TEDxDenver ED Presentation links

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Brian

I’ve had numerous requests for links to the student work highlighted during my TEDx Denver ED talk tonight. Just about everything is linked to right here on this blog. Just look at the top of the right hand column under “Pages” and you will see “Links To My Students’ work.”

Presenting my talk was a fantastic experience that I will blog more about later. I do need to say thank you to all of you … my presentation was a reflection of the work those of you that are part of this expanding network of learners help me and my students with everyday.

Learning is messy!

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TEDxDenverED Presentation

Posted on June 7, 2010 by Brian

I’ve been known to advocate … pontificate? …  for teachers having more voice in general. Well now I’m being asked to do just that … the advocate part that is. I’ll be presenting a TED Talk at TEDxDenverED, on Monday, June 28, 2010, 5:30 – 10:00 PM (includes catered reception)

Ricketson Theatre

Denver Performing Arts Center

(Adjacent to Convention Ctr)
1101 13th Street
Denver, Colorado

The other presenters are listed here.

From the TEDxDenverED web site: TEDxDenverED is centered around the theme of transforming education by empowering people.

A diverse group of educators, innovators and problem-solvers in attendance will have the opportunity to learn from one another, both as speakers and as attendees, and will leave the conference driven to creatively improve our collective future.

I understand the presentations are being streamed live, but I don’t know the particulars yet. School gets out for us the end of this week, then I will go into total prep mode – I’m really stoked … and nervous … but a good nervous I hope,  about sending a powerful message. Hope to see you there.

Learning is messy!

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Update: Our High Hopes High Altitude Balloon Project

Posted on May 29, 2010 by Brian

Thursday we launched our balloon. It reached an altitude of over 107,800 feet, the flight lasted about 90 minutes, the coldest temperature encountered was -80F, our camera took almost 500 pictures.

My 4th grade students have each already posted on their blogs, pieces that share a bit about the launch and a “Wordless Photo Essay” about the day. We are still working on stories where each student has to tell the story of the flight from the point of view of the balloon. They will be able to illustrate their stories with photos we have already posted on our class Flickr page (check them out – way cool - especially these taken by our class onboard camera). We hope to make multi-media presentations that combine the story from preparation through recovery using iPhoto, iMovie and Garage Band.

One of the photos taken at over 100,000 feet on the way down.

On the science side, we are learning how to edit Wiki pages while making a supporting page for the project - The High Hopes High Altitude Balloon Project wiki will have pages that share links to the science behind the project as well as links to the Flickr photos, blogs, videos and multi-media projects we are producing. Note the link on the main page to a map that shows the path, time, altitude and more of the flight. If you click on the red dots they display the statistics for that point in the trip – we were able to follow the journey live using the map.

One of the highlights of the project was developing and sharing our “High Hopes” for our school, community and the world. The students all wrote their own. We took a photo of each student against a sky background and using FD’s Flickr Toys each student made what we called a “StratoCard” (because the balloon would make it into the stratosphere) and we sent these up with the balloon as a keepsake. In addition the students used their blogs to solicit “High Hopes” from around the world. We burned these to a CD and sent the world’s high hopes aloft as well. We received “Hopes” from England, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and across the US. Perhaps the most poignant however, were the “Hopes” we received from Bangkok, Thailand, where rioting and violence have been issues of  late. Students there shared their hopes that people would stop starting fires, stop releasing pets into the streets as they flee, and in general promote peace.

I just wish we had more than 6 days of school left – there is so much we could do with all these experiences and I haven’t even mentioned the temperature and other data we collected. And on that note I should mention that The UNR scientists that ran the project from their end  Dr. Jeffrey C. LaCombe, Associate Professor, Chemical & Metallurgical Engineering and Dr. Eric L. Wang, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering – want to do this again next school year! I have “High Hopes” that we will!

Learning is messy!

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Update: Our “High Hopes” High Altitude Balloon Project

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Brian

Travis Fields, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno, and the scientist leading our high altitude balloon project visited our school today to talk to our 4th graders.  He explained some of the science that they work on. Things like they are required (yes required) in some classes to design high tech dune buggies, race cars and more (see photo) They are graded on their design, explanation on why it will work and then construction and testing.

vehicles
Very few of our students have family members that have attended college, so this was a great opportunity for them to see the possibilities. Many were confused at first that you could actually take classes in this kind of thing … priceless!
Next Travis showed them a video clip they made exploding a balloon containing hydrogen gas … we had to watch it twice. They are filling our balloon with hydrogen because it is much cheaper than helium … helium has to be mined and the deposits are running out, so the price has skyrocketed.
He explained that the research they are doing with balloons is mainly about stabilizing the payloads during flight so that certain kinds of data and samples can be obtained without the constant movement that happens now. Balloon flight is very cheap … no, very, very cheap compared to rockets, so figuring out how to do this would be huge.
He also informed us that they have decided to use a 3,000 gram balloon instead of the 1200, so that means we were wrong when we claimed that the balloon would get at least 80,000 feet. Now it should make 100,000 feet+. They are trying out a new balloon release system during our flight that will … well … release the balloon after it bursts and the parachute deploys so that it isn’t hanging below the parachute flopping and banging into the payloads and causing havoc.

He showed how we will track the balloon online during it’s flight and explained that sometimes it takes 6 hours or more to find the balloon after it’s 2 hour flight – about 90 minutes up and 30 minutes down. He checked out our payload design and said it was basically sound … gave us a few tips on attaching a back-up line in case something happens to our rigging.

If you are interested we are still taking “High Hopes” comments to send up with the balloon … now even higher.
Learning is messy!
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Come Join Our “High Hopes” High Altitude Balloon Project

Posted on May 15, 2010 by Brian

With the help of Dr. Jeffrey C. LaCombe - Advisor, University of Nevada, Reno faculty member in Materials Science & Engineering, my students and two other fourth grades at my school are designing and building “payloads” that will be launched on a high altitude balloon that will reach (if there are no complications) at least 80,000 feet. As part of the camera, temperature and other data gathering instruments our payload will contain, my students are writing their “High Hopes” for their school, community and the world. We want to include yours’ too! Here is how it is explained on our class blog along with links to the other parts of our project. Please comment on our class blog if you and/or your students are interested in joining in:

We have “High Hopes” for our school, community and the world. We also are part of a project to send a high altitude balloon that will include a “payload” we get to build with a camera that will snap a photo every 5 seconds for the over 2 hours it will take to float up to over 80,000 feet. That is over 15 miles! We will also monitor temperature and other readings.

We thought it would be cool to include our “High Hopes” as part of the payload so they really will be “High Hopes!” It turns out we have room to include everyones’ “High Hopes” and we want to include YOUR “High Hopes” too!

Just before we launch our balloon on May 27, 2010, we will copy all the comments you leave on this post with your own “High Hopes” to a CD or DVD and send them up with ours. That way your “High Hopes” will actually be raised up really, really high too!

We are doing other activities too. We are learning about lighter than air balloons, air pressure, the atmosphere and more. We have already written blog posts on this blog that include videos we produced about the science involved in balloon flight. In addition we have a wiki page we are designing to share our learning and news about our project. Here is a link. We also have photos from our classroom learning and will include photos from the balloon flight on our class Flickr page.

We want to thank teachers and students from The University of Nevada, Reno, for supporting and helping us with this project.

So if you or your class would like to participate, just leave your “High Hopes” in the comments on this blog post. We will do the rest.

Leave your comment in a form something like this:

I live in (Your City and Country) and my “High Hopes” for my school, community and the world are … 

So click the comment link on this blog post and send us your “High Hopes” right away!

Here are some samples of our own “High Hopes” to give you some examples:

I live in Sparks, Nevada, USA and my High Hope for the world is to keep the world safe and a better place to live.

I live in Sparks, Nevada and my High Hope for the world is education for the kids that don’t have a school to learn in.

I live in Sparks, Nevada and my “High Hopes” for the world include all people to stop violence and live in peace. But my Highest Hope for the world is to stop hunger and give people food.

I live in Sparks, Nevada, and My “High Hopes” for school include graduating high school and working hard to improve my grades. But my Highest Hope for school is to graduate college and get a good job that I like.

I live in Sparks, Nevada, and my “High Hopes” for my community include police because they keep us safe, hospitals because they can heal and fix the injuried and schools so we can graduate school.

I live in Sparks, Nevada and my High Hope for the world is ending homelessness because it’s kind of sad that someone has no roof over their head.

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Make Their Day!

Posted on April 21, 2010 by Brian

My 4th graders are mostly second language learners and on IEP’s so they need lots of practice using correct English, punctuation and spelling. Since we blog, Skype, make wiki pages and more, I believe constantly exposing them to the ethics, safety and respect that having a presence online demands. To that end I devised a new blogging activity for them to participate in.

Kids like to help out. That’s just the way they are. So I chose a 1st grade class that blogs and explained to my students that being “older” they could “Make The Day” for these younger students by leaving them some positive, supportive comments. We even discussed any experiences they had being included in a game or activity when they were “young” by older kids and what that was like for them.

So far they have taken to this idea very enthusiastically! Here is the activity description from our class blog:

“This week we are going to practice making positive, supportive comments and make the day for younger bloggers at the same time! First, go to the first grade blog linked on our class wiki page. Then find a blog post that you make a connection with. You might have to deal with “invented spelling” that you have to decipher. EXAMPLE: It is a post about a cat and you have a cat too.

Next, say something positive about what they wrote or the picture that might accompany the post, like, ”I like how you described your cat. I have one too.”

Then ask them a question like: “My cat is white, what color is your cat?”

Leave it fairly simple like that, after-all they are 1st graders.

Edit it and post it to their site.

Have fun and MAKE THEIR DAY!”

Learning is messy!

Posted in 1:1, Blogging, Inclusion, Literacy | 8 Comments

New Report Finds That Writing Can Be Powerful Driver for Improving Reading Skills

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Brian

Some will say this is so obvious that it goes without saying … and I would tend to agree, but I think it’s one of those studies that allows us something to point at with authority to those that don’t get it.

From the National Writing Project web site:

New Report Finds That Writing Can Be Powerful Driver for Improving Reading Skills

From the NWP web site:

“The majority of American students still do not read or write well enough to meet grade-level demands, and poor literacy skills play a role in why many students do not complete high school.

To help reverse that trend, the authors of Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading (PDF) call for writing to complement reading instruction because each type of practice supports and strengthens the other.

The report provides practitioners with research-supported information about how writing improves reading while making the case for researchers and policymakers to place greater emphasis on writing instruction as an integral part of school curriculum.”

(Link to the PDF of the report) Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading, a new report from Carnegie Corporation of New York published by the Alliance for Excellent Education.

From the report:

“Writing practices cannot take the place of effective reading practices. Instead, writing practices complement reading practices and should always be used in conjunction, with each type of practice supporting and strengthening the other.

This study shows that students’ reading abilities are improved by writing about texts they have read; by receiving explicit instruction in spelling, in writing sentences, in writing paragraphs, in text structure, and in the basic processes of composition; and by increasing how much and how frequently they write. Our evidence shows that these writing activities improved students’ comprehension of text over and above the improvements gained from traditional reading activities such as reading text, reading and rereading text, reading and discussing text, and receiving explicit reading instruction.”

Learning is messy!


Posted in Blogging, Literacy, National Writing Project, WritingFix | 2 Comments

Part of the Problem?

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Brian

Talking to teachers at my school today about how we could raise our test scores gave me some further insight into why change doesn’t happen. They tend to jump into solving “the problem” by doing what comes naturally to them. They focus on attacking the problem they are given – Getting our students to do much better on the very testing that they have some, to many issues with. But they don’t make the jump then to speaking up about that they have huge issues with the testing and trying to get our students to do well on the current type and format of testing … that the testing is a disconnect from the learning our students should be involved in.

They totally get the vast disconnect and the implications … but they don’t even think for a second about questioning that. It doesn’t enter their mind to question it … because we just don’t do that … we do what we are told … and/or that’s never entered their minds, that what they believe and have come to through their education, experience and common sense has any value or should be considered. They have years of experience and a masters degree and tons of training … but who are they to use that to make decisions about student learning?

That is administrations role (they have been told). If I or someone else raises those issues they totally agree … if they are told we should be bringing up these issues they totally agree … as long (pretty much) as it isn’t them that brings it up. This is partly their fault, and partly what has happened after 8 years of being told what we think is not under consideration, just do the program … don’t question it, it is “research based” (and the university profs don’t help here mostly in the classes teachers take from them they reinforce it).

Just do what we are told. Deal with the problem we are given … not what we believe is the real problem.

Learning is messy!

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A Conversation About “The BluePrint”

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Brian
Massie Ritsch http://twitter.com/ED_Outreach (link to his appearance on The Colbert Report) with the US Department of Education, and a teacher on special assignment named Jose Rodriguez, contacted me through Twitter after I made a few comments about the ESEA “Blueprint” We talked for close to an hour and they allowed me to dump most of my concerns and issues on them.

They were very respectful and supportive and allowed me to carry on and on (as I’m known to do) about the issues … dang I start out slow and get rolling along and become an avalanche about a third of the way through … I just get way too fired up. I know that’s mostly a good thing, but afterwards I always figure I’m way too over the top.

Massie and Jose explained that one of the changes I would probably like is that if a student demonstrates progress (say a 4th grader moves from high 1st grade level in reading to third) then not only would the school not be sanctioned but possibly rewarded. Definitely a positive change. They also feel the grants for science and the arts and other long neglected subjects that states CAN apply for might help alleviate the very narrowed curriculum students of poverty endure.

I pointed out that one of my major concerns was the wording. When the document says that states MAY apply, then we are probably right back to a narrowed curriculum because the people that make decisions at the state, school board and district / administration level will too often not value those education pieces for our at risk students, or fall prey to the politics and bad assumption that kids need to have mastered the “basics” first without understanding that when they miss all that schema development, reading becomes a boring chore instead of a window on the world. BTW – “states may choose / school districts may decide” was the same kind of wording that was in NCLB that infuriated so many of us (because mostly they didn’t decide to do those things).

I said the same about innovation … don’t give us 4 “models” to fit into that are narrow charter models obviously designed by the Broad and Gates people that have infiltrated positions in the Ed Department, give us REAL opportunities to innovate. I’ve mentioned often that the “Programs” pushed by the textbook companies are not making teachers more accountable, they are giving teachers cover. “I followed the research based reading and math programs to the letter. My principal observed me doing so and has copies of my lesson plans that follow the program to the letter. Oh, our test scores are too low? Don’t look at me, I followed the ‘research based’ program. Talk to admin and the school board that chose the program and requires us to follow it.”

They had me describe how I use 21st century tools in my teaching and said they were impressed … but I mentioned that much of what I do I have to “get away with” (sort of) … isn’t really the “program” I am supposed to be using. I have to get the required pieces out of the way so I can get to the meaty stuff. Therefore how can that be a model for others?

We also discussed the “all education problems would be solved if we just had good teachers” message that runs throughout. They claim that they realize that is harsh language, but that they understand that there are many other contributing factors. I suspect that this is another of those, “let’s appear to be tough to get the legislation passed pieces.”

In the end I mentioned I hope this wasn’t just a “let them vent and maybe they’ll feel better session.” That issues and concerns they are gleaning from these talks might REALLY be considered. They said they took notes, they assured me that Arne Duncan was listening and is aware that there are concerns.

The upshot I think is that educators, coming off the last 10 years of NCLB disconnects and disappointments, were and are caught up in that “Yes We Can!” attitude and expecting great and profound changes in “schooling”. So many see so much potential, need and opportunity for change and how a new pedagogy could transform education for all … and this legislation just isn’t going to get us there, or even a good chunk of the way there anytime soon.

It is an improvement, but political realities, societal understandings (or misunderstandings) and the difficulty humans have with change are not going to bring us fulfillment through this bill … but to put a positive spin on the situation, at least maybe the process (after the healthcare mess is over?), will bring at least a modicum of national focus and discourse as the “ESEA blueprint” moves up the agenda?

Learning is messy!

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Our Blog Post of the Week Award!

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Brian

From our class blog:

We are each reading other students’ blogs this week to find  well written, interesting blog posts. When we find one we think might be a winner we cut and paste the URL into a Word page, write a short description and save it. Each day this week we will add to our list of nominees and then on Friday we will decide which one will be our winner. We have put a template for a possible post you might write to your winner. So let’s find some really great posts and make someone’s day by making them our winner!

Winners name here

Congratulations! You are my blog post of the week award winner!

I have been looking for great student blog posts all week. I found several good ones, but I decided yours was the best!

_____________________________________

The reason I chose this post was …

I also liked …

My favorite part of this post is …

I really liked how you …

__________________________________________

Again, congratulations for being my winner this week!

Your first name

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