The K-12 Online Conference is just around the corner. Preconference activities will take place during the week of October 13. Then, the following two weeks will be filled with presentations. The theme this year is Amplifying Possibilities and the flyer is now available. Teasers for upcoming sessions will be available soon. You might consider planning some school events to correspond with the conference, which takes place entirely online. Maybe even think about providing professional development points?
Category Archives: 21st Century Skills
The Power of Creativity
Most of us have probably heard Ken Robinson talking about creativity. Yesterday, a story on National Public Radio underscored its importance in the lives of young people. The subject of the story was the creation of “scraper bikes” in Oakland, California. The reporter described how the fad spread because of a YouTube video: “The video spawned what is becoming a worldwide movement, even as it changed the lives of the young men who customized the bikes and made the video.” In fact, Tyrone Stephenson, Jr., who calls himself the Scraper Bike King, credits the creation of the bikes with saving his life: “Because I was at a young age, getting into a lot of serious trouble, selling drugs and on the verge of going to jail. So my mom told me this is a way to channel anger and frustration, just focusing on something that’s creative, something that’s me, and the bikes is me.”
These are young men growing up in a tough place who have found something that makes them happy and, as Stephenson suggests, allows them to have a positive influence on their community. As an English teacher at heart, I will admit to cringing a bit at the grammar. But as someone interested in grassroots media, I am reminded of the power of YouTube to tell the stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. These young men understand that power and have taken advantage of the media to tell their own stories.
Here’s the video:
In Just 45 Minutes…
I head to campus to begin another semester. I am teaching a course called Designs for Technology Enhanced Learning. I have taught some version of this course to pre-service teachers for the past five years. It began as a one-credit class that focused on technical skills, but as the students have become more familiar with the tools, the course has morphed into a two-credit class that focuses more on how to use the tools in the classroom. I am more excited about teaching the course this semester because I really feel like I have hit my stride with it.
The one area where I am a little concerned is with the additional of a online personal learning network component. This is clearly something that others are thinking about as well since my first look at Twitter this morning led me to Will Richardson’s post on the subject. I am going to have my students join a the VSTE Ning network and participate for the whole semester. This assignment replaces the blogging they used to do as I grew discouraged with that assignment over time. It became increasingly quantitative (x number of posts and x number of comments) and few students seemed to ever realize the potential power of blogs to support their own learning and reflection. The Ning assignment is much more open ended: get involved in the community on a regular basis. I have invited Sheryl Nussbaum Beach to come in as a guest speaker since she’s my hero when it comes to these communities. I’m hoping she can provide some motivation for them to get involved AND stay involved even after the course is over.
The other part of this assignment is that I am hoping it will motivate my own learning and involvement in an online community. I tend to live on the peripherals of these groups. I was never much of a “joiner” in the real world and that habit has remained in the virtual one as well. Like Will, I am very much in the midst of examining my own practices and also looking towards life after my degree is completed. So, while I am nervous about this assignment, I am also excited to have an opportunity to really engage in an authentic activity with my students. I’m just hoping they will feel the same way!
And now it’s time to get ready…I’m walking to campus this morning to benefit myself and the environment but that means an early start. Class begins at 11 and if you want a sample of what we’re doing, here’s my agenda.
Now More Than Ever
It has taken me nearly two weeks to muster the energy to write this post. You see, I’m a Unitarian Universalist, and on Sunday, July 27, a gunman walked into the packed Knoxville church and opened fire. Two died and seven others were wounded. A letter found in his truck indicated that he harbored hatred for liberals and gays who he perceived as preventing him for getting a job. Subsequent reports revealed a deeply troubled man who planned to keep shooting until the police came and killed him. It would be easy to write him off as another crazy person who had somehow gotten his hands on a gun. And, even as I mourn for the Knoxville church, I know this isn’t the worst mass shooting nor is it the last. But this one hit pretty close to home for me and not just because it was directed towards people of my faith. Another reason is because it also reminds us that promoting civil discourse is one of the most important things we can do as we send our students out into both the real and virtual worlds.
That was the theme of an article I wrote–“Don’t Feed the Trolls: Using Blogs to Teach Civil Discourse“–for Learning & Leading With Technology that appeared in the May 2008. I’m in the process of getting permission to put the article on my website so for now you need to be an ISTE member to read it. Why is this important to this story? Because I, at least, had my head in the sand when it came to the rhetoric of hate that has been directed towards liberals. Evidently, joking about killing liberals and issuing liberal hunting licenses is fair game for cable news commentators, radio entertainers, and conservative bloggers. I wrote about this in my personal blog:
Really? Someone, anyone, finds it funny to talk about killing people like me because of my political views. I might find Russ Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly offensive but I would never wish their death.
And I found myself wondering how we got here…where hateful rhetoric like this is not only accepted but seemingly encouraged. While I wouldn’t want to blame people like Sean Hannity for what happened last Sunday, his ongoing war against liberals certainly didn’t help. For someone who is mentally unbalanced, these relenting attacks become an underlying soundtrack to a tragic life and offer up an easy target. Tom Friedman says that while he was sleeping, the world got flat. While I was sleeping, the world got ugly.
We can DO something about this, folks. We can talk to kids about how words–whether spoken or written–really matter. I’m sure there are liberals out there who are also guilty of negative rhetoric although my own bias might make it more difficult for me to really hear them. As you head into the school year and start getting your kids on the web, please take the time to include civil discourse in your conversations with them.
Of Test Scores and Budget Cuts
MSNBC reports on Maine’s laptop program, and the news seems to be pretty positive:
- Students scored significantly higher on the writing test despite having to write it by hand.
- Attendance is up with students reporting that they liked school better since getting the laptop.
- Detentions are down.
- Teachers are able to make lessons more personal for students.
- Teachers report that students are becoming better at combining information from different sources and expressing their thoughts.
- It’s easier to study real-world problems and dig deeper into concepts.
- Students are learning 21st century skills like collaboration and creativity.
- Maine feels like it is helping to ease the economic digital divide.
Here’s the negative: test scores, besides the writing test, have not changed much. And, as we all know, test scores are really what’s important: “What we need to look at is the broader impact on student improvement,” said Timothy Magner, the director of the Office of Education Technology, a branch of the U.S. Department of Education. “One of the key metrics is test scores. We’re keenly interested in that.”
So, despite all the successes, the program is going to be judged on one metric, which at least according to one academic, may not be the right one. “What you can do on laptops isn’t measured on current standardized tests,” said Mark Warschauer, an education professor at UC Irvine.
And, here’s the other bad news: Maine would like to expand the program, but budget cuts have made that impossible. So, let’s see, we seem to have found something that gets kids engaged and helps them learn, but we don’t have the political will to actually fund it. I’m reminded of the old saying: it will be a great day when schools get all the money they need, and the air force has to have a bake sale to build a bomber.