Dangerously Irrelevant

What I said to the NEA

Earlier this month I asked what you would say to the NEA Board of Directors if you had the chance. Thank you, everyone, who chimed in with thoughts and suggestions. Here’s what I ended up showing and saying to NEA’s Board. As you’ll hear, I pushed them a bit…

• Audio of presentation (21 MB mp3)
  
• Audio of post-presentation Q&A (26 MB mp3)

UPDATE: Art Wolinsky kindly synchronized the audio and the slides for me if you'd like to watch the presentation as an integrated whole rather than accessing the slides and audio separately. He's also added the video to TeacherTube. Thanks, Art!

Interesting observation #1: The room was set up kind of like the United Nations. Here is the delegation from North Carolina. And over here is the delegation from Idaho…

Interesting observation #2: If you say the word ‘Walmart’ to NEA folks, they instinctively boo and hiss? Apparently they're not big fans of Walmart...

Everyone at NEA was very kind to me and I appreciated the opportunity to speak with them. I’m not sure what they’ll do (if anything) with what I said but I guess we’ll see! For those of you who are interested, you can check out my NEA web page, which includes additional resources.

Related posts

• What would YOU say to the NEA?

School is no longer constrained to how far the bus can travel in the morning

I love this slide (courtesy of Dean Shareski and John Pederson). Click on the image for a larger version.

School is no longer constrained to how far the bus can travel in the morning. Schools will be last to notice.

Photo credit: The School Bus

Secular v. sectarian Christmas displays: What is the obligation of public schools to be welcoming?

I walked into one of the Iowa Area Education Agencies (AEAs) last week and saw a tree in the foyer that was decorated with lights, tinsel, ornaments, a star on top, and presents underneath. The area around the receptionist’s desk was decorated with red and green garland; a Santa Claus candy dish; little stockings with names on them; Santa Claus nesting dolls; and a smaller tree also decorated with lights, ornaments, and a star on top. On the door to the receptionist’s area was a green wreath and a chalkboard sign with a snowman on it that said ‘11 days ‘til Christmas!’

As I walked past the holiday displays, I was confronted yet again with my annual concerns about public schools, religion, and inclusiveness. I’ve blogged about this the past two Decembers:

• 2007 - Bah, humbug? (and its 24 comments)
• 2008 - It’s time to play … Spot that holiday violation 2008! (and its 62 comments)

The Iowa Department of Education speaks

This year I decided to ask an Iowa school law attorney what he thought about what I saw at the AEA. He referred me to the December issue of the Iowa Department of Education’s School Leader Update monthly newsletter, which states on page 11 (in part):

Secular aspects of Christmas. The non-religious aspects of Christmas may be part of students‘ lives at school to the extent that they do not otherwise violate school rules. For example, the following are permissible activities (inasmuch as they do not violate the First Amendment):

• Hanging pictures of reindeer, bells, other non-religious symbols.
• Sponsoring a "giving tree" on which students may hang hats, mittens, scarves, other items for donation to less fortunate persons.
• Handing out candy. [Remember, this does not violate either the First Amendment or state nutrition guidelines (if not provided by the school; check to see if it would violate a local school wellness policy!]
• Sponsoring sleigh rides.

Class parties. Focus on the secular side of Christmas. Excuse all children whose families object to celebrating Christmas in any way, both those families who are of other faiths and those who are Christian, but who find the commercial aspects of the holiday to be offensive.

. . .

Displays. Aside from the utter schizophrenic nature of displays that commingle nativity scenes with Santa, displays that do not overemphasize the religious side of Christmas have been ruled by courts to not violate the First Amendment. Nativity scenes standing alone have been struck down by the courts.

Christmas trees. There is nothing sectarian about a “Christmas” tree. (Go ahead…show me where the New Testament refers to it!) The tree is not the problem. The ornamentation could be. Make sure that the ornaments are not all (or not primarily) representative of the Christian faith. Better yet, see “Secular aspects of Christmas” above.

Scram, kids. We’re celebrating!

So it appears that the Iowa Department of Education has no problem with secular Christmas displays, trees, or celebrations in public schools [and even gets a little cheeky about it; read that New Testament comment again!]. The Department says that class Christmas parties are not an issue: simply excuse objecting students from the party. [Sorry, kids. We’re all now going to celebrate the secular aspects of a sectarian holiday. If you don’t like it, we’ll send you to some other location in the building while we engage in our revelry. You can come back when we’re done with our merriment.]

I don’t fully agree with some aspects of the Department’s legal analysis, but that’s okay. Some of the finer points of holiday displays and celebrations are yet to be determined by courts. What I’m more concerned about, however, is the issue of inclusiveness.

Serving all, but only welcoming to some

Last year in the very active discussion to my post on this topic, I said:

I notice that no one's taken up my inclusiveness concern (and by that I mean schools' moral, ethical, professional, and societal responsibility to provide welcoming learning environments for ALL kids).

The obligation of public schools to be welcoming to students, families, and community members appears to be lost in all the legalistic wrangling. We can dance on the legal head of the pin all we want, but the bottom line is that all communities - even really homogenous ones like those that exist in many rural Iowa communities - have some members who are Jews, Muslims, Jains, agnostics, Hindus, Baha’i, atheists, etc. They also have members who may be Christian but who aren’t of the dominant denomination(s) in the local area and thus may object to particular expressions of belief. Many of these members are uncomfortable with public schools expressing even the secular aspects of sectarian holidays because there’s often no concurrent recognition (in December or at other times) of their own holidays. They don’t feel that their own beliefs are validated, they don’t feel included, and they don’t feel welcome.

It’s not about declaring a ‘war on Christmas.’ Heck, I like Christmas; my family celebrates it every year. Much of this isn’t even about religion. Instead it’s about kindness and respect. Why do so many schools talk all year (and even implement curricular programs) about being kind, respectful, and inclusive and then get their backs up and get defensive about their right to do this? Don’t they see the disconnects between their rhetoric and their actions? Why on earth are they fighting so hard to send messages of noninclusiveness?

As a former Social Studies teacher, attorney, school law professor, and American citizen, I believe that public school administrators and the organizations that they lead have an obligation to recognize and honor the ideological, cultural, and religious diversity that exists in our country. We don’t do that by allowing holiday displays that scream CHRISTMAS! and nothing else. Every December this is an issue, and every December I feel sorry for the students and families who are of minority faiths or no faith because I know that many schools are doing very little to help them feel welcome too during this supposedly-festive time. In a country that is the standard-bearer for the world when it comes to ideological and religious diversity, allowing this sort of activity just doesn’t sit well with me. Even if it’s legal, that doesn’t mean it’s morally right for the members of our community that we choose to ignore.

Okay, I’ve said my piece. Have at me…

P.S. Also see this story about a preschooler being suspended for having long hair for an altogether different example of a school’s noninclusiveness.

Video - What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century?

Here's a new video from Heidi Clark and Anita Bramhoff, two Canadian teachers who made the film as part of some work at the University of British Columbia. Happy viewing!

Some thoughts on U.S. News & World Report's 100 best public high schools

My father-in-law gave me the January 2010 issue of U.S. News & World Report. It features a number of articles on P-12 education and includes detailed tables of its ‘100 best public high schools’ in the United States. I’ve been playing around with the data a bit…

1. Nationally, it helps to be rich and/or flexible

The tables show that 72 of the top 100 schools are magnet schools, charter schools, or have an application process for students. Only 33 of the top 100 high schools are classified as open enrollment schools. What’s not apparent from the online tables (but is in the printed version), however, is that 5 of those 33 also are labeled as magnet or charter schools and that 26 of the remaining 28 have fewer than 10% of their students classified as economically disadvantaged. In other word, only 2 of the 100 ‘best’ public high schools are traditional open enrollment schools serving a socioeconomically-diverse student population:

• High School for Dual Language and Asian Studies (#52; New York, New York)
• Hidalog Early College High School (#97; Hidalgo, Texas)

2. In Iowa, small homogenous schools reign

No high schools in Iowa were given a gold medal by U.S. News. Only 1 of the 47 Iowa high schools given a bronze or silver medal has a sizable number of students in it:

• Washington High School (1,463 students; Linn County, Iowa)

The remaining 46 high schools have fewer than 600 students. Over 3/4 have fewer than 300 students, often spread out over grades 7 through 12, not just grades 9 through 12. Only 4 of the 47 high schools (including Washington High School above) have racial/ethnic minority student percentages greater than 6%.

3. Are these schools good models for others?

No doubt these are good schools. Some of them appear on the U.S. News list every year. But many will question whether they are good models or exemplars for traditional schools. Are they doing things differently in terms of curriculum, instruction, expectations for student work, teacher training, etc.? And to the extent that they are, how much is due to their greater flexibility compared to more traditional schools?

I’m not disparaging these schools. I’m just thinking out loud here…

Kudos, Dr. Watson!

 

Bill Watson, Activities Director for the Urbandale (IA) Community School District, received his doctorate this evening from Iowa State University. As his doctoral advisor, I had the pleasure of 'hooding' Bill at Commencement.

Please extend your heartiest congratulations to Dr. Watson for successfully completing his doctoral program. Doctorates are always difficult and challenging journeys (particularly when your advisor is me!). Nice work, Bill!

Related posts

• Kudos, Drs. Davis and Finsness!

ISTE conference keynote - Final totals (by category and overall)

Here is the final leaderboard for the ISTE conference keynote crowdsourcing project. Category winners are Chris Lehmann, Alan November, David Pogue, David Rose, and Karl Fisch.

If votes from all categories were totaled, this would be the leaderboard:

The top five - Chris Lehmann, Jeff Piontek, Gary Stager, Barack Obama, and Daniel Pink - received all or the majority of their votes in the leadership category.

Someone with more time than me will have to go in and see how many of these votes were from the same person but in different categories. For now, I’ll just say that Chris Lehmann, Gary Stager, Michael Wesch, Sir Ken Robinson, and Will Richardson had more support than appears from the single category totals.

Thanks to everyone who voted (and who put up with all of my updates on this ISTE project). There are lots of good names on these lists and I’m sure any of these folks would be a bang-up keynote speaker. Now it’s in ISTE’s hands. We’ll see what happens next!

Unperceived changes followed by dislocating explosions

Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, & Harry Lewis say…

Exponential growth of anything can suddenly make the world look utterly different than it had been. When that threshold is passed, changes that are “just” quantitative can look qualitative.

Another way of looking at the apprent abruptness of exponential growth - its explosive force - is to think about how little lead time we have to respond to it. . . . At what point was it only a half as devastating? . . . The answer is on the next to last day. . . .

The information story is full of examples of unperceived changes followed by dislocating explosions. Those with the foresight to notice the explosion just a little earlier than everyone else can reap huge benefits. Those who move a little too slowly may be overwhelmed by the time they try to respond. [Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion, pp. 9-10]

How is your school system responding to some of the exponential, qualitative changes that we are experiencing in our information landscape?

Related posts

• Publicly available v. readily accessible

HELP WANTED: Looking for some assistance with my next survey of the edublogosphere

I’m looking for a few folks who might be interested in helping me with my next survey of the edublogosphere. I’d love to have some assistance devising questions, analyzing and presenting the results, publicizing the survey, etc.

I’ve done two of these in the past:

• 2008 - 2008 Education Blogosphere Survey results
• 2007 - The results are in!

My plan is for the survey to go live in early to mid-January and to have the analysis completed by late January or early February. Complete this short online form if you’d like to be involved. Thanks!

12-14 ISTE conference keynote update - David Rose takes over category lead

Here is the current leaderboard for the ISTE conference keynote crowdsourcing project. Not much voting activity. Chris Lehmann still holds his lead over Jeff Piontek. David Rose has taken the lead in the Universal design for learning category.

I’ll post one more update tomorrow, which is the last day of voting, and then another post showing the final results. Have you voted yet?

 

A day with Will Richardson, Part 3

Here is Part 3 of my notes from our day with Will Richardson. You also can see the live chat and/or follow the Twitter conversation and/or participate in EtherPad.

• We started with a visioning exercise (and accompanying discussion)
• Are we suffering from information overload or information overchoice?
• The nichification / ghettoization / balkanization of society
• Communities of interest don't look like communities of geography
• The #1 characteristic of a healthy network is diversity of ideas. (Stephen Downes)
• Adolescents are growing up in a much more transparent environment than previous generations; whatever they do is likely going to be public (whether they like it or not)
• We are spending a lot more time interfacing through screens
• We are failing to teach adolescents how to use these technological affordances in socially responsible and productive ways
• This is because the vast majority of educators aren't information literate themselves
• If you can't figure out who's behind http://www.martinlutherking.org/, you're illiterate these days
• It's not hard to make the case that the world is now 24/7/365 anyone anytime anywhere. But we need access to it.
• Turning to the National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A). We used this document as a self-rubric.
• 1a: share the story of what it could look like for kids, lots of meetings with stakeholders, showed videos/inspiring tool usage by educators, visited other places, created cognitive disconnects, built partnerships with business/industry
• 1b: has to be an ongoing process/conversation
• 2b: making videocasts, using iPod touches for teacher observation/evaluation, moved to Google Docs, using digital discussion forums, using blogs/wikis/EtherPad, school board is now paperless
• 2e: working with SETDA or iNACOL, being active in the blogosphere / Twittersphere
• 3c: are you creating opportunities for staff to do this?
• 5c: give credit when you use photos (modeling attribution),
• We've got to share more with each other and with others (can CASTLE collect some of these stories?)
• For example, Todd Abrahamson (Sigourney) is doing podcasts
• Could we fill in the rubric examples as a group and then share with others?
• Networks are about people who are cooperating and sharing; communities are groups of people who know each other, roll up their sleeves, and collaborate (go even further than networks)
• We now live in an era of perpetual professional development
• Check out the Electronic Crime Institute (John Carver)
• Digital literacy/safety/security issues need to infuse everything; it's not a stand-alone unit
• Are our safety/security efforts both everywhere and nowhere?
• I want my kid to fail safely in the vicinity of some responsible adult that can help her recognize the ramifications of the mistakes that she is making
• It can't all happen at school (Dave Keane). Where else is it going to occur? (Will Richardson)
• Modeling by adults implies intentional, visible behavior
• Models that Will has seen
• Science Leadership Academy (Philadelphia, PA) - inquiry-based laptop magnet school, students are patenting a student-created biodiesel generator, SLA is tough to scale, defining questions = how do we learn?, what can we create?, and what does it mean to lead?, core values of inquiry/research/collaboration/presentation/reflection
• High Tech High (San Diego, CA) - very tech-infused but not getting the global/networking piece yet
• Australia is getting every kid a netbook/laptop by 2012
• Can we do this? Is it possible? What choice do we have?

A day with Will Richardson, Part 2

Here is Part 2 of my notes from our day with Will Richardson. You also can see the live chat and/or follow the Twitter conversation and/or participate in EtherPad.

• How are you personally taking advantage of these online / technological affordances?
• If you're not, can you participate in the conversation? 'Cause you don't have the context.
• The business sector is behind this; they want specific policy initiatives (can ISEA / SAI / Iowa business leaders / etc. all get behind these?)
1. Get every kid/home connected (broadband)
2. A device for every teacher
3. A device for every (secondary?) student
4. Do you have a curriculum that supports the things that Will is talking about? (does the Iowa Core go far enough?)
5. Community forums that educate the average Iowan / statewide visibility initiative
6. More online coursework options (e.g., statewide virtual high school)
7. Education of teachers / community members about workforce / 21st century skills / globallization needs/issues
8. Greater flexibility for schools to use existing funding streams
9. Repeal / revise Dillon's Rule?
10. Different / better assessments
11. Allow schools to use/create free textbooks and use textbook money for student computers
• We are the last generation that had a choice about technology (Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach)
• I am amazed that schools are investing in all of these technology tools
• Schools should be in the curriculum business, not the hardware business or connectivity business
• We need learners, not teachers, in the front of our classes
• Teachers are no longer the smartest people in the room; the smartest people in the room are the ones you invite in from outside
• Teachers come in all shapes and sizes from all parts of the world
• We need to create learning communities, not teaching communities
• I don't know any kids or teachers that have SmartBoards in their bedroom; why aren't we focusing on the technologies that our kids have in hand?
• We need a new graduation requirement: Students will be able to create, navigate, and grow their own personal learning networks in safe, effective, and ethical ways
• In Iowa, we need a movement!
• If folks aren't at the table, get them there!
• The world is about networks right now (how can I get the answer I need when I need it?), it's not about textbooks and memorization
• Check out fanfiction.net to get a sense of user-generated communities
• We're preparing kids for a world in which they're going to be Googled over and over again in their lives
• If you don't share, you don't get hits / visits; you're not visible
• If you can't be found, you're irrelevant (Scott McLeod)
• You have to put yourself out there in ways that people can find you
• Kids are doing this every day without us
• Kids don't care about much of what we have them do in school - it's inauthentic, it lacks meaningful and relevant purpose, it's disconnected and decontextualized
• MIT is offering all of its courses online
• Tough questions from Will
• Can you please teach my child to read and write in the context of <insert student's interest here>?
• How many of your schools teach Wikipedia (how it works / how to contribute / etc.)?
• How many of your schools teach kids how to read/write in hyperlinked environments?
• How many of your schools teach kids how to be Google-able?
• It's just not us edublogger blowhards; see, e.g., the NCTE Framework for 21st Century Curriculum and Assessment
• Gut check: How many of these bullet points can you do? Are you literate according to NCTE? And if you're not, how are you going to teach our kids?
• This stuff is here already; this is not future stuff
• Will demonstrates Diigo using this Science Daily web page
• Annotated web pages, for example, are social reading. No one is teaching our kids how to be social readers.
• We gotta rethink "Do your own work." Collaboration is everywhere.
• Schools spend money on a lot of things that they don't need to be buying except in limited numbers: software licenses, textbooks, etc.
• It's increasingly an open source / Creative Commons world
• See the Flat Classroom Project 2006, 2007, and beyond
• Will collected all of the work that got sent home in his two kids' Friday folders for a year; the stack was 2.5 feet tall
• This didn't include all the work that stayed at school
• His kids never went back and looked at all that paper; they had zero investment in it
• Will showed Radio WillowWeb
• Will showed the 2009 Horizon Report
• "Increasingly, those who use technology in ways that expand their global connections are more likely to advance, while those who do not will find themselves on the sidelines. With the growing availability of tools to connect learners and scholars all over the world — online collaborative workspaces, social networking tools, mobiles, voice-over-IP, and more — teaching and scholarship are transcending traditional borders more and more all the time."
• Is your own personal learning practice transcendent? Are you learning / interacting differently? And if not, why not?
• Will quoted Howard Gardner: "[A]fter millennia of considering education (learning and teaching) chiefly in one way, we may well have reached a set of tipping points: Going forward, learning may be far more individualized, far more in the hands (and the minds) of the learner, and far more interactive than ever before. This constitutes a paradox: As the digital era progresses, learning may be at once more individual (contoured to a person’s own style, proclivities, and interests) yet more social (involving networking, group work, the wisdom of crowds, etc.). How these seemingly contradictory directions are addressed impacts the future complexion of learning."
• The reality is that the way we've done professional development for the last 30 years doesn't work.
• You have to create a culture in your teaching staff where, if they need to know how to blog, they can go online and learn themselves (in communities)
• We've made teachers as passive about learning as kids - kids wait for teachers to tell them how/what to learn; teachers wait for us to tell them how/what to learn
• NSDC agrees: it should be long-term, job-embedded professional development that really shifts practice
• There aren't enough educators / policymakers that are looking at the current system of schooling and saying "Oh, crap! We need to stop tinkering."
• Leadership is a choice. It's a choice not to do nothing. (Seth Godin)

A day with Will Richardson, Part 1

Here is Part 1 of my notes from our day with Will Richardson. You also can see the live chat and/or follow the Twitter conversation and/or participate in EtherPad.

• I'm going to make you uncomfortable; you should be uncomfortable
• If you're not uncomfortable right now in education, you're not paying attention
• Conversations are spreading far beyond physical space, in ways that previously were not possible
• My learning today looks nothing like the learning that's occurring my kids' classrooms
• There are no adults right now teaching kids how to LEARN, not just be social, in these networks
• Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuFsDN8dsJU
• He assumes there's an audience and that they'll respond
• He's comfortable asking for help
• He views YouTube as a learning tool (Elliott Smith)
• This is inquiry- / problem-based learning
• After 101 views, he had 10 comments (10% hit rate); all 10 had specific feedback/suggestions for him
• This 12-year-old kid can throw out a question to 1.7 billion people
• Shirky: We are experiencing a tectonic shift in how we form groups and self-organize
• Wesch: This is not simply a technological revolution, this is a cultural revolution.
• Outside of school ALL of our learning is inquiry- / passion-based
• That's the way that world looks for anyone with an Internet connection
• Finland has legislated nationwide broadband access by 2012
• Schools have a lot of tech, but nothing's really different
• Still memorizing a lot of stuff
• Curriculum hasn't changed
• Instruction hasn't changed
• This group-forming ability is everywhere
• Obama's use of social media for Presidential election
• Flickr tag: iranelection
• Raw information is being released rather than it being edited / filtered first
• We now can live stream video from our phones; imagine a world in 5 years where everyone's phone is iPhonish
• Justin Bieber became famous by uploading his talent show videos to the Web
• Check out surfthechannel.com
• Today, instead of writing a letter to the editor / Better Business Bureau / CEO, you make a video
• Business is different today because people can form groups,
• Allstate (and others) has hired people to monitor the Twittersphere; don't call; tweet!
• Best Buy has 1,200 people monitoring TwelpForce; don't call, tweet!
• Alvin Toffler: if you're a cop with a speed gun, the car going by at 120 mph is business, the car going at 5 mph is education
• This MacArthur Foundation report is a must-read
• Kids are using social networks to connect with their friends / peers
• They're also connecting with adults around the world in interest-based networks
• Educators need to teach kids how to do this responsibly and powerfully b/c this will be the majority of their online interactions in the future
• Adults are uncomfortable with the idea of being hyperconnected and hypertransparent
• They're wary of being open and findable
• How are we going to think differently in 3-5 years when every kid comes to school with ubiquitous access (via cell phones) and has the world's sum of knowledge in their pockets? (see Will's post on this, along with the 130+ comments)
• Research shows that the online predation issue is not nearly as big as we think; the threat is overblown; we've been Datelined to death; and that most kids are pretty good at navigating the Web safely
• It's a basic risk-reward equation
• Adults are not having these conversations with kids, they're simply blocking and/or ignoring the issue
• Just like we have driver's ed, we need Internet ed (Dave Keane)
• There's nothing personalized or passion-based about what we're asking kids to do in school
• How can we square this with entrepeneurship, innovation, creativity, 21st century skills, etc.?

Never going to happen?

True statement by a teacher (said with all sincerity) in one of my workshops this semester:

We’re so far behind our students. How do we catch up and move past them so that we can then teach them things they don’t know?

Single-media schools, multimedia world

If a picture tells a thousand words, then the two images below from a recent report by the Global Information Industry Center at the University of California, San Diego are of interest. The first image shows the average American’s hourly information consumption per day. Note that the small yellow wedge represents printed text, which of course is the overwhelmingly dominant information medium in P-12 schools.

The second image shows the decreasing prevalence of printed text in our lives since 1960:

These data represent average Americans. I’m sure they would look different if we just looked at our younger generations.

It’s simple, really:

How long are American schools going to get away with these kinds of expansive disconnects between how we consume information in schools and in our daily lives?

12-10 ISTE conference keynote update - All is quiet on the voting front

Here is the current leaderboard for the ISTE conference keynote crowdsourcing project. No major changes in the last four days. Voting is slowing. Chris Lehmann still holds his lead over Jeff Piontek.

I’ll try to post an update every day or two between now and December 15. Have you voted yet?

 

CASTLE has a new blog! Check out 1to1Schools.net

Some of you have noticed that CASTLE has a new blog: 1to1 Schools. We’re excited about this new venture, which is meant to highlight news, stories, videos, and other resources related to elementary and secondary 1:1 laptop programs.

1to1 Schools is a group blog. For example, check out Nick Sauers’ series on using John Kotter’s 8–stage change process as a model framework for schools that are considering 1:1. Or his post on banning boredom, not laptops. Nick and I also have been on the road with our Flip camcorders, making videos of educators who are involved in laptop programs (see, e.g., our chats with Wynn Draper-Bryant and Marge Beatty).

Pamela Livingston, author of 1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs That Work, recently had two posts about an international survey of students in 1:1 programs:

• Part 1
• Part 2

She also wrote recently about how laptops are NOT for listening.

Blair Peterson, another occasional contributor, has noted that we should be prepared for the expected opposition to laptop programs.

The blog is a work in progress - and like many new blogs we’re still working on finding our voice - so please contact us if you have suggestions. If you’d like to be a contributor (or know someone else who’d be a good writer for us) please let us know that too.

Happy reading!

Yes, this is the future of magazines (and newspapers and books and ...)

Judy O’Connell asked if the video below is the future of magazines. Yes, absolutely. Maybe not by 2010 or 2012 but sooner than we think. And for newspapers and books too. And, to a lesser extent, maybe we’ll even start seeing more interactivity and/or multimedia embedded within scholarly research, government or policy center reports, and other manuscripts.

If ‘news’ is becoming more of a commodity every day, perhaps it’s this sort of added value from which publishers will make their money. I know I’d pay for something like this from my favorite periodicals.

Thanks to Ewan McIntosh for the tweet that led me to this. Happy viewing!

What would YOU say to the NEA?

I have been invited to speak to the Board of Directors of the National Education Association (NEA), our nation's largest teacher union, about disruptive innovation. I'm scheduled for the morning of Saturday, December 12. I only have 20 minutes, plus another 10 minutes for questions and discussion. If you were in my shoes, what would you tell them (stick to the topic, please!)?

2009 Edublog Awards: My thoughts on 'lifetime achievement'

I’ve been nominated for a few Edublog Awards this year, including Best Individual Blog, Lifetime Achievement, and Best Leadership Blog (a nonexistent category!). I’m flattered that some folks think I’m worthy of nomination and am appreciative of their support of my writing.

I should be WAY down the list when it comes to any kind of lifetime achievement award. The category is only in its second year of existence; David Warlick won last year. I can think of a number of different folks that have come before me and are much more deserving. Below is a partial list that is 1) in no particular order, and 2) by no means exclusive of others that I’m forgetting at this moment. All of these folks have influenced my thinking and writing and many were very kind to me when I was getting started.

• Will Richardson
• Wes Fryer
• Stephen Downes
• Karl Fisch
• Miguel Guhlin
• Doug Johnson
• Vicki Davis
• Christopher Sessums
• Dean Shareski
• Jeff Utecht
• Steve Dembo
• George Siemens
• Ewan McIntosh
• Bud Hunt
• David Jakes
• Tom Hoffman
• Darren Kuropatwa
• Judy O’Connell
• Alan Levine
• Pete Reilly
• and so on…

I only have been blogging for about 3 years now. Maybe in another decade or two - if I’m still at this and the folks above all have been selected - I’ll feel like it might be my turn. Until then, I hope you’ll consider throwing your support behind one of these others (if they get selected for the final ballot).

Nominations close December 8 if you’re interested in recognizing the blogging contributions of others. Voting ends December 16 and the awards are announced December 18. Keep writing and learning, everyone!

12-06 ISTE conference keynote update (including overall vote totals)

Here is the current leaderboard for the ISTE conference keynote crowdsourcing project. Chris Lehmann holds his lead over Jeff Piontek. Gary Stager continues to make his move.

I’ll try to post an update every day or two between now and December 15. Have you voted yet?

FYI, if votes from all categories were totaled, this would be the leaderboard:

Someone with more time than me would have to go in and see how many of these votes were from the same person but in different categories. For now, suffice it to say that Chris Lehmann, Gary Stager, Michael Wesch, Sir Ken Robinson, and Will Richardson have more support than appears from the single category totals.

4 tales out of school

Here are four tales out of school, as relayed by parents:

Hatshepsut and Thutmose

Four questions from a study packet for a middle school World Civilizations class:

A. Nubia developed trade routes over land because:

1. there was not enough wood to build boats
2. the Egyptians controlled the Nile
3. the cataracts prevented river travel in Nubia
4. Nubians only traded with West Africans

B. According to legend, who united Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt?

1. Hatshepsut
2. Menes
3. Amon-Re
4. Thutmose III

C. Thutmose III was all of the following except:

1. a conqueror
2. an educated man
3. unmerciful to the defeated
4. a great Pharaoh

D. What was the kingdom of Kerma known for?

1. great poverty
2. skilled archers
3. delicate pottery
4. ironworking

These are just a sample; most of the items in the packet are similar. Students have to ‘learn’ these because they’ll be quizzed on them.

It’s very hard for me to see this kind of schoolwork and not think that vast amounts of student time are just being wasted. And I’m the first to admit that I did this when I taught 8th grade. I didn’t know any better, but that didn’t make it right. There are lots of great higher-level concepts possible in this unit, such as the inter-dependent relationships between people and land, what influences where civilizations develop, and so on. But I don’t see those concepts here (and I wasn’t ever taught to focus on those as a teacher or student teacher).

[Correction: I've been informed that students did get to learn/write about some of those higher-level concepts too. That doesn't remedy the multiple-choice items for me, but it does help me feel slightly better.]

Study hall rules

In a high school cafeteria, there are flyers about study hall that say (among other things):

• Students may eat and drink as long as they clean up after themselves.
• Students may listen to music as long as they have headphones.
• Students may talk quietly.
• Game/Card playing, laptops, or any other such devices are not permitted in Study Hall. I-Pods are for music only.
• NO CELL PHONE USAGE!

In other words, you can eat snacks, hang out and talk with your friends, and listen to your music during ‘study hall,’ but you can’t use what may be the most powerful learning devices that humanity has yet invented.

Assessment reliability, validity, and parent (dis)trust

An e-mail exchange between a parent and a high school teacher…

Parent

Dear [teacher], I would like to find out how to get a copy of my son's exams for his Algebra 2 class. My son's name is XXXX XXXX. He informed me that he is not allowed to take them home. I am very surprised by this. I don't know how I, as a parent, am supposed to help him if I don't know what he is not understanding. Also, it is very helpful to students to have their exams to study for the final. I am happy to pay for copies. Please let me know what I need to do. Thank you.

Teacher

I am attaching a pdf of our departments rationale for keeping students' tests on file. In addition, students are welcome to set up times when they may review a test in the math study center. When exams are returned, they are welcome to write down a question in their notes to which they may refer later.

Parent

I am very disappointed by this policy although at least the department lets parents and students look at their old exams. I appreciate not letting them come home until all students have taken the exam, but it seems that waiting a week would be fine. The "needing copies on hand" can be dealt with by letting a parent pay for a copy to take home if requested or by scanning and emailing. As for the issue of not wanting to make up new problems, math is one of the easier subjects to do this in so I'm really surprised.

I hope that students have been informed of this policy; I as a parent certainly haven't been by any department. My son didn't seem to be aware of it though, but that could be a teenage thing. What times are available for me to come in and look at the exams? Do I make the appointment with you to get the exams or go through the math study center? Thanks for your help.

In other words: No, we don’t trust you or your child (and/or we can’t be bothered to make an alternative assessment); if you are willing and available to take off work and come down here, we’ll show you what you want to see and you can take some notes but you may not have even a copy of your child’s work.

No computers for you!

It’s December and some upper elementary students have yet to use a computer this year for anything other than typing practice and to look up things in the library catalog.  [I’m not sure there’s anything to say about this except to sigh in dismay]

Wrap-up

Four tales out of school. Four tales that could exist in most districts in the country. Four tales that illustrate the disconnects that often exist between our schools and the caring, empowering, relevant, meaningful, modern learning environments that we should be creating for students and their families. Got one or more tales to share of your own?

12-04 ISTE conference keynote update - Gary Stager is gaining ground!

Here is the current leaderboard for the ISTE conference keynote crowdsourcing project. Chris Lehmann holds his lead over Jeff Piontek. Gary Stager continues to climb the charts.

I’ll try to post an update every day or two between now and December 15. Have you voted yet?

Does your school organization reflect our new digital information landscape?

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

CASTLE has been doing a great deal of technology leadership training for the School Administrators of Iowa, some of the Iowa Area Education Agencies, some of the Minnesota Service Cooperatives, and other school organizations across the country. One of the discussion activities that we’ve been doing lately asks session participants to think in groups about the impacts that the Internet and other digital technologies have had on various sectors of our society:

• newspapers, magazines, and the news industry
• banking, money management, and personal finance
• television, movies, and video
• maps, travel agencies, and the travel industry
• radio, CDs, and the music industry
• medicine and personal health
• reading and books
• how we communicate, connect, and share with each other; and
• universities

[Download these slides: ppt pptx]

This is not an exclusive list - for example, it doesn’t include the postal service or politics / political campaigning [or real estate agents] - but it does include many of the major sectors in our society that are information-oriented. In other words, they’re societal sectors and activities that, at their heart, are all about information and knowledge in one form or another.

In groups, participants can quite easily identify that ALL of these societal sectors are undergoing major, radical transformations because of digital technologies. Information-oriented societal activities are being reshaped in significant ways, and it’s just getting started as digital tools and environments continue to advance at a rapid pace.

Characteristics of our new digital information landscape

If asked to describe the ideas or themes that cut across all of these societal changes, participants can identify the general characteristics of our new digital information landscape. It is

• open
• more accessible
• more convenient
• more immediate / real-time
• networked
• connected
• shared
• collaborative
• interactive
• individualized
• empowering
• flexible
• adaptive
• less dependent on “experts”
• rapidly-changing
• more comprehensive
• searchable
• often crowdsourced
• creative
• multimodal / multimedia
• more efficient
• often less expensive
• global
• less dependent on geography
• technology-suffused
• less dependent on physical media
• and so on…

These apply to us too!

The challenge for us as leaders, of course, is that P-12 schools also are information-oriented institutions. At our hearts, we too are all about information:

• information mastery
• knowledge transmission and transference
• organizing and accessing information
• making meaning
• etc.

Because of this, schools shouldn’t expect that they somehow will be immune from the same changes that are radically altering other information-oriented societal sectors. We can’t continue to pretend that these revolutions aren’t going to affect us too, in significant and as-yet-unknown ways.

How many of the big ideas / cross-cutting themes above describe your school? Does the daily work of your school organization reflect our new digital information landscape?

12-02 ISTE conference keynote update - The crowd speaks!

Here is the current leaderboard for the ISTE conference keynote crowdsourcing project. Chris Lehmann holds his lead over Jeff Piontek. Gary Stager is climbing the charts.

At the beginning of this project round, I said:

The bottom line is that we all can have a voice now. It seems to me that ISTE is trying to make this voting area a closed space - separate from all of the other conversation spaces that we have available to us - and I just don’t think that’s either logical or feasible.

Sure enough, conversation about this round has been taking place in Twitter and in the edublogosphere:

• Wanted: Keynoter
• Penance for keynote influencers
• ISTE keynote project

See also a few posts from the last round, the first of which is Vicki Davis’ excellent reflection on the whole process:

• Crowdsourcing or loudsourcing?
• ISTE educational technology conference: Crowdsourcing
• The difference between ‘crowdsourcing’ and being lazy
• Give me the ridiculous
• Need for radical reboot – Dismissing the ISTE keynote
• The keynote I’d like to see at ISTE 2010: Vote and share yours

I’ll try to post a daily update between now and December 15. Have you voted yet?

Slide - Lose your sleep before your decision, not after it

Download this file: png ppt pptx

See also my other slides and the Great Quotes About Learning and Change Flickr pool.

Photo credit: 2/365 My Work