Lesson planning short term and long term should be the top priority when getting ready for a new school year. If a few things need to be finished up in your classroom at the start of the year that’s not as important … having powerful lessons and activities and meeting with other teachers about the year that should come first!!!

So why is it I cannot shake having my room all arranged before I can get serious about planning?!!! I know I’m not the only one who suffers from this because when I mentioned it yesterday to a few colleagues at school I received a rousing AMEN!!

The kind of spooky part is that at about three o’clock Friday (school starts Monday) when I had finished a classroom inventory our principal assigned us and looked around and noticed the room was pretty much ready … all I could focus on was planning. My brain started connecting with the curriculum for the year and I was furiously making notes and looking for materials and thinking about a possible field trip. UGGGH!

The most infuriating part is that now the weekend is here and I really crave more time to think it all through. My very organized wife is going through this to a lesser extent, but she understands completely. How about you? Does this happen to you?

I was starting to hate Clarence Fischer this morning after seeing this post of his set-up room and school doesn’t start for a week for him. But who could hate Clarence? : ) I’ll have to learn to “channel” him next year I guess.

Learning is messy!

Tags: School

Results from the 40th Phi Delta Kappa International (PDK)/Gallup Poll of the “Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools are in and here are a few of the interesting and even heartening findings:

Federal Funding
Americans support an increased use of federal funds to maintain local public schools.

No Child Left Behind
Fewer than 2 of 10 Americans believe the No Child Left Behind legislation should be continued without significant change.

Biggest Problems
Lack of funding for schools tops the list of “biggest problems facing schools” for the sixth year in a row.

Assessment
In a change from nine years ago, Americans believe written observations by teachers, as opposed to scores on standardized tests, are a superior way to document student academic progress.

Teacher Pay
Almost three of four Americans believe teachers should be paid higher salaries as an incentive to teach in schools identified as ‘in need of improvement.’

Follow the link above for the whole study “downloadable” in PDF.

Learning is messy

Tags: Public’sAttitudes Toward the Public Schools

During and since NECC, I have had conversations with many people about the weak teacher voice in the edublogesphere in general, and the lack of actual examples from the classroom being showcased in presentations period.

Whether you attended NECC in person or virtually, how many presentations did you attend that were presented by teachers? I mean full time classroom teachers … probably none. How many times during presentations did you see examples of work done by teachers and students using the tools and methods we promote? I did see examples, but usually made by the presenter to give attendees the basic idea.

Is this a conspiracy meant to cut teachers out of the loop? Is it because there are no teachers doing and modeling this kind of teaching in their classrooms? … No. But I believe the result might be one of the factors slowing the adoption of these tools and methods by teachers and administrators.

I know when I do sessions for teachers they often seem to make the connection and see the point when I show actual lessons (and even have the teachers experience the lesson themselves) along with examples of student work and discussion about the pedagogy and what is valuable about this kind of learning.

I know it isn’t always practical to do, depending on the topic, but examples of student work and learning, those examples should be showcased in presentations, blog posts, anywhere we can show them off. I suspect we will have many more AHA! moments from teachers, administrators and parents when they see more actual examples of the kind of work we are promoting. The Keynote at NECC on Tuesday by Mali Bickley and Jim Carleton was a good example. They shared example after example of work they are doing with their students making connections worldwide. They didn’t share enough of what went into each project because of the time … but there was a buzz after their keynote. I saw Allan November show Bob Sprankle’s student produced video about podcasting last year at NECC 2007 … the crowd took notice, but it was just a sidetrack of his presentation – he quickly got back to other things, but it strengthened my thinking that we need to show examples, examples, examples of what we are talking about and start making better connections between teachers actually doing this stuff and those that present about it the most.

Using the statistics from NECC’s web site I noted that less than one-fourth of NECC attendees are teachers, and most of those are there for the first time. Most are locals that wouldn’t have attended if it had been anywhere else, and don’t go to future NECCs. The point being you may only have one shot at them.

So what? Well I’m just wondering if we need to do a better job of having teachers present at NECC (problematic) and other conferences, and having non-teachers that present do a better job (whenever feasible) of connecting to teachers by showing more real examples of what we are on the soap box about constantly. There is, unfortunately, a dearth of whole school districts or whole schools to point to as examples, so we might want to start highlighting the examples that there are. By now there has to be an archive of projects on wikis and video and web pages and so on that presenters could point to. Teachers and students could even be video-conferenced into presentations to share the nuts and bolts of projects, maybe from their classrooms – this could be powerful.

I know some of this has happened, my class has Skyped into presentations a few times. Maybe it even happens a lot more than I am aware, although I doubt it, but I believe it should happen more.

I’m not completely sure why more teachers don’t present or have their presentations accepted at edtech conferences, but that is another avenue we need to travel. I know I did not even put in a proposal to present at NECC officially, although I did present in the “Unconference” and in a poster session. Why? Because when proposals had to be done I was extremely busy being a teacher. It was the first few weeks of the school year, and I know many of you that are not teachers don’t get that, but it’s an easy choice to make – proposal or lessons and all else that goes with the job? I will endeavor to get at least one proposal done this year, and I really encourage all teachers out there to do so, but the other issue is – will I even get to go? Money is very tight and I only got to go this year at the last minute because we found some money in an unexpected place. There are many other edtech conferences besides NECC too, and subject area conferences – science, language arts, math,… that we should have a greater presence in.

Look at your aggregator , go on – look. How many bloggers that you follow are full-time teachers that are not tech teachers? I’ll bet not many. How would you know what kinds of projects they are doing that are perfect examples you could show in a presentation? Yeah, I know, they probably don’t always write about things that interest you. But those examples should be a gold mine for you to share.

Teacher bloggers – how many of you blog about the projects you do with your students with links to student work that others could easily follow to get examples to share? Do you have links to work easily found on the side bar of your blog? That is an area we could perhaps improve on to make this easier for all.

As a result of conversations at and since NECC, Alice Mercer has put together a wiki page that Scott Mcleod has posted on his “Moving Forward” Wiki. She has called it the “Educational Technology Professional Development Manifesto.” Check it out, edit it, suggest changes or additions, give us feedback.

Learning is Messy!

Tags: “EducationalTechnology Professional Development Manifesto.”

As you have probably already heard EduBloggerCon had some controversy this year in relation to how Pearson brought in cameras and mics and recorded much of the conversation happening in one room. There was much fallout associated with it and people have come down on different sides of the fray. One of the people involved from Pearson has started a blog and voiced that after some retrospection she has seen the point from those that felt intruded upon and that were peeved that some of their thoughts and opinions and ideas might end up making Pearson money. Someone Twittered tonight about the post by Elaine Roberts on her blog.

She identifies herself as an employee of Pearson and makes a bit of a mea culpa including:

Several comments had already been left thanking Elaine for her transparency and honesty. I agree … however, I guess I’ve just been burned too many times and I wanted to be sure that more of my concerns were addressed, so I left the following comment:

Learning is messy!

Tags: NECC08Pearson

This is great if it will really have an impact on things. Article in eSchool News today:

Ed-tech groups give candidates a wake-up call
New ad campaign aims to spur discussion about education and technology
By Meris Stansbury, Assistant Editor, eSchool News

A quote from the article (Note: you can read the first part of the article without registering, the rest with free registration):

Check out the whole article.

Tags: Ed-Tech

First I’m not sure having a blueprint is what is appropriate or really needed. Too much of what we have been doing in school has been pre-selected, pre-decided and scripted … the art of being a teacher … the creativity has been leeched from the system, especially in “at risk” schools.

I have been voicing concern to my administration for several years now that teachers that have taught for less than 8 years have NEVER taught when we weren’t doing “programmed” teaching. They have done little creative teaching outside of what is allowed by whatever the program says is appropriate. That scares me … especially if that trend continues.

I realize that part of the move to less teacher control of what we teach has been a reaction to lessons and units of instruction that while interesting and fun really didn’t teach the concepts they were supposed to cover.  The “Apples Unit” from “Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe is a great example:

Most of the activities here are great on their own, however as a unit of study were the activities chosen to meet the standards that were supposed to be covered, or because they were cute and fun and covered multiple subject areas? I’ll bet too, that a teacher doing this unit would overwhelmingly get very positive feedback from the students’ parents, especially any that volunteered to help with it. So would the teacher most likely do the same “unit” again next year? Even if they moved grade levels because they were told what a great job they did and how much the children SEEMED to learn?

If what we do with technology in our classrooms is basically akin to the “Apples Unit” … it’s cool and fun and parents like it, we are doing a disservice to all involved. And I think too many times that is exactly what has happened with technology use in education. The technology is introduced (and teachers are given zero training in effective use and use the tech to do things the same way they always have)… its cool … students are excited and parents are overjoyed that their kids are excited about stuff at school …  and everyone feels warm and fuzzy inside … for awhile. Then the newness and initial excitement wears off and what is being done is no better (and maybe worse) than what was happening without the technology and we have yet again “proved” that technology use in education is a bust.

Tom Barrett has noted that in general there isn’t a lot to read and learn from about 1:1 technology integration at the elementary level:

“Much of what I read is to do with an older age range and far different environments than our own. The sites included “blueprints to 1:1 computing” and complete “guides” suggesting, just from the rhetoric of the titles, that one size (may) fit all. Although we may learn lessons from what other teachers, schools and districts have been doing it seems we will have to discover our own UK primary version of what a 1:1 classroom looks like.”

I know there are 1:1 initiatives going on, but not many involved are apparently blogging or otherwise sharing their experiences with us. I would also note that the vast majority of edtech bloggers are at the secondary level or are mostly involved from the training side of things and are not full time classroom teachers sharing the struggles and triumphs of 1:1 integration in their classrooms.

I’ve also noted in recent posts that integrating tech at the elementary level these days involves trying to integrate it into programs that were not designed with tech in mind. They tend to be fast paced reading programs that leave little room for the further/deeper exploration, collaboration, refinement of thinking and sharing of learning that tech integration is best at.

I’ve found that often when students are researching on the web they are more motivated to use the skills they’ve been taught to make meaning from text because they WANT to understand what they are reading so they can use it in the project they are involved in. The reading program already provides what they are supposed to read and react to, there is no time to do more, read more, learn more about a topic … and yet isn’t THAT what we should be promoting? Isn’t THAT what being a lifelong learner and teaching students to BE learners is about? Hence the frustration.

I think we have a general understanding of what effective tech integration should and could look like at the elementary level. I’m just not so sure we have those “Working, Breathing, Reproducible, Intriguing Models”
 that would help us find our way.

Learning is messy!

Lots for me to ponder this summer and I hope going to NECC helps in that regard. Just to refresh the memories of both of my regular readers and as background for the rest, I teach in a 45 year old classroom that has an ActivBoard, a built -in ceiling speaker system, 30 – eight year old Apple iBook laptops, 1 original Airport hub (that is supposed to support 10 computers online, but that has to support my 30 and 30 more HP laptops sometimes), 2 digital video cameras, a digital camera, a scanner, a Lumens projector and I might have left a few things out. My school district labeled my classroom its “Model Technology Classroom” 2 years ago when it paid to have my Activboard installed. My fifth graders and I just finished our 2nd year together and are heading for a third when I roll with them to sixth grade next year.

I’ve tried to leverage the distinction of having this “model” room and 1:1 laptops to “get away” somewhat with doing things a bit differently, and have done so pretty successfully. However, I’ve never actually been told that I have that freedom, so I do so at my own peril. In other words, if something “goes wrong” admin could claim they had no idea I was going “off program”, and they are just appalled that I did so.

I’m at the point right now where that is really going to be a problem. My students started out this pilot having almost no tech savvy at all (they are very “at risk” students) and now they are getting sophisticated enough that they are ready to go to the “next level”.

What’s the “next level”?  Well I wish you were here to help me completely flesh that out, but it has to do with having my students using these tools to do their own learning and deciding how to share their learning … you know, making them learners. Having them able to research and make appropriate contacts with others (with still a lot of guidance from me …  they are just 6th graders) to gather information and then make good choices on how best to archive and share what they’ve learned. There’s more to it than that, but that’s the gist.

So what is the hold up? Well, for one the prescribed reading and math programs actually require you to follow them without deviation and that alone eats up almost 3 hours, and now we will have a required 45 minute “Intervention Block”  each day, so after lunch and recess (which might get cut back) that leaves you with MAYBE an hour each day to do science, social studies, music, art, PE and so on.

So you can see I am having to completely work “within” a system and still try to do a “model” program that might lead decision makers in my state and school district to rethink things a bit. I’m both discouraged and challenged by that. Our laptops have done amazingly well for being 8 years old, but they are really showing their age now and I just wonder how they will do this next year AND what will I do after that? I have no real prospects for replacing them. Many days I wonder how things would be different if we had newer ones and a faster, broader connection – it wouldn’t even have to be blazing fast, just fast. At one point I was approached about doing a pilot with OLPC laptops, but that fell through with our latest round of budget cuts. Also, how will I do if these laptops become unusable and there are no replacements? Will I be able to go back to not having easy access? I guess we will see.

This is a response to a comment left on an earlier post.

Mia-

Could one of the reasons that more students aren’t doing better in the “core subjects” be because we haven’t allowed schools to move into this century along with everyone else? Could you imagine a businessman from a hundred years ago dealing with all the changes in how businesses work today? How about a doctor from one hundred years ago? Do you think they would notice any changes in how medicine is practiced today? Now let’s take a student from one hundred years ago and plunk them down in a school from today. They’d note different clothing styles, and the furniture is a bit different. In most schools they’d still see chalkboards and desks, and pencils and paper and books. Teachers in many classrooms would still be doing things pretty much the way they did 100 years ago too. Hmmm, maybe that student from 100 years ago would fit in pretty well.

How can a student know if they are destined to be an artist if they have rarely been exposed to art? In our present situation students in primary grades focus only on literacy and math, they rarely do much more than simple drawing. No real art is taught. Science and social studies are only taught through reading class. PE is not funded despite the fact that students are increasingly obese. Students often have to pay extra fees to participate in sports, music and other extra-curricular activities- so guess which schools have the highest participation? Student drop out rates are abysmal because for too many students school has little relevance. Your after school clubs idea would help too, who will stay after school to run quality ones for free? Schools aren’t funded adequately for all they are asked to do though so money for such programs is very hard to find.

You say:
“It seems to me that if students are destined to be artists, they’ll pursue art as a hobby, take classes at a local museum – whatever. I don’t know of many artists who needed a curriculum and a teacher (especially at high school level) to pursue their art.”

Really? The place where I live there is a museum about 10 miles from my school that offers such classes. How will we get the students there and home? Parents are working or don’t understand the value of such activities or don’t like having their kids away from home. How will we get them interested in going if they have done very little art in school or elsewhere and have never been to a museum? Why not offer such classes in the elementary schools which are located in the neighborhoods where the students live? No driving, just stay after school, the teacher drives instead of 30 kids’ parents driving. More kids will participate because it’s easy, and some of them will gain an appreciation for art and some might even become artists or musicians or?

Some students stay in school because they are athletes and participating in sports keeps them coming to school (you hear that all the time when they interview the pros) – maybe we should make access to sports more inclusive and more students would stay. We have turned our high schools into “college prep only” academies despite the fact that most kids don’t go to college (but I wish more had the opportunity to go and would go). How many more students could we get to stay if we offered more and higher quality options in the arts, technology, mechanics, sports, and more? It would be the best money we could spend – imagine investing in our kids. Kids with more relevant things to do might even stay out of trouble and become more educated and we could spend less on crime – might be a bit of a trade off in costs there even.

I’d go into why NCLB is much less than “not perfect”, but that will have to come another time.

Today is our last day of school. This is the message I left my students on our blog:

We’ll see!

Learning is messy!

Saw this on The Huffington Post today:
Obama’s Call to Arms on Education Reform  – by SUSAN KAISER GREENLAND
 
An excerpt:

Thoughts anyone?

Follow the link above and read the article which has a link to the speech Obama gave on this subject.

Learning is messy!

Tags: EducationReform