Dangerously Irrelevant

At the Schoolhouse Gate: Re-launch

After a hiatus of several months, I am pleased to announce CASTLE's re-launch of At the Schoolhouse Gate, a group blog dedicated to legal and policy issues in K-12 schools. We have several new contributors. Recent posts have addressed states' teacher discipline databases, cyberbullying, students' rights to post pictures taken in class, and a boy's right to wear a dress to prom.

I hope that you will join us. We welcome all new readers, commenters, and contributors.

Kwout

I don't often blog about specific technology tools, but I just ran across a service called Kwout (pronounced 'quote'). It lets you quickly take a screen shot and then post it to a web site, Flickr, or Tumblr.

The cool part of this is the image mapping. For example, in the screen shot below from this blog, you can see that what looks like an ordinary graphic actually contains hyperlinks. Very nifty!

Model AUPs for student empowerment?

I received this e-mail earlier in the week:

My name is [anonymous]. I am a Library Media Director at [high school] in [city, state]. We are a small community, who until recently underwent tremendous growth in the number of students and buildings in our district. I am writing to you because I have been an admirer of your blog and writings on how we, as educators, can shape the educational direction of students using technology. Your posts on Dangerously Irrelevant have inspired me to no longer take a back seat and wait for changes to occur in our district. Now, I'm trying to lead the charge. I have for several years been met with the proverbial "brick wall" when attempting to get the district to allow more access to technology tools on-line. We currently do not permit access to many Web 2.0 sites that actually help with our student's education. With persistent badergering, our Central Administration is allowing me to rewrite our Acceptable Use Policy so students can supplement class instruction with blogs, access academic content from YouTube and similar video sites, and post information on wikis. I would love to know what you believe should be in an AUP that addresses the concerns of today but is still conscious of the technology access of tomorrow. I'm sure you are very busy, but any help you can provide to me and my students would be greatly appreciated.

Here is my rather lame response:

Hi [anonymous], I haven't really seen any good model AUPs, but then again I haven't gone looking. Here are a couple of links:

http://www.doe.state.in.us/olr/aup/aupmod.html
http://tinyurl.com/2s7o8o

I would find some tech-savvy districts in your state and see how they're handling their AUPs. They may be better resources for you than I am. Maybe the edublogosphere has some suggestions for us both?

So, how about it? Does anyone have, or know of, a good student AUP that can serve as a model for others? One that seems to appropriately address the safety concerns of districts while simultaneously affording students access to the digital tools that are revolutionizing the rest of society?

You know, NSBA, AASA, NASSP, and/or NAESP (and their state affiliates) should be helping districts with this. Maybe some of these leadership organizations are and we just need to bring their efforts to the forefront?

Help wanted: 2008 education blogosphere survey

Last year I put out a call for bloggers to participate in the first annual education blogosphere survey. I reported the results several weeks later and reactions were generally positive.

In January I will launch the 2008 education blogosphere survey. I have some ideas for new questions and definitely will build upon the results from last year. If you have any questions that you would like to see included, please send them to me by Monday, January 7 for my consideration. Thanks!

FYI, here are the main questions I asked last year:

• Would you quit your current job if you could support yourself and your family through blogging?
• What's the most valuable thing you get out of blogging?
• What's the most difficult thing for you about blogging?
• Anything else you want to share about being an educational blogger?
• How many feeds are in your aggregator?
• What is the URL of your favorite NON-education blog?

DABA: Blogs that deserve a bigger audience

Earlier this year I profiled some 'new voices' in the edublogosphere that I thought deserved more attention.

I am going to try and revive (and rebrand) that idea in 2008. In the coming year, I will attempt each Friday to highlight a blog that I believe deserves a bigger audience (DABA). I will be picking blogs that:

• have new content fairly frequently (i.e., at least a few times a month);
• have a Technorati authority of less than 100 (I'll probably make exceptions to this now and then); and
• I think are interesting, provocative, relevant, and/or important to K-12 educators.

Most of my picks will be education blogs, although I also will throw in other blogs now and then.

In order to make these blogs as accessible and visible as possible, I have created a Google Notebook page that will list all DABA blogs to date (I've included my previous 'new voices' blogs too):

• See list of DABA blogs

I also have created a feed that will allow you to read and/or subscribe to all of the DABA blogs in one place:

• Read DABA posts on a web page
• Subscribe to DABA posts via RSS
• Subscribe to DABA posts via e-mail

Here's the code if you want to add the DABA blogs as a clip on your web site or a blogroll:

• DABA clip code
• DABA blogroll code

And, finally, I have created a graphic for anyone who wants to post my recognition of their blog (again, this includes my previous 'new voices' blogs):

• The Crimson Megaphone

Like the Weblog Awards, Edublog Awards, and Bloggies, the goal of the DABA initiative is to help publicize some great blogs that have the potential to make bigger contributions (in this case, to K-12 education). Some might call these blogs the 'Z list' or the 'F list.' Whatever you call them, they deserve to be more visible.

Contact me if you know of a blog that might be a good candidate for the DABA list. As always, any other suggestions you have for me are welcome as well. I'll begin next Friday!

Notes

Hopefully this blog post also is a good model of how educators can take a group of blogs and make them accessible in different ways by using Google Notebook, Google Reader, and/or Feedburner.

Everything is a marketing interaction

Every time you interact with a customer, you're engaging in marketing. Doesn't matter if you're instituting a policy, gaining some data, delivering an invoice... it's a marketing interaction.

… When you yell at a classroom full of kids because one kid misbehaved, that's a marketing decision.

from Seth Godin, What’s the point of this interaction?

XOs for my XO

I'm one of the lucky ones: my XO arrived in time for Christmas (thank you, Betsy!). I wish I knew to which country the other one went. For those of you who are so inclined, you still have time to give one and get one.

My kids and I have been playing with the XO a lot over the last couple of days. It definitely requires a mind shift for those of us who are used to computers with the Microsoft Windows interface. I've been reading up on the Sugar interface so that we can better understand how to think about this new computer. I've also started bookmarking some helpful XO resources in my del.icio.us account. As others have noted, the key is not to judge the XO by the standards of a more expensive, mainstream laptop but rather to recognize it for what it is (and then marvel at the form factor and functionality that you get for the price).

Now that it's in my physical presence, I already have LOTS of questions about my XO (e.g., how do I find files that I download? can I add some of you as friends in an XO group?). Doug Johnson, Tom Hoffman, Anne Davis: who else out there in the edublogosphere has/ordered an XO? Should we create an edublogger community around this thing, maybe as a group blog or as a social network in Ning?

Notes

1. I tried to wow my 89-year-old grandmother with the XO yesterday. She said, "Oh, I know all about that thing." My mom had heard about the OLPC project too. Awesome!
2. I'm the third person in Iowa to add myself to the XO Frappr map!

This stuff is too easy not to use

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

I talked my department chair into letting me do a 10–minute technology demonstration to my faculty colleagues at each of our monthly department meetings. My last one was titled ‘Fun With Audio.’ It went something like this…

Hi everyone. You know how you open up your word processor software, type some stuff, and then hit Save and your file’s somewhere on your hard drive? Let’s take that same thought and extend it to audio…

[open up Audacity with the LAME MP3 encoder already installed]

This is audio software. It’s like your word processor but for voice.

[hold up tabletop mic]

This is a microphone. $30 at Best Buy. I plug it in here and I’m ready to go. I click on this record button, start talking [blah blah blah], hit stop when I’m done. Voila! A sound file!

[play back file]

What can I do with this? Well, I don’t know about you but I can talk faster than I can type. So maybe I’d like to send a message to my class…

[demonstrate a quick voice memo to students - blah blah blah]

Click on Export as MP3, put the file where I want it, and send it as an e-mail attachment. Ta da! I’ve just freed up 20 minutes of my day. What else might we do with this?

[talk about voice instructions for online course management systems, sending voice e-mails instead of text e-mails, doing interviews for research studies, interviewing local experts for department web site, etc.]

[expand my faculty colleagues’ horizon by quickly mentioning Skype and the ability to record long-distance phone calls for free; offer to help anyone install Audacity and get up and running; drop a hint that I’m going to do a hands-on podcasting clinic in the spring]

Done! Thank you very much!

[next month: YouTube QuickCapture!]

This stuff is getting too easy not to use. Faculty members in colleges of education don’t tend to be very tech-savvy. With the right approach, however, we can get them using, and thus exposing future educators to, these tools. My audio demonstration took about eight minutes, I never mentioned the word ‘podcast,’ and I had a ton of questions and interest at the end.

We can do this. Share the love, share your knowledge: adopt a professor today.

Phone book litmus test?

Whenever I need an address or phone number, I turn to the Web. I realized the other day that I probably haven't used a telephone directory printed on paper in at least three or four years.

My parents and grandparents, in contrast, always turn to the phone book. While I don't even think of pulling out the white or yellow pages in our cabinet, the phone book is always the very first place they go. The same is true of paper atlases. I have one in my car for the state of Iowa, but it gets used one-hundredth as often as Google Maps and/or my new GPS unit.

Is this the ultimate litmus test of whether you're a 'digital native' or not? Regardless of your age or setting, where do you turn first when you need an address, phone number, or directions?

YouTube ignominy

A while back, a video of Lauren Caitlin Upton's (Miss South Carolina Teen USA) poor response to a geography question went viral (19 million views as of today; the 30th most popular YouTube video of all time). Now there's a YouTube video showing Kellie Pickler's geographic ignorance ('Is France a country?') on Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?.

You just know that Lexington (SC) High School (where Upton had a 3.5 GPA) and North Stanly (NC) High School (Pickler) must be chagrined to have one of their graduates be the object of public ridicule due to their academic ignorance. Can you imagine the conversations that their former teachers are having right now?

Cross your fingers that one of your graduates isn't next (like we do whenever there's a national news story about some school administrator doing something dumb). Oh, and how many of you could have said that Budapest was the capital of Hungary?

How-to videos

There are a number of great sites that host how-to videos: SuTree, 5min, VideoJug, Expert Village, Vidipedia, and many more. Typically just a few minutes long, these types of videos seem like a perfect opportunity for K-12 and higher education students to display their expertise on some topic. If scientists can tap into the power of online video, educators should be able to as well.

My favorite educational how-to videos are the comma rules at Bionic Teaching. There's just something about those commas dropping down that's sheer genius! Wouldn't it be great if we saw more of this in K-12 classrooms? If creating is the highest level of Bloom's revised taxonomy, wouldn't how-to videos be one great way to foster this? Wouldn't TeacherTube (or some similar site) be a great location for students to upload these? I can envision high-school students creating resources for younger students, middle school students creating how-to videos for their parents, elementary students creating videos for each other, and so on...

Anyone out there making how-to videos with students? Give us some links so we can check them out!

Observing religious holidays in schools

I was interviewed for NASSP's new article on observing religious holidays in schools:

• Ho ho no: The December dilemma

I blogged about this last year in regard to the holiday e-card from Miguel Guhlin's team. The NASSP article includes some good resources on the topic. I would add three others:

• Schools, holiday decorations, and the law (my 2002 article for the  Minnesota School Boards Association Journal)
• Christmas curriculum: Unintended consequences
• Tips on celebrating year-end holidays

The Principal's Policy Blog is sponsoring a dialogue about the article. Add your two cents here and/or there!

The nation's best high schools?

U.S. News has come out with its list of the best high schools in the United States. Andy Rotherham of Education Sector explains the thinking behind the list. Jay Mathews at The Washington Post, who compiles his own list each year with Newsweek, has a very thoughtful reply to the new rankings, including interviews with administrators and other experts, many of whom question the idea of even ranking high schools at all. Check out the rankings and the debate; they make for some interesting reading.

[thanks to the Principal's Policy Blog for pointing to me to these]

School video that mocked student with disabilities posted on YouTube

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

A video production teacher at Montville High School in New Jersey had her students create a public service announcement (PSA) as a class assignment. The students decided to make an anti-bullying video and assigned roles for the skit. B.B., a junior with multiple cognitive and social disabilities, was selected to be the victim. Other students then emptied garbage cans on his head, slapped him, and pushed him to the ground. The video concluded with a teacher breaking up the bullying activity and an anti-bullying message.

Sadly, the video was then edited by some students and posted on YouTube. The YouTube version omitted the anti-bullying aspects of the video and only showed B.B. being bullied. The YouTube version was viewed over 3,700 times before it was taken down. B.B. became the subject of taunts and teasing in school, severe enough that he missed school for a month. His mother has now sued the teacher, principal, superintendent, and school board under the state’s anti-bullying law for failing to sufficiently protect her son after the teasing began.

This incident raises multiple issues worthy of consideration. In no particular order, here are a few questions and thoughts…

1. Where did the original video file reside? Presumably the editing of the PSA was done at school since it was a video production class. What precautions, if any, were taken regarding storage and/or possible dissemination of the PSA? Did each student involved in creating the video get a copy?
2. Who owns the original video? The school? The students who made it? Both? What rights does each party have to do with the video what it wishes?
3. Was the edited YouTube version of the video created at school? If so, the school’s AUP should cover the offending student’s behavior. Although the offending student was identified, it is unclear what disciplinary action, if any, was taken against him/her.
4. In addition to the state law, presumably the school has an anti-bullying policy. Can a minor student with multiple cognitive and social disabilities legally consent to “fake” bullying? Is there any argument of consent or assumption of risk for this situation?
5. One of the necessary elements of a defamation claim is that the victim’s reputation was harmed substantially enough to warrant a legal remedy. Is this harder to prove for a minor student than it would be for an adult, particularly given the rampant teasing that occurs in schools?

There are lots of issues here, but these are the ones that initially jump out at me. I think B.B.’s attorney was right when he said that B.B. never should have been selected in the first place to be the bullying victim. That said, any of the students conceivably could have been teased if they were in his place. B.B. just appears to be a particularly sensitive student because of his disabilities.

As teachers and students in schools continue to create more digital content as part of coursework, we will see more stories like this. The portability and modifiability of digital files, combined with the openness of the Internet and the ready availability of content creation tools, make these types of situations difficult to prevent. The challenge for schools will be to balance appropriate safety and supervision concerns with the pedagogical advantages that often accompany the use of digital technologies. Think about the digital content that is created in your school: is your organization at risk for similar inappropriate appropriation of content by a student or staff member?

[thanks to Jim Gates at Tipline for pointing me to this story]

Note from a school board president

I got this e-mail last week in response to my recent AASA article:

I’m the Board of Education president at [district] in [state]. Our board conducted our superintendent’s evaluation last evening and we discussed the use of technology in our classroom. Well, I asked about it and he replied, “Do you mean the 3M machines?" I requested that our Information Technology staff make a presentation to our Board at a work session. Today I emailed your article to our superintendent with the note, “I wish that this had arrived in my email yesterday; however, these are the questions that I would like to have answered.” It’s difficult to know where to begin; the right questions will be helpful. Thanks for your efforts and the timeliness of this particular article.

Just another indication that our superintendents need help. What are you doing for yours?

Exit strategy

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

Last month I blogged about the importance of first impressions. In other words, what do visitors see and hear when they first walk into your school organization? Is that experience positive or negative? This month’s post will be on exit strategy.

No, I don’t mean your own personal strategy for getting out! Instead, I mean what are visitors’ experiences when they leave your organization? Do they see some interesting, motivating, or upbeat message as they walk out of the building? Do they see charts of significant progress the school is making? Are there pictures of students doing interesting work? Does someone say something nice to them as they leave? Are they leaving their visit with a positive taste in their mouth?

Like first impressions, what visitors see and hear as they leave your building can have big impacts on their overall feelings and beliefs about your organization. Leaders should strive to have every visitor walk away with a positive impression of the organization. If that’s not possible, perhaps due to a difficult conversation that just occurred inside, leaders should at least do everything they can to minimize the negative feelings with which visitors leave. No one wants visitors to leave unhappy, ready to spread the bad news about your organization to others.

As leaders, I encourage you to take a critical, objective look at your school’s entry and exit experiences. Ask yourself, ‘As a visitor, what do I see and hear when I enter and leave this place? How am I treated during my time in this building?’ Get others to do this too – they’ll have different thoughts and impressions than you will. Brainstorm ways to make outsiders’ visits more positive and hospitable – you’ll probably find many low or no cost ways of improving those experiences.

Oh, and did I mention that whatever you come up with also should help the general vibe of your students and staff too?

Y’all come back now, hear?

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

Last month I blogged about the importance of first impressions. In other words, what do visitors see and hear when they first walk into your school organization? Is that experience positive or negative? This month’s post will be on exit strategy.

No, I don’t mean your own personal strategy for getting out! Instead, I mean what are visitors’ experiences when they leave your organization? Do they see some interesting, motivating, or upbeat message as they walk out of the building? Do they see charts of significant progress the school is making? Are there pictures of students doing interesting work? Does someone say something nice to them as they leave? Are they leaving their visit with a positive taste in their mouth?

Like first impressions, what visitors see and hear as they leave your building can have big impacts on their overall feelings and beliefs about your organization. Leaders should strive to have every visitor walk away with a positive impression of the organization. If that’s not possible, perhaps due to a difficult conversation that just occurred inside, leaders should at least do everything they can to minimize the negative feelings with which visitors leave. No one wants visitors to leave unhappy, ready to spread the bad news about your organization to others.

As leaders, I encourage you to take a critical, objective look at your school’s entry and exit experiences. Ask yourself, ‘As a visitor, what do I see and hear when I enter and leave this place? How am I treated during my time in this building?’ Get others to do this too – they’ll have different thoughts and impressions than you will. Brainstorm ways to make outsiders’ visits more positive and hospitable – you’ll probably find many low or no cost ways of improving those experiences.

Oh, and did I mention that whatever you come up with also should help the general vibe of your students and staff too?

Y’all come back now, hear?

Dangerously innumerate

In what may be the best word play yet on the name of my blog, Tom Hoffman had issues with my previous post on GDP overachievers. Check out the conversation: the phrase 'jibber jabber' was used!