USA Today is reporting on a new comprehensive study of elementary school classrooms that is being published in this week’s Science magazine. Aside from not being overly engaged, the study of over 2,500 classrooms showed that “The typical child in the USA stands only a one-in-14 chance of having a consistently rich, supportive elementary school experience.”
Did I mention I have two kids in elementary school? Did I mention I already knew this?
More engaging are some of the nearly 100 comments that the article has garnered due to the new USA Today bloggy style. I didn’t read them all, but I found this one especially charming:
Perhaps the problem is the fact that the formerly drugged up hippies of the 60/70s is the gerneration that are control of not only the government, but also run the colleges, universities and news outlets. These are also the same peace and free love people who do these studies.
Quote: Rather than banning Wikipedia, why not make studying what it does and does not do part of the research-and-methods portion of our courses? Instead of resorting to the “Delete” button for new forms of collaborative knowledge made possible by the Internet, why not make the practice of research in the digital age the object of study? That is already happening, of course, but we could do more. For example, some professors already ask students to pursue archival research for a paper and then to post their writing on a class wiki. It’s just another step to ask them to post their labors on Wikipedia, where they can learn to participate in a community of lifelong learners. That’s not as much a reach for students as it is for some of their professors.
Note: Great essay from Cathy Davidson from the Chronicle of Higer Education. As if:Book points out, here is a scholar defending the value of Wikipedia. Nice to see.
Quote: “TIGed is looking for the best examples of creative, collaborative, technology-rich global learning experiences from students and educators all around the world. We want to hear from you about projects and activities that have opened your students’ or classmates’ eyes to global and local world issues, and the different ways that you have used technology and social networking to achieve this. “
Note: Taking IT Global is a site that is doing some amazing stuff with kids and one that surprisingly doesn’t seem to get a lot of notice out here. Winners of this contest will be announced at NECC.
Quote: “When I step out of school, I have a pretty high-tech
life,” Herrera says. “When I step in school, I feel like I’m not me
anymore. I have to jump into this whole old-fashioned thing where everything is restricted.” –17 year old Randy Herrera
Kevin Jarrett points to a cool new tool to use with Flickr called Splashr! Outputs your photos by username or tag into any number of different slideshow formats, and then creates a link to the slideshow itself that you can share out or put on your own page. See Kevin’s presentation on Second Life as an example.
The focus groups also revealed victims refuse to tell an adult about the abuse because they fear they will be punished in order to be protected.
“They’re scared that their parents will take away their computer privileges,” Mishna said.
Oy.
I keep imagining what the parents of those girls would think if they heard that. And this is, I think, more about parenting than anything else. And it’s about how we act. What we do teaches our own kids volumes more than what we say.
I won’t speak for other parents, so here’s what I’ve set as my own path for helping my own kids deal with the inevitabilities of this extremely complex and wide-ranging social issue.
Talk to my kids about what bullying is.
Start conversations about how to deal with being bullied.
Help to empower them to stand up for themselves and others.
Point out bias and objectification when I see it.
Point out gratuitous violence when I see it.
Point out victimization when I see it.
Model appropriate responses to inappropriate contacts or content.
That post about superintendent transparency, I mean. I’m not gonna delete it. But to be honest, it felt forced. And the thinking felt thin.
I shouldn’t have put it up.
And then I saw Stephen’s pointer to this. Deadly transparency? Not good.
At some points, this all gets too complex for my feeble brain. What exactly are we to make of all of this? I know how powerful it’s been for me, in my own life. But at every turn, what I hear are mountains of reasons why it’s not gonna work. Why we can’t. Why we shouldn’t.
Ultimately, this isn’t about blogging and Web 2.0 as much as it is about a culture, an anger, a fear that these tools make writ large. That’s the thing. It should be about learning. Instead it’s about the disruption.
Wired’s theme for April is all about radical transparency and how it plays out for business, but I couldn’t help reading it by what it might mean for education. I think one of the biggest pushes for schools with all of this is the whole idea that transparency can be a good thing. Yeah, it can be messy, and it’s going to make life more difficult from time to time. But the long term benefits are worth the short term problems.
Clive Thompson’s feature on “The See-Through CEO” challenges the traditional thinking about this in a number of ways. (Interestingly, he invited readers to help write the story by posting updates to his blog in the process.) And it’s a huge shift, this idea that “turning everyone into a partner in the process and inviting them” to poke around and complain in the open is a good idea. But as the article points out, many businesses, from Microsoft to Southwest Airlines to online shoe retailers I’ve never heard of are slowly (or in some cases quickly) pulling back the curtains and letting people inside with very positive results.
And so I’m wondering whether a “See-Through Superintendent” might play. I know some of the high-profile attempts at superintendent blogging have gone down in flames. But in schools, this would be more than just a blog. It would be a culture shift that would attempt to open both internal and external communications and build collaborative environments.
First, as the article implies, shouldn’t superintendents be working toward districts where “the more you know us the more you’ll like us” tenet applies? I mean, if we are being transparent in our work, in our decision making process, and we are sincere in our efforts to bring others into the conversation, our constituents will be more forgiving of those “everyday snafus.” And second, if we are communicating more and interacting more, we can actually gain leverage over those who may want to disrupt or disparage what we are trying to do, assuming, once again, that what we are trying to do is in the best interests of students.
Not to mention that at the heart of this is creating models for our students to look to and learn from.
Jeff Felix of UC San Diego is doing research for his Ed.D. and sent along this request:
If you are a teacher who uses a blog in the classroom, please join your peers and take a short, simple survey! This survey will help other teachers to better understand the powerful benefits of blogging with their students. It will also help them avoid many of the travails that you went through! Take the survey now; it will take less than 10 minutes! Click here to take the survey.
Citizendium, the “project, started by a founder of Wikipedia [which] aims to improve on the Wikipedia model with accountability and academic-quality articles as cornerstones of its work” goes live in beta today. They have 180 expert editors and 800 authors that have already worked on 1,000 articles. They also have “constables” which are:
friendly, hard-working folks who make sure the community runs smoothly. If you break a rule, a constable might gently tap you on the shoulder and explain what’s wrong. Constables make decisions solely about behavior, not about content, which is the domain of editors.
Here’s an essay by founder Larry Sanger as to why he thinks Citizendium, depite the name, will succeed. I’d like to participate, but unfortunately right now I don’t have a “non-free” e-mail address which is a requirement to be accepted.
I’ll be interested to see how things go here. What happens after the first sign of misinformation or vandalism???
So my online geekiness entered a new phase this week as I signed up for a Verizon broadband wireless account. I did it for a couple of reasons, first and foremost that I’m really tired of paying anywhere from $8-$10 an hour for wifi in airports and hotels and wherever else, and secondly to be able to get work done whenever I get a chance. I have to say that it’s already made me feel different about the world. Now I know that sounds weird (as in “Like, get a life already!”) But it is a different head to know that I can now really get online with my computer almost anywhere I am.
Take yesterday, for instance. I got stuck coming home from the Westhampton School District on Long Island on the most lovely Belt Parkway and it took me two hours to travel the nine miles from Kennedy Airport to the Verrazano Bridge. Was the most productive nine miles I’ve ever spent in a car after I popped in the USB card and got four bars the whole way. (Don’t say it.)
I was ready to pop it in again today as I had to wait for about six hours while Tess participated in a pony club quiz-a-thon or something up here in the Poconos. But the good news was, much to my astonishment, the place we’re at actually has free wi-fi. What a concept.
Anyway, I wonder how long it will be before this isn’t so amazing.
There’s no doubt another post that needs to come out the 50 or so comments on in the most amazing previous thread. But for now, the one that’s really got me shaking my head is Karl’s report that his Did You Know? video has been viewed over two million times. Now I know that’s a rough estimate, and that we don’t really know what “viewed” means. But you have to look at that at just think “Oh. My. Goodness.”
A couple of stories: The other day I get an e-mail from our friend who is our school board president titled “An Item of Interest.” Guess where the link led…
Yesterday in a workshop I was giving, a staff developer told me they had shown Karl’s video at a staff meeting. The reaction? “Blown away.”
Rob told me a few weeks ago that he had shown it at a faculty meeting at my old school. Same response.
So what does it mean? Obviously it’s hard to say. Certainly, Karl’s video has no doubt gone viral, which is the first time something like that’s happened in this community, I think. It’s probably done more to set the table for the “big” conversation that just about anything else we’ve collectively done. And it’s certainly done much to bring people into our world.
Last night I got the chance to spend a couple of hours with about 20 graduate students in education at a pretty large school here in New Jersey during a class they are taking in educational technologies. We ended up talking about a lot of the shifts that are occurring right now, the tools, and the challenges that face them as they enter the profession. Now, I was really impressed with the level of the conversation and the sincere questions that they shared. But I was also struck by how much of a reality check it was for me, at least.
The general sense from the group was “yeah, but” once again. Yeah, but we have these kids who are going to abuse these technologies if we open them up. Yeah, but we’re going to be out there on our own if we decide to use these technologies. Yeah, but I don’t have enough time to make this a part of my own practice. Yeah, but, etc. (And please, if any of those in attendance are reading this, feel free to chime in.) At one point I said something along the lines of “you know, there’s a lot of pressure on you in my circles because many people think nothing is going to change until the old guard retires out and you guys take over.” Well, that didn’t float very well. I got the sense that most didn’t want to accept that challenge or felt it was just too daunting. And at another point, after going through a list of reasons why using these ideas were going to be difficult, I said “yes, but you know there is nothing stopping you from changing the way you learn.” Not sure how well that went over, either
I don’t mean to come across as disparaging to any of these students. You could tell they were by and large smart and sincerely interested in the discussion. But I guess I was hoping for more, though I’m also not entirely surprised I didn’t get it.
One other thing. A couple of them noted that this one class (which was an elective, by the way) was the only (stress…ONLY) time in their grad program that they had talked about technology in a pedgogical sense.
As much as I want it to be otherwise, the reality here is that we’re just not getting it done on so many levels.
Quote: SplashCast enables anyone to create streaming media ‘channels’ that combine video, music, photos, narration, text and RSS feeds. These user-generated channels can be played and easily syndicated on any web site, blog, or social network page. When channel owners modify their channel, their content is automatically updated across all the web pages ‘tuned’ to that channel.
Note: Via George Siemens…another tool for presenations but with more sophistication, it appears.
SplashCast enables anyone to create streaming media ‘channels’ that combine video, music, photos, narration, text and RSS feeds. These user-generated channels can be played and easily syndicated on any web site, blog, or social network page. When channel owners modify their channel, their content is automatically updated across all the web pages ‘tuned’ to that channel.
I actually had a couple hours in a car recently and for some reason I popped on the the TED presentation by author Charles Leadbeater from a couple of years ago. It’s a pretty interesting talk about the struggle between open and closed organizations that has a lot of relevance to schools. This’ll be a bit sketchy, because I was taking notes while driving…yikes! But anyway…
He asked a great question at the beginning…How do we organize ourselves without organizations? We really don’t need an organization to be organized any longer, or at least it doesn’t have to look like a traditional organization. But if that’s the case, then the ability to creatively self-organize is huge in this world. And we’re talking about a whole host of different levels here…from an information standpoint, business, learning. There is an independence that is available to us now if we want to seize it, which I think is a big question in how this all progresses from a school change standpoint.
He also made a point that collaboration is highly creative, and said that more and more, the inventors of things will not be able to say what their inventions are for. It will be worked out in collaboration with users. That’s been true with SMS, MySpace and bunches of other tools that have ended up being powerful for much different reasons than their original intent.
Another quote: “Big corporations have an inbuilt tendency to reinforce past success.” (Read: education.) It’s very difficult for them to spot what is emerging, and yet “emerging markets are the breeding ground for passionate users.” I love that last bit.
At any rate, these open new systems are causing a huge struggle. The closed are threatened by the open and do whatever they can to stifle these new structures. It’s about control. And no one really knows how that struggle plays out. But Leadbeater says the end result will be somewhere in between open and closed. There are new organizational models coming about, mixing closed and open in tricky ways. Those models can be powerful and those that can understand them will be incredibly successful.
He finished with a great point: Imagine you took all the children currently in school and had one percent acting as co-developers of education, creating and publishing materials. What would that do to our educational system? Imagine the potential in that.
So my online geekiness entered a new phase this week as I signed up for a Verizon broadband wireless account. I did it for a couple of reasons, first and foremost that I’m really tired of paying anywhere from $8-$10 an hour for wifi in airports and hotels and wherever else, and secondly to be able to get work done whenever I get a chance. I have to say that it’s already made me feel different about the world. Now I know that sounds weird (as in “Like, get a life already!”) But it is a different head to know that I can now really get online with my computer almost anywhere I am.