Beyond School

I just left this comment on Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk Blog post entitled “How can we help shape teacher attitudes toward technology?”

Before you read it, don’t get me wrong. I think Ning is a great thing - but, at the risk of sounding like a prig and a purist, I don’t think it’s in the same ballpark as open blogging. And I worry that teachers who mistake these walled blogs (or social blogworks?) for “open range” blogging will never learn the crucial role that Technorati, tagging, hyperlinking, and such play as the “ligaments” of the connectivity that is real blogging. And thus never be able to introduce their students to that experience.

Ning and 21classes and so forth just seem isolated, and isolating, by comparison.

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this. Our in-house staff development day is Wednesday - only four days away - and I’m not yet decided on how I’m going to run my mandatory training session. The Old School instinct says “Direct their learning, decide what they need to know, and make them learn it.” But another impulse says the idea to let them choose the pathway based on their own multiple intelligences, and toward the goal of unlocking their creativity, is the better way.

And a third voice says, “Maybe there’s a Middle Way.” (Can I really lose this opportunity to introduce them to RSS and social bookmarking?)

So here’s that comment:

This is a timely post for me to read, as we’re giving an in-house “Learning 2.0″ conference at my high school in Korea to present what four of us department heads learned at the Shanghai Learning 2.0 Conference.

Since I’m 1/4 teacher, 3/4 tech coordinator for the HS, all teachers have to attend my session. I’m leaning towards the WIIFM ["What's In It For Me?"] approach, but with this twist: I want to test the hypothesis that, if teachers discovered their own creativity, based on the strengths of their “multiple intelligences” profiles, by learning to express that creativity through some “digital art” they don’t know about with iLife or the read/write web, then my hope/hunch is this: their excitement at unlocking their own creativity will gradually trickle down into their instruction.

This is partly influenced by my own discovery of how easy it is, after 20 years of fantasizing about it, to actually do music composition using GarageBand (we just went 1:1 as an Apple Laptop School, so all teachers have MacBooks).

There is talk at my school of “assigning” all teachers to blog on Ning or 21classes, but I’m ambivalent about that. It treats teachers as “students” (or as mere “teachers” instead of humans with unlocked potential), it treats web 2.0 as “homework” (or simply “work”), and worse still, it treats forced blogging on a walled garden as the real thing (those of us who blog know that it goes beyond writing posts on Ning). It also forces writing, when there are so many other modes of expression that some teachers might be more comfortable with. All of that is a recipe for aversion, it seems to me.

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts, though I know you’re enjoying Manhattan right now.

I made a staff development wiki that sorts “digital arts” (activities) into separate “menus” based on the different multiple intelligences that is open to all for editing and using. I’d be curious, again, to hear any feedback on any of the above ramble

Enjoyed the post.

Thoughts? (And Patrick and Anthony, I’m particularly interested to hear your views.)

Photo: Eduardo Amorim

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More from the previous posts. I’m having a lot of fun creating that staff development wiki. The “Digital Arts for Multiple Intelligences” pages are coming along nicely, but unevenly, so your input would be great (thanks, Patrick and Diane!).

I’ve also got a page called “Links to Real World Examples of 21st Century Educators.” I’ve added links myself, but…

…as my high-speed middle school colleague Anthony Armstrong suggests in his recent post, the best way to compile examples of 21st c. classrooms and educators is to invite you all to collaborate and share.

I updated the wiki to include the password (”welcome,” w/o quotation marks), so come on over and add your own classes (or favorite examples from others), and your favorite digital tools for the various multiple intelligences. (And while you’re there, why not take the Multiple Intelligences questionnaire and learn your alleged strengths? 40 quick questions and a cool little graphic is yours. I’d love to hear your profiles in comments

It’s good for all - drives traffic and readership to the classrooms that want them, and gives us all food for thought on how we might approach The Next Thing.

And while you’re at it: there are so many great staff development wikis already out there. Feel free to start a page and add your own, and/or others, for a master list. Why not?

Photo credit: Flickr Tag Network by toby maloy

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UPDATE: The wiki password is: welcome

As promised in an earlier post tonight, I set up the staff development workshop wiki with pages dedicated to web 2.0 and other digital tools best suited to each of Gardner’s eight multiple intelligences.

I hope you’ll agree to two things:

1. This type of organization for web 2.0 / digital literacies and creativities will be useful for teachers and students alike; and
2. There’s no way I can do it better than we can. (C’mon - it’s a wiki. That means it’s open to collaboration!)

It’s straightforward enough: If you know any iLife (okay, or PC) or web-based tool that would be most attractive and fun for the eight multiple intelligences, click on the link for that intelligence and add it! I’ve already started with the Musical Intelligence page, but would love to see your additions to it and all the others.

Need a refresher on those intelligences? They are (with links to their wiki page):

1. Kinesthetic (Body Smart)
2. Logical (Number Smart)
3. Intrapersonal (Myself Smart)
4. Visual - Spatial (Picture Smart)
5. Linguistic (Word Smart)
6. Interpersonal (People Smart)
7. Musical (Music Smart)
8. Naturalistic (Nature Smart)

I really hope some of you will play here!

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…the USA is so free?

More from Save the Internet dot com (and watch the comments for the corporate lobbyists’ responses - they’re apparently paid to find posts like this, hit reply, and leave a tossed salad of obfuscations, red herrings, and straw men. Logic and debate teachers, help yourself to this real-world example.

I’d apologize about being political, but gee, doesn’t democracy sort of demand it? Anyway, my future as a teacher using web 2.0 sort of requires that web 2.0 stays around. Free citizen radio didn’t a century ago - and corporate history is trying to repeat itself.

Here’s the latest from Save the Internet:

Dear Clay,

Tell Congress: Stop the Gatekeepers

You’ve probably heard that Verizon censored text messages sent by the pro-choice group NARAL. They claim it was a glitch. And they feel really, really bad about it.

Sorry, Verizon. That’s not good enough. This is just the latest example in the long list of phone company efforts to block, filter or interfere with the free flow of information over 21st century communications networks.

Take Action: Protect Free Speech Everywhere!

In August, AT&T censored a live webcast of a Pearl Jam concert just as lead singer Eddie Vedder criticized President Bush. AT&T said it was a glitch.

Both Verizon and AT&T illegally handed over private customer phone records to the National Security Agency. The phone companies first denied it and then started a secret campaign with the White House to gain immunity from any lawsuits.

This pattern of abuse shows that powerful phone companies cannot be trusted to safeguard our basic freedoms. The democratic principles of free speech and open communication are too important to be entrusted to corporate gatekeepers. Whether it’s liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, pro-choice or pro-gun, the phone companies can’t pick and choose what messages get through.

Censorship by AT&T and Verizon shows us what we can expect in a future where these network gatekeepers gain control over the free flow of information. Congress must reaffirm its commitment to free speech on the Internet, on cell phones, on our airwaves — everywhere!

Tell Congress: Stop the Gatekeepers

We’ve had it with phony apologies from phone companies. Congress must act now to protect free speech and the free flow of information.

Thank you for all that you do,

Josh Silver
Executive Director
Free Press
www.freepress.net

1. Spread the word. Tell your friends about this important campaign.

2. Support our work by contributing to the Free Press Action Fund today.

3. See what people are saying about Verizon’s recent efforts to block text messaging at the Free Press Action Network and SavetheInternet.com.

4. Read about AT&T’s efforts to cover its tracks after blocking a Pearl Jam live concert webcast and the latest on the phone companies’ secret campaign to stay above the law.

Tell your friends about this campaign at: www.action.freepress.net/campaign/verizon/forward

If you received this message from a friend, you can click here to become a Free Press activist.

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That last post was supposed to report this:

1. Since those first two fragments I composed on GarageBand, I spent a couple or three hours watching Atomic Learning’s GarageBand screencast tutorials (paid subscription required), and they taught me a few things. Most importantly, they taught me how to change the key of different loops and parts of the song so you’re not stuck on one chord the whole time. (You can only go so far on the tonic.) Hint: “Tracks > Master Track.” That’s where you can take that C major tonic chord to the F sub-dominant (the “IV”) and the G dominant (”V”), and voila, instant blues or rock songs. You can do more than that, of course.

2. Wes Fryer showed us his midi keyboard, an M-Audio Axiom 29 model, in Shanghai. I found a dealer here in Seoul, chose to get the 5-octave Axiom 49 plus an Axiom SP-2 sustain pedal (total cost: USD $380 or so), and my soon-to-be better half helped me order it on the phone, and it’s going to be delivered tomorrow. That’s a picture of it, above. See those square black pads on the upper right? They can each be programmed as a different percussion instrument (probably other things too), and are touch-sensitive.

I can’t wait to play with this baby. If any of you are fans of Leonard Cohen’s later works - say, I’m Your Man and on - you know that he has done some beautiful stuff setting voice and lyrics to very simple music tracks. I’d bet money that he didn’t use much more than GarageBand (or something as simple) and a keyboard like mine to make his Ten New Songs cd in 2001.

OMG. I hope the manual isn’t in Korean.

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