SABIER

Evaluating Teachers: Part Three

2011-07-21T22:49:00.009-05:00

Well, it's pretty clear that the legislators over in St. Paul have not been reading my blog. As I said in my previous two posts, using student's test scores on standardized tests is an ineffective way to evaluate teachers. There are links in both of those posts to well articulated reasons why test scores are not a good idea. To be fair, according to the StarTribune report today, the legislators have not specified that test scores need to be used to determine student academic growth. "School districts will also have to start new periodic evaluations of teachers based on a loose set of guidelines. Thirty-five percent of that evaluation must be based on student academic growth. If districts and unions cannot agree to an evaluation plan, they must use one outlined by the education commissioner."

I'll hold out a little bit of hope that at least one or two districts in the state will attempt to determine student academic growth by using something other than standardized test scores. But even if a couple of districts manage to use authentic assessment methods, most districts will rely on some standardized test score. While ineffective and expensive, it's easy and accepted. What's likely to happen is that we'll end up with a hodge podge of ways to determine student academic growth and a hodge podge way of applying that information to teacher pay schemes. I think we're well on our way to making the current mess even messier.

You know, of course, that I'm a Moodle advocate. It's a tool that can be used for most of the many aspects of teaching and learning. Most significantly, for this discussion, Moodle provides the means to assess student academic growth in a whole bunch of ways that can be about as detailed as you want to make them; it also provides a real way to assess or evaluate the work of teachers while actually making authentic correlations of the teacher work to student academic growth. The final outcome could even be enumerated, if necessary, which is what is so attractive to the folks pushing the idea of using test scores.

One of the big reasons, I think, that the currently accepted ways of measuring academic growth is going to be pitiful, in addition to the reasons listed in the articles I've linked to in my two most recent posts, is that teaching and learning is changing, and it will be continuing to change very rapidly, and the standardized testing method doesn't have a prayer of keeping pace with the changes that are happening in learning and teaching.

Take for example Grovo, one of the new companies that will be a force in changing teaching and learning. Grovo isn't in schools, yet, and it's 'only' teaching new high tech types of things, so far. But, it's a method of student centered 24/7 kind of learning that will be what students of all kind are looking for soon. Well, students want Grovo lessons, now. Grovo, so far, doesn't have a way to report student work. I heard a rumor that they might be working on some kind of way to do that - I would recommend using Moodle. Even without built in reporting tools, Grovo and Grovo types of learning environments could easily be ported to electronic Portfolios, which is the way that academic growth will eventually be measured. Yes, portfolios are more complicated than a raw score/percentile score/growth score report, but then teaching and learning is way more complicated than a raw score/percentile score/growth score, isn't it?

And then we have Sophia, my local favorite to make a real dent in how teaching and learning happens in the next months and years. Sophia has actually taken a step toward assessing and evaluating the work of teachers. The posted lessons (learning packets in Sophia speak) are rated by people who already have credentials or experience in the topic area. Sophia has taken the all important step in teaching and learning of including a discussion board and grouping tool. (Full disclosure: I know they're thinking about ways to report out student work to portfolio tools because they picked my brain for a few hours re: Moodle etc. The Sophia folks are very talented, creative, and brave, and I don't think they'll mind me saying that they're open to any ideas you might have, too.)

Socrative is small and new and way out there in New York City by Grovo, but this tool has legs, IMHO. They've leap frogged a lot of the people trying to do something new in education by going right to mobile devices of any kind. Because the Socrative tool is limited in the way that Twitter is limited, it's simple and small, it also has the flexibility to be adapted to all kinds of teaching and learning. Student and teacher work is immediately portable and quantifiable. The issue with Socrative is getting admin people, teachers, too, up to speed on how to actually use all of that raw real data. Tangentially, I think there will also be a learning curve in how to use the tool for optimum pedagogical effect, but it should be a quick curve.

Betterlesson.org is already big and not so different from the way we've always done things in the past. It's really just a big online folder full of reproducible lessons - a black line master lesson book on the web. The good news is that there's hardly anything a teacher needs to learn about using Betterlesson.org that's different from the way things were done in the 1970s, and that's the bad news, too. It's an example of how to use technology to keep doing things the same old way. But, it still has enough variety to really mess up a plan to use standardized tests.

I'm trying to think of the right way to tie-up this post to say that standardized tests are already obsolete before the laser printed bills over in St. Paul cool down to room temp. They were obsolete even before that.

July 25, 2011
A really cool thing about blogs is that you can edit them. This morning I received a Tweet (from Knewton) with a link which said it was about their online learning platform. Since I'd just done a brief review of some eLearning platform type tools, I was curious to learn more about what Knewton was up to. It turns out that the article under the link is actually an interview with George Siemens about how new technologies, like Knewton and the ones I mentioned above, can change teacher evaluation and several other aspects of education, as well. That's what I was getting at in these last three posts.

I've admired and commented about George's work before. His thorough and articulate analysis of the possibilities of eLearning is most definitely worth a read.

Evaluating Teachers: Part Two

2011-07-11T14:42:00.011-05:00

As I said in my previous post, using student's test scores on standardized tests is an ineffective way to evaluate teachers. If you want more on why it's ineffective try Joanne Barkan's op-ed in TruthOut. She also does a great job of explaining a few of the other big challenges facing public education these days.

I argued in that last post that evaluating the work of both teachers and students will be easier when that work is done electronically, at least recorded electronically, most likely on the web using some kind of cloud implement. If you want to see an example of what that might look like, check out either of the Bring Your Own Technology Webinars done by Classlink about its LaunchPad service. Cloud computing will enable school districts to get out of the business of supplying computers for learning, a business at which most school districts are very bad, and it will enable students and teachers to use the tools the rest of the planet is already using to communicate and create.

Moodleshare, where I posted the teaching and learning unit on Bird Observation, is one of the many new repositories of learning content that can be managed via cloud computing tools. The fact that learning content will soon be mostly in the cloud, or at least off the shelf, is fostering a whole host of various ways to create, deliver, and manage teaching and learning content.

I like Moodleshare for lots of reasons beyond the fact that they paid me to be part of the ARRA grant to produce Moodle units. Other reasons would be: they're right here in Minnesota, they're some really smart people doing the work there, and they focus on Moodle, the teaching and learning tool I've been using for the last four years. Jon Fila, one of the masterminds of Moodleshare recently reported that "Between Late-August 2010 and Mid-June 2011,there were 180,606 page views from 55,662 unique visitors. These visitors were from 179 different countries/territories. 39,000 of which were from the United States. Of the U.S. visits, 6,255 of them were from Minnesota. Two of the top three courses accessed on MoodleShare were from the grant uploads." It would seem that I'm not alone in liking Moodleshare.

Now, you might be saying, "yeah, but the units on Moodleshare will require lots of time and work by teachers and students and people to do the evaluating of the teaching and learning before we know if they're any good." Aha, you've just hit on one of the best kept secrets about education - it takes a lot of time and work, and it's complicated, but it's all very doable, especially with the corps of teachers we've already got in classrooms. Some of it is rocket science; some of it is just plain science. A lot of it is about reading and writing. And, in case you haven't seen an iPad, or T-Mobile, or Kindle commercial lately, reading and writing is now being done electronically on a whole bunch of different kind of devices that access the web or the cloud.

The valued added measures,VAMs, being touted everywhere these days are certainly a small incremental improvement over the old ways of 'measuring' teaching and learning. But they're still just resorting the same numbers that were generated in the same way they've always been. Defining and evaluating teaching and learning in this 21st Century can't be done by simply downloading sets of numbers that were generated by students filling in bubbles on either screens or pieces of paper. That will take us down a path that will get us to about the same place that the NCLB has gotten us; we'll still just be looking at the final score as it's printed in the next days paper. In order to actually see the 'game' of teaching and learning, or better yet, participate, we'll need to use the literacy and measuring tools that are concurrent with the world in which we live.

Some of the new organizations with great ideas that I think can make a difference in teaching and learning and evaluating teaching and learning are:

Betterlesson.org
Sophia
Socrative
Grovo

The next post will be a more in depth look at how those tools will make a difference.

And, I'm always open to new suggestions...

Evaluating Teachers

2011-06-26T14:06:00.011-05:00

I recently had a lesson plan that I'd created evaluated, so I was very interested in the announcement this last week that Maryland will use a qualitative assessment of lessons plans in their overall evaluation of teachers. Principals will be doing the assessing of lesson plans along with their assessment of the environment of the classroom and "other factors that the local school system can determine." Those 'other factors' are intriguing, and I'd like to know more about what that means. I'm betting that Baltimore teachers will want to know what those 'other factors' are, too.

The headlines are reporting not about the lesson plan assessment, though. The headline writers are excited that student test scores will also be included in the overall evaluation. The article in the Sun mentions that 75% of teachers teach things that aren't measured by the standardized tests, which is going to be a huge problem. That very obvious problem, along with the fact that standardized tests are lousy tools to measure student learning, makes their effectiveness at measuring the teaching, a very different thing than learning, doubtful at best.

I don't think it needs to be that hard. The process that was used to assess my lesson plan could also be used to assess student learning. My lesson plan, for a whole unit on science and writing for upper elementary students, will even be available for you to assess, too. It will be posted later this week on Moodleshare. I created this unit as part of the the District 287 Ed Tech ARRA grant (don't try to view this overview if you're on a Minneapolis Public School connection that still blocks YouTube.) When this unit is taught, the student work can also be assessed. Other teachers can use this unit, too. They can comment and make additions and modifications after they've tried it with their students and had their principals assess it. It will be possible for anyone to also assess the student work (with appropriate permissions, of course.) I'm sure that the unit will get better the more it's used and shared.

Jon Fila, the brilliant architect and administrator of this project, did what good administrators are supposed to do. He pushed me to stretch my practice, to go beyond what I'd done before. I've used Moodle for four years in a blended elementary classroom setting, but I've not had much experience with an online only elementary course. Jon pointed out that since this course was to be designed to be used online only I needed to add and change some things to accommodate for the fact that I wouldn't be present in the same room with my students every day to check for understanding and clarify expectations like I'm used to doing. I'm also looking forward to comments from other teachers who might use all or parts of this unit with their students.

Online and or blended learning (using online tools in a F2F classroom) enable the kind of assessment that's being wished for in the Maryland plan but is not likely to happen if principals do what they've sort of always done - flip through spiral lesson plan books on desks, look at posters and charts on the wall, and listen and watch for 30-50 minutes, maybe, from some uncomfortable spot in the room with clipboards and pens in hand. And then, maybe catch the teacher with a note about the 'observation.' That's what passes as assessment by a principal in most of today's classrooms. It's not really surprising that the ideal of this spiral bound plan book, poster, and clipboard method never really gets done thoroughly, certainly not consistently across buildings and districts. It's not effective in the best of circumstances, and a real waste of lots of people's time in most circumstances. Real qualitative assessment and collaboration between administrators, teachers, and students can happen a lot more easily if current tools are used, but that's going to require a sea change that will take longer than the hype that is being hoped for in Baltimore. Maybe the Maryland people are thinking about Moodle as one of the 'other factors.' We can hope.

ePortfolios will be central to the New-Form

2010-11-21T20:53:00.003-06:00

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For my Nov. 22, 2010 blog post on education reform, I'm going to piggy-back on Ira Socol's post. Ira points out that grade based schools need to go; Ira makes the point clearly and eloquently. One of the practical components to doing away with grade based schooling will be to implement portfolio based 'assessments.' Portfolios will be the product of the IEPs that Ira envisions for every student. We have the technology to make it happen, we just need to learn how to do it.

I also think that this 'piggy-backing' on each others ideas will be an important feature of the 'new' education system. Being the expert on any given topic is no longer of much use; it's not bad, but it's more important to be able to blend our thoughts and ideas with those of others to give those ideas real power. Twitter, Google apps, Moodle, and all of the other tools that will be showing up on all of the various devices we'll be using to communicate are important, but it's not the tool that's important; it's the sharing of human ideas.

Cell Phones and Handhelds for Instruction

2010-11-13T00:34:00.009-06:00

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When I was invited yesterday to join a district policy discussion about Cell Phones and Handhelds for Instruction I was referred to as an early adapter. I'm flattered to be considered an early adapter; I think I have some credibility as an early adopter, too. I did some writing about the general subject of information devices and access to information a year ago as a guest blogger on Shelly Blake-Plock's TeachPaperless site. Note the links in that post to the blogs of Ira Socol , Will Richardson; they and lots of other folks are talking and have been talking about the day when schools decide to quit wrestling with the horse and decide instead to jump in the saddle and start riding.

Matt Montagne's comment on my post deserves some thoughtful consideration, I think:: "Schools need an exist strategy for getting out of the computer business. Barbara Bareda wrote about this in a recent leadertalk post. Let kids bring in their own stuff and provide stipends for students/families who can't afford a device. I'll take it a few steps further. In the next 5 years, the relevance of the LAN and school owned networks will shrink as wide area broadband continues to proliferate, improve and become a commodity. Are schools prepared for this? Do they have an exit plan to get out of the computer and ISP business? December 20, 2009 6:39 PM

I think it's great that the MPS is considering beginning to use current and future communications methods, but I think it's crucial that this discussion be as public as possible The issue of the how we access information and report information and share information and create content is indeed a very broad subject. It's the essence of what we do as educators.

This discussion has the potential to lift the MPS out of the gloomy morass in which it's currently slogging. This discussion has the potential to move the MPS into the 21st Century ( we won't be any more tardy than lots of other educational institutions, if that's any consolation to the realization that we're way, way behind in waking up to what's going on .)

I've started a Twitter hashtag for this discussion #MPShandhelds and I'll be posting some more thoughts here about why I think this discussion needs to be publicly documented; Moodle, Google.docs or one of the available tools on the new MPS web platform would work for a public archive. I suspect that we'll reinvigorate the debate that followed Steve Dembo's post on Dangerously Irrelevant when he said: " I don’t see it as teachers spurning technology, or choosing not to take advantage of those new ideas and tools. I think most teachers don’t even realize that there’s a decision to be made. " (There's 138 comments on the post, so far.)

The notion that all opinions regarding this issue are equally valuable needs a little more discussion, too. When it comes to designing how we construct our teaching and learning for the future, the opinions that lack the benefit of experience or research are less valuable than those which are informed by experience and objective research. The opinions of those who will use the new design are important, but we have information from the new world that will alter the closely held beliefs of those from the old world - North America is not India; Earth is indeed a sphere. We don't need to make the same kind of mistakes that those who 'discovered' the Americas made.

The question is not whether to use the tools or not, the question is how to proceed to learn how to to use the teaching and learning tools of this age.

Twitter, Moodle and the History of U.S. Education

2010-09-26T09:12:00.019-05:00

I've had a draft started for a blog on why I use Twitter and why I think Twitter is a real professional benefit to teachers, but I haven't had time to write much in this last month as school began. The only writing I was able to manage was this post on Dr. Scott McLeod's Blog, Dangerously Irrelevant about my use of Moodle in my classroom. The topic of the post was reconciling 21st Century skills with standards and accountability- I'm not sure I really ever reconciled them but...

Scott and I don't always agree, but the next time I'm in Ames I hope he'll be able to spare some time from his family and demanding job for coffee. I know about his family and job because of Twitter.

Yesterday via Twitter I was connected to this great blog by Cecilia Coelho , an obviously very committed educator who has a different kind of classroom than me, but who uses many of the same tools I use. Her insights enrich my practice. Next time I'm in Spain, I'm hoping Cecilia has time for coffee, too.

Then a bit later yesterday, I was surprised and deeply honored to read my name in this post by Ira Socol whom I've come to regard as a friend even though we've only spent an hour together over coffee last summer after corresponding for 18 months via Twitter. Ira and I share a lot of interests. I value his research on the history of education almost as much as I value the knowledge about technology tools that he shares so generously - and then there's his novels, and his insights into all things Irish. Ira's inclusion of me on this list makes me blush- "Teachers, and most teacher educators, are, as Dr. Becker says, "blindly focused on their classroom and kids." From Linda Darling-Hammond to Lisa Parisi, Dan McGuire, Patrick Shuler, Punya Mishra, Pam Moran, Dave Britten, Dave Doty, and tens of thousands more, are working with students every day, trying to make the changes we can in the lives and learning of our students. "We" are the William Alcotts of today, the Maria Montessoris of today. "

None of these valuable connections to the things important in my life would have come my way without Twitter, I think. Twitter is not a waste of time; it connects me to many educators all over the world who are working hard to be better at their crucial work. That list continues to grow and I can't name them all here, but in the last couple of days I've shared correspondence with: Melissa Benson, Kelly Tenkely, Ben Knauss, Pam Moran, Joe D'Amato , They make me feel like I'm part of team that extends way beyond the walls of my classroom and school. I would like that richness available to all of my colleagues in their place of work. Twitter needs to be unblocked again in the MPS.

Response to M. Horn's comments

2010-08-12T07:11:00.005-05:00

I appreciate very much the engagement of Michael Horn with my post about the book he co-authored with Clayton Christensen and Curt Johnson (see previous post and his comment there.)

So, Michael, why then did you focus so much in the book, Disrupting Class, about computer based student-centric instruction that substitutes or replaces teachers? You barely mention blended (computer and F2F) classes in the book, the model that is growing the most. You also didn't really pursue how computers might enhance the student teacher relationship and improve both teaching and learning; you stuck with the notion of using computers to substitute for or replace teachers. Then, you noted that when you consulted with veterans of the battles of school reform you learned that these veterans didn't think that 80% of courses taken in 2024 would be online because teacher unions wouldn't allow it. The evidence cited by these veterans who were consulted was their battle scars. On page 102 you write, “Veterans of the battles of school reform with whom we've consulted for this project have been uniformly skeptical about these predictions, primarily because, as evidenced by their battle scars, the teachers unions will not allow it.” Really !

I think there's more than one problem with the above assertion, but let's look at where you go with it. You say that if the substitution is managed disruptively, it will happen, even though these institutions, the teacher unions, can wield self protective power in the political processes. You then go on to explain why a change in the political (governance ) structure of schools is necessary. What exactly is the evidence of battle scars? This argument for a regime change is shakier than the weapons of mass destruction one used by you know who.

Your logic also got a little fuzzy when you started speculating about all of the student-centric individualized software that would be developed by user networks. I suppose that might make sense if all we wanted to do was get students to pass standardized tests on a standardized core curriculum. If everyone were home schooled or conveniently placed in the little boutique schools you envision, having a broad selection of software packages that you could take off the shelves of the new user network supply warehouses (probably a branch of Wal-mart) might actually make sense. But as I've pointed out earlier, I don't think the primary political organizations of our society are going to along with your schema. Standardized tests on standardized curriculum are a long way from reality (that's a long discussion that got cut way too short in your book.)

And, then, you say that “the influence that teachers unions can wield over textbook and instructional software adoption decisions looms so large that many would-be school reformers have abandoned hope of significant change.” (p142) You're kidding me, right? That must be another of those facts based on somebody's scars. Come on, at least try a little evidence on me before you jump to the conclusion that “administrators, unions, and school boards will CAPITULATE to the FAIT ACCOMPLI of larger and larger numbers of students acquiring and using superior, customized learning tools on their own. That sounds like the pyramid scheme model. It's certainly not something that's based in any experience that I've had when it comes to text book or software adoption. I've been very active on the District Technology Advisory Committee and have pretty much given up on me or any other teacher ever being consulted again before any kind of acquisition. That's consistent with what I'm hearing from teachers in other districts, too, so I'm really curious where you got your 'fact.' Usually the 'teachers' who are consulted are TOSAs (teachers on special assignment) who are really administrators in training still being counted as teachers for purposes of tax referendum public relations.

I do think you're on the right track some times, but you've confused yourselves with theories, as you were warned. You provide insufficient evidence, in my opinion, for jumping to governance change, which is another name for highly nuanced teacher union bashing. Can I get in on the next book in this series?

Disruptions

2010-08-09T16:18:00.014-05:00

My new hard bound copy of Clayton Christensen, Curt Johnson and Michael Horn's Disrupting Class arrived the other day (It was signed by Curt Johnson. I won it by re-tweeting something from Education Evolving.)

The disruptive thing is intriguing and probably true in the instances they cite in the book, but they don't really offer much in the way of what their new school will look like except that it will be student-centric, and they'd like to see a new form of governance, which is to say that they'd like all schools to be private, or chartered, or TPPs, or 'new schools' of some kind.

Essentially, they're talking about wiping out public schools as we know them. In the future they're seeing, we'll be rid of those nasty teacher unions and the bloated bureaucracies that run public schools. All schools will be tailored to the aspirations and learning styles of all of the students.

As proof that this notion is going happen the authors talk about various commercial innovations that have been disruptive technologies – the transistor, and … well, their examples are all in the book. I spent the first 18 years of my adult life in regional, national, and international ICT business markets doing sales, sales management and consulting; I learned about disruptive technologies. When I first starting selling telephone systems in competition with the mega monopoly of all monopolies in the 70s, there were businessmen (pretty much all men, then) who seriously thought I was doing something illegal. In fact, the Bell System spent a whole lot of money on lobbyists trying to make what I was doing at the time illegal. (My adventures in D.C. lobbying against the Bell 'advances' are a good story for another post.)

The divestiture of AT&T and the almost total dissolution of the CWA certainly qualify as disruptions of major purport ions. Some very intelligent people actually believed at the time that the telephone system was a true natural monopoly. Christensen et al are likening public education and the teacher unions to major corporations and their dependent unions. There are certainly similarities, but it's the differences that are important. Public education is not a single entity, never has been. The teacher unions, though politically powerful, are nothing like the CWA. The power of the teacher unions, and the thing that so irks their opponents, does not come from their collectivity; it comes from the fact that they're respected solid citizens in most every community in the country and they very closely mirror the primary political organization in those communities- the local school boards. And, yes, they're left leaning, but not nearly so much as many would have you believe.

The authors' vision won't leave intact the primary political organizations in the U.S. of A. Local school boards would not survive the kind of political and organizational disruption that is suggested in this book. AT&T's stockholders, for the most part, did very well, Thank You, after only a bit of anxiety. McKinsey and Co. and the Reagan administration greased the deal so that the only ones who took much of hit in the disruption were the members of the CWA. They got hit big time, and there really wasn't much they could do about it. The unions are the target in the author's vision; school boards will merely be collateral damage, which will leave our local communities scrambling even more than they are now to maintain a functional identity.

The unintended consequences of the kind of disruption that the authors promote has not been adequately thought through. If you think busing created a mess; they're talking about busing on steroids. Busing was an attempt to do part of what the authors think would be a good idea, except that busing kept the school boards mostly intact.

The authors are actually on the right track when they talk about software innovations and changes in assessment being the key to the future of education. The disrupting force that is already in process might even be bigger than the notion they promote. Teacher unions will surely need to change, but not in the ways that Horn, Johnson and Christensen think they should change.

The hardware and software already exists to make learning truly student centric, and make assessments individually relevant, and I think the authors already know that to be true, or certainly should. So why then are the authors are so insistent that no change will come to public education unless governance of schools and the governance of the teachers in the schools change? Might the authors be more interested in governance change than they are in actually improving teaching and learning. They want to shift the political power when that isn't even necessary, and I would argue, desirable.

What needs to change is attitudes and understanding. The education system needs to understand that the tools to make learning student centric are already available. Let's innovate the teaching and learning and not change the governance structure of our schools. Let's kick the big corporations out of our schools and let our local governance structures use the tools of education that are already freely available to them. What would happen if all of the money that is spent by the U.S. Department of Education was simply given to the local schools without strings attached? Do you trust the people you leave your kids with every day to know how to spend the money necessary to make that classroom all that it needs to be.

The unwieldy confusing testing system is not working because it's not being used for teaching and learning but as a tool to change the governance structure of public education. Let's assess individual student learning instead. Portfolios can replace testing, very quickly. Portfolio assessment will actually save the system a lot of time and money. Portfolio assessment will create the professional status for teachers that ED/Evolving is pushing as part of its current drive for political change . New and improved standardized testing, by definition, can't document student centric learning - portfolios will be the documentation of student centric learning. They already exist.

The administrations of our schools don't need to bother with wondering how to deploy literacy devices in classrooms (The authors talk a little about computers, but mostly they're focused on computers that are at least a decade old.) The administrations of our schools simply need to decide to let students use the literacy devices that are already deployed and owned by most students for teaching and learning instead of as distractions to teaching and learning. The disruption has already happened – the new void that was filled was the ability for everyone to be connected 24/7 to each other and to the increasingly vast archives of information. The job of administrations is to support teachers in learning how to teach with the literacy devices that are already in most of their students backpacks or on their shelves at home because they're outlawed at school.

Using open source learning management systems like Moodle puts the power to create individualized learning in the hands of teachers. It already exists, it's tested, it's available in almost a hundred languages, and it's free. Moodle will work with most of the literacy devices that students already own; teachers just need to be gently shown how to use it. Things will change, that's certain. Most of the change is going to happen, though, between the ears, as many a teacher has often said.

Writing Tools

2010-08-07T22:40:00.002-05:00

Last week I spent four days with 120 of my elementary teacher colleagues in the MPS Summer Science Institute. This was a premiere staff development of the MPS. We were treated to some very effective hands-on learning lessons that we'll be able to use with our students. Well, that is if we can fit it in to our class schedules. There's a little competition from the Literacy and Math Departments for minutes of instruction, but that's a blog for another day.

What's on my mind now is the full day session we spent the first day with Karen Worth. Ms Worth is a delightful person; she's got the personality that every parent hopes their kid's 1st grade teacher will possess.

The day long session was an in person delivery of her book, The Essentials of Science and Literacy: A Guide for Teachers -we got a paperback copy of the book, too. The day included a demonstration of how to conduct an inquiry discussion in a circle, and video showing us some of the finer points of leading discussions, and we talked about writing, why it's important. Mostly, the day was a power point version of the book - talking about science and writing about science is important. Got that! The link above will let you sample a chapter and get a good feel for the book.

Here's my concern - the book is prescribing 19th Century teaching techniques, maybe 18th Century, whenever it was that was before we started separating science from the 'other' subject areas. It's a good thing to integrate reading, writing, math, and the arts with science; that's not my concern. My concern is that Ms Worth and her book ignore the tools that scientists use for writing, math, and integrating art with science.

We're a full decade into the 21st Century. Twenty five years ago, Donald Murray, the father of the process theory of writing instruction, in the revision of his seminal book , A Writer Teaches Writing noticed how useful computers were for writing. Murray probably wouldn't consider his observations to be scientific, but when it comes to writing about writing, he had a pretty good grasp of the 'current research' on how you teach writing. The appendix of his book lists almost everything that's been said about the teaching of writing in the 20th Century.

Murray said:

“The principal advantages of the word processor include:

* A good typist can type aster on a word processor than on a typewriter, because the typist is typing only one continuous line. The machine does the carriage return automatically, and this speeds up the process immensely. A poor typist can type quickly on the machine and then clean up errors easily later.

* The writer has increased freedom to create a discovery draft without worrying about anything that will have to be corrected later. The writer can feel an enormous freedom to get something down that will be developed and refined later. I have found, for example, that sometimes I write in bursts of one to five paragraphs on the word processor; then cut, add, and reorder, shaping the fragment’ the polish it line by line, checking each word, each phrase, each sentence; then write in another burst. That’s a very different pattern for me, and it’s made possible by the word processor.

* The writer can produce a section of a longer piece of writing whenever it comes to mind, because it can be moved around easily and inserted wherever it belongs later on.

* The writer doesn’t have to worry about the internal order of paragraphs as much as in ‘normal’ (my emphasis) writing. The writer can get the paragraphs down, then reorder them easily later.

* The three main functions of revising and editing - cutting, adding, and reordering - can be done with amazing skill and ease on a word processor. The writer can cut - zap - just like that. The writer can insert easily, and since most writing is undeveloped, the word processor makes it easy to do the necessary developing. The writer can reorder words, sentences, paragraphs, sections and re-reorder.

* The writer can see a clear text immediately after each change instead of the messy, scrawled-over drafts that are normal for a writer (using paper and pen.)

* The act of writing that always has been a satisfying form of play for most prolific writers is available as play to more people. For many people, the word processor does seem to make writing a game. They can enjoy the fun of making a text come clear on the tube.

* Many word processor have programs that spell. Educators may worry about this, but the fact is that many writers - present company included - are poor spellers, and the ability of the machine to check this allows spelling to b put in its proper lace, at the end of the writing process, so that it is not a matter of primary anxiety on every draft.

* The writing can be stored away easily and recalled whenever the writer has somethingv to do to the draft. These changes may be small or large. No matter, they can be added to the draft, and the draft can be stored away efficiently, ready to be called up again.

* Most writers will confess that in the past they have not made changes that should have been made because of the time and energy it took to produce a new draft. With a word processor you don’t have to worry. The draft remains flexible, changeable, until it is printed.

* The writing remains in process for a longer time. There is a wonderful impermanence about the draft on the video tube. It is always writing in process, ready to be changed.”

So, writing is crucial to learning, in any subject, and technology has been observed by someone who knows writing to be a tremendous aid in writing. Why is there even a question about whether or not technology has an effect on teaching and learning, and why wouldn't we want to use computers in a science classroom ?

Murray never got to use modern learning management systems like Moodle to teach writing, but if he had, I’m sure he would have been as appreciative of Moodle as he was of word processors. Moodle allows teachers to do all of the things that Murray advocates but even more quickly and more easily. All of the advantages of the word processor that Murray delineates are extended and expanded with Moodle. I’ve taught reading and writing to 3rd and 4th graders without word processors, with word processors but without Moodle, and with Moodle. There’s no reason not to use Moodle, or Google apps, or one of the many new technologies that adds global collaboration to the advantages that Murray listed of using word processors in the writing process. I really never want to see the tears welling up behind the eyes of another 3rd grader when I tell them that most everything they’ve written needs to be reordered when they’ve just labored mightily with a pencil to get their story onto the page, especially when the usual response to revising with a computer is, "Hey, this is kinda fun." The computer provides the power and access to language that most of us adults who've used a computer for a while have come to expect. For me, the question is not whether or not technology has an effect in the classroom, it’s why isn’t everyone using technology in the classroom.

So why, then, does Ms Worth actually caution against using technology in an elementary science classroom. And why does the MPS, in 2010, buy books for their elementary science teachers that don't even mention how the current tools of science might be used in a classroom? Those are really important questions.

Willingham on Technoogy

2010-06-18T11:18:00.005-05:00

Last year at this time in the CASTLE summer book club I was criticizing Daniel Willingham for not considering technology in his book, Why Don’t Students Like School?. Scott McLeod thought I was too harsh on Dr. Willingham, and Willingham excused himself by saying, "Well, the book is about the human mind, it's not about the uses of technology in teaching. You may feel that technology is essential to the future of teaching. . .if so, that may prove a lively point of debate in the book group."

Well, this June, Dr. Willingham has, at least, taken a beginning look at how technology fits in with teaching. His piece in the current issue of the American Educator falls way short of being thorough and well thought out, though, despite the twenty-two end notes which are mostly from the last ten years.

As long as we're at the end of his article, let's note that I think the editors must have chopped off his ending, because there isn't one- the article just stops at the end of a list of four things that answer the question- What Does All This Mean for Teaching? The four items are:

1. Encourage your students to avoid multitasking when doing an important task.

2. If a new piece of technology is placed in your classroom with the expectation that you will use it, take advantage of online teacher communities.

3. Think about what the technology can and can't do.

4. There's nothing wrong with engagement.

I don't know many teachers or parents who would argue with the premise of the first point while it's almost a given that there are lots of teen-agers who could offer a very spirited contrary opinion -my daughter being one of them. The second point begs a further discussion about what teachers need to do to insist on being given proper support in the classroom which includes adequate professional development to be competent with the tools of our trade, and the tools are changing and will continue to change.

In his discussion of the third point, Willingham compares a chalkboard to an overhead projector. That's about as useful as comparing a horse drawn carriage to walking as a means of traveling from Minneapolis to Chicago. Horse drawn carriages and walking are both still very lovely things to experience, but neither are practical for traveling from Minneapolis to Chicago. I still really like a chalkboard for some things but I would never buy a new one, and all overhead projectors need to be tossed as soon as possible for lots of reasons - a document camera does everything an overhead does and so much more. I wonder if Willingham has ever used one in a classroom? I guess we shouldn't expect that much investigation from a cognitive scientist- No, wait a minute; Yes, we should, especially one that's writing in a magazine called the American Educator that's published by the AFT.

Willingham reveals his superficial understanding of Twitter by pointing out that while it provides asynchronous communication between two people, the users are limited to 140 characters. I can't really take seriously anyone who claims to be writing about technology and teaching who's that limited in their understanding Twitter. It's in his fourth and abruptly final paragraph that Willingham reveals his lack of engagement with the technology. He suggests that Twitter might be useful for providing a moment of fun or energy and implies that's all it's good for. Willingham asks us to "be clear-eyed" while he's only seeing a small corner of the picture.

Auditory Learning

2010-06-09T23:37:00.003-05:00

This was posted in the Online facilitation course I'm currently taking. We were having a discussion about whether or not auditory learning was important.

This is very definitely an aside, but it is still about the issue of auditory or not:

Ira Socol just posted his thoughts on why Ulysses is so important in our literary tradition. For those of you who might not be fans, (you don't need to have read the whole damn thing in order to be a fan, either)next Wednesday, June 16, just after we finish this course is Bloomsday. Bloomsday is a holiday to celebrate Ulysses. All of Ulysses takes place in one day, kinda like a 24, on June 16, 1904. Ulysses was originally released as a serial.

Before I digress into Ulysses and Joyce too much, the point that Ira makes is that it is not really possible to 'read' Ulysses without saying the words outloud, reading with your lips moving, something that we try to drum out of kids.

Try to get through as much of the text from Ulysses as you can and then skip down to Ira's comments at the end. Ira has an opinion about the auditory part of reading.

By the way, and this, too, is an aside, if you look at the background of my profile picture, you can see, if you super magnify it, the Martello tower of Sandycove which is the opening scene of Ulysses and which is across Dublin Bay from where I am in the picture. I had made my pilgrimage out to Sandycove the evening before, and purposely wanted to put it in the background of this picture. If you want another stream of consciousness/auditory type of experience with an Irish flavor, you can go to my facebook videos and play a clip of the great band I heard at Pearce St Station on my way out to Sandycove.

I will also digress to my Chaucer course in grad school: I was outraged, and at 25 yrs old my outrage was barely tempered, that the prof didn't plan on reading any of Chaucer's works out loud in the class. She, the prof, was offended that I was outraged and more than a little dismissive; I think I managed to finally get a 'B' out of the course, but just barely. I distinctly remember 35 years ago being looked at like was silly or something, but I'm still outraged; I mean, how can you rationally expect to really be learning about the Canterbury Tales if you don't actually read at least out loud. I thought then that the whole thing should be read out loud, and then we could start talking about the connections to Italian poets from the 13th Cent., maybe. I think auditory learning is very important. I'm so glad that we can now link to an actual reading of the words. And I'm glad that I'm an elementary teacher and I get to read out loud everyday to my students. Roald Dahl's, The Witches is my favorite.

A Tool that Really Works

2010-04-09T10:27:00.012-05:00

I'm excited. I found a tool that really works. Not only does the tool work really well for what I need it to do, it comes with spectacular directions. (Guys do use directions, sometimes; I tried figuring it out on my own first, of course.)

The tool that I'm talking about is the Database Module ; it's a special tool in the very big toolbox called, Moodle. I've discovered that the database module works really well as a reader's response journal for my 3rd and 4th grade students. I use it in place of the spiral notebook or three-ring binder or composition book method. In previous years I've tried both the Workshop Module and the famous Moodle Forum activity module. The Workshop Module is overkill for 3rd and 4th graders; it's like using a cam/cad computer to sketch an elementary illustration. The very flexible Forum can be made to work, but it doesn't have enough of the built-in structure to be really useful for what is needed for my 3rd and 4th grade students. (Although, a couple of them are approaching the level of being able to benefit from the more complex Workshop Module. That's the trouble with teaching; once you teach them something; they want to learn more.)

I learned how to use the Database Module by watching the fabulous short tutorial that Tomaz Lasic created a while ago. I set up the database so students could easily log in the title, author, main characters, settings, plot problems, and plot solutions. The directions at the top of the database input screen directs students to use complete sentences and as much descriptive detail as possible.

The comments feature of the database allows other students or me, the teacher, to make comments on each entry. In that way, it is much like a discussion forum. I was pleasantly surprised when I found that three of the students had discovered the comments feature on their own and had already started commenting on each other's entries. If you use technology in a classroom, you gotta get used to students showing you how to do new things. When I showed the whole class how to use comments, the whole class eagerly took to writing on each others entries. My job as the teacher then became to coach students to expand, clarify, punctuate, relate, etc. - all of the things writing teachers do.

Except that I had one problem. The way that I had set up the database didn't include an easy way to go from the 'list view' to the comments. It was easy enough to search for a particular student or title, but then I or the students had to go back to single view and tab through all of the entries until the desired entry was reached. The students didn't mind as much as I did, mostly because they aren't as familiar with databases in general and didn't sense that there must be an easier way - tabbing through to see what others had written is still new and intriguing.

When I showed my A.E. what was happening, she was as impressed as I was about how eagerly the students took to writing about books. I mentioned that I was frustrated about not being able to go to the comments directly from the list view and said, "I think I'll do a search of the Moodle Forums and post a query if I don't find the answer right away." I'd had a great experience a year and half ago when I was trying to add a pdf file to an online text assignment. That was my first experience with the power of the Moodle user community. It happened again. After about 15 minutes of browsing through the Database Discussions I just posted the question to the forum. It took less than 3 hours to get a detailed response about how to do what I needed to do. Itamar Tzadok from Toronto, confirmed my hope and explained how to do it. I hadn't had time to check on the forum until a few days later, so I didn't actually see his response for a few days. In the meantime, Ivan Dobrovolskij from Moscow, had asked a clarifying question. Itamar explained Ivan's question, too. Talk about collaborating and connecting ! I feel renewed hope for our profession. When students and teachers work together, we both learn how to use great new tools.

My students convinced me today to let them do a literature circle on Jeff Smith's Bone series of graphic novels. I haven't read them yet, but have lately seen noses buried in one of the nine different titles all around the room. The Bone series literature circle will use the refined database with links to comments, and I'll be learning about Fone, Phoney and Smiley.

Collaborate and connect

2010-04-05T21:48:00.011-05:00

I couldn't help but think of collaboration and connecting when I was asked this morning for some summary thoughts about the use technology in elementary classrooms- I've been doing a series of a guest speaking talks via Skype in a course for future teachers at the U of Minnesota (we're only blocks apart but without Skype I wouldn't make it back to my classroom in time to meet my elementary students in the morning.) I've also been fortunate to be involved recently in several discussions between educators about sharing, connecting and collaborating. In her recent post, Pam Moran, Superintendent of the Ablermarle County Public Schools, beautifully juxtaposed collaboration-a butterfly with a pendulum-the machine that is the public school system. With my words to the future teachers in the class this morning, I echoed Pam's exhortation to make creating the freedom of the butterfly in our classroom our necessary job. I told them it's our job to bring whatever tools we can to our students; that we needed to teach our students what they needed for their lives, not we we were taught to use for our lives.

In our district, there's an initiative underway headed up by Todd Pierson @tpierson to create MPS specific Moodle courses for both instruction and staff development. Elsewhere, around the world and here in Minnesota, Tomaz Lasic has created a venue for sharing Moodle lessons; Joe Thibault is creating a place to archive every Moodle course ever created; Carl Anderson has just created a site for sharing Minnesota Moodle courses; the Minnesota Moodle users group is growing daily; Nellie Deutsch and friends are sharing ideas and tools vibrantly all over the planet.

All of these teachers know it's their job to connect, to share, to be the butterfly of creation in classrooms. It's what teachers do.

Thanks for sharing, really !

New Technologies

2010-02-16T20:35:00.007-06:00

Ira Socol wrote about technologies today. I had written the post below after school today (I'd been thinking about it for a day or two) and submitted it to the StarTribune in response to this piece in Sunday's StarTribune by William Souder. Both Ira and I, unlike Mr. Souder, like the idea that 'books' are available in multiple formats.

William Souder offered the opportunity to judge the essay he wrote that was printed in last Sunday's Star Tribune and which was also made available in the online version of the Star Tribune. His essay fails to prove his point. He proposes that formal writing is dying; that it is being replaced by digital writing. I'm not quite sure what Souder means by formal writing, but he implies that it is writing that does not appear in electronic form, which is a ridiculous proposition since most of what has been written by humans in any language and on any surface with any tool is now available on line. For Souder, digital writing is writing that is not published and printed on paper by publishing houses that published books by Tom Clancy and Stephen King. Souder asserts that those publishing housed used to subsidize a number of less-famous writers whose work was worth reading but who couldn't make money for the publisher or, presumably, themselves. I will acknowledge that that how people get paid for writing is changing. Souder says that this inferior digital writing is somehow lessening the value that existed for the kind of writing that came before it. He makes fun of the what he calls digital writing but fails to show how that harms the other kind of writing. Good writing endures, no matter the form.

I still value what Plato wrote about what Socrates said about writing. Socrates, or at least, Plato using a character called Socrates, didn't think much of writing; he considered writing to be much inferior to oral discourse. http://english.ttu.edu/Kairos/2.1/features/brent/platowri.htm

Anyone now reading these words electronically can with one click be able to the words of Socrates, via Plato, written in fairly modern English. There are probably scholars of both Greek and Latin who could offer alternative translations and thus maybe put another twist on the meaning of the words as they appear to us, today. Was Plato's writing on a kodex in classical Greek formal writing? Are his words dead?

Chaucer significantly messed with the formal writing of his day. He eschewed the old formal Latin in favor the indelicate vernacular English. Now we call him the father of English literature. Chaucer would've been all over Facebook if he were here today. And the rhythms and rhyme he so informally wrote six hundred years ago - “Whan that Aprille with hise shoures soote / The droghte of March hath perced to the roote.”- still delight even though the spellings and pronunciations have changed a bit.

With this 'inferior' digital writing, I'm also able to connect readers of these words to the words of Wordsworth – now there's a guy whose words are worth reading. What I especially like about using an electronic tool is that I can go right to the part of Wordsworth's words that I want readers to notice. I have a hard time remembering the exact paragraph where the line I want to share shows up, but I remember that the word 'torpor' appears in the sentence so all I need to do is type 'torpor' into the little 'find' box at the bottom of my laptop screen and, presto, I'm at the passage which expresses notions which readers familiar with Mr. Souder's essay will recognize. Wordsworth, too, was turning traditional, formal writing on its head in favor of the language of the common man.

It was almost two hundred years ago that Wordsworth said, speaking of the capability to excite the beauty and dignity of the mind, “It has therefore appeared to me, that to endeavour to produce or enlarge this capability is one of the best services in which, at any period, a Writer can be engaged; but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day. For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. to this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves. The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of Shakespeare and Milton, are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.” I suppose Mr. Souder would put blogs and Twitter threads, no matter who wrote them, in with all those sickly and stupid German Tragedies and the deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.

The number of English speakers globally continues increase rapidly so the market for things written in English, digital or formal, is also growing. Mr. Souder's main objection to digital writing seems to be that it is endangering the profits of the owner's of the means of distributing writing on paper. Books are not going away; writing is just showing up in new places in addition to books, newspapers and magazines. If there's enough demand for words printed on paper, somebody will figure out how to make money making books. I think the Book of Kells is gorgeous, but I'm not going to suggest that everything written should be written in a book using the same skills required to produce the Book of Kells. Mr. Souder laments the fact that Moby Dick is available for free. I think it's a good thing that a child in the Philippines, or China, or wherever, can download a copy and read it, or almost any other book, with the aid of a translating tool and even online explanatory notes. Lots of people without the ability to hold or read a book can also have the text read to them by this 'inferior' digital tool. Electronically produced writing opens lots of doors for lots of people. Our ability to tell our stories whether we're bards or scribes is not hampered by electronic communication- electronics make both the stage and the seating area a whole lot bigger and more inclusive.

More on iMoot 2010 and the networked creator

2010-02-12T22:00:00.006-06:00

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Tomaz Lasic is promising to write about the panel discussion in iMoot 2010 that he moderated and I listened to last Saturday morning; I participated via the chat board. As I mentioned in my last post here, it was a wonderful experience in which to participate. I'm eager to hear/read his report. Tomaz is starting his new job at Moodle HQ soon and he posted to Twitter a comment that a friend of his made to him "So, you're going from environment that doesn't encourage community creation (EdDept) to where comm. is valued & key (Moodle.)" I clumsily tried to expand on that comment by expressing my envy of Tomaz in his new job, but I think the point of the comment that Tomaz's friend made is crucial to what's happening and needs to continue to happen in education. Moodle is by definition a tool that encourages community creation, and Tomaz is a perfect example of John Hagel's poignant observation in his recent post - "Rather than simply pursuing our passion as a hobby, we felt a growing need to make our passion our profession." Tomaz is truly a "networked creator."

I also listened to Martin Dougiamas's keynote talk that kicked off iMoot. Martin, too, demonstrated what a networked creator looks like. In fact, Martin is the gold standard for doing conscious networked creation. His early writing makes his intentions clear. The millions of Moodle users around the planet are the beneficiaries of that conscious networked creativity.

And that contrasts sharply with what is all too common in k-12 school districts- A superintendent holds a meeting that is attended by a group of people. Everybody at the meeting takes notes on paper but nobody records communally what's said. Then, the people at the meeting call another meeting where even more people attend and take separate notes on paper and nothing again gets recorded in common. Each of the people at that meeting then go off to their buildings and call meetings where they mimic the behavior they've just witnessed - they report what they've heard. Sometimes this pattern gets a little 'innovative.' Instead of just having meetings the information is passed via paper, and then, sometimes, even greater 'innovation' occurs and the information gets passed via a chain of emails. That's not creativity - it's passing information. The passing of the information dilutes creativity and accountability.

Instead of welcoming the feedback and criticism that Martin describes as crucial to the quality of the ongoing creative process, the hierarchical information passing system is paranoid about making sure the information is passed 'with fidelity.' Because there's no common record, the information tends to get confused or misunderstood or twisted somehow. And yet, the paranoid system seems to take weeks to get even the a single convoluted idea on paper or into print.

I understand that it takes time to formulate ideas. I've yet to get my thoughts on the page about why Moodle is a model for the kind of 'accountability that is being yearned for by the 'reformers' even though I don't think they would recognize the truth of real accountability if it was staring them in the face. But I won't be surprised if that thought process isn't taken up by someone else via Twitter, or a blog, or even the new and somewhat still puzzling Buzz. I'm not suggesting that this convergence of ideas is the same thing as the recent scandal of the teenage novelist in Germany (I'm not even going to bother to link to that; google it if you haven't yet read about it.) It's just that the speed of ideas that go zipping from Australia to Minnesota to Germany and back to Australia (I was tipped off via Twitter to Hagel's blog by John Mak) is becoming something I'm beginning to trust. I've never met John but I think we've thought about the same things at about the same time and mentioned it to the world via our 'network.' It's work is progress.

iMoot2010

2010-02-08T22:15:00.003-06:00

iMoot2010 was the answer I gave to a query this evening asking for the best staff development. iMoot2010 was a gathering this last weekend of people who use, create and promote Moodle. People from all over the world were chiming in online about a wide range of aspects of an education tool that has the potential to significantly alter teaching and learning; actually, it's already changing it. Colleagues of mine have paid hundreds of dollars to travel to a hotel conference room to listen to a presentation that may not even be recorded. I attended iMoot 2010 in my slippers and I can review the recordings for at least 90 days. I suspect that the discussions will move over to the forums on the always reliable Moodle Community sites.
Moodle provides the kind of accountability that Arne Duncan et al are asking for in the RTTT. Moodle goes much farther than the clumsy observation and test score methods being touted as ways to make teachers and schools 'accountable.' I was reminded of the transparency that is and always has been essential to Moodle. Martin Dougiamous reminded us that the strength of Moodle is the fact that it's open source and only gets better as more people use, test, question, critique, modify, and expand the tool. The refreshing openess of the conference reminded me why I like teaching and learning.

Twitter for teacher professional development

2010-01-10T16:31:00.010-06:00

Last Wednesday at our PLC (Professional Learning Cmmunity) meeting we were discussing how to integrate science into our reading curriculum. We shared the ways that we used notebooks with the science kits that we use. When the question was raised about what kind of resources we, as teachers, could use to increase our learning about how to to use notebooks, I offered to see what I could get from Twitter (at least one of my colleagues raised an eyebrow.) It took about 2 minutes when I got back to my room to locate the recent account that the folks at Lawerence Hall of Science have created for their great elementary FOSS program. I had to wait to look it up because we meet in the multi-purpose room with about 6 other PLCs - it's easier for the admins to observe and coach us that way. There's only about two AC outlets in the room and only a shaky wireless connection to the district intranet which still has Twitter blocked. In my classroom I put my laptop near the window by my desk and I can hitchhike to Twitter on one of the unsecured routers in the neighborhood.

One of the recent posts on the @FOSSScience Twitter time line was a link to their web page about, guess what, using notebooks in the science classroom. The FOSS web site also contains enough information to occupy our PLC for more than a few of our next meetings. Someone else actually suggested that we meet in my classroom for our next PLC so we can look at the web site on the overhead. I'll also let them peak at Twitter, Shh, don't tell anyone.

So, here's a couple of my wishes for the New Year. I would like to be able to access Twitter from anywhere in any of our school buildings. If we need to start by providing access only to teachers, fine, but let's start. One of the other things I'd like to see in the new year is that all of our professional development notes and communications be done on our staff Moodle site. That would be handy, for instance, for me to review the PLC notes if I wanted to do something like write about my professional development on the couch at home with my recently broken ankle wrapped in an ice pack while the Packers are trying to sneak by the Cardinals [edit: They didn't.] It would also be handy if I noticed a tweet from someone about teacher professional development relating to integrating science into a literacy program - I could just pop it into the Moodle notebook instead of sending myself an email to remember to bring it up the next time we gathered to drag out the 3-ring binder. I'd also like to change our PLC meeting times to at least include some asynchronous 'meeting' time on line.

My wishes for the new year are probably not what Shelly Blake-Plock was looking for when he put out a call for crazy stuff, but it's one of the little steps that Ira Socol (get that wheel rolling soon) was talking about in one of his recent posts. We need crazy little steps to do our work. (See what I did there, Kelly?)

Writing

2010-01-02T13:54:00.004-06:00

I didn't get anything posted here during the month of December. Getting ready for the Christmas break both at school and home was a necessary and obvious priority. I did write a guest post on Shelly Blake-Plock's TeachPaperless blog; it was sincere pleasure and honor to work with Shelly on the post. As Shelly points out on his blog and I alluded to in the post, this is the kind of sharing teachers need to be doing even more frequently.
It might be obvious, but blogging and even using Twitter ( I don't like the verbs, tweeting or micro-blogging) require writing skill and especially skill with some kind of electronic input tool (I'm still using mostly one of my two second-hand WindowsXP laptops.) Writing and 'typing' are skills that have essentially been worked around for years in education, justifiably or not. We can only hope that things like Dial2do or some of the other voice to text tools will make it easier for everyone to get their thoughts out to a place where they are more easily shared. 'Writing' in any of the many ways that word is defined is still one of the keys to teaching and learning.

How to Make a Living

2009-11-10T21:27:00.009-06:00

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I read the first chapter of Peter and the Sword of Mercy to my son tonight at bedtime. It's the 4th in Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson's great series about Peter Pan. Frankie lent me his copy this afternoon after school. He had already finished it. When he ran up behind me on the bus lane one day a week or so ago, he had shouted, "Hey, Dan, Dan ! I got the new Peter and the Starcatcher's book, it's the 4th one, it just came out this weekend, have you seen it?" I hadn't even heard that it was out, yet. So much for staying abreast of children's literature; I've been spending too much time doing F & P assessments lately, I guess. I had smiled to myself after Frankie walked away. We had talked a bit and I said I was looking forward to reading it, but I hadn't read any in the series to my current class yet I wasn't sure if it would be good to start at the end of the series.

When Frankie had started in my 3rd grade class two years ago his parents had pulled me aside to talk about their concerns that Frankie wasn't reading 'at grade level' yet. His older sister was an A+ student in high school now and had never had any trouble reading anything she wanted to read to date. They wanted to know what kind of tutoring they should get for Frankie to get him caught up. They looked at me a little warily when I said, "Why don't you just let me work with him for awhile, first." As it turned out, I got to have Frankie in my class for the next two years due to the multi-age grouping we do here at Marcy.

Not every student makes the kind of progress that Frankie did in the two years he spent with me, and I certainly can't take much of the credit. Most of the credit goes to Frankie and his parents. They all did their jobs - Frankie did his homework and his parents made sure he did his homework. They called and stopped in frequently over the last two years. His dad's cell phone number is still in the contacts list on my cell phone.

I used lots of tools to help Frankie become a better reader: parts of a Houghton-Mifflin curriculum that the district had sanctioned a few years back (they're now sanctioning the F & P system and scowling at those H-M 'texts.' Anything that looks like an anthology is out of favor these days.) I also used a whole variety of lessons on our Moodle site. Frankie was in my first class to use that great reading and writing tool. I can't even imagine wanting to teach writing without it today.

One of the things that really helped Frankie was the Accelerated Reader system. A.R. has taken some slams lately from the likes of Alfie Kohn; he makes a living slamming this, that or the other thing related to education. Lots of his ideas are worth considering like his take on merit pay, but I don't think he's ever really used Accelerated Reader and its assessment companion, StarReader. A.R. was especially useful to Frankie's parents. They used it to find books in the public library that were at Frankie's optimal reading level. The A.R. list of quizzes is available anywhere there's an internet connection and most of the reference people in the Mpls Public Library know how to help kids and their parents find the right level of book, at least, after I've done a few assessments, had them try a few books, and given them a reading level.

Accelerated Reader is a way of keeping track of where you're at if you're a growing reader; it also helps teachers and parents keep track of how their child is progressing. It's certainly not the only tool that a teacher or parent should use to nudge a child along the literacy path, but it's useful. It's useful like stats are to Joe Mauer, or a stop watch is to Adrian Peterson's coaches. Are Joe and Adrian going to be star athletes without those tools? Probably, most likely, we could even say for sure, but they use the tools anyway. Pros use tools that are useful. Ira Socol has a fairly well developed Toolbelt Theory for Education. Like Ira, I made my living for a short while wearing a toolbelt standing on a ladder with my head above the ceiling tiles punching down 25 pair cable. I've found Accelerated Reader to be a useful tool to help kids be better readers, and I can even go so far as to say that it's helped build a culture of reading in my classroom and in our school.

So, I wasn't that surprised when Frankie caught up with me after school today. He held out the book rather awkwardly. I don't think he's lent out too many $19.00 hard cover books before, and to a teacher to boot. He said, "I've finished it and I thought you might want to read it, but I think you should start with the first one with your class." I said, "Wow, you sure cruised through that book fast." "Yeah," he said, "it was really good." I said, "thanks a lot for the book; I haven't had time to get my own, yet. And, I'll go with your advice on starting with the first one with the class. We gotta get through Hoot first." And then Frankie said, "Oh, yeah, those are great books, too. I read Splash this summer. And do know that Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson have another series about Fighting Prawn and the Lost Boys? It's great, too."

Frankie's mom was there to pick him up after school. I could tell that they had talked over his lending me the book. Her smile told me she was proud of her son for more than a few reasons. It's great having a job where I get paid to read good books out loud to kids.

Ed Mn conference was like Twitter

2009-10-28T06:09:00.004-05:00

I just reread what I had posted about the Education Minnesota conference and realize that what I found valuable in this year's conference was the same value I get from Twitter. Twitter connects me with other teachers who share my ideals and my frustrations. The frustrations are what Tomaz Lasic writes about in his latest Human blog post. Dean Groom, another of my Twitter partners and who I've linked to on my blog previously, commented on Tomaz's post, as did I. We are part of a very large conference of educators that span the globe. The sharing and connecting will salve the frustrations, eventually. If this can happen for teachers, just think what could happen for students if they all got connected; Whoa there, Cowboy!

What're your scores ? Ed Mn Professional Conference

2009-10-16T20:42:00.014-05:00

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I spent the day yesterday at the Education Minnesota Professional Conference. This year the highlight for me was connecting with other professional educators for informal discussions. I was in the aisles of the exhibit hall or in the corridors outside the presentation rooms talking with old friends or exhibitors (some them now also old friends) about possibilities and realities. We talked about substantive educational issues and substantive personal issues. This was probably my 17th conference - I went to a couple while getting my license and also while I was subbing that first year before getting a contract with the MPS. Getting affirmations from other pros is so crucial to this job.

One of the big affirmations for me was when a teacher who used to teach in our building met me in the aisle with a big hug and eventually the question - "Are you still doing your St. Patrick's Day Poetry Reading Contest?"and then "I want you to know that I've taken that to my current building and made the whole month of March a poetry month." I did skip the contest this last year because of scheduling conflicts with testing. I won't miss it this year; we'll be reading poems in Room 207 this March 17.

Some years the highlight has been a pep talk by great orators for the keynote; Paul Wellstone, Peter Yaro, and Garrison Keilor are memorable examples. Ray Suarez's excellent talk this year was more of a sober look at what's coming for our profession. I can't remember all of the stats he rattled off about the demographics of our schools past, present and what they're likely to be in the years ahead; I'll want to read his next book. The official theme of his speech was the impact of immigration on US education. He urged us to start paying close attention; things are changing and they're gonna change some more. His comments are summarized on this MPR audio piece which also includes comments on health care and journalism. Serious, researched talk both informs and affirms teachers.

Another form of affirmation is talking possibilities. Our 3rd and 4th grade team is still exploring arts integration opportunities for this year. Angie Keeton, The Minnesota Opera teaching artist, got me thinking about opera. Maybe we'll put my earlier claymation idea to music and sing the story. I've only been to a couple of operas in my life, but I'd like to learn more. David, my colleague across the hall, usually has classical or operatic music playing before and after school, so he'll likely be on board.

One of the uninspiring conversations I had was with a professor of one of the local teacher colleges. When he heard where I teach and that I've had a student teacher in my room almost every semester for the last twelve years (a K-8 close to the U of M and Augsburg gets lots of student teachers; he wasn't with either of those.) he perked up and started talking about an urban literacy program. And then, his next question was, "what are your scores?" I said, "uhh," and he continued with "are you AYP?" I grew up on South Dakota country western, and I like U2 and the blues. So, talk to me about poetry and opera, not AYP.

Useful Tips for Saving Teacher Time

2009-09-22T23:47:00.008-05:00

9/22/09
Writing helps me think about things that don't seem to make sense at first.

This morning at our weekly staff development session we learned about some new features that are available to teachers on the district electronic student database. The student database now has an ILP form that was created so that teachers can use it with parents at conferences. Since the IT department doesn't want teachers to have printers in their rooms, printing the completed forms will require teachers to send the completed forms with the information that parents have just shared to a printer down the hall some place. Teachers will need to leave the room and go get the printed form and hope that someone else hasn't sent a big job to the printer or left the printer out of paper or toner. Printers aren't yet considered useful educational tools, at least not useful enough so that a teacher could actually have one in the classroom where instruction happens. Is teacher instruction time less valuable than printer toner?

We learned that "Fractions would be easier for teachers to input into the database than percentages." The fractions are numbers which report student performance on a reading assessment. Fractions like 7/10 and 5/7 are all put in the same list. I'm having a hard time understanding why fractions are better than decimals for this score. I hope there's a reason other than the assertion that fractions are easier than decimals for teachers.

Then, in response to a very good question asked by a teacher, we were told, "I'll check on that and send an email about what I find out to your principal and assistant principal." I suspect that was just a learned response in a system that insists on that kind of response. Why couldn't the response be made to the all of the teachers at our building via the same email and save the principal or assistant principal the trouble of forwarding the response on to teachers? This seems a bit like what Miguel Guhlin recently wrote on his blog about the top down command and control of information? Those old habits of paper passing to reinforce hierarchy are hard to break.

Also today, deadlines were announced for completing the inventory of the collection of books that were recently delivered to each elementary teacher's room. The books cost about $1500 per room. The first two boxes of books contained about 150 books; there's supposed to be another couple of boxes coming soon. The inventory consisted of four pages of book titles and a letter of the alphabet that signifies its F & P level. The ISBN number was also included on the list, but not the author. The list was not organized by any of the fields of the list. It was a list of the books in a totally random order. The list was actually in the order that the books were packed by someone in the warehouse. I discovered that piece of information when I sent an email to the president of the company that was the vendor of the books. The vendor president said that was the way their inventory software generated the list. I suggested to her that they didn't have any business being in business and certainly shouldn't be doing business with the school district where I work and where my kids go to school if that was all the better they could do for an inventory list. I said I thought an electronic list that could be searched and sorted should be sent to each teacher along with the boxes of books that the teacher was required to inventory. The next day, the vendor sent me a pdf file of the list in alpha order. I wrote back that that was better but still not satisfactory. Pdf files are dead-end documents. You can't really do anything with the information in a pdf document except print it out or copy it by hand. To the vendor's credit, I got an Excel spreadsheet of the inventory later that same day, the authors weren't included - "That wasn't in the contract." Was the electronic file in the contract? The person in charge of buying the books for the district stopped in to visit me (I was called to the principal's office during my instruction time) a few days later and said that I was being too harsh on the vendor. I said that I thought asking teachers to inventory a couple of boxes of books with a random list was too harsh.

I'm fortunate to have U of Mn practicum students spend a few hours in my classroom each week. My student teacher suggested that completing the inventory would be a good task for the practicum students; He's showing a real talent for using resources effectively. They did a great job and had the list done in about 20 minutes complete with dividers they made out of card stock separating the different levels. When I showed the random list to the practicum students and asked them if they would have liked doing the inventory using the random list instead of the sorted list the response I got was, " I'd rather wash windows." Now that's harsh. I hadn't thought of that; apparently there's a teacher out there somewhere who's asked practicum students to wash windows - they all compare notes back at the sorority. I'm not sure if my colleagues in the district have received an electronic inventory that can be sorted and searched. I'll ask around.

9/24/09

As it turns out, I've been viewing a problem from my own narrow perspective again. I've done that before. The problem with the inventory of the leveled books library for each elementary classroom, that costs about $1500 dollars per room wasn't just a problem for classroom teachers strapped for time at the beginning of the year (I'm not sure the time of the year makes all that much difference when it comes to time for things that could be done in a more efficient manner.) The inventory was also a problem for someone at 807 (district HQ.) I'm not sure exactly what the problem was; I haven't been told. I only know that the deadline for finishing the inventory has been pushed back indefinitely.

I got to thinking about things beyond the world of MPS classroom teachers and wondered what was going to happen to all of the inventories of books that arrived somewhere. Doing an inventory with a five page random list of books isn't just a problem for the person checking off the books; it's also a problem for the person who then is responsible for doing something with that collection of random lists of books. I think there's about 300 or so elementary classrooms in the MPS. That's a pretty big stack of random lists to sort through. I guess the whole point of doing an inventory is so that somebody can keep track of all the books that have been scattered around the district-about $450,ooo worth of books. Maybe using one of those new fangled computer things that can sort and search lists of things like books might be useful. Can a collection of books that is not organized in any manner other than the order in which they were packed in a warehouse actually be called a library? I'm going to ask one of my cousins who has a masters in library science - at least three of my 64 first cousins are masters of library science , and all of them have the ability to offer opinions, a skill necessary for psychological survival in large Irish Catholic families.

Is There a Whiteboard in this class?

2009-09-02T05:50:00.001-05:00

"Is there a Whiteboard in this class?" That was the second un-prompted question asked by a student in my class this year; he's new to our district, having moved in from the burbs. We had just moved into the circle of benches in front of the room for our morning meeting. The question that had come up just before was "what is that flashy thingy?" - the student was pointing to the blinking cursor at the end of the text on the 'Daily Schedule' on the screen.

The second question came (very politely asked with a raised hand first-it was the first day of class) as I was in the process of using that first question as an opportunity to explain about the computer, cable, projector, document camera, and screen combination that I use a lot. (That would be a variation on the standard Responsive Classroom guided exploration model.) The answer to the 2nd question was "not, yet." I then asked for opinions about whiteboards and six students offered why they thought I should get one. Another student new to the MPS had had one in their room last year. Nobody thought I shouldn't and I actually fished for negatives. 'You can have us all write stuff on there and then save it and print it out and even put in on a web page if you want.' I've been holding off on a whiteboard while encouraging my colleagues at Marcy to use them - I've been focusing on making Moodle work for elementary teaching and learning, quite successfully, I'll add, unabashedly.

Then, when I got home my 10th grade daughter excitedly reported "Dad, you're gonna really like my English teacher. He sings Bob Dylan songs and is going to have us use Nicenet" [an early Moodle type of learning collaboration tool.] I started a Nicenet forum for MPS middle school math teachers back in the summer of 1997 (it didn't go anywhere because the heads of the math dept didn't even use email in those days.) Moodle does way more than replace Nicenet, but I'm assuming her teacher is still using Nicenet because there's been such a paucity of support, sometimes actual resistance, for using Moodle in our classrooms.

So, learning how to use a whiteboard effectively in a 3rd and 4th grade multi-age classroom will be on my professional development list this year. Stayed tuned and chime in, please.

Real Life Development

2009-08-30T00:11:00.002-05:00

This last week I was able to participate in several different professional development opportunities (I'm still not sure what the difference is between staff development and professional development.)

First thing on Tuesday we, my school's teachers, were shown how to create little tiles using polymer clay. We'll be doing an all school quilt/collage this fall. It was a great hands-on activity to do while we got acquainted again for the year, some of us for the first time at Marcy.

Wednesday morning we followed the directions sent to us on Tuesday evening via email. The email was sent to our principal who then forwarded it to all staff (that hierarchical passing of paper, even when it's electronic, is a hard habit to break.) The directions in the email proscribed the process we should follow to look at the initial assessments of the year for math. Our team did that and then used the remainder of the time adjusting the daily schedule so that it would actually work. We also talked about how we would do six groups of math with only five teachers - we have five classrooms each with half 3rd grade and 4th grade, on average. It looks like all of the 4th graders will be squeezed into two classes for direct math instruction. Those referendum dollars for class size management aren't making it to the 4th grade at our school.

Wednesday afternoon we all went to Olson school where we met in groups of about twenty teachers by grade level. The general topic was again math. We needed at least an hour a month last year that we didn't get and this was a way to catch up, but it still won't be enough to develop real mastery of the new math curriculum as fast as we need the mastery. We read some articles, watched a video and verbalized important points in the articles we had read that were passed out to us during the meetings. We had a 'parking lot' for questions which consisted of a piece of chart paper where we could attach sticky notes with questions to be explored later. I think it would have been much more efficient to do what we did via a Moodle course. Moodle allows learning groups to maximize face to face time by taking care of what can be done via online tools outside of the face to face time. Moodle also creates an electronic record of the interactions.

Thursday we had a great two hour presentation on the new curriculum we'll be using to prevent bullying. I was encouraged that online teacher forums are part of the curriculum. It's too bad that we'll be using 2002 technology consisting of pre-printed picture cards to prompt discussion with the discussion outline on the back of the pictures. It would be nice to have everything online so we could use the data projectors instead of cards; that would make it a lot easier for many kids to see the pictures. There's nothing in the boxes of materials that couldn't be online thus saving paper and making things easier to share.

On Friday, I traded in hour that I spent on Saturday with my student teacher planning lesson plan logistics for an hour at the State Fair where I attended the bacon haiku contest. I was a little disappointed because there was only about 10 minutes or less on haiku. It was impressive, though, to participate in an interactive Twitter discussion. It will definitely obsolete the clickers that we still have only gotten into a few of our schools in the MPS; that is, if we can allow cell phones in schools for kids to use in class. That will be a controversial introduction, no doubt. There was an impressive presentation of facts about just how fast social media is growing. Learning how to use new communications and information tools is not going to get less complex or less necessary anytime soon, I think. We need to teach teachers how to teach their students to become communications and information tool adopters and users. Avoiding the inevitable won't make it easier.

The Why

2009-08-19T20:55:00.013-05:00

8/19/09

I've been thinking for a few days now about writing about professional staff development. Then just a few minutes ago I came across a link to Dean Groom's blog post, Leave Your Hat ON, about why it's important for teachers to blog. He's outlined very effectively why I as a teacher should blog. I think this is what happens when people are in a network. What Dean wrote almost a year ago is now pertinent to me and I'm able to share that with you because he wrote on his blog. He didn't have to write a scholarly article and get it published, or write a book; he just blogged. I'm not sure now even how I got to that link, although it must have been through Twitter or one of the blogs that I had linked to from Twitter. (Thank you to Brock Dubbels for inviting me to join Twitter last January.)

It was about the time that Dean posted 'Leave Your Hat On' that I was becoming more interested in professional development, or staff development (I'm not sure what the difference is between the two terms but I'll blog about what I find out- I just posted the question on Twitter.) Last fall was the first time I'd been on our school staff development committee. We were told at our first meeting in September that 'we didn't have any money.' We didn't meet as a group for the remainder of the year, but I tried to find out why we didn't have any money. I had been under the impression that the state required school districts to spend something each year on staff development. What I've found out and have yet to find out about why 'we didn't have any money' has been a lengthy and sometimes frustrating process. I hope by writing about what I've learned I can help other teachers better understand professional staff development.

More about the Why
8/20/09

Why write about professional development?

In addition to the reason I linked to yesterday: Dean Groom's statement, "‘blogging’ your story, your extra-extra-curricula work and sharing that is probably the most important record of professional development right now – and the most effective way of getting you/me/us to challenge each other and make change in schools not only sustainable, but enjoyable and exciting," there's the fact the school district has listed improving teacher professional development as one of the five things that the district is doing to improve all schools. It's listed on page 3 of the multi-colored brochure (Warning: this link takes forever to load.) that was sent out with MPS student's MCA scores.

Not only has the district singled out professional development as important, but so too have the president and his education secretary; Obama and Duncan want more professional development. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) requires that at least 25 per cent of the money be spent on professional development. None of the other components in the comprehensive approach of 21st century learning environments will work well without sustained professional development.

And, the state has laws about staff development. The law that was in effect last year in Minnesota is quite explicit about how money for staff development is to be spent by school districts. It's doesn't appear that the MPS actually spent the money as the law says it was supposed to be spent. The law also says that if the money isn't spent in one year then it is supposed to be carried over to the next year. I'm still trying to figure out why the money wasn't spent as it was prescribed, and it isn't clear whether the money that wasn't spent as prescribed will be carried over. And, it still isn't quite clear how the changes that the Mn legislature enacted this past May will effect how money is spent in the MPS. It appears, according to this page on the Education Minnesota web site, that if money is spent on staff development that the money is supposed to be spent according to the prescription outlined in the law.

So, there are a few things that need to be cleared up, but because the district has said that professional development is one of the top five things it is doing to improve schools, and because President Obama has signaled that professional development is important, explaining how staff development money is spent in Minneapolis should be cleared up soon.

In future blogs I will look more closely at how the recent referendum in Minneapolis impacts staff development, and I hope to specifically look at how 21st Century literacy tools are are being included in staff development efforts.

8/23/09

More on writing about Professional Development

In just these last few days since I started this blog, I've begun to think about staff development and professional development differently. Creating this blog has helped me focus on what staff development really is and what professional development really is. Keeping a log, a web log, a blog, of what I notice about staff development and professional development focuses my thinking and creates a record of my thinking.

This evening, I browsed through the various links on the MPS web site under the department heading for Staff Development. I noticed for one thing that money is not mentioned any where on the web site, at least, with regard to how it is budgeted and spent for staff development. There's mostly just links to IFL stuff. It appears that all MPS staff development falls somewhere under the umbrella of IFL. I'll write about whether or not it's really a good thing to be putting all our eggs into one basket at some later date; for now, that's the way it is.

Last Thursday, I participated in an event that I consider professional development that is not directly under the IFL umbrella, although it still might be possible to fit it under the IFL umbrella. My wife and I were guests of Project Success and the Guthrie Theater for a supper at the Mill City Museum and the play, When We Were Married. It was great. I got to chat with colleagues from Marcy and Dowling and a few other schools at a nice standing buffet in one of the conference rooms of the museum that I'd never been in before. The mayor was there, looking very gubenatorial (He can sling a long paragraph from memory as well as any of them.) He reminded us that our work as teachers is important and that the kids in the MPS schools have a chance at creating a culture that includes all 80 languages that they speak in a world that is increasingly global. Most of us already knew that, but it's nice to have the mayor noticing.

I'd never heard of J.B Priestly before - 20th Cent British Lit was one that I avoided- but I really enjoyed the play. Both my wife and I agreed that the characters were made to look too old, though. That's probably because the cast included a fairly substantial list of Guthrie old timers. They're good. I like being able to see what can be done with language. It got me thinking about how I can use language to help kids make movies of puppet performances in conjunction with the polymer clay residency that we'll have at Marcy this year. We might not get quite to the level of Wallace and Gromit, but we can try, or am I being a bit too "la-di-dah (p.11)"?

Anyway, it was a professional development that got me into meaningful conversation with my peers, expanded my knowledge base, inspired me to think about the curriculum for my students, and got me out with my wife to a great Mpls treasure. We'll see if the district staff development that's planned for later this week matches up.

Marcy is just six blocks from the end of the Stone Arch Bridge - to the right, the east side of the river.

This was the first time I'd been to this stage and seen the view from this side of the building. It would, of course, be better if the picture had been taken with a little more light.