The front page of today’s New York Times features a story about the attempts of Tim O’Reilly and Jimmy Wales to create a set of guidelines for “Web Civility” in the light of what happened with Kathy Sierra and others.
Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship.
Should we feel lucky, I wonder, that a sense of civility has pretty much been the norm in this community to date? Obviously, since most all of our conversations in some way revolve around students, I think this whole process will be important to follow as it plays out.
As if I don’t have enough time to get my first life in order, I’ve been spending a bit of time exploring Second Life of late. As with anything else new like this, it helps to have a mentor, and mine has been Kevin Jarrett (aka KJ Hax) who has been kind enough to take some time to show me some very cool places. (If anyone cares, my SL name is Blogsar Lumpen…don’t ask. And that’s Kevin in the picture, not me. I need a serious wardrobe adjustment. And some hair.) Anyway, there are a lot of people who are putting some serious time into creating education spaces, and some of them are pretty provocative. I’m still waiting to sit in on a live presentation to get the full effect, but the guided tours of a couple of the islands that I took Saturday night were pretty incredible.
Anyway, today Kevin is up at Suffern Middle School in NY getting a first hand look at their use of Second Life.
In a few short hours I will be walking the halls of Suffern Middle School … as well as cruising their teen-created digital world, Ramapo Islands. With Victoria as my guide (she has been there before) today promises great things. I will meet new people (virtually and in person), experience a middle school language arts classroom actually USING SL as an instructional tool, and I will get to see the Ramapo Islands build in detail for the first time. I’ll get to meet Peggy Sheehy, the leader of the SMS initiative. And, I’ll also get to finally meet Victoria (Catherine Parsons in RL) – an educator, mom and Ph.D. student whom I have gotten to know very well with via SL over the past month or so.
So the whole conversation that has developed over the last two days has been another one of those amazing, intellectually stimulating back and forths that I feel extremely privileged to be involved in. Let me just say at the outset that the number of quality, thoughtful comments that have been coming to this blog of late has just blown me away, and I thank all of you for being willing to participate. I can only hope that those contributing or reading are getting as much if not more than I. There is another entire post forming slowly that connects this to the whole Classroom 2.0 idea and some other stuff that’s evolving out of it…but that’s for another day.
Without beating a dead horse, this latest conversation has got me thinking, on a number of levels. First, on how interesting it is to see the nuanced interpretation of what I originally was writing about. Second, on how my own thinking keeps going back and forth as I read through the comments, pushed by people who I respect and admire greatly who have vastly different viewpoints. But ultimately, on how certain snippets, certain phrases push me to bigger insights or questions. I find that whole process incredibly interesting.
So here’s what got me to this post. Liz Lawley, who was one of the people who really helped me understand the pedagogies of these social tools very early on in my reading of blogs, left a couple of pretty challenging comments, which pushed me to think. In the second, she wrote:
Will, debates like this are absolutely a good example of a back-and-forth collaborative learning process. But expecting that people will systematically (a) seek out and (b) find examples of every important theme and its associated points of view is–I think–naive.
The real value of a formal educational process is that all too often “we don’t know what we don’t know”–and so without a systematic structured approach to a complex topic we run the very real risk of not seeing the big picture, and falling into the trap of generalizing from our anecdotal experience.
I hear that, but here are the questions that provokes for me…and they are sincere, not simply meant to start more discussion.
How much of people’s inability to systematically “seek out and find examples of every important theme and its associated points of view” is because we simply don’t teach them to do that in a systemic way from very young ages?
How much of that is because we are so focused on content and not learning, because the system that’s still in place hasn’t shifted at all to keep pace with the fact that we can connect to information and knowledge and teachers on so many new and profound levels?
Can we systematically teach students to “see the big picture” in ways that will allow them to construct their own process that might actually come close to replicating that formal educational process?
Or do those types of potentials only come at a later age or from experiences that cannot be replicated in a K-12 system?
Those may be naive, I don’t know. But what I’m struggling with is how do we re-envision what we do in our classrooms to prepare our students to leverage the potential of the connections now available to (most of) them, connections that have not been available in the past.
And while I know this is a bit of a different topic from the above, I’m not saying that physical space, high-level coursework isn’t going to remain important and in fact relevant for some pursuits. But I’m not convinced that stringing courses together to earn a degree has to remain as the only way to achieve “expertise,” which in an of itself is open to all sorts of different interpretations.
Quote: “A century ago, there was no way to address these concerns, but, thanks to computers and the Internet, we now have rapidly improving tools that will soon allow virtually all young people to master essential material at their own pace, and to do so at any point in their lives. There will probably always be a place for the classroom, but it will be a place where intense and intimate learning takes place with highly willing students, not a step on an assembly line.”
Note: Pretty compelling essay by Robert Epstein that challenges, once again, the traditional beliefs about schooling and learning. It’s getting to the point where I’m either going to have to stop reading stuff like this or put my blog where my mouth is in terms of my own school system…
Attention: This is just a test…and it doesn’t seem to be going to well, in fact. I’m playing with Mojiti, the site that lets you annotate videos with all sorts of cool stuff, including, um…video. (What a concept.) Anyway, when you click play below, you’ll hopefully see Karl Fisch‘s “Did You Know?” video and eventually see me talking over it. Seems there are two of me at some point, so when you hear the second audio kick in, just restart the video and it should work from that point. Take a look:
Let me know what you think of the tool, and, if you actually managed to see and hear the video, what you think of the idea…
Ok, so check it out, dawg…here’s an example of what you can do with the new “My Maps” feature from Google. Go on…go look.
Now, if your head ain’t swimmin’ with ideas like mine is… My children don’t know it yet, but they just became the map makers for all travel related to the Richardson family. (And we just figured out that the whole clan is going to Australia this summer.) I can’t wait to show them this.
I know this isn’t news, but this is the kind of stuff that still gives me butterflies. Stupid, I know. It’s also the kind of stuff that I want to go running into schools with, shouting “Look what our kids can create! Look what they can contribute!”
It’s a great time to be a learner, isn’t it? Very cool…
(And PS…if you haven’t seen this yet, check out Step #19 in the directions Google gives in getting from my town to Stockholm, Sweden where my relatives live…too funny.)
Quote: Educational software, a $2 billion-a-year industry that has become the darling of school systems across the country, has no significant impact on student performance, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Education. The long-awaited report amounts to a rebuke of educational technology, a business whose growth has been spurred by schools desperate for ways to meet the testing mandates of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law. The technology — ranging from snazzy video-game-like programs played on Sony PlayStations to more rigorous drilling exercises used on computers — has been embraced by low-performing schools as an easy way to boost student test scores.
Note: Hmmm. Not sure it’s a rebuke of educational technology as much as the pedagogies of the software, which, I’m guessing, aren’t much beyond how to get the right answer on the test.
Students pursuing a specialization in Social Computing learn to analyze online social interactions, both in online communities and in more diffuse social networks. They learn about features of social computing technologies so they can recognize opportunities to put them to use in new settings and make good choices about alternative implementations.
And this quote from one of the professors is pretty provocative, I think:
The depth of our curriculum in social computing is unparalleled. Rather than a single course as you might find in other programs, we offer a range of in-depth courses in the technologies and applications that are driving the Web 2.0 revolution.
So, does anyone else find this a little ironic? I mean how in the world would this particular degree “certify” anyone as a social computing specialist any better than, um, spending a year or so just actually becoming a part of social learning network, learning from the various teachers and conversations within it, and building a rich, online portfolio that illustrates your ability to be an online community manager, social network analyst, community organizer or any of the other job descriptions they list as possible outcomes? For, um, zero dollars?
And look at the Recommender Systems description as an example:
Recommender systems guide people to interesting materials based on information from other people. A large design space of alternative ways to organize such systems exists. The information that other people provide may come from explicit ratings, tags, or reviews, or implicitly from how they spend their time or money. The information can be aggregated and used to select, filter, or sort items. The recommendations may be personalized to the preferences of different users.
Do we really need a class in this? Might be more effective to head on over to Classroom 2.0 and start your own program.
I’ve said it many times, my blog, my participation in this network is my Ph.D. I know that my own experience won’t fit for everyone else. But how hard would it be to take the descriptions that U of Michigan offers, create a wiki page for each, and begin to find teachers and resources and build networks to create your own classroom “of unparalleled depth” to prepare you for a new, exiting future?
So this started as the “School 2.0” project a couple of months ago, but in light of recent discussions regarding the terminology, I think I’ll rename it to the above. My colleague Rob Mancabelli and I have started working with a number of districts who have begun looking at school change in systemic ways in light of the opportunities this Read/Write Web offers to teaching and learning. A few months ago, I wrote about the initial meeting with one of those districts, and I just wanted to post an update on the process there for those who might be interested.
In January, we had a daylong retreat with district administrators and members from a regional support entity where we talked in broad brush strokes about what we thought this project might become. I was really enthusiastic coming out of that meeting because of the willingness the people in the room had for having honest, sometimes difficult conversations and for the ways in which they looked at this idea not just from a school standpoint but from an entire community standpoint. It was a great start, and I’d urge you to read the original post for context.
Yesterday, we met again, only this time we were joined by representatives of just about every constituency of the district. We had the original members of the school administration and technical support staff as well as the regional group. But we also had a business owner from the town, a representative from a corporation with long roots in the community, a board member, three teachers, someone from the town library, a town councilman, the teacher’s association president, two parents and last, but certainly not least, two students from the district. In all, we had invited 25 people to attend, and all but two made it.
In a few words, it was a pretty amazing discussion. We talked about how these tools are having an impact in many areas of life and society. We tried to imagine the potentials and opportunities they might bring to the school and how those fit with the community at large. We struggled with the limitations of money and the weight of the state test scores that most thought were the number one factor in assessing the effectiveness of the school.
And, in general, we struggled with getting a clear picture of just what “it” is that we want to move towards. Which, in some strange bloggy way, weaves me back to a Tom Hoffman post that’s been floating in my brain for almost a month now. (BTW, I appreciate Tom more than he thinks, I think.) It’s more complex than this, but Tom suggested I was “stuck” because I have “never been willing to place his bets on any existing model of school or education reform.” And that comment moved some molecules in my brain that, in actuality, have helped get me somewhat unstuck. (Thanks, Tom.) Now I’m not saying that this particular district is going to buy into a model of reform that’s already out there, but what I’m realizing in this process is that for now, we have to work within the frame of what schools can become in the current environment, not necessarily some vague idea of what we think they should be.
To that end, this particular group began envisioning what their school and their community could become in the next 3-5 years with a lot of conversation, a lot of support, and a lot of work. I’ll quote here from one of the planning documents they have created in terms of what they see, for now:
A community where the conversation is more about what students are demonstrating than the scores on the test
Where residents have a window into the classroom
A community that can participate in a more global conversation about learning and teaching
A school that is the center of learning for the community
One that has a more open network to the world
One with more opportunities for global learning
One where the desks aren’t in rows
Teachers that have wider learning networks and are excited about new technologies
Teachers that have freedom to learn and feel supported and not fearful
Students that have more freedom to learn and are drivers of their own learning
Students that have more collaborative learning experiences and interactions with the local community
Learning that is centered around essential, big questions
There are more, but that’s a pretty good taste. Again, the thing I find so interesting about this process so far is the depth to which they understand and are talking about the connections that can happen. And that it is a shift not just in the culture of the school but in the community as a whole. It’s very cool.
Right now, the members of the planning committee are looking at what needs to be learned and moved forward in the next 3-6 months. We’re meeting again next month to dig into it some more.
Quote: A different study by Melcrum says that 55% of corporations already have blogs or are planning to within the next 12 months, and 63% plan to be distributing videos on the likes of YouTube. 73% have no plans to use SecondLife. 70% have no guidelines or policies for blogs and other social media, and only 26% were “sure how to monitor what was being said about” them.
Note: The state of the business world. The last part is pretty amazing…like, RSS anyone?
Quote: “When I hear people say it’s our job to create the twentyfirst- century workforce, it scares the hell out of me,” says Chris Lehmann, SLA’s founding principal. “Our job is to create twenty-first-century citizens. We need workers, yes, but we also need scholars, activists, parents — compassionate, engaged people. We’re not reinventing schools to create a new version of a trade school. We’re reinventing schools to help kids be adaptable in a world that is changing at a blinding rate.” –Chris Lehmann
Note: Really nice article in Edutopia on Chris’s work at the Science Leadership Academy.
Today’s New York Times magazine has an amazing look at what it means to be a girl growing up in an affluent, north Boston neighborhood where expectations are high in so many ways and where kids, and families, are struggling to deal with them. As the father of a nine-year old daughter, I read this with a sense of sadness for these girls who, by all traditional measures are getting a “great” high school education but whose motivations are borne more from what they perceive as necessary to achieve as opposed to their true passions. The author, Sara Rimer, just does a great job of chronicling this struggle for the main protagonist in the story, Ester Mobley, whose mother worries that these “amazing girls” will end up with an “anorxia of the soul.”
A couple of passages that really struck me:
And, for all their accomplishments and ambitions, the amazing girls, as their teachers and classmates call them, are not immune to the third message: While it is now cool to be smart, it is not enough to be smart. You still have to be pretty, thin and, as one of Esther’s classmates, Kat Jiang, a go-to stage manager for student theater who has a perfect 2400 score on her SATs, wrote in an e-mail message, “It’s out of style to admit it, but it is more important to be hot than smart.”
“Effortlessly hot,” Kat added.
And if you think that the SAT prep services don’t know a gold mine when they see it:
The test-prep business is booming. Kaplan (“Be the ideal college applicant!”) is practically around the corner from Chyten (“Our average SAT II score across all subjects is 720!”), which is three blocks from Princeton Review (“We’re all about scoring more!”). My First Yoga (for children 3 and up), with its founder playing up her Harvard degree, is conveniently located above Chyten, which includes the SAT Cafe. High-priced SAT prep has become almost routine at schools like Newton North. Not to hire the extra help is practically an act of rebellion.
I’m not sure what the best path for my daughter (or son, for that matter) is, but I’m pretty certain it’s not this. I care less about where (or if) she goes to school and more about what I can do to support her passions. And that’s the question I constantly struggle with…not what she needs to ace her SATs, but how do I help her find those things that she’ll love learning about her entire life? And how can I help instill in her the work ethic to master it, to, as Darren asks of his students, become an expert at it? And how can she get through all of this with a strength and character that is measured by her own standards and not societies? If I can help her get there, the rest will take care of itself regardless of what scores she gets or schools she graduates from.
As if I don’t have enough time to get my first life in order, I’ve been spending a bit of time exploring 
So the 
Ok, so check it out, dawg…
So this started as the “
Today’s New York Times magazine has an