Speech Outline

If you just want to watch my recent keynote address in Australia — which, as farce would have it, turned into two addresses — just click on the screenshots of each speech below. But I hope you read the little mock-heroic back-story.

Learning Technologies 2009 Keynote, Part 1: Click image to view.

The Missing Link: Texas Politics Distorts US Textbooks
(watch before Speech Part 2. Slide to 5.15 for the kicker)

Learning Technologies Keynote Part 2 (click image to view)

~

Prologue: On Time and Other Thieves¹

Anybody as oblivious to the passage of time and calendar pages as I am knows it can be a source of both bliss and embarrassment: bliss because the hours and days are so damned interesting you don’t have time to notice them; embarrassment because some of those hours and days demand your notice — or else there’s hell to pay.

Common examples: birthdays, anniversaries, blasted holidays.²

Less common: the keynote speech I gave to the Learning Technologies 2009 Conference in Mooloolaba, Australia, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, recently — d’oh! — not so recently: last November. It’s time to share it, reflect on it, and say thanks. Where does the time go?

~

The Story of the Speech: A Farce

Exposition: Seth Godin as Textbook

I’ve given smaller presentations before at various schools, at the Apple Distinguished Educators Institute in Bangkok a few years ago, and so forth, but they were always in-house. But this one was by special invitation and, cooler still, for the keynote of the final day. I’ve never given a keynote before, and wanted to rise to the occasion with my best creative effort.

But I had other, more important reasons for wanting to do well: I wanted to use the speech to teach my students. The invitation came in September, at the very time that I had assigned my Western Civ and Chinese history students to give “creative speeches” of their own. As you’ll see if you watch the speech, I had tossed out the ’schooly’ approach to oral presentations — you know, the Death by Droning Powerpoint  — and replaced it with a different “textbook” for speeches.

That “different textbook” was online. It was TED Talks. More specifically, Seth Godin’s talk “On Standing Out.” Here it is:

I showed this Talk to all my classes in the first week of school and, in a nutshell, told them that the closer they got to Godin’s delivery and slide creativity, the closer they got to an “A.” It resulted in the best time I’d had watching student presentations in my entire decade of teaching. Not all the students rose to the challenge, mind you. But those that did proved the value of the attempt in spades.

Good for the Gander

So I figured I’d be a good egg and put my money (and reputation) where my mouth was for my students: I’d give my own “Godinesque” presentation³ in Australia and, knowing it was to be filmed and put online, share the link so they could learn, along with me, whether my TED/Godin evangelism had real-world merit, or was just the latest example of teacher BS. They’d get to see me walk the tightrope without a net, and judge for themselves.

Damned Clocks, Blasted Calendars

There was a small problem. I was already drowning in the waves familiar to all teachers in their first year at a new school — above all,  creating curriculum and syllabi from virtual scratch (I didn’t like the textbooks). I didn’t have a lot of mental space for crafting a speech on something as far afield from that teacher-head terrain as the conference’s theme: “The Power of You.” My head was in the Power of History.

I burnt the candle one night brainstorming an outline for the thing, wrestling the whole time with my confusion over that most important question for any communicator: Who, exactly, is the audience? I couldn’t tell if it was teachers, administrators, corporate types; if they were already techie born-agains, or phobic techie infidels. I muddled on anyway, and saved the file for later.

The next time I looked at the calendar it was the Friday a week before the conference. I didn’t have a single slide.

The Pleasures of Masochism

My long-suffering wife of a workaholic listened to another apology that I had to work through another weekend, and watched me slink off into my office/doghouse. I fired up the by-now old outline I’d banged out, looked at it, and promptly deleted that four hours of late-night work. My head was in the Roman Republic back then, and now it was in the Late Medieval period. I had other things to say now. Our classroom had long since moved on from the student presentations to discussions of the “key concept” of “civilization” and its textbooky “five characteristics,” and I wanted to prove to my 15-year-old charges that this bit of schooly knowledge could be put to good real-world use, done critically and creatively. Plus, our class time-travels, since I’d made that outline, had covered an additional 1,500 years of memorizing one damn fact and name after another for ninth-grade tests and essays, and I wanted to demonstrate ditto for those schooly testable items — wanted to show them that knowing history can be golden when arguing in public for a real cause.

The Madness of Blog-Mining and Flickr-Fishing

Then something beautiful happened. Read the rest of this entry »

1. “Time and other thieves” lifted from lyrics of Joni Mitchell’s “Furry Sings the Blues,” from the (near-perfect) Hejira album [↩]
2. David, one of my all-time favorite students — whose work you’ll see featured in the speech — told me last week he’d found the perfect coffee mug for me from the Onion website. The cup reads, “I hate whatever today is.” [↩]
3. I actually use that phrase in class [↩]

Supporters:
Looking for US History textbooks? Visit ValoreBooks, a marketplace that aims to provide cheap textbooks.

Now that I’ve left schooling, it’s wonderful to explore things for teaching. Case in point: Annenberg Media / Learner.org’s A Biography of America series.  It’s an astonishingly media-rich 26-part series – count ‘em, 26 half-hour PBS episodes featuring leading US historians, plus transcripts of each episode, plus interactive maps, photos, primary sources, and more for each episode – that covers US history from pre-Columbian times to the present.  And it’s free.

(Click screenshot for full-size view, including “chapter” headings.)

Can somebody remind me why, with free online resources like this, schools are spending tens of thousands of dollars on short-shelf-life textbooks, often dumbed-down and intellectually neutered (or worse, downright propagandistic)  due to the textbook industry’s fear of alienating their biggest markets in conservative Texas and California?

[Update: I should have mentioned that the US History resources are only one example of Learner.org's offerings. They have full-year courses in just about every subject area imaginable, k-college, plus professional development courses for teachers. Browse them here. Amazingly good use of US tax dollars at work via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.]

Here’s an 8-minute promo movie I made for my school over the last few hours. I share it in case anyone wants a resource that talks through a couple of class projects we did last year in my grade 9 history and English classes - and shamelessly boasts about how special my school is for being the first 1:1 Laptop School in Korea.

The first project is “A Broken World,” a student-created wiki textbook and companion whole-class reflective blog about world history from World War I to World War II and the outbreak of the Cold War. (There’s lots of frustration in the sphere right now about blocked sites in schools, so this might be a useful demonstration of how valuable YouTube, wikis, and blogs are for enhancing creativity and learning.)

(By the way, I’ve been scratching my head lately about what to do with that Broken World wiki textbook. It’s really good stuff, and I’m proud of my students for making such an impressive resource. It seems a shame to just abandon it like one of Graham Wegner’s “learning jalopies” or some piece of digital flotsam. Anybody have any ideas of how to put it to use? I’m open to others fact-checking, extending, editing, using, donating, whatever. I just feel like there’s some experimentation possible here on how to put the “legacy products” we so easily talk about in the theoretical to the much-harder-to-pull-off practical use. In other words: help?)

The second project shown in the video is the first annual 1001 Flat World Tales flat classroom writing workshop on Wikispaces: 130 students at my school, Chris Watson’s school in Honolulu, and Michele Davis & Karl Fisch’s school in Denver. The promo walks through not only the wiki, but the (damnably) still-under-construction but worth-a-peek anyway 1001 Flat World Tales blog and website, featuring the prize-winning stories selected by our international student editorial board, plus author profiles, author podcast readings, editor profiles, student testimonials, and more.

Those student testimonials are highlighted in subtitle bars on the movie, which might be effective for persuading your admin to unblock these sites, again.

I really went over the top promoting my 1:1 Apple Laptop School as being “on the 21st century map,” since the point of the thing is to entice parents to send their kids to my school. It might produce a motivating jealousy in your own admin or school board to go 1:1 so they have such bragging rights themselves.

Or maybe the thing’s just a piece of junk. You tell me. (If nothing else, I got some iMovie practice out of it. Still trying to hone those skills.)

(And if you click on the video, by the way, it’ll take you to my AP Literature class Ning, which is open to the public. Sylvia Martinez of the Generation YES blog, and Diane Cordell of Journeys have both joined my students for literary discussions in the forums. You’re welcome to come inside yourself. Interesting talks about “schooliness” and literacy in there.)Find more videos like this on KIS AP Lit 07-08

Unknown News | Lies from the Bush-Cheney administration

• Partisan? Yes. But also supported by documentary evidence. Could be a resource for Animal Farm, etc. Squealer doesn’t only symbolize Stalinist distorters of the truth, after all.–Clay
  

Political News, Blogs, Humor featuring Republicans, Democrats, Independents and More

• For social studies and contemporary issues teachers looking for a site representing a wide spectrum of positions on US political issues. I can see students using Scenemaker to clip segments from the videos on this site for “quotes” in essays they write about contemporary political issues.Useful for teachers who find one-stop shopping for balancing viewpoints a hassle.
  –Clay
  

Nag Hammadi Library

• It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Nag Hammadi Library for an understanding of the many interpretations of Jesus and Christianity before the Roman Catholic Church–and Imperial Roman police–violently destroyed them. Many of these original Christian texts bear more resemblance to Buddhism than to contemporary Christian belief.

  This website has translations of the early Christian texts that were buried in the 4th Century CE to preserve them from the destruction of the first great book-burning in European history. Essential for religious studies, European history, and informed religious discourse today.

  From the website:

• The Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of thirteen ancient codices containing over fifty texts, was discovered in upper Egypt in 1945. This immensely important discovery includes a large number of primary Gnostic scriptures — texts once thought to have been entirely destroyed during the early Christian struggle to define “orthodoxy” – scriptures such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Truth.

  The discovery and translation of the Nag Hammadi
  library, completed in the 1970’s, has provided impetus to a major re-evaluation of early Christian history and the nature of Gnosticism. Readers unfamiliar with this history may wish to review the brief Introduction to Gnosticism and the Nag Hammadi Library provided here, as well as an excerpt from Elaine Pagels’ excellent popular introduction to the Nag Hammadi texts, The Gnostic Gospels.
  

Just a quick note to say that this blog has been preempted by end-of-year duties such as:

• assessing (and overseeing publication of) the 1001 Flat World Tales (more soon: student reflections from Hawaii and Seoul already done, and Denver hopefully soon to follow; after that, teacher reflections)
• assessing and polishing the Broken World wiki-textbook with my history class
• assessing and responding to the mountain of blog-posts in English and history
• prepping final exams and lessons

I imagine most teacher-bloggers have similarly pulled back from blogging in these final weeks.

And I imagine any of them who have been experimenting for the first time with integrating the read-write web in the classroom have, like me, a lot of sorting out going on in the silences.

After finals, I’ll be back with attempts to share my lessons learned. It’s been an interesting ride.

Phuket sunset
Originally uploaded by rosswebsdale.

Nothing like an illness to clear your head. Mine taught me a lesson in balance. I’ve been so fascinated by the possibilities of our sci-fi educational reality that I’ve forgotten to take care of myself well.

It’s also a good time for silence in other ways. Things are slowing down, getting calmer. Thank Goodness.

Chris in Honolulu, Michele in Denver, and I are wrapping up our first 1001 Flat World Tales workshop (more on that when the student publishers choose the first stories for the “blook” in a few weeks).

The World War I to World War II online wiki textbook my history students are making is coming along nicely, and since they are lecturing for at least 75% of each class session, I’m more of a coach than a teacher (you can see their lectures on the wiki, since we filmed and embedded them–come back next month to see them try again with a second lecture, and we’ll see how this improves their presentation and speaking skills).

The endless 1:1 planning meetings with my admin are also winding down, and I’m waiting, with everyone else, to hear what the business department and owner finally decide. (Which gives me time to catch up on my grading.) Bless them for having the sense to include a teacher in these discussions.

The student blogging Grail still evades but still beckons. Let it. I can’t push the river.

And I’ve taken a break from my RSS subscriptions, from reading edublogs (at least reading so many), and from constantly holding my laptop to hold other things instead. Things like books, and EunJeong’s hand.

It’s nice to be reading again: Harvard historian of religion Elaine Pagel’s Adam, Eve, and the Serpent is a fascinating look at the culture wars between pre-Church Christians concerning sexuality, the body, and gender politics. It’s my second Pagels this year. During Chusok (the Korean Thanksgiving, Buddhist/Taoist style) I read her Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, along with ex-minister and New Testament Greek professor Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ: Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity?, and learned how much closer to Buddhism and other advanced viewpoints early Christianity was, before Roman Imperial politics put an end to all of that. So Adam, Eve, and the Serpent continues this jag for me. I’ve got Pagel’s The Origin of Satan, another historical study of early Christian thought and politics, waiting after that. It all fascinates me. I wish I knew more Christians–any, actually–who it fascinates as well. All the amazing discoveries we’ve made about Christian history due to the Nag Hammadi Texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other pre-Catholic writings burned by the victorious Roman Church, yet nobody reads them. (Or even bothers to consciously read their Bible, for that matter.) It’s a shame. “The Christianity that was, but is no more” is a Christianity far superior to the current brand, in my book. (DaVinci Code fans, there’s more history there than pop churches are comfortable to admit. Again: fascinating.)

But enough of unsolicited book recommendations.

I’m really just writing to say that I’m off to Thailand for a nine-day Spring Break. No computers, no students, no “Mr. B.” Just a guy with a backpack full of books and a snorkel, looking forward to reconnecting to more elemental things.

See you on the flip-side.

Confession: I’m behind in my unit planning for history. I’m doing too much administrative stuff to stay abreast of my course-work.

But an interesting thing just happened. Faced with a history class in 2 hours and no unit plan for World War I to World War II, I found myself setting up a new Wikispace–”A Broken World“–and designing a project for a student-created online textbook, complete with embedded student video lectures and Skypecast interviews with academic experts–and it took me all of 30 minutes.

I really think that this project will be self-sustaining for the next three weeks or so, requiring little further planning for me.

I also think the students will learn much more, and enjoy that learning more as well, than if I had created discrete lessons for the whole unit.

This is only my third or fourth wiki project. The French Revolution Wikipedia and Ant Farm Diaries was, judging by student feedback, a success–but an imperfect and exhausting one for us all. The 1000 Flat World Tales creative writing workshop for my English class has also been engaging for students and teachers, but again, high-maintenance (we’re working those bugs out, though).

But this online textbook wiki? It seems like a new plateau in simplicity and design. I hope I’m not deceived. Take a snoop and tell me what you think–and steal at will (though be a nice thief and let me know how things go, and any improvements you make).

W3Schools Online Web Tutorials Annotated

Excellent tutorials to self-teach HTML, XHTML, CSS, PHP, AJAX, and more. Who needs a college course when you can study here for free?

* * *

FresnoBee.com: South Valley: Corcoran sees success with its laptop program Annotated

A California school discusses improvements in student learning after going 1:1. Show this to parents.

Draft budget forecasts laptops in lieu of books – Nashville, Tennessee – Tuesday, 03/06/07 – Tennessean.com Annotated

More schools getting “beyond textbooks.”

Issue ~ AALF (Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation): 1:1 Pedagogy Annotated

Good resource for the pedagogical shifts required for teaching in 1:1 schools.

1-to-1 and Pedagogy		01 Mar 200

The March Newsletter Started the Dialogue… What’s Your Contribution?

01 March 2007:In the March 2007 AALF newsletter, One-to-One, AALF president Bruce Dixon and AALF members Lorrie Jackson and Michael Valentine provide critical essays on 1-to-1 and pedagogy. As the first part of a two-part topic, we wanted to open the issue up to all AALF members: What’s your opinion on this month’s essays?

The LoTi Connection Annotated

Assessment tool for teacher computer pedagogy and literacy.

Nancy Updike: Better Writing Through Radio Annotated

• Excellent writerly discussion of podcasting (radio).
  – post by cburell

Bionic Teaching » 1:1 Programs and Expectations Annotated

This teacher understands how 1:1 projects can be abused without pedagogically trained teachers.

Education World ® Technology Center: One-To-One Computing: Lessons Learned and Pitfalls to Avoid Annotated

Good overview of lessons learned.

1 Laptop : 1 Student: Macbook Yeas and Woes Annotated

A teacher evaluates MacBooks in his grade 6 1:1 classroom.

For all the beauty that is the Macbook, I have some thoughts from the front lines of probably the most brutal users. The brutal users you ask? Sixth graders.

Yeas
1. Speed – The Macbook is fast. Way fast. Compared to a G3 or G4 there is no comparison
2. Keyboard – The keyboard has held up very well. I have only had to service one Macbook with a keyboard problem (the space bar popped off).
3. Rubber feet – The rubber feet have held up very well. No issues with feet missing.

One-to-One Information Resource Annotated

Good clearning house for info on 1:1 initiatives in the US.

Life-Long Computer Skills (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox) Annotated

Good framework for teaching 21st century literacy skills.

The Korea Times : Digital Textbook to Debut Next Year Annotated

The Korean Ministry of Education goes “beyond traditional textbooks.” Who says Korea fears being unconventional? (I do–but this contradicts me. Good.)

Learning is Different (Australia 1:1 website for parents) Annotated

Excellent video of Australian 1:1 school’s students reflecting on 1:1 learning (with MacBooks).

FAQ (Australia 1:1 website for parents–excellent) Annotated

Warranty, cost, lease, parent complaints, justification for Mac choice, more in this outstanding FAQ page.

Welcome (Australia 1:1 school) Annotated

Australia school’s community outreach website for its 1:1 initiative. Excellent site

Recommendations (FL 1:1 report, appendix) Annotated

A summary of the entire report. This is an excellent blueprint for launching a 1:1 school. I will not add annotations to this page, but it should be bookmarked and studied. It summarizes all aspects of a 1:1 launch.

Benefits (FL 1:1 report, appendix) Annotated

Costs (FL appendix, 1:1 roll-out) Annotated

Includes “Total Cost of Ownership” factors: savings by less paper and printing costs, using free online content instead of textbooks, etc.

Costs

Technical Support

The most cost-effective method of technical support is a three-tiered approach in which problems are taken care of at the lowest level possible. In this way, support costs are kept down and laptops are returned to service more quickly than if every problem is sent off to a specialist for repair.

The first tier is the end-user. Both students and teachers should receive a short training in trouble-shooting and problem-solving frequently encountered glitches. Students, teachers, and parents must be provided with training that includes basic operation, troubleshooting, and proper care of the laptop.

Some schools have also implemented effective student help programs. Students who have an interest and aptitude for problem-solving are given the opportunity for extra training and responsibilities in a laptop program. Noted one middle school tech assistant, “I’ve learned something new every day that can help me have a good career. I’ve gained confidence from having the responsibility for all the equipment, and having students and teachers count on me. It’s a good feeling to help teachers with computers, and to get noticed in a large school.” With effective teacher and student training, many technical difficulties can be averted or solved, thereby freeing the second tier to concentrate on more difficult issues.

School Networks

Throughout this report, the Task Force has recommended the use of tool-based software in support of project-based learning rather than a reliance on a commercial integrated learning system (ILS). That recommendation is based on pedagogical considerations, but there are also technical advantages. With an ILS, students are often all trying to hit the same server at the same time. All requests have to be routed to a central school, district, or Web server causing steady traffic across the entire network. If students are engaged in project-based learning, there can be much collaboration and filesharing as projects are created and turned in to the teacher, but if the network is properly configured, all of the traffic among students and with the teacher is handled locally without impacting the entire network. The other common cause of network capacity problems appears to be the indiscriminate use of the Internet. Using the Internet is an important 21st century skill that is essential in many teaching situations. However, it is not uncommon for a school to implement a laptop program and not give their faculty sufficient training in using cognitive software tools with students. In some of these cases, the majority of student laptop use consists of surfing the Internet without much direction. This can result in a severe strain on the school network. Rather, the Task Force recommends that teachers embrace project-based learning with technology, which requires only a short amount of time doing targeted research on an assigned problem. The majority of the time is then spent in writing, designing, and producing a product–activities that do not require network access.

If a laptop initiative is careful not to create excess network traffic by these means, many schools will find that they will need only modest additions to network capacity that can be accomplished without exorbitant expenditures. Although the cost to upgrade a school network will vary from school to school based on existing capacity, building construction, and floorplan, the following can serve as examples of the cost involved.

School “A” has 1000 students in 40 classrooms where each classroom already has at least two network drops per room, however, most of the existing network is running at the older speed of 10 MB/sec. This school would be able to upgrade their network with a new router, five new switches, and 60 wireless access points for under $10,000. This expenditure of less than $10/student would provide a wireless environment in every classroom and instructional area, as well as the surrounding grounds.

School “B” has the same number of students and classrooms, but has already upgraded their network to 100 MB/sec, a speed which is available in many Florida schools. This school would only need to purchase the 60 wireless access points at a cost of approximately $5,000 or about $5/student to provide wireless access throughout the school and surrounding grounds.

These examples show how adding wireless capability to an existing school network can dramatically expand its usefulness without, in many cases, incurring the high costs of running additional cable throughout the school.

Digital Content

The Task Force has recommended that teaching and learning in schools move away from teacher-centered, textbook-driven methods to student-centered, project-based learning. This shift would substantially reduce the need for textbooks whether in print or electronic format. (A textbook merely ported to an electronic format is not a shift to project-based learning. Electronic texts are a digital means of doing the same thing we have done before and will not lead to educational reform.) Unlike textbooks, online collections of digital content can easily be updated and can be expanded by contributions from many sources.

For example, all Florida students currently study Florida history, typically in fourth grade. There are 179,000 fourth grade students in Florida’s schools. The current adopted textbook is priced at nearly $40 so it costs Florida schools over $7 million to supply a textbook for every fourth grade student in the state. However, a free online resource for Florida history has already been created with a Technology Literacy Challenge Fund grant. “Exploring Florida” is on the web at http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/. It has over 70 reading passages that include “FCAT-like” question sets, plus a collection of copyright-free multimedia resources students can freely explore and incorporate into their own projects. Thousands of historic and contemporary Florida photographs, 2,800 Florida maps, virtual reality movies, 3-D stereoview photographs, as well as movie and music clips, are all available for instant downloading and use.

Reducing the reliance on printed textbooks will provide funds to create free online content in many areas and result in substantial savings that can be applied to the support of a laptop initiative.

Assess 21st century skills (FL sec.9) Annotated

• The assessment slice of 1:1 transition.
  – post by cburell

9) Assess 21st century skills

“The infusion of technology in schools has opened the door for opportunities…to provide student assessment that will measure their abilities for connecting knowledge learned with real-world applications.” (Moore, 2003, p. 22)

Incorporation of multimedia elements and simulations in innovative items can elevate traditional tests to measure higher-level thinking. Technology also makes it much easier to create and administer alternative assessments (i.e., authentic tasks such as performance or portfolio assessment).

The portable laptop computer allows us to turn the corner in assessment practices. Instead of having students stop their school work to go to the computer lab to complete drill and practice exercises, the computer now comes to them to be used as an essential tool in completing their tasks. Authentic assessments can be made of student productions using real world tools to solve real world problems. Electronic portfolios can be created incorporating many types of electronic media. Technology-infused performance assessments often results in positive externalities. For example, a performance task might require a student to create a multimedia module to teach a science concept. One of the outcomes of this assessment might be a class presentation. Thus, not only has the student producing the product learned the concept through creating the module, but also other students in the class have learned through the presentation of their assessment outcomes.

Provide adequate technical support (FL sec.8) Annotated

Provide adequate technical support

“Each student using a laptop for real time classroom instruction and taking it home to continue school work requires a substantial increase in the amount of technical support required and also the times when it must be provided. Technical support is one of the more expensive elements of providing technology in K-12 education.” (Florida Senate Interim Project Report)

Provide the appropriate tools to all students and teachers Annotated

• This is key. Notice the MacBooks in these pictures from Florida, as well as the Australian website.

  I’m not “on Apple’s side.” I’ve compared the tools on PCs and Apples, have used both and learned them, and thus simply know from experience which tool is the better solution for student learning.

  When this situation changes, when there are non-Apple products that offer seamless multimedia production software, I will “switch sides” to the new best tools. But right now, those tools aren’t there.

  – post by cburell

Provide rich multimedia resources (FL sec.6) Annotated

Provide effective professional development (FL sec.4) Annotated

4) Provide effective professional development

Guiding principle: Successful professional development:

• must be held on a continuous basis
• provides mentors, coaches, or peer teammates to model appropriate integration strategies in actual classrooms
• gives teachers feedback on their own performance
• holds teachers accountable for implementing instructional strategies and student learning

Reform teaching methods (FL sec.3) Annotated

3) Reform teaching methods

Talking at kids never has been and never will be an effective way to help them learn.” (Reeder, from Salpeter, 2003)

The most difficult hurdle to overcome in the pursuit of these new educational goals will be to change the way we teach. Change will not come easily. There are approximately 285,700 public school teachers in Florida, many of whom teach as they were taught a generation ago by educators who emulated their own teachers: the “sage on a stage.” When teachers comfortable with this “broadcast” method of teaching first encounter technology, they are likely to envision students learning from the technology in the same way that they expect students to learn from their teachers.

For years, however, educators have realized that relying solely on the “sage on a stage” or “broadcast” method of teaching was not ideal. This is especially true now that the millennial generation of students has arrived in our schools.

Today’s students expect their school assignments to be relevant, challenging, and related to the real world. They value problem solving, communication, and the chance to collaborate as adults do in real world occupations.

Yesterday’s methodologies will not work with today’s students.

Learning with technology, on the other hand, empowers students with the tools to take responsibility for their own learning. Whether they are researching information on the Internet to solve a problem, communicating with experts, or sharing their work in a presentation or on the web, it is raising the bar for all students to create their own learning. The FCAT measures more than just remembered facts. It requires a higher level of thinking and problem solving that is best accomplished with an emphasis on project-based learning with technology.

“We must educate all teachers and students to use the computer as a productivity tool as well as a tool for learning, research, networking, collaboration, telecommunications, and problem solving. Always using drill-and-practice software does not allow students to participate in meaningful and engaging learning environments.” (Swain & Pearson, 2001)

“It’s a waste to use these powerful new technologies simply to reinforce our traditional mindsets about learning and our traditional teacher-learner relationships.

“What’s the definition of insanity? It’s doing the same thing you always did, but expecting, wanting, or needing completely different results. If we continue to use new technologies to reinforce what we’ve always done, we’ll continue to get the same results we’ve always gotten.”

Ian Jukes

“Many schools have simply applied technology on top of traditional teaching practices rather than reinventing themselves around the possibilities technology allows. The result is marginal–if any–improvement.

“Dream how technology can not only improve education but also transform what we think of as education.”

Rod Paige,

United States Secretary of Education

Guiding principle: Teachers must create instructional environments in which students use higher- order cognitive skills to construct meaning or knowledge, engage in disciplined inquiry, and work on products that have value beyond school.

Teach 21st century skills (FL sec.2) Annotated

Bridge the Digital Divide (FL sec. 1) Annotated

Laptops for Learning Introduction Annotated

Florida’s plan for 1:1

• – post by cburell

Around the Corner v2 – MGuhlin.net – 1:1 Laptop Initiative Annotated

The LoTi Connection – About LoTi Annotated

• A good framework for evaluating teacher readiness for 1:1 classrooms.
  – post by cburell

OpenOffice.org: Home Annotated

• A budget-slasher for sure. A free alternative for MS Office. This could reduce our costs when going 1:1.
  – post by cburell

When the hurly-burly’s done » This I Believe Annotated

• More “This I Believe” assignments and examples. My students want–yes, want–to do this assignment, after listening to Chris Watson’s student podcasts of the same from his classroom in Hawaii.
  – post by cburell

More in that quest Doug Belshaw mentioned: how to take student presentations beyond the god-awful Powerpoint or nose-against-the-notecard varieties.

Student Amy made this for our Sentence Style wiki. Projected it on the screen via LCD, and I was spellbound. Watch the creativity, as grammar homework approaches film art.

Have I mentioned I’m amazed? I want to interview this girl about her attitude while she made this. I mean, it’s grammar, for crying out loud. But it seems not to be, in her hands.Maybe she’ll agree to a Skypecast interview. Hope so. [Update: She did. It's here.]

And isn’t this better than reading a textbook section about this pattern? Anybody want to buy Amy’s lesson instead? I’m sure she’d sell it for a fair price.

[Postscript: "But at my back, I always hear / The teacher cynics drawing near....". So: Yes, Amy was front and center, body and voice, to clarify and answer and speak.]

Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post

As promised, the anonymous student feedback on the just-concluded French Revolution “Ant Farm Diaries” Wiki / writing to learn project.

I can’t say I see much different from the non-anonymous feedback posted earlier.

The difference from the reflections at the beginning of the project do sound different, though. The learners have changed their tunes since then. And to me, there’s an important lesson there for other teachers considering implementing these new practices in their classrooms. It’s this:

Don’t let students talk you out of something they know nothing about. They’ll complain at first. They’ll be uncomfortable. They won’t see the big picture. They won’t see much at all. They’re addicted to their routines as much as we were. So–don’t listen to them too much at this stage. They’ll only ask you to be a traditional teacher.

But the whole point is to move beyond that teaching so they can learn more. So refuse to be the teacher they want you to be; instead, be the classroom leader they need. Don’t let them lead you backwards.

But do listen to them once you’ve finished your first voyage. Do that After Action Review.

Here are mine, all 12. More proof that kids are pretty smart at 15, and can enjoy learning and ask for more. Emphasis added, but nothing deleted (okay, I didn’t include one reflection so poorly written it didn’t communicate):

Learner #1

First of all, I would like to say that the ant farm diary project was something that was very sensational and creative. I really liked it, especially because we did something totally new and interesting. I’ll now be going into some detailed feedbacks.

GOOD

Creating the ant farm diary, like a said before, was a magnificent idea, because we got to engage in a more perspective point of view of the person we each had to become. Therefore, we were becoming experts on our social status, at least. Also, we had a chance to include other characters in our diaries, which made us learn about them too. Again, this was something that deviated us from normal, usual lectures, and it really did let us have some fun!

IMPROVEMENTS REQUIRED

Okay, I believe that many people said this so many times already, but I really agree with them, so I’ve got to say this once more. People just weren’t giving clear, detailed feedbacks. Sometimes, I got the feeling that they didn’t even read our diaries properly before commenting on them. It really showed when they told me to ‘add this and that’ to my diary when they were ‘already there’. I wish they could have spent more time reading other people’s diaries and also leave some detailed, helpful feedbacks, instead of just saying ‘nice job, I enjoyed it!’

Furthermore, I think that we should have had more time to revise and fully write our diaries. First of all, I don’t think we had enough time to go over the topic, and I also believe that we could have written more diaries – five weren’t enough for us to really grasp the whole concept of the revolution – this could have been a good idea.

We also could have added some more varieties to our project, such as having one particular event, and making people from different social status write about it from their own point of view. This really could have helped us learn how different social classes during those times differentiated from one another.

MAYBE NOT THIS…

I don’t really have much to say in this column. I really loved this project, and I would be happy to do another one like this.

However, one thing I’d like to add is this. I think we relied too much on writing ant farm diaries, rather than really learning about the revolution itself. Although we did have reading materials and some lecture classes, people seriously varied a lot in the amount of effort they put into this project. I believe that some people still does not know much about the revolution, because it kind of shows in their diaries. I’m just saying that we could have left some room for other activities…

Mr. B’s Response:
I agree about the pace: too fast. It’s a conflict built in to having to cover so much material in limited time.

Another point: it’s an unfortunate fact that all students are not created equal. Some work harder, write better, read better, and learn better. (But all can grow, which is the point of education.)

How much everybody learned will come out when I get past grading the diaries and move on to the traditional essay test you all took. Unfortunately, there will probably be the usual span of grades from alpha to foxtrot That’s the reality in any type of classroom, traditional or modern….

Learner #2

Something to keep:

well…. What I liked about doing Ant Farm Dairy was that I was able to thoroughly look into history of French Revolution. Just by imagining my self being in that time and write diaries about it, made me understand more about the history. Also since the diary was done in wikis, I was able to edit pictures and change any errors, which would be too difficult to do in hand written assignments.

Something to improve:

I think interacting with characters weren’t as successful as it was expected. For students I think, was hard to blend other characters in as the story of their diaries progress. Also commentings or feedback needs improvement since some people don’t get lot of comments as they are expected to have.

Something to reject:

Frankly I can not really think of anything to reject. Some difficulties I had with this “Ant Farm Diary” just needs improvement, that’s all. ^^

Learner #3

I’ll just point out the bits I think needs changing.

Interaction: I thought the whole ant farm idea would be an entertaining read as a final product, however i don’t think it is worth all the extra effort put into it. The diaries are awesome, but not the interaction…..

Feedback: Much of my feedback was pretty useless to me, and sometimes I didn’t even get the feedback from people!! I just think this bit of the Diary work needs some tuning up…

Learner #4
what’s good(3)
- There’s no doubt this wiki projects have not only given many chances to improve my writing skills but also put the facts into my head strongly. Also, the discussions we do in class has been better than just normal lectures. We surely do think more about what the answer is if we were to answer. Feedbacks. We surely do want to get better, and also, we would be learning to listen to others’ advice.

what to improve(3)
- may be do something other than writing based works? Of course, writing plays a vital role in our life, for we need to show our opinions. But this is world history. I believe and hope there are more varieties of learning world history. It is important to learn to find these varieties by ourselves, but experiencing some of it in class wouldn’t be bad.
- this is a trivial thing, but the discussions could have some supplements. I would recommend using random selection to choose people to participate not that I’m a student(because I personally don’t like it either…)but as I’m an criticizer at this moment. This gives an effect that makes students brain and eyes open altogether.
- well, and group working should be done more carefully. I think we mostly did group works because the work we had to do was so big in quantity that we had break it up. But doing group works in ways to be more cooperative and working on team works would be more helpful. I can’t think of anything specific about this “team work” right now, but I somehow wish to have somethings added.

things to let go(1)
- we should let go of the silence in class. make more opportunities(opinion asking questions) probably.

I hope there weren’t any too strong words in here.

Besides AAR, I’m still curious about why teachers teach “specific” stuff in history if they know it wouldn’t help very much later on.

Learner #5

The feedback I got from other students were quite helpful because they made both positive and negative comments so that I could consider making some positive changes.

Writing the diaries required a lot of reading and understanding and took me a long time to do. But I thought it was a great way to learn history and was interesting and not boring at all. It was much better than just writing dry facts… The interacting part was more complicated to do but was good because it made the stories more alive and gave them more action.

Since I like the variety of things, I do like this history class and hope it will continue that way.

Learner #6
Good: It was a new experience for me since I was used to textbooks and writing on paper. I liked the fact that I could edit my work. Most of the time, I end up using so much white out that I start over several times. I hate wasting paper. I also liked the fact that I could read what other people were writing about. At times I wasn’t sure if I was doing it correctly but I could read other classmate’s work and compare.
I also liked that you gave us time in class to work because writing 500+ words every night is not easy.

Improve: Definitely the feedback needs work. “It was good” is not feedback and it didn’t help at all. At least pick out the grammar mistakes.. because I saw TONS of grammar mistakes and everyone’s feedback was “I liked your story”.
I don’t think you gave us enough time. It was hard for me to write all the diaries by next class. Reading takes me a while and even longer to understand what it says. I can’t just skim through it, so it would have been nicer if you have us more time to finish the assignment.

Get rid of: Interacting with others. It was so hard to put them in my diary. I didn’t know how to talk with them. Most of the time it was really pointless. I understood their lifestyle better by reading the Lectures more than by reading other people’s diaries.

Overall, I like this kind of work. I like the being creative / imaginative thing. It was fun, but I just think that 500+ words was a lot. After reading all the lectures and writing the diaries and then hearing your “lecture”, I felt that I knew all the information for the essay and I understood everything.. I didn’t just memorize facts.

Mr. B’s response:
I agree with most of what you say. I’m seeing a lot as I grade that will help me make an improved “2.0″ version next time around.

Thanks for the effort on this. It’s noted.

Learner #7

I like using the wiki’s. They are easy to use and they are much faster to do because my typing is faster than handwriting. It wasn’t very difficult to use and because we didn’t run into much problems, it was better to use than just paper and pencil. I liked having an “online textbook” where we had what we needed to know on the website.We didn’t have to bring any textbooks home and we could get the reading where ever there was a computer with internet. It was very convenient for me.

Something that i think we should change is reading and using the textbook these days. We can’t annotate, we have to carry a big book home, and we can’t access it as much as we can when we were doing online textbooks. Also, during the ant-farm diaries, although I had fun with it, I don’t think it was fair to hurt another person or another person’s property permanently because the other person had to change their idea just because of one person’s decision. I noticed that people were burning other people’s houses for fun rather than for the assignment (I did it myself) and it made the assignment seem more like a joke than students doing an assignment. I think we should get rid of the idea of giving students the power to give permanent damage to other students. Overall, it was better than I expected. The permanent damage to other students were not really that bad and it went nearly perfect. I wouldn’t mind doing the same assignment for the industrial revolution.

I think we should do more wiki assignments. Its much better than doing some section review with a paper and a pencil to forget for the rest of the unit. I liked having our own space to do almost anything we want on a whole page. It gave us a lot of freedom to put more and more stuff.

Mr. B’s Response:
This is very good feedback–thank you.

There is an Industrial Rev ant farm project already made by another teacher (Mr. Spivey and I made up the French Rev one ourselves).

I’ll give it a look. Maybe a shorter version, because I really want you all to experience actually writing a history of something you’re interested in.

Thanks for the input! And for teaching me about the problem with destruction of other characters’ property. The assignment DID specify not to do anything for mere silliness, so people will see points off if they ignored that.

Learner #8:
Good

• selecting word choices, grammar, spellings have improved(our writing skills have improved)
• we get to compare our work with others, kind of competing. (it’s good to compete with others. I read other people’s AAR and I saw someone’s opinion that said showing the grade was bad. But I disagree. If he or she had worked hard on the project, the person would’ve gotten a good grade. I know that this point of view usually comes from the people who got a good grade. But let’s think about this. If the person had worked hard on it and got a satisfiable grade would the person complain about it? No. I worked hard on the project, not only to get a good grade but also I knew that people will see how good(like my writing skills, how hard I worked) I am as a student. So showing the grade doesn’t really matter I think.
• we didn’t have to write it on a piece of paper which would have taken a long time

Bad

• Our class became perplexed(some got mad) when you just gave instructions for a certain task and not the goal of doing it. For example, at the very first time we summarized “The origin of the French Revolution” in class. You just said to summarized it and eventually you deleted the whole thing at the end. (I don’t remember this event clearly because it was long time ago)
• You sometimes require too much work from us, as someone have mentioned in previous AAR. I remember when you told us to write 2 diaries until the next class. It was too much. I know that you push kids( I don’t mean that it’s bad) but I think it’s not a good idea to do something like this.
• The feedback didn’t really help. Everybody just said “Nice work” “Good job” There was no criticism.

Mr. B’s Response:
Now here’s my response:
1. Sorry about the unclear instructions on that summary thing. “Learning is messy.” I’ll try to do better. (But you all did overcome it.)
2. 2 diaries for hw too much: got it. Now I know.
3. Feeback will be reflected in grade. Why didn’t any students mention this as it was going on? That’s one of MY frustrations with students at this school. All year I’ve been saying “communicate, speak,” etc. Not a word. Please do your part to maximize your learning experiences too!

Learner #9:
Good

well, what I really think was good was that it was NEW, and it was fun to be able to think like a person during the French Revolution and write a diary as if I was actually going through one of the famous historical events. something good was that we had a lecture at the end. In the beginning, I thought I liked the old way better, but after actually going through the French Revolution myself and learning it again I changed my mind because I realized that this way works.

Improvements TT

First of all, I didn’t like the fact that we had to use computer the whole class and write on it… I don’t think using computer itself is not cool, I just think that maybe we could decrease the amount of time we use computer in class. And the homeworks… it was too much… I was dreading everynight to write those wiki diaries…

Disappear!!

um… not much of what should go… but maybe making the character contact with different characters from EACH estate should go away… I couldn’t possibly make the story flow with so many other characters in my diary, so I just used one..sobsobsob…

Mr. B’s Response:

Thanks for the great feedback. I agree with everything you said and will make those changes next time

I really appreciate the thought you put into this. Thanks again.

Learner #10:
Good

- Each of us had a character had fun creating its characteristics. This project was very creative and good idea for students to have fun and study the history. It made us to require historical facts because without reading history, we were not able write the diaries.

- It was a good idea to use “ant farm.” It was very interesting to put other characters in my diaries and see how the other characters described my character. We linked the others’ diaries so that we could travel the ant farm.

- I felt natural and easy because the writings were diaries. It was easy to show the character’s inner most feelings and express her personality.

Improvements

- We had too little time to do this project. Two diaries in one class were too much for us. Maybe we could make it one diary per class.

- It would have been more fun if we had more connections to other characters before we wrote the diaries. Like, we should have divided the class into 3 or 4 for one diary and make up a main event that includes all of the members in each group. That way we could meet everyone and have common events in the diaries. The audience would be more interested to see how characters connected.

- I wanted to be different characters. I especially wanted to be the executioner or the lower classes so it would be better if we could have change roles.

Bad

- The comments weren’t so much helpful. People weren’t criticizing and giving advice. Instead, they just said “good job” or “keep it up!” I mean, it is good to encourage other people’s work but there is no point if they don’t criticize what others are doing.

- I thought that there should be more foreigners if it was required to meet at least one foreigner for everyone’s dairy. People started to put British journalist everywhere because of the requirement.

- The time of events went too fast in only 5 diaries. My diary skips 20 years. Maybe this project is good to do part of the French Revolution.

Mr. B’s Response:
I like this especially (and everything else you said–thanks for the great feedback )

- It would have been more fun if we had more connections to other characters before we wrote the diaries. Like, we should have divided the class into 3 or 4 for one diary and make up a main event that includes all of the members in each group. That way we could meet everyone and have common events in the diaries. The audience would be more interesting to see how characters connected.

- I wanted to be different characters. I especially wanted to be the executioner or the lower classes so it would be better if we could have change roles.

Learner #11:

Something that was good

• We were able to edit our writings whenever we wanted to edit.
• Our homework was written down clearly

Something that could be improved

• Proper feedbacks (sometimes there are short meaningless ones)
• Whenever teacher writes the grade in reply, everybody can see my grade.

Something that should go

• So far nothing should go, but we need a little changes

Mr. B’s Response:
Right on all points.

The “public” feedback was a decision I made to wake up those who didn’t put enough effort (or time management) into the assignment. I won’t always do that.

So was this a good way to do history, if those improvements were made? Did it help you to learn the FR and feel it, instead of just memorize? Was it better or worse compared to traditional class-work?

Learner #12:

GOOD

This was a very different type of homework for me. It was a great way of learning about the events of the French Revolution because it wasn’t just a boring homework reading the text book.

I had to use my imaginations and had to research a lot about the events in order to write a diary with my character. So writing the Antfarm diaries was a very fun and effective.

IMPROVE

However, it took very long to write two diaries for the next lesson. To research all the information and the facts was time-consuming and a hard task. Writing the diaries was a great way of learning about the French Revolution and not forgetting about it. However, it took a long time. I think next time we could write one diary of about 500-600 words. This would make us take more time in the research and understand the event, rather than rush through the information so that we could finish the homework.

BAD

I was only one character throughout the French Revolution unit. This was good in a way, because I was able imagine all the events as though I was that person. However, I only thought from the third estate’s view point. It would have been more challenging and interesting if we could be about four characters, each from the different estates and a foreigner. This way we could learn about all these three characters and their view of the French Revolution.

Mr. B’s Response:
I hear you. Great points I won’t forget next time.
——-

Postscript: There you have it. I wish I had more time to reflect, but I’m a very busy teacher. The bold print emphasis I added to each student’s feedback is as much time as I can give (and actually speaks volumes that I don’t need to spell out, I hope). I’ll leave it to the non-teachers to mine it in more formal theorizing (and please let me know if you do so I can read it!).