Category Archives: Education

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What Will Happen When They Find Out Kids Might Already Have Unblocked Wireless Access At School?

Thursday I sat in an ActivBoard Cadre meeting at another local school in Reno – a school surrounded by homes and apartments – and when I opened my laptop I noted that I had 15 wireless connections available – 3 that were not password protected. So I made use of one while I was in the meeting and was able to access and share things I couldn’t have without the connection. I didn’t get a chance to ask the teacher whose classroom I was in if she had noticed the available connections. I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of this, but I wonder how many schools are located in neighborhoods where numerous wireless connections are available?

I doubt many students routinely bring their own wireless laptops to school – but what kinds of issues would arise if students started utilizing these free resources? What if teachers started to use them? Should they? There are no blocked sites, no IT interference … um … free … what are the implications?

Will wireless routers within a certain distance from schools be required to password protect them? Who is liable if a student accesses MySpace or porn or other school district banned site while at school by accessing a private person’s open connection?

I’m just asking. Lots to consider.

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TeacherTube, Free, Easy To Use … But Is It Blocked?

Thanks to Vicki Davis and David Warlick I tried TeacherTube by uploading our “Inclusion” video there. It was viewed 30 times in about 30 minutes. As so many Web 2.0 applications it is free, easy to sign-up for, easy to use … but … is it blocked by my school district? Since it’s Saturday I’ll find out tomorrow or Monday.

Update 3-25 – I’m at school right now … and the answer is … IT’S NOT BLOCKED!!!

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“Speak Up” Survey Speaks Volumes

“ … an overwhelming 97 percent of students, but just over half of teachers, say they think cell phones should be allowed in school for emergencies and for connecting with parents.”

So says Eschool News in an article where they quote the 4th Annual “Speak Up” survey.

The survey, “ … released at a Congressional briefing in Washington, D.C., on March 21, collected ideas and views from more than 270,000 K-12 students and 21,000 teachers from all 50 states. For the first time, the survey also included parents, and some 15,000 parents took part. Participants were asked about their views on such topics as technology, math and science instruction, 21st century skills, global collaboration, communication and self-expression, and schools of the future.”

Here’s a surprise:

“According to the survey, students cited communication as their No. 1 use of technology.”

The article is chock full of interesting findings like:

“When asked how well they think their school is preparing students for working in the 21st century, 48 percent of parents and 47 percent of teachers said well. More than 50 percent of parents said not well.”

– I’m not going quote them all here – go see the article yourself or the Speak Up survey itself.

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Posts Worth Noting

Doug Noon has 2 great posts – “Scientifically Based Reading Research Wars” and “The Might-Work Clearinghouse” that are way worth the time. Doug has done his research and does a great job of laying out the issues and the research behind the battle over reading instruction.

This has so much to do with education in general because language arts literacy and math literacy are the driving forces behind almost everything that happens in elementary schools. Obviously, reading/language arts and math should be the cornerstones of elementary education – however, many of the programs being promoted have the major downside of making little to no room for schema building and gateway subjects like science, social studies, art, music and PE. Likewise some of these programs effectively restrict or block any innovation or integration of other methods into the school day because they take up all the time.

Doug cites the newest research, so if you haven’t kept up on it (like me) he has done the leg work for you. Thanks Doug.

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YouthBridges Interview Via Skype

Lee Baber’s students from YouthBridges will be interviewing my students Thursday from J. Frank Hillyard Middle School in Virginia. We’ll be using Skype and may be joined by others from various locales. They’ll turn this into a podcast – I’ll let you know where as soon as I know where it will be available. Lee and I did a test run this morning and things seemed to work fine. The one unknown is whether or not Celest will be able to join us, she has been a bit under the weather of late, but she seems to think she’ll be ready for this.

My class spent time today thinking about possible answers to the questions we were sent.  This is a great opportunity for my fourth graders to practice expressing themselves. Since most of my class are second language learners giving more than short answers is a weakness, so I really appreciate the opportunity this gives them – we can even listen to ourselves later and critique how we did.

More later.

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My First Blog Post

Well I missed my blogs birthday a few weeks ago – So belated Happy Birthday blog! Here is my first post:

Why Field Trips, Technology and Project Based Learning?
Sunday, March 5th, 2006

Why Field Trips and technology and project based learning? They build schema and experience many of our students don’t have.

School mission statements have revolved around developing students that know how to learn or teach themselves for many years.

“Students will develop the skills required to become lifelong learners,” has become almost a mantra in education. Then we go about this by doing what we have been doing forever – just more focused, organized and, “research based.” NCLB added “the stick” because obviously what was missing was strict accountability.

Language and math “literacy” have become the focus because the thinking is that underachieving students will never make it without the “3R’s.” OK, fair enough – and some of those programs have made a difference – especially in primary grade reading and math test scores. However, as soon as students get to 3rd or 4th grade those scores drop and continue to drop more each grade level thereafter.

Why? Partly because the programs being mandated are so time consuming that there is no time for anything else (field trips, real science, real social studies, art, technology, PE, etc.) where students might experience at least some of the vocabulary and background knowledge required to make sense of what they read – and make it interesting. When students hit upper elementary, reading and math questions stress more and more analytical skills and vocabulary and students often just don’t have the schema in those areas to be successful. Reading then is too often meaningless and boring.
Technology has become a new tool of literacy – like it or not. Just like long ago:

At a teacher’s conference in 1703, it was reported that
students could no longer prepare bark to calculate problems. They depended instead on expensive slates. What would students do when the slate was dropped and broken?

According to the Rural American Teacher in 1928,
students depended too much on store bought ink. They did not
know how to make their own. What would happen when they
ran out? They wouldn’t be able to write until their next trip to
the settlement.

We are not doing our students justice by not giving them experience with the new tools of literacy because we don’t feel they know the old ones well enough. Technology is a gateway to learning that without the knowledge of its use students will be at a disadvantage compared to those that do.
Don’t believe that yet? We will continue to convince you.

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No Child Re-Think?

Some interesting goings-on in Washington:
Dozens in GOP Turn Against Bush’s Prized ‘No Child’ Act
By Jonathan Weisman and Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 15, 2007

This article starts out with this news flash:

More than 50 GOP members of the House and Senate — including the House’s second-ranking Republican — will introduce legislation today that could severely undercut President Bush’s signature domestic achievement, the No Child Left Behind Act, by allowing states to opt out of its testing mandates.

I, like many, am not entirely against NCLB. I just wish the testing parts were more prescriptive and timely – were used less to point fingers and more to actually make substantive changes – there was less testing overall – and that some of the money came straight to schools to fund some innovative approaches that allowed teachers at the local and site level some say in how things are done, along with the money to actually-really try them, instead of only psuedo try them so they are doomed to failure like we have done ad naseum. This might actually lead to teachers being able to conclude that this did or didn’t work and we need to do it differently – NOT, well this didn’t work but that was because we didn’t have the support or funding to do it right.

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Blogging Superintendents

3-15 Update – Scott Mcleod pointed to this piece – they really go together.

Found this article today at Eschool News:
Supes use blogs as outreach tool
District CEOs discuss the impact of blogs on stakeholder relations
By Corey Murray, Senior Editor, eSchool News

I wonder how many of the teachers and students do this:

In Pinellas, for example, Wilcox uses his blog to link to video feeds of meetings with building principals. He also reportedly uses Really Simple Syndication (RSS), a technology that automatically pings stakeholders when new features or content have been uploaded to the blog and links to the local television station, so readers can download relevant video footage about the school system. Stock says he’s currently exploring ways to integrate podcasts and other audio-based content that readers can stream or download and listen to at their leisure.

The article also touches on some issues you might recognize:

For one thing, they said, administrators need to decide if the blog is to be a natural extension of the school system, or the property of the superintendent. This distinction is important, because it affects how the blog will be used and what content and issues–political and otherwise–should be addressed, said Stock.
In his case, the district requested that he put a disclaimer on his blog stating that the opinions expressed were his own and that they did not necessarily reflect the beliefs or ideologies of the entire organization.

And:

As the superintendent of a large school district, Wilcox said, his goal was to give stakeholders a chance to voice their opinions about his decisions, “to give them that pressure relief valve.”
But there was problem: “People were just vicious,” he said. As the attacks got more heated and eventually started striking out against administrators and school district employees on a personal level, he said, the district had to shut down the blog temporarily to reconsider its policies.
“I think it’s just one of those things where, when you get out in cyberspace, you’ve got to be a little more careful what you ask for, because you just might get it,” he said.

Interesting article – check it out.

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One : One Laptop Ramblings

Miguel started this conversation – Tom and Doug have jumped in … here are my ramblings:

How important or “worth it” are laptops, or any other technology? How valuable they are as learning tools should be the decider of how much we are willing to invest. Not that I think we shouldn’t expect that $200 dollar laptop, but it will be important what those $200 laptops can do – we have had PC4’s that could do word processing and some other applications for less than $200 but that hasn’t been enough – they were hardly used … what is enough?

Internet based software like wikis, blogs, and various web based, math, language arts, science and social studies pieces make operating system issues closer to moot all the time. To use them effectively with my students I’ve found I have to teach them to think differently. I can’t claim that it has been transformational or even “better” than what we were doing before … yet – but my students spend more time on task, and when I explain that we are going to use our laptops to do whatever, they are excited every time – even on activities we’ve done multiple times. We write more than ever – and I’m a writing project consultant and I already had my students writing a lot.

Our laptops are 7 years old – dropping and breaking has not been an issue, we spend some time talking about care – but the fact that this year the students have some sense of ownership helps – I’m sure breakage will happen sometime – is that a deal breaker? Tom mentions a 3 year shelf life – well we are searching the net, blogging, wiki-ing, word processing, using digital video, digital photography and more with 7 year old laptops – will we get less longevity later? Are we the exception?

Don’t do a 1:1 laptop program (Or any tech program) if you don’t already have,  “age-appropriate, curriculum-relevant things to do with them.” That’s been done many times and it doesn’t work any better than spending money on textbooks or any other educational tool you aren’t sure what to do with – and it makes us all look like fools. Technology won’t make a hoot of difference if we don’t do things differently and work and learn in ways that are more engaging and meaningful. And if we can’t do that, or that doesn’t work – then we don’t need to buy them or use them at all.

I’m not saying this alone really makes 1:1 worth it – but just the experience my students have had in the last month while we have been reading stories about animals they know little about (whales, rhinos, leopards, camels, kangaroos, elephants, armadillos, and more) – having them use our “Just So Stories” wiki to gather facts, but also to see photos and video of them – how excited they get and how as a teacher I find that many really knew nothing about kangaroos or most of the rest of the animals (assessment on the run) – how they moan when we run out of time. Just being able to build their schema easily and quickly in such an engaging way almost makes the cost worth it just for that.

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Any Input?

Will Richardson is asking for input on what to share with US Senators when he conference calls with them about the America COMPETES Act. Read about it over at his blog. Here was my response:

Ask how we are going to compete in a global 21st century economy if ALL our kids and teachers don’t have access to and knowledge of global 21st century tools – NOW. Mention that they should be worried about what happens when China loosens up on access for their citizens and they learn to speak English. Therefore we should take advantage of our freedoms, since China can’t, and use this time to teach our students and citizenry how to use these 21st century tools of learning and doing while we can (I seem to remember about them having more GT students than we have students). We should invest in our future because China, India, et al – are investing in theirs.

(you might mention to Senator Stevens that the internet isn’t a series of tubes – he’ll appreciate it later – nah, never mind that part).