BalancEdTech

iPads or MacBooks?

2012-01-31T13:33:00.000-05:00

I just posted this response to Jeff Utecht's post, Why I still want MS and HS to Have a Laptop.

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Currently, students in my classes have primary access to Windows machines, but they also have access to Mac computers and iPads. We are not currently a 1:1.

If I were offered a 1:1 with MacBooks or iPads and everything else were equal, I personally would definitely pick the MacBooks. However, if I could use the difference in funding to pay for additional professional learning community time (which includes curriculum redevelopment time) among those “teaching” with the iPads, I’d probably opt for the iPads. I would also choose the iPads over Windows XP machines. I’d have to think carefully between the iPads and Windows 7 machines. If I were choosing for the whole school, I might even choose the iPads over MacBooks even if everything else were equal.

Why? One reason is that I think your conclusion about iPads as consumption devices is inaccurate. (“At the end of the day the iPad is designed for the consumption of information.”) I do believe Apple designs them to be excellent consumption devices and those features may appear to stand out. But, they are also excellent production devices. In some cases, even better than MacBooks.

You mention wanting students to create apps, videos, and music. It is true that iPads cannot be used to create apps that run on iPads. (I’d add that they can’t run Scratch here too.) Related side question, what percentage of your students are coding apps on their MacBooks? But, iPads can be used to shoot and edit excellent videos with just the built in camera and iMovie or iStop motion. And, with GarageBand, among other apps, students can create excellent music or audio podcasts. In facts, my students often create better (technically) videos and audio recordings in less time on the iPad. Granted, they may not have all the special fx, but that’s rarely what makes video or audio go viral. It’s much more often about the content and a little less due to the quality of the original footage/audio. Here’s a link to an great example –http://www.ipadacademic.com/education/lesson-plans/animating-and-explaining-cell-division – though it might not go viral.

With their ease of use, stability and the ability of students to complete quality projects often in less time, I’ve seen teachers in my school and nationally during summer pd sessions take to these devices much more rapidly than laptops, even MacBooks. If teachers will get (allow) students to use iPads to produce more projects than with MacBooks, then I need to take the iPad over the more flexible and powerful MacBook.

That’s not to say I view iPads without their definite drawbacks, which I lay out in a little more detail here (draft). Link to Affordances & Constraints Chart –http://balancedtech.wikispaces.com/Affordances+%26+Constraints+-+iPad

We also need to make sure our PLCs are focusing on quality uses of either device. Working through the following activity with teachers is a start in that direction, whether using MacBooks, iPads, or other devices. Link to Apps Taskonomy Activity for Educators –http://balancedtech.wikispaces.com/Apps+Taskonomy

Check out iPad Creative to see how others are using iPads in phenomenal ways!http://www.ipadcreative.com/

iBooks Author

2012-01-20T12:45:00.000-05:00

So, if I am a professor (or maybe a teacher in some situations) and I can assign my own textbook as a required reading, could I make more money if I have the students purchase a self-published version? Apple gets 30% and I get 70%. The publisher gets 0%, they've been cut out. The students also can't resell it.

But, I can't sell my book anywhere else? What about the students who don't have an iPad?

The Rise of the New Groupthink

2012-01-19T13:02:00.001-05:00

The Rise of the New Groupthink by Susan Cain

Well worth considering, but why is it always one or the other? BalancEd! Wouldn't it be nice for students to learn skills for a range of situations and how to reflect on them to determine if a different approach might be better for themselves or their group? Let's mix Cain, Shirky, Vygotsky, etc. to come up with a toolbox teachers can use to fit the context of their subject, students, and classroom. There are some hints in that direction earlier in the article. By her conclusion, it seems Cain would agree,

"... we need to move beyond the New Groupthink and embrace a more nuanced approach to creativity and learning. Our offices should encourage casual, cafe-style interactions, but allow people to disappear into personalized, private spaces when they want to be alone. Our schools should teach children to work with others, but also to work on their own for sustained periods of time."

For another take on this article, check out, Does Solitude Enhance Creativity? A Critique of Susan Cain’s Attack on Collaboration

Quilting Bee, Design Studio, & Game Party

2012-01-19T12:51:00.000-05:00

I appreciate Donald Schön and John Seley Brown's metaphor of an architecture studio. Watching my own class in a somewhat open environment, I'm wondering if other metaphors offer important elements to consider. What aspects from a quilting bee, sewing circle, video game party, book club, etc. might help students and teachers conceptualize an engaging learning "space"? Which aspects work only or best in face to face environments, which can work in virtual? Can they work asynchronously?

"Flipped" Classroom?

2011-12-05T15:06:00.000-05:00

Is a truly "flipped" classroom one where the students consume the lesson content at home in video/audio format and then do the "homework" in the classroom? Or, is a truly "flipped" classroom one in which the students are doing the teaching?

Best New Blog of 2011 - Not Just A Teacher

2011-12-01T21:55:00.000-05:00

Best New Blog of 2011 - Not Just A Teacher - Pauline Roberts

John Seely Brown: Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge Production

2011-02-13T14:01:00.001-05:00

This video by John Seely Brown discusses many of the elements at the heart of BCS' Engage program.

John Seely Brown: Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge Production

Have to foster the imagination first
Create - Reflect - Share

sharing - create peer based learning

Studio Learning Environment

multi age learning community
best way to learn something is to teach it - Kids teach each other
critique - Need to be open to criticism (from self, peers, and others)
work in progress is public
critiques are public

Tinkering

with Information
with Knowledge
with concrete things
networked Tinkering with other people's stuff
you have to test what you build

authority comes from testing what you build and whether it works and is as good as it could be

Allows us to bootstrap our own knowledge
maybe - kids identities will come from what they have created AND others have built on

Technology

enables us to build distributed communities of practice
allow you to create and to remix

Autodidacts

2010-06-28T07:56:00.000-04:00

The drumbeat is getting louder for society to offer alternatives to traditional schooling. If you study the history of education, the desire for change seems anything but new. Is the latest round of ideas actually different? Will the tools of today make these efforts any more successful?

TEDxAtlanta - Anya Kamenetz - DIY U
TEDxAtlanta - Gever Tulley - Reimagining Education
Daniel Willingham - Why Don't Students Like School

Low Floor, Wide Walls, & High Ceiling

2010-04-04T14:46:00.000-04:00

Technology has changed so much in the 20+ years I have been teaching! While most of what is available seems very similar in output to earlier tools, the biggest changes have been in ease of use (low floor) and integration (wider walls). Put those two together with greater/cheaper access and collaboration and what is possible has greatly increased (high ceiling).

What toolkit would I recommend these days? Well, before getting into that, all the tools in the world won't get you very far without brave, collaborative, creative, thoughtful (reflective), and critical students. Assuming you have created a culture for such kids I'd recommend:

A MacBook, NetBook, or iPad to create content and access all those web 2.0 tools
Wiki - An amazingly flexible tool that allows my students to easily integrate text, images, audio, video, and widgets galore. My students are the producers instead of just consumers! Currently I prefer Wikispaces, though I would be quite happy with several others
Moodle - For the forum tool alone it is worthwhile. It also allows for integration of the elements mentioned above, but the nested nature of the discussion helps my students follow the conversation, and therefore encourages it.
Multimodal tools

GarageBand or Audacity - Audio recording, not just for the students who have difficulty writing, for anyone who wants another form of communication that offers its own rich set of options and strengths
Flip Camera - Get video into your web 2.0 world
Still Camera - And images too! It's time to move beyond clip art and other people's photos. Let the kids bring their world into the web 2.0 world.

MyWebspiration.com or Inspiration - Graphic organizers and concept maps offer students a deep way to demonstrate the connections in their knowledge.
iChat or Skype - Another way to bring the outside world in and to get our students heard in the outside world.
VoiceThread - Still learning this one, it may move up.

Related Link - http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/scratch/scratch-cacm.pdf (page 3)

When is good enough good enough?

2010-04-02T21:23:00.000-04:00

Always a tough question. Tougher still when it involves other people.

Next question, how many balls can be easily juggled? What if some are eggs?

DirectInstruction2.0

2010-04-01T00:01:00.004-04:00

With the tools and techniques available to us today, we should be able to deliver direct instruction far better. Start with a big, bright Interactive Whiteboard, they're all the rage in schools these days. Design some slick slides. Use a technique or two to help the kids retain your content. Pace it like a Pecha Kucha. The students minds (blank slates) should be filled up in half the time! That'll save plenty of time to work on the obesity epidemic!

Learning Leader Golden Rule

2010-02-27T06:53:00.002-05:00

After reading Derek Wenmoth's, Leading Learning in a Digital World, I added the comment below:

Maybe this is implied in the statement "the capability to envision view of desired future organization state," but I think that the leaders, whether they be teachers or administrators, need to envision the desired future learning state in addition to the organizational state. That future learning state needs to be put into practice by the leaders amongst themselves and their colleagues as well as thoughtfully adapted over time and context for those leaders to truly model for others. The golden rule of learning leaders should be to do yourself that which you would have others do.

I should have been a little clearer in that I meant colleagues AND their students when I said "others."

The Over Under Conundrum

2010-02-17T07:46:00.000-05:00

I was reminded again this week and last how easy it is to misjudge your students' skills. My latest example of underestimating my students was working with a high school special education class. The teacher is thinking through how technology could be used to improve his students' reading. I thought thought they might be interested in a little SSR through RSS (sustained silent reading through really simple syndication). We also added a twist in that the students would create a wiki page that contained the 5 newest links from their RSS and the 5 newest comments they had added. In a sense, their reader's response journal was on the same page as an ever fresh set of things to read on a topic of their own choosing.

So, after showing the students an example of what they would be creating, drawing them in with an Olympics topic, we demonstrated to the students how to use Google News to create an RSS feed. We talked a little about what topics might be better for a News site, but told them to try whatever they were interested in, provided it was appropriate for school. Then, we showed them how to take the address for that feed and add it to a new wiki page. After that, we showed them how to add a second section to the page that would display the latest discussion posts. Finally, we showed them how to add a new post in the discussion tab where they could link to a story and comment on it. The mini lesson must have taken a close to 10 minutes. The students would need to remember at least fifteen steps and off they went in pairs.

As they worked, we ended up having a couple of little computer issues, naturally enough, and I was getting a little concerned about time. Instead of my preferred method of letting the students fiddle with the wiki while trying to remember the mini lesson, I tried to help a couple pairs. As the words were coming out of my mouth, the kids' mice were already there. Eventually that observation trumped my thoughts about time and I realized I had underestimated these kids' ability to remember so many steps. I stopped talking. They finished on time without me. How quickly I could have taken away their confidence in themselves and their ownership of the process.

On the way home I mentally chastised myself as I thought about the students and their ability to first focus and take in so many steps and then to remember (I don't think that is actually the right word, since I don't think they put the individual steps into memory, more the overall feel and order of the process) the steps well enough to complete the process. Soon though, I also started thinking about the flip side, when the previous week I had overestimated my own students ability to apply skills we had learned earlier in the year.

My students were researching three subtopics related to diversity in the metro Detroit area. After brainstorming what they thought they knew about the topics and what they wanted to learn about them, the kids set off to find answers or partial answers using the internet. Though my students used a set of thoughtful keywords, not once did I see any of the pairs using Google's advanced search techniques. This despite having worked on using phrases and Boolean logic several times earlier. How quickly they reverted to their old practices! How slowly I thought to stop them as a group and point this out! They didn't need a mini-lesson, only a reminder to use the skills they had.

How often we must misjudge our students' abilities. By taking too inactive role, without watching the kids and reflecting on their processes, or by taking too directive an approach, how can we help but either underestimate or overestimate their abilities. Is it any wonder that informal and formal formative assessment is so integral to students learning?

One Foot in the Classroom

2010-01-29T13:44:00.000-05:00

Why are there so many administrators that no longer teach K-12 students on a regular basis? Why are there so many professors in departments of education who no longer teach K-12 students on a regular basis? Why are there so many educational technology "experts" who no longer teach K-12 students on a regular basis?

I remember learning from professors like Maggie Lampert, Deborah Ball, and Glenda Lappen who at that time still worked regularly with K-12 students. What they had to say was so much richer, nuanced, and in the end practical for helping me teach in new ways!

Though I spend a great deal of my time working with teachers, I still have my own classroom part time and collaborate in the classroom with many others. The benefits definitely go both ways. I get to try things out in my own class and bring my experiences and examples to the table when working with the teachers. Their work in turn inspires what I try back in my own room.

Why would anyone ever completely leave the classroom?

Tripped up by a Learning Typology

2009-12-14T11:00:00.001-05:00

Christopher D. Sessums posted an interesting matrix by Vavoula that was on Patrick Dunn's site.

Christopher commented primarily on the "Unintentional informal learning." I was interested in a different part, one that I work in much more. By the graphic, it would seem that assignments where the teacher gives either the goal or the process, but the other is determined by the student, would be "Intentional informal learning" just as would an assignment where the student determines both. To me, those three feel quite different. I'll have to go read what Vavoula means by "informal". I'll also have to consider what "explicitly defined" means. What if I have a general process, but the students are free to work creatively within that process? What if I have on overall subject goal, but students define many of the elements within that goal? Seems to me that there are many shades of formal and informal learning.

Contradictions?

2009-12-03T15:30:00.000-05:00

Are they contradictions? Did I not explain the nuances well enough? Maybe I'm just not a dualist today.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself;
(I am large – I contain multitudes.)
Walt Whitman

Haven't read this in awhile, but it gave me lots to consider:
The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why

Is One-to-One Computing the Best Solution?

2009-12-02T09:57:00.001-05:00

Originally written December 5th, 2005

It seems as if every tech related magazine has a story about another school, district, or state pursuing a one-to-one laptop initiative. Michigan’s initiative is called “Freedom To Learn.” Computer companies like Apple and HP have put up sites dedicated to the idea. And, they’d love to sell you carts full of laptops!

While I would love to teach in a school that provided a laptop for every child, especially if it was paid for by the state, I wonder whether having one computer for each student would change my methods.

When I work with my students, there are only enough computers for one for every two children. It’s designed that way. Compared to having students work individually, I find that pair and team projects result in greater student learning of content, tech skills, and intrapersonal skills. If each student had a computer, maybe that would give me the ultimate flexibility in designing some projects to be completed individually, some concurrently, and some jointly. Or, maybe I would lose something when each student is staring at his or her own screen instead of a shared screen. Over time, would I slowly be seduced by obvious individual accountability of one student per machine/project, instead of having to work hard to hold all partners equally accountable?

What advantages or disadvantages have you experienced or might you foresee?

Anti-Patterns - Avoid Focusing on the Tool

2009-12-01T07:05:00.000-05:00

(This post the fifth in a series commenting on Kathy Sierra's presentation about creating passionate users.)
How many tool based workshops or training seminars have you attended? How much of what you learn do you retain? How much of what you learn is easily translatable into students learning about your subject matter and methods? Focusing on the tool instead of focusing on the thing the user wants to do with the tool is common among technology companies and professional developers. Over the past years we have tried to spend less time on the tools and more on pedagogy, content, and the balance among the three. We try to put the direct instruction bits into problem-solving activities, exploration and self-teaching, and a few examples of what students can do with the tools in their classroom.

Yet, many teachers WANT, I mean demand, direct instruction in the step by step manner where they can write it down step by step. Are there ways to move teachers away from such a limiting habit? After all, how often does something occur in the exact same set of steps versus some variation on those steps? How will these teachers move on by themselves without the trainer their to hold their hand?

What will it take for the majority of teachers to get to the point where many of their students already are, comfortable with exploring the tool, using trial and error or other methods of problem-solving, or if all else fails asking a peer or searching Google for a screencast or tutorial?

As a half-way step. How can we get most teachers to at least see that their favored form of "learning" doesn't fit most of their students' favored forms of learning? This limits the possible growth of their students tremendously. Students' learning ends up happening far more outside of the classroom.

Conditions for Innovation - David Gilmour

2009-11-30T06:50:00.001-05:00

Just saw this article linked in John Connell's blog and had to post David's "Conditions for Innovation." I'll comment later. I'm especially interested in his stance on long-term planning. For the full article, click here.

Transparency: If people see what others do it generates support and peer pressure.
Greenhousing: Innovative ideas often start out as fragile little shoots that need nurturing.
Benefit focus: Keep asking what it is you’re trying to achieve – don’t just tick boxes.
Diversity: Of people, background, experience and outlook. Avoid groups of people who all think the same.
Risk-taking: Recognise risks, watch out for politics, listen to people at the sharp end.
Avoid deficiency models: Telling people they need to be there rather than here does not work.
Mistakes: It has to be all right to say, ‘That didn’t work – let’s try something else.’
Long-term planning: Can’t be done for innovation. Sensible next step is best that can be done. Then look closely at what happens and take another step.

Student Notebooks in the Age of Social Networks

2009-11-29T13:15:00.000-05:00

Many teachers have used authors notebooks, science journals, etc. in the past. There is tremendous value in them. But, now that we have easy access to blogs, wikis, social networks, and more, how do we take the student notebook/journal concept and adapt it for today's tools and learning methods? What I'm struggling with particularly write now is which tool is best for my students to conduct ongoing social studies inquiries of various sizes, on a variety of topics, with different partners/groups that I want shared with the class/world. If I go with a wiki, do students record their work on an individual page, a group page, a topic page, or something else? What would be nice would be if the elements on a page could be individually tagged by student, group, topic, method, etc. so that the content could be sorted and sifted in different ways. Students could see the range of their own work if they sort/sift it by their name. Groups could collect their work by sifting for their names and topic. Topical pages could be created by sifting for topics and/or subtopics. An online database would be the answer, but what databases have the ease of use, multimedia capabilities, and web2.0 nature of wikispaces?

Failure, Success, and Motivation

2009-11-29T09:23:00.002-05:00

(This post the fourth in a series commenting on Kathy Sierra's presentation about creating passionate users.)

As a professional development facilitator, curriculum designer, mentor, or teacher, how do you motivate your "users." One of Kathy's points is to make the product they will actually use. She suggests to make the right things easy for people and the wrong things hard. Kathy was presenting in a certain style that makes it hard to get beyond the superficial, but that seems too simplistic. If we are aiming for intrinsic motivation, one element that seems extremely important is finding the right balance between failure and success. Making things too easy or too hard leads to frustration or disinterest. When you have learners (kids or adults) that all come in knowing different things and having had different experiences, how do you design a one-fits all that will balance failure and success?

Scientific American recently had an article related to this conundrum. The article presented findings from a study that found learning becomes better if conditions are arranged so that students make errors. How many of us have created learning opportunities designed to avoid the problems and pitfalls students might encounter?

A couple of other related resources:
On His Team, Would You Be a Solvent, or the Glue?
Famous Failures
Failure – The Secret to Success
F Is For Fail
Zone of Proximal Development

What's The One Thing You Can Do To Be Amazing?

2009-11-26T07:00:00.005-05:00

(This post the third in a series commenting on Kathy Sierra's presentation about creating passionate users.)

Have you ever attended one of those workshops where so many things are covered that you don't know where to start? Or, have you ever visited on of those sites that describe 100 Web 2.0 tools? Many professional developers seem to think that value comes from the quantity of tools, tips, slides, lesson ideas, etc. that they can cram into an hour, half-day, or whole day.

That seems contrary to Kathy's statement that we can help our "users" by giving them the one thing they can do to be amazing. I didn't take that statement to mean that we should tell teachers we work with exactly which tool they should use and in which particular lesson. In fact, struggling to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of certain tools in certain situations may be the most important "problem" we can lead teachers to consider. Instead, Kathy's statement reminded me that we need to think very carefully about the number and order of tools, tips, activities, etc. we do present. Will they make the teachers (really, their students) amazing, or will they distract them from what's most important/beneficial/amazing? Would you rather have a teacher that has thought carefully about when and how to creatively and thoughtfully use one tool like a wiki throughout the year in their subject(s), or a teacher who has mastered a dozen tools, but can't achieve rigor or relevance with them? Less is probably more if teachers develop a nuanced understanding of their tool(s) and how they best fit with their pedagogy and subject. They can always add another tool later in the year or the next year.

Practice Eating Your Own Dog Food

2009-11-24T09:04:00.007-05:00

(This post the second in a series commenting on Kathy Sierra's presentation about creating passionate users.)

I know it sounds funny, but when Kathy mentioned practicing all the time, it connected with Guy Kawasaki's rule to "Eat Your Own Dog Food." Guy meant that statement in regards to technology developers using their own products. I connected Kathy's appeal to practice all the time and Guy's rule to use your own products to the typical paradox of professional development where new pedagogical methods are "taught" using old pedagogical methods. I realize there are many reasons that occurs, but this is why teachers need to use the same tools we want them using with their students. (I am definitely not advocating they need to use them so that they know them better than their students or before they let their students use them!) Teachers don't need to use the tools to complete the exact same sort of projects as the students. They need to use them in an authentic way for their own learning. When using the tools for their own learning, their understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the tools will grow as will the range of possible uses for these tools in learning activities. With time, the teachers will develop an intuitive feel for the tool.

Stuck in Program Mode

2009-11-22T08:02:00.001-05:00

(This post the second in a series commenting on Kathy Sierra's presentation about creating passionate users.)

One metaphor Kathy briefly made was having your camera stuck in Program Mode. Thinking about teachers, I took that equivalent of teaching the lesson as the textbook says to or if it is a lesson or project designed by the teacher, teaching it the same way every year. Getting the teachers out of P Mode means getting them to reflect on their lessons. They need to reflect on the TPC of the lesson, and who their students are so that they can modify it (or ditch it) for greater success.

One way curriculum designers can encourage this reflection is to design lessons with optional activities. I don't mean optional in take it or leave it, I mean optional as in a flow chart or a football option play, where depending on what is observed/experienced, the teacher makes a choice. If we add in reasons why they might choose different options, the teacher can make better choices, but also "hear" an expert's thinking. Who knows, they may even internalize it with time. Otherwise, we have merely created a new textbook for teachers to teach from.

A second way professional development and curriculum facilitators could lead teachers away from only using Program Mode, would be to build up their understanding of a wide variety of activity types. This would need to be accompanied by discussions of the affordances and constraints of these activity types as well as how each of those might be modified depending on the technology used to accomplish them. Teachers would then have myriad choices and a better feel for when to select one activity type or technology over another.

Listening in on Tangentially Related Conversations

2009-11-22T07:58:00.000-05:00

One of my sources of food for thought is IT Conversations. A presentation I listened to a month ago is still sparking thoughts. Kathy Sierra presented at an Ignite conference on creating passionate users. While she was talking about users of products, I first thought about "users" as my students and then as the teachers (adult learners) I work with. Over the next few posts I'll comment on where those thoughts led me.

Puzzling Professional Development

2009-11-15T09:17:00.002-05:00

Most teachers recognize that much of what they teach cannot be done learned easily or quickly. Learning to read, write, reason, etc., all take years to learn, even at a superficial level. Mastery takes even longer. (Gladwell and others have posited that it takes 10,000 hours. Though others, like Godin, disagree about the exact amount of time.)

So, why is it that teachers and district administrators, most who once were teachers, keep planning professional development in a manner that fails to take this into account? Do they really expect more than a superficial understanding after a staff meeting, one day workshop, or even a four day training? Is it any wonder that most professional development has little effect in the classroom?

And that's not the only difficulty. Even if the teachers can see the theoretical value in a longer term development project, they feel as if whoever is facilitating the project should be able to communicate the whole even before they begin. If they don't, many teachers start to get frustrated. Donald Schön expressed this difficulty in Educating the Reflective Practitioner,

It’s as though the teacher said something like this: “I can tell you that there’s something you need to know and I can tell you that with my help you can probably learn it. But I cannot tell you what it is in a way that you will understand. You must be willing therefore, to undergo certain experiences as I direct you to undergo them, so that you can learn what it is that you need to know and what I mean by the words I use. Then and only then can you make an informed choice about whether you wish to learn this new competence. If you are unwilling to step into this new experience without knowing ahead of time what it will be like, then I cannot help you. You must trust me. (p.66)

Most adults are uncomfortable with such a proposition. Many teachers actually prefer the ineffectual one-hit wonder type of workshop. Interesting that they expect their students to be willing to live through just such a situation. (Or maybe they don't, and they only expect rote memorization and skill mastery.) The question is how to structure their adult learning in a way that can help them live through and eventually appreciate such a deep learning experience. If the school or district even considers such opportunities.

When will districts embrace the new forms of writing?

2009-11-14T10:28:00.002-05:00

Most of my students don't enjoy traditional forms of writing. Most of my students enjoy writing much more when it is in the form of a wiki project, online discussion, tweet, text message, etc. There are myriad elements that may be behind this increased motivation and engagement. It may be due to the novelty of the technology, the authentic audience, the interactive and collaborative opportunities, the ability to write multimodally, the variety of structures, or the ability to hyperlink. Yet, most districts still cling to only basic writing, the traditional five sentence paragraph or five paragraph essay being typical. If they have taken a step farther, to them, a writer's journal exists in a notebook. How sad that they hope to improve student writing with more of the same.

Fortunately, there is hope. Throughout the web you can find inspiring examples of students and teachers who have embraced new tools and methods. Furthermore, NCTE has endorsed a change. To learn more about their suggestions check out their set of articles, Writing in the 21st Century, or better yet, this new book, Teaching the New Writing: Technology, Change, and Assessment in the 21st-Century Classroom.

Minds on Fire

2009-11-13T16:44:00.004-05:00

Yet another interesting article related to the !gnite program in Birmingham, Minds on Fire (doesn’t the title make it sound related?). Make sure to check out the section on Social Learning. I thought the following study should be noted,

Compelling evidence for the importance of social interaction to learning comes from the landmark study by Richard J. Light, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, of students’ college/university experience. Light discovered that one of the strongest determinants of students’ success in higher education—more important than the details of their instructors’ teaching styles—was their ability to form or participate in small study groups. Students who studied in groups, even only once a week, were more engaged in their studies, were better prepared for class, and learned significantly more than students who worked on their own.

There is also an audio file related to this topic by John Seely Brown and others from a Celebration of the opening of MIT’s involvement in Open Courseware.

Is PowerPoint Crippling Our Students?

2005-11-12T12:00:00.003-05:00

November’s Learning and Leading with technology had a great point/counterpoint discussion of the question, Is PowerPoint Crippling Our Students? In my mind, the tool itself is not the problem. What we ask students to do with the tool may be a problem. But, if it is pushing students to think and communicate, it is probably serving an educational purpose. If we can get students to the next level of deciding when it is and when it isn’t appropriate to use the tool, (regardless of how someone else views it “should” be used) then we really will have educated our student.

Increasing Student Participation with Online Forums

2005-11-07T12:00:00.003-05:00

One of the tools I’ve been using with my students this year is Moodle, an online course management system. Instead of using the system to run a completely online class, I’ve used it to supplement what I am doing in the classroom. Within Moodle, forums have been a favorite of my students who view them as, “a lot like e-mail, except you can read what everyone says.” One of the benefits of forums is that every student gets the chance to answer the questions you pose, which means far greater participation by ALL students, instead of the typical small number of students who get the chance to participate in class discussions due to limited time. Not only do the students all get to respond, but I require them to reply to at least two other students’ answers. At first I accepted any response, but with time, and mini-lessons, students have learned to respond with specific detail, interesting questions, and polite disagreement. It has become much more conversational in tone. All in all, the depth of discussions has surpassed what I typically get in class. Now, if I could only get the district to give me the extra planning time I now need to keep up with all of this work by my students!