, film-making, and thinking with our kids. I am not stuck following scripted programs like Every Day Math. In a lot of ways I really feel sorry for our kids, teachers and our country.
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 NCLB,
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 Public Housing,

Chris Sessums posted this video from Youtube from an old Alan Watts talk.. Thoughtful and timely in these data-driven, bottom-line days. So much of teaching is a musical, intuitive, serendipitous affair. Not quantifiable at all. Yet we are always completely concerned with attainment and the bottom-line. Indeed a hoax. Good Stuff.

I am trying to get my tech-sensitive assistant principal to blog. No he does not break out in red blotches when near computers. (Well perhaps Windows platform PCs)

Tech-sensitive: meaning to have an understanding and sensitivity to the fact that technology in education is no longer about infusing tech into a curriculum that is a separate entity. Indeed tech (what a horrible word) is the curriculum. The two are inseparable the way books were to tribal knowledge, oral history, and religious thought after Johann Gutenberg in 1440 started fooling around with movable type and ink.

I have some good ideas but they may not be enough to convince him. The main reason I want him to blog is we bought as a school, November blogs for September and I think the only way I am going to move the initiative forward is to get him to blog, as a leader, as a teacher. He is what many people in the NYC DOE are not, consumed with ideas about teaching kids. He is not consumed with watching the Educational Data-driven Indy 500 sponsored by NCLB, the Everyday Math Company and the Reading First people. Not that he doesn’t know everything about our school numbers and data, he does. He knows how to play that game; he just is not consumed by it.

So why do I want him to blog?

Reason 1. He will inspire others. Well, people honestly respect him, I do too. If he blogs he will move others to take blogging seriously. He will move communication off the bulletin boards and memos that no one except a few kids and teachers see, to the world.

Reason 2. Audience. I want him to blog because of audience. I think Ewan McIntosh says it best when he says, “the average audience for student work is one (two for a conscientious student who bothers to read their own work). ”

Now we have the possibility of hundreds, thousands, to view student work and teacher thought. Amazing.

We were talking about it while we watched an army of movers on the last day of summer school, move one buildings belongings to another and the reverse for September start up. (Don’t ask but suffice it to say our Autism spectrum classes are moving into our smaller building, and our standard assessment classes into the main building) Not a decision that he made, or my principal even. (Who wants to worry about setting up 25 classrooms the first days of school, instead of thinking about the direction the school is taking?) These were their marching orders from NYC DOE. This is one of the main things administrators do, try to respond to the ever-changing demands made by a pretty faceless and heartless bureaucracy. Then do damage control so as to not completely destroy the educational experience for the kids and teachers.

Anyway he said quite seriously, I would have to write. Meaning he rarely gets time to go to the bathroom with the demands of the job now, how could he possibly make time to write thoughtfully about his job or education. Bingo. Here is one of the best reasons to blog. It makes you stop and think about what you are doing as a teacher, as a leader, as a student. Of course this ties into the father of education’s most famous line, (no not John Dewey) Socrates,(” the unexamined life is not worth living”)

Reason 3. Blog for self reflection and record. Know where you have been, and what you thought while you were there, this will give you a better idea of where you want to go.

Not that I meant that as a slam on John Dewey.

Just this morning over at 21st Century Collaborative there was a great quote by Dewey that indirectly contains some reasons to blog.

The quote was:

“”The world is moving at a tremendous rate. Going no one knows where. We must prepare our children, not for the world of the past. Not for our world. But for their world. The world of the future.” Learning by doing. Learning through real and authentic experiences. ”

Add the words global and connected to the lyrics and it sounds like the song Will Rich is forever singing rather well over at Weblogged, on behalf of blogging and other social media, or an article at Edutopia, Not something over 75 years ago about how education must reinvent itself to meet the demands of a world that was about to explode politically and economically after we all finished killing each other across the globe in WWII.

But listen to Dewey’s words: “The world is moving at a tremendous rate”. Certainly true today, we have to prepare for a world that does not exist, and don’t let anyone tell you they know exactly what that world will look like, because if they do they probably want to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.

If anything has changed in our world at a tremendous rate it is connected communication. I mean the phone company as we know it can be effectively put out of business and is hanging on by redefining it self as an Internet provider and cable TV. So blogging and podcasting (if you have an ipod and italk that is a piece of cake) is the natural foot forward in education. Not because I know that our students will use blogs and pod-casting in their careers I am not making that claim. (I have no bridge to sell). But because the logical step forward for education is in the area of globally connected communication.

Dewey says we should learn by doing, authentic experience. Blogs are real. Blogs may elect our next president (or more importantly keep track of what Anna Nicole Smith’s baby is doing.) Bringing blogs into the classroom and the administrators’ office makes those experiences more “real” or “authentic”. Well perhaps that is a stretch.

I taught for 20 years before blogged. (Yes I am old, a little fat too) I used Project Based Learning for 15 of those years and did some terrific things but so much of that experience is lost. There is no publication of student work, or my thoughts as my students conquered ; the Civil War, Separatists in Holland” Dian Fossey, Mexico, D-Day and The Battle of the Bulge” Civil Rights, Anne Frank, Hiroshima, Child Labor, The life of bats, Zoos, The Founding Fathers etc… I could go on with this list of titles. But that is all that remains, titles that really tell me nothing. Even if I were a pack rat, (I throw everything out and I never taught the same thing twice in 20 years) the only person that would have seen what we had accomplished would be me.

Reason 4.Blog to share what you do and know.

Blogs also are a kind of progress report. A really fertile progress report that is living and can have interactive relationships. Blogs indeed could meet the goal of Data-driven education or what I like to call Educational Indy 500 . You have a real record with writing, photographs, self-reflection, podcasts maybe even videos of progress or lack of a student or a whole class. You also have teacher review and peer review of what has been created and presented. Real reflection. Not a number 1-4 that may tell you more about whether the child or the teacher was in a good mood on the day of the test rather than what kind of a job the teacher did, or how much the child has progressed. With a blog as opposed to a one dimensional score 1-4 , you have a picture of what and how the teacher taught, what the child did and thought. Very fertile stuff. You want an initiative that will give your real accountability Al Klein? Go for real public transparency with the classroom, instead of reading first how about blogging first? Take heart educational companies I am sure you can make fortune on this one too.

So, Reasons 4 &5 Accountability and public transparency of a public agency.

Any way I want my A.P. to blog. He is good at his job and I think it will only make him better. If you have any thing to add please do. Why should he blog? Tell me what you think.
[BloggingEducation]
[21stCenturyLearningskills]
[JohnDewey]

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.

A post by Chris Lehman was referenced by Rob Mancabelli at his blog which discusses how much control is necessary for schools to I suppose maintain, well the levels of control and safety they now enjoy.

Wow, is not this an old debate?

(Above a piecie of revolutionary technloogy that transformed society)

I think this gets to the heart of the matter of an age old dilemma in public education, what is public educations ultimate concern in a capitalist democracy? Creating controllable citizens that will help the social-political mechanism continue to function, or creating free thinkers who may challenge in disruptive ways the power structure albeit make great advances for society?

Since this is black history month lets take a look at the history of the evolution of equality in Black America in light of educational controls. Well to begin African – American’s were denied access to Gutenberg’s momentous technological invention of the 15th century, (movable type) the book.

This amazing piece of technology had the ability to connect people, and their thoughts managing knowledge in a new a profoundly efficient way. No wonder It was illegal to teach slaves to utilize this piece of technology. No reading or writing.

Then of course came segregation and the “separate but equal folly” which while a step up from no educaton still proved to be a powerful way to control knowlege and just what race would would have it.

I always find it fascinating how truly ” careful and fearful” we are that free thinking may one day enter into k-12 education.

Education and control, how much? Who owns knowledge? It reminds me of something an uncle of mine would always say.

I had an Italian uncle who was a piano maker. Uncle Dan (Cortaza) he was not much fun. He was pretty ancient when I was a kid, made wine, fought in World War I for Italy, and did not smile that much. One thing that I always remember was what he said every time I visited him without fail and in a commanding voice laced with a thick Italian accent ” Meridith the one thing no one can take from you is your knowledge, it the only thing you ever really own and it is the most powerful weapon. Read, and learn it is all you have and it may save your life” Dower words to say to a 7 year old. They however stuck with me my whole life. Uncle Dan taught me that knowledge is power and who controls it is an important question in any society.

So back to Chris and Rob’s problem, however you phrase the question, how high the walls? how much freedom? Who controls what is taught and learned, the government? the schools? the teachers? the parents? the students?

The read-write web is indeed shaking all of this up just about as much as Guttenbergs invention did 500 years ago. After the book life was never the same, and yes it was better. The book offered a dramatically increased ability to manage, and share information. This had a profound effect on the world and ushered in the Renaissance, the scientific revolution and led to the Age of Enlightenment. So the quesitons are old ones. How much control, perhaps that is not the question that teachers should be concerned with. Maybe the question is in an increasingly connected and yes transparent socieity is control possible the way it was tradtionally enjoyed?

Let me tell you before the book in feudal society a few Kings and religious elders controlled everything, and that was that. It was an autocratic world where power was closely guarded. The advance of the book began to organize men around ideas, and indeed eventually killed feudal society . After the book it was almost impossible to contol people as they had been before.

Pol Pot knew this in Cambodia when he attempted to recreate feudal society, and the controls it had by making the population leave the cities and forcablly recreating peasant farm life. Education had no place in Pol Pot’s plan and in fact an infamous school the former, Tuol Svay Prey High School, was used as a place of draconian torture known as S-21.

Back to the question of control in our world. Rob makes a good point when he says “Online interaction between students, parents and other members of the community have already started and will continue whether the school provides space for it or not. At this time, schools are not deciding if their students and parents will be online, they’re just deciding whether they will be central or peripheral to the online experiences of their community members”

I have no answers Moodle, or some other “safe, controlled service to manage the read-write web in the classroom” is probably beside the point. The issue is one of control and just like with the invention of the book, with the read-write web there has been a dramatic shift in who controls knowledge and it’s access. This is a revolutionary change. and I don’t expect anyone to be too comfortable right now, or”know what to do”. History teaches us that no one is very comfortable during a revolution.

Quick update, and a webcast from FETC . Our school has purchased the November blogging service. We will roll this out formally in the next few weeks. The interesting thing is that we have a few teachers who have already started their own blogs. Like new bloggers they seem excited. Our kids have also started their own Kidsnewsblog, which is just in its infant stages. The idea here is I make them blog about what I want and here they can blog about what they want. I was showing them how to navigate Wordpress dashboard yesterday and most knew how to use this technology because they all have My Space accounts. Not really surprised but again it brings home the point these children in my case ( 4th, 5th, and 6th graders) are using Web 2.0. technologies outside of the classroom. Now to try and get my colleagues to use them inside the classroom.

_uacct = “UA-1297985-1″;
urchinTracker();

Now the tie in between us beginning to blog and what Will and Rob have to say about Web 2.0. technologies . The podcast is interesting they take a look at some creative classrooms that are using blogging and pod-casts to connect students to the larger world. Valuable stuff. What struck me is the points that Rob makes about how to apply this stuff to a larger audience, systemic change whole school districts etc….

I can’t help but think we need leadership on high level for real change to happen. Something Will said about presidential hopeful John Edwards (not that he is a John Edwards fan) , using his blog to run his election in a participatory manner where he responds directly to bloggers queries made me think we need a president who understand this stuff. Elect a president who understands social technologies and their untapped power in education and creates a NCLDC ( No child left disconnected) act.

Rob makes it clear that a Field of Dreams approach will not jive here. The “if you build it they will come” approach to change will lead to nowhere.

He retorts “if you build it but do not convince, A.P.’s principals, Superintendents, etc…of its importance, if you do not make Web 2.0. technologies standards based with quantitative standards, nothing will happen. You will just be left with a green field populated by a few teachers, isolated silos of educational excellence, but no system change.
I can apply this to my own school, things are changing not as fast as I would like perhaps. I would love if our administration would make blogging a requirement, or at least reward bloggers, but things are changing. In part this is due to one of our A.P.’s is in the know about Web. 2.0. technologies, and he is dedicatd to bring about change in this area to our school culture.
Anyway click on the pic below to listen for yourself and post a comment if you like.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 fetc07

I am excited, frustrated, and a little impatient.

We had Alan November at our School in Staten Island on January 13th, and as expected he was terrific. He really connected with our staff. With his permission I will be posting a pod-cast of that session in the near future. If you have never seen Alan speak I suggest you do. He is the ultimate teacher and does something all the really good teachers do, use their natural curiosity to drive their classroom/audience. Good teachers model learner’s curiosity for their students, unafraid of where that may lead . In essence creating the perfect classroom model, good teachers learn with their learners.

Okay so Alan was good.

Our teachers were inspired. Many are now playing with Skype, del.icio.us and Garageband.

Many are now open to seeing their classrooms, and how they teach in new ways. So What Now? How do we keep the momentum going, and just where do we want this momentum to take us?

Our plans are to contract Alan’s company as a blogging service and see where that leads. I myself am looking into some grant writing, to support our endeavors.

I will keep you posted as to how successful we are to try and get a good portion of our teachers running their own blogs, and just how this impacts our small special education school.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 Alan November

Written January 3rd, not posted until the 22nd

Well Maybe not such a big Hello, just Happy New Year. As an educator, I have been faithful to my mission, as blogger less so.

I was just doing my bloglines self assigned reading.  I think I read about 70 tech-ed blogs a week or so.   I was reading what blog guru Will Rich saw as his most important posts of the year. One struck a cord as I look at how faithless I have been to edublogging, Reinvention: I Quit , It was Will’s post on how he quit teaching to write books, present and blog and spend more time with his family.

I don’t know if his post makes me feel better or not. I think in my gut that good teachers, need to be in the classroom, in the schools, etc… So many of them, the good ones leave the classroom, for out of classroom positions or even better district supervisory jobs. I guess we need leaders and perhaps it is impossible to be good at two things at once. Will discusses leaving his job just short of a pension. My cynicism leads me to think presenting must be “lucrative” in order to make such a move.

I met Will at Alan November’s conference (BLC06) last year and he was quite good, I got a lot out of him and his book.

In this coming week I have Alan November coming to talk to my teachers about what classrooms should, could or will look like and anything else that he wants for that matter.

This post is raw and disjointed at best.

A nagging question I have had increasingly is if blogging is so wonderful, and I think it is, and if it is as Will points at very time-consuming how do we get teachers to embrace and actively blog? )It is not like they have a lot of extra time on their hands.)

I am not a gamer at all. I don’t like video games. I could make a sarcastic comment here about how I always found my real life challenging (engaging) enough with unconquerable problems. I did not need simulated problems, that in truth, are easily conquerable. I am not a gamer. That said this is definitely an untapped avenue of learning I need to look at more closely.

Watch the video, I particularly like Henry Jenkins assertion that students” will go to bed not completing there homework because it is “too hard” , but stay up all night if they can’t get past a level on a game platform.” He asserts this is total ‘engagement”. I agree.

But this makes me think of something else we identify as a 21st century skill ’self directed behaviour”. We want self directed learners, citizens, (as we should always remember the real goal of education is to prepare students for citizenship in a democracy, not make a lot of money in a capitalist dictatorship, more sarcasm!!!). Anyway we to develop the trait of self-direction in our kids, who think for themselves, creatively, outside the box and all that nonsense.

But that is not the reality in my school and most schools. The number one trait we encourage for administrators, teachers, and of course students is blind obedience. I know why kids like games past the sexy graphics, lights, bells, whistles and the need for speed. Here what they do finally has power. They are powerful relevant beings in Sim City, Grand Theft Auto, Halo, etc….For a little while they are not kept in the claustrophobic and intellectual sterile confines of classrooms and homework. They get to have power and it might be messy and not be politically correct. What Fun!!

Never forget childhood was an 19th century invention, that protected children from unmentionable horrors , but rendered them completely impotent until they reach legal age. Kids like videogames certainly for the elegants designs filled with violence and speed, but also because there they finally have some power, what they do matters. In real life what kids do has little or no impact on the family survival, or classroom life except when they refuse to play by the rules and remain, obedient and impotent until adulthood sets in. There job is to wait like an indentured servant or apprentice before they can feel like relevant powerful beings. Before they can feel the fire in their belly. Video games make them feel like they and their actions are important.

Reminds me of when a friend of mine became an assistant principal in my school, this was maybe a month later after he started the job. It was cold and we were at dismissal in front of the school. He had I think begun to realize that the “blind obedience” rule applied not only to students and teachers but in many ways mainly to administration. We smiled and he whispered “I can’t wait to get home and play such and such a game”, with a rueful pirate smile. I think it was Grand theft Auto. He wanted power on that chilly day he had spent being a dutiful AP. Aand that is one thing video games give kids’ power’.

In conclusion I am still not a gamer but maybe what I take from this is  I should look at my own classroom, and design my assignments and classroom more like a video game, where students get to have some power, to make choices that have real consequences, maybe a little messy,  and a little less politcally correct.

I am still working my way through k-12 on -line presentations, and I am still impressed by and large. Now to the title of this piece. So just who owns this stuff? There is this guy I read regularly Stephen Downes( me and thousands of other educators) and his take on the K-12 on line conference which was a bit of a dissent from the rave reviews I read everywhere else but his point stated in a piece entitled Selling an idea was interesting. Interesting to me because on a smaller level in my own little special education school I can see this brewing. Who do these ideas belong to? The people who are exposed to them first? The innovators that change them and apply them in creative and imaginative ways? Anyone who lays claim ?

So just who owns this stuff? What stuff? well I guess the all the neat and by and large free tools and applications and the power they make available to teachers and students courtesy of Web 2.0.

By the way this is an old story. This is nothing new people love to be in the “included” in the “in” group, well maybe not Stephen Downes, but most of us. He points out in his article that it is the same group of people laying claim to “ownership” of something that can not be owned or sold. I actually found what he said about the Web 2.0. crowd rather refreshing . Though I am a late comer and can’t claim to own anything I admit I was getting a little tired of all this “positivity” I mean we are teachers, and you know what they can be like.

So who owns this stuff? To me the answer is simple, none of us. No one. It is like trying to own bodhichita or enlightenment. You may be driven by it, identify yourself with it, be part of it, you may even help spread it but you do not own it. The Dalia Lama does not own Buddhism just as the Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler does not own The Friendly order of the Raccoons.

I think that is what being connected may mean for education. No one gets to be “the expert” not even the teacher. That is the point it is shared knowledge. Teachers are so dis-empowered and live in such an “economy of poverty ” when it come to feeling their own power in most school environments.(school administrators for that matter too)that i am not suprised that ownership or rather identification with the idea that ownership is implicit, becomes a question.

And this stuff, as the world gets flatter, and smaller through connection, Well this stuff
It is just not top down . It similar to the Socratic in method, Socrates,( really a hero of mine,
taking poison and all on principle), the best thinker in the bunch posed questions to lesser thinkers and then let them become better thinkers by listening to each other. He was the best listener of all. He knew shared collective knowledge was more important than “an autocratic approach that says I “know” am not I great” bow down to me. He knew that cheerful back slapping had nothing to do with learning or real accomplishment. Maybe the question isn’t if you can sell an idea or who owns it ,but what does this mean for me, my kids, the next generation. I really don’t see anyone who has the answer perfectly worked out to that one just yet, ( though if this were a horse race I would bet Stephen Downes would be one of the front runners) but I am going to keep “listening” and see what comes.

Blogged with Flock

Technorati Tags: k12online06 k12online

Well I have been participating in the K12 Online conference.On and off I am presently listening/watching the movie
Download

I am trying to think of what I like best about this conference, well I though David Warlick was very engaging, not mindblowing at first. But I watched his presentation twice and I have reflected again and again on things he talked about.

I listened/watched David Warlick’s Keynote this morning. Without a doubt it is like no other conference. I had a similar kind of experience at Alan Novmember’s bash in July. I have gone back and re-listened to some of the workshops I attended. Which is the beauty of a conference such as this that is not time-constrained. I choose when I learn. Not new. Tivo for students,but really radical in many ways.

To make a point of these observations. I think I got so much more reviewing the workshops

I attended at Novmeber in the privacy/comfort of my own bedroom. The fact that I can 

go back to this again and revisit, get a

new perspective, when I am relaxed or the mood strikes me is a tremendously powerful teaching tool.

Leads me to 2 points, about online learning in general. Point one, anyone can learn, because you can rewind it as many times as you like so to speak and ” get it right” in your own time frame. Secondly, the “teacher” better have something solid and relevant to share, fluff and druff will not do. Online learning will exist for a long time, so if you have said nothing, you may fool some of the people the first time, but chances are you might not fool them the 2nd time they view it. Wow very difficult for a presenter/teacher, makes you feel a little vulnerable I imagine.

I want to make a few other observations, “the sidetrips” David speaks of is where the true learning has always been, good or maybe the word I am looking for is “great” teachers have always known this. The thing is the internet/information/digital tools, just put this concept of “sidetrips’ into over drive. What it reminds me of is the way scientists work, sure they have a rail, in fact they know every inch of the rail, it is branded into their brains, but that is not “learning” that is memorization, the regurgitation of facts or principles is not learning. Real learning takes place on these “sidetrips” when a teacher/coach says something like okay so you know this. or you have these set of facts at your disposal, now where can you, or do you want them to take you? I had a great teacher who used to say about questions of ethics/history/etc..”who is to say?”, Just who is the “Expert” and then he would bellow,(for a very quiet man) “You, you are to say”. It is your job to go find the truth and be the “expert” This information age we are in or entering is allowing this to happen. Here I am sharing my thoughts with everyone who cares to read. Astoundingly powerful stuff.I am getting ready meanwhile for my schools, mock election one

I have not put the time into this blog and I feel rather guilty about that. So I make a commitment to post at least 3 times a week.

Wait this is beginning to sound like one of those pathetic New Years Resolutions to lose weight or stop fighting with your wife. You know you say it, write it and then you just go on doing as you please.

So why don’t I teacher-blog? Well part of it is because I spend a lot of time on my student blog. That is not the real reason. The real reason is I just don’t make the time for here.

The same reason I am 20 pounds overweight. I don’t make the commitment. So I don’t achieve the goal.

Really that is such a simple principle in education and in life, either you make the commitment or not. No excuses.

I really think the Buddhists put this idea out best in some of the Thai forest Theravada texts. Particularly from the teaching of a wonderful monk from this tradition, Ajaan Chah. I remember one story I always liked that to me made the idea of either you do something or not very clear.

Some westerners if my memory serves me were staying at his forest monetary, the conditions were a little rugged to say the least and they were sweeping around their huts in the sweltering heat and bugs of Southeast Asia.

The point of traveling from Harvard, which is where these gentlemen were from, was I think to get less attached. Thereby freeing up the body and mind to ” have a moment that belonged entirely to itself, not memory, not desire, not physical/mental comfort, or pain for that matter.” A moment in the moment so to speak”.
I don’t know If the venerable Ajaan Chah would agree with my summation of what a forest retreat was “supposed to achieve”, and since he is dead since 1992, I suppose there is no way to really know.

Anyway that is what I think the goal was, less attached to everything, (if it can be said Buddhist monks “have goals”.)

One PHD from Harvard I believe was very distressed sweeping in the heat and suffering obviously. This joyful old monk came up behind the man, smiling, really beaming and said with utter delight, “suffering much? Paused and then broke out in laughter and said ” too bad, too attached”.

And there you have it. Either you work toward your goal, or you don’t.

Not a warm, fuzzy fact but an inevitable one. It seems to me with the amazing inventions the information age offers in full swing, and the freedoms that virtual life offers, that some educators/ students would think maybe things would get easier.

Now this seem like as Homer Simpson would “crazy talk” if you think how the invention of the horseless carriage complicated life for the folk of the last century. Yes the car made more things possible, but it did not make “life easier” if anything I think it made it more difficult.

So there you have it, either I commit to this blog and actually reflect on what I am doing my class or I don’t. You really want something you do it, you may fail, but you do it. Or you don’t.

I think the question I have to answer is the one everyone has to answer, including the PhD’s from Harvard being eaten alive by bugs in the forest, what do you want?
Do I want to self reflect on teaching in this new world or not and share my experiences, as this “sharing” seems to be the greatest good” in this “ delicious/myspace/youtube/google-zon” world.
(Is my ambivalence about all this obvious? I am not completely convinced blogging for bloggings sake is that vital to education, though super-edu-bloggers like Will Rich David Warlick,Alan November or my hands down personal favorite, Stephen Downes, make me think perhaps it is, as I learn so damn much at their digs.)
Well stay tuned, if there is something to stay tuned to, and what I “really want” will be revealed in my action or lack of.