Christopher D. Sessums

(Filed under Fun with Art)

Teaching and learning doesn't always have to be drudgery, right?

I came across this site via my anonymous friends at Fipi Lele, a web/art collective that doesn't really exist (long story).

The series of photographs from the site Henry VIII's Wives are entitled The Iconic Moments of the 20th Century. The site and photos are the brainchild of a group of  pensioners in a home for the elderly in Glasgow.

From the site: A group of aged volunteers pose in their everyday outfits and in their daily environment (the vicinity of the Home) to re-enact the scenes from well-known newspaper photographs taken from history books and encyclopaedias. The images in question depict ‘historical moments’ that took place in their lifetime: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference during the World War II, the Napalm Attack and the killing a Vietcong from the Vietnam War, or the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald, which was depicted live on a TV programme. Each of these images represents an immediately recognisable cultural leitmotif of its époque, the representation that overshadows the event it documents.

These photographs offer us a chance to purposively remember and reflect on iconic events that shaped a generation and those that followed. The site urges us all to "remember the unclothed nine-year old girl Kim Phuc, the subject of the photo Napalm Attack, which toured the world inciting numerous political controversies: the Canadian photographer who took the picture won the Pulitzer Prize; the girl became the star of numerous humanitarian events and anti-war campaigns and also the hero of a bestselling book Girl in the Picture*."

The pictures also suggest an underlying sense of humor about them. While the moments themselves were emotional and iconic, there is something a bit subversive and silly about they way they are recreated by the pensioners. The stories and lives they represent are no-less important but he photo's message is somehow shifted a little, transposed onto another world and other lives.

As a teachable moment this site serves at least many purposes: one, to remind us of the importance of historical events and the impact they have on our perspectives and collective/individual psyches; and two, as a chance for students to study and recreate their own culture in more detail. This exhibition could be recreated as a teaching and learning activity wherein participants have the opportunity to share and publish the fruits of their vision and understanding.

What do you think? Let me know if you're familiar with similar such projects, slide shows, or digital storytelling that's tied to teaching and learning. I'd like to put together a wiki with such projects.

(* References: Quotations above excerpted from Jelena Velcic in Breaking Step—Displacement, Compasion and HUmour in Recent Art From Britain, Catalog, 2007 Belgrad.)

From the Kansas State University professor Michael Wesch who brought you Web 2.0 The Machine Is Us/Ing Us comes this wonderful new/old story titled A Vision of Students Today, "a short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today - how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime." While this perspective comes from a higher education setting, there still much to be gleaned for K-12 environments. Enjoy!

An Apple computer is so simple, even a kitten can use it!

While I regularly use both a PC and a Mac, the Mac generally makes me happier.
This is important. Since I spend close to eight hours a day on a machine, doesn't it make sense that I should be comfortable (and easily amused like a kitten randomly mashing buttons)?

I don't like to get into debates about which platform is better, i.e., Mac vs. PC. I'm not an elitist. Both have strengths and weaknesses. Both have pros and cons. And both have great power and influence over how we feel. Yet ever since I left the world of the command line in the late eighties, Mac's GUI interface never ceases to impress and embiggen me.

What I find most impressive about a Mac is not the operating system per se, but the box it comes in. Design expert and professor Donald Norman once said something to the effect of, it was the box his iPod came in that impressed him more than the technology itself. We often overlook the emotional appeal of design that can affect us in a myriad of ways. After all, emotions have great influence over the decisions we make.

Of course, no single design will work for everyone. The same can be said for learning design, no one size fits all (unless you're in the Army). However, two words you do not often hear associated with learning is pleasure and fun. Of course, not all complex learning is simple, nor should it be. But think of the learning environments you participate in. Are they emotionally appealing? Do they motivate you? Should they motivate you? Or is that the job of the learning facilitator?

Given the importance of our emotions and their impact on our perceptions, what would your ideal learning environment look like? What environmental factors suit you best? What do you need that will allow you to work through the most complex of tasks? A kitten, perhaps? >(^-^)

This post is a collection of rough ideas that stems from a link via Stephen Downes re: A discussion about PLE's from New Zealand. Stanley Frielick Moodle Moot NZ07. Slides and audio from the New Zealand Moodle conference. Frielick asks, can Moodle become more supple - that is, a more social, ubiquitous and permeable personal learning environment. I think it's a good question to ask - can Moodle migrate from the old LMS world to the new web 2,0 world? Stanley Frielick, Slideshare September 28, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Ubiquitous Internet, Audio]

Full disclosure: I heart discussions about Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). I even like the way the term rolls right off your tongue. Say it aloud: Personal Learning.

Simple, isn't it?

PLE and the Pleasure Principle
Frielick's discussion is a fun one to have. Can a course/learning management system be more PLE? -- that is, can it be designed more to be a social platform that is more supple, more flexible, more nimble, more happy.

Yes, I said "more happy."

Online social networks rely on social support. Support, mind you; trust, empathy, a shoulder. Without it, community suffers; why come back? A PLE should invite pleasure -- that without which not... From Wikipedia under pleasure: "Arthur Schopenhauer, 19th Century German philosopher, understood pleasure as a negative sensation, as it negates the usual existential condition, that of suffering." Shouldn't our time online investigating the world, watching videos, reading email, attending class, renting a room, shopping for shoes, paying bills, connecting, engaging, playing, negate our sense of suffering? So a PLE should be sweet and engaging! Perhaps Twitter is so popular because it is so simple, so supple, and happy. 140 characters to say your piece. Short, sweet, simple. Social support. Connectivity. Intimacy.

PLE as shoes
While plotting the PLE continues, I've come to appreciate multiple social networking platforms. Platforms are like shoes. I want one platform that's for play. I prefer another for work. In reality, I use multiple online community platforms for both toil and pleasure. Each is different in the sense that they fit particular needs depending on who I'm engaging and for what purpose.

Second Skin
The Internet is like a second skin. I have identity in multiple (uni)verses across cyberspace--sometimes overlapping, sometimes combining, sometimes alone. And while it might be interesting to have one multi-syllabic interface (Berners-Lee's semantic web?) that allows us to connect to and interface with the various communities and spaces we inhabit, doesn't that make our Web browser a PLE? Our desktop as the original PLE? In a way, the desktop serves a friendly metaphor for our personal learning space. Here is a space for me to engage in a number of activities. Here are my books, here are resources, pens, paper. From here we call upon friends, we talk with colleagues, or perhaps we only work here alone with no appearance of connection at all.

Intention
A PLE implies intentionality. Learning is not only personal, it is intentional. While social and developmental experience shapes much of how we see the world, we must choose to adopt some form of organizational structure to frame our experiences. Is this the role of a PLE? To house or support this framework, or is the framework, an a priori conceptual structure? Is it both? Should a PLE try to be a single platform or does it serve us best as a concept map?

 
PLE as the Tower of Babel (Confusion).
People/Individuals stay divided by platforms and applications as communities continue to anger the Internet gods in their attempt to unite humanity.

PLE as Organizational Structure
Diagrams of PLEs direct all activity clouds to a central unit, me. This picture makes me feel rather Ptolemaic, geocentric, in many ways. While every circle has a center, I like the notion of the center being undefinable. The center shifts, tied to a collective intelligence, the ghosts in the machine, or the wisdom of the crowds. But this view can also be limiting. PLE diagrams are essentially an atomistic view-- a representation of a single node within the larger universe/network. And like all matter these atoms connect, collide, excite, and repel each other, which is quite like what really happens in our geophysical worlds.

My ideal PLE diagram is depicted by these representations of Georges Seurat's Un dimance apres-midi a I'lle d la Grand Jatte (Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte).

Here we see a collection of people enjoying a beautiful day on the banks of a lake. Seurat's pointillist technique shows how the atoms, the variations, compose what we see as well as our existence. This picture could be (y)our life.

Notice the crowd. There is proximity; there is intention; there is pleasure and simplicity. This environment is both active and passive. There are others to engage, listen, and talk to. Or one could sit alone. There is water, the symbol of the substance of life, without which we are not... There are people sailing on the lake, people observing the lake, people absorbing the environment.

PLE and the Wisdom of the Crowds

Surowiecki notes that a wise crowd relies on independence, decentralization, a diversity of opinion, and and the ability to combine and collect as needed. This collective wisdom of the crowds can theoretically lead to greater cognitive advantage for people, the opportunity to coordinate and share an understanding of what's right and what's wrong. Thus collectively, a PLE cannot exist without connecting the dots.

The limiting factors of such a stance relate to incorporating too much agreement or division of opinions, too much centralization, or when choices are limited by a handful of decision makers (the "information cascade"). Of course there is also the threat of a  herd mentality overpowering other outside opinions.

GeNe(x)t
I imagine, based on my read of current literature, 3D networking platforms and applications will continue to expand in ways that will be easier to learn and navigate, better fitting my particular needs and interests. Second Life will become next years Friendster. MySpace will be so 5 minutes ago (like AOL). Perhaps there will be a return to the WELL, to places we grew up in, places that are nostalgic, that trigger pleasurable memories of the good ol' days, when life was simple. Not that things were better or easier earlier, but there's this sense of comfort in things that we "know" and grew up around.

PLE as Consumer Good

ESchool News points to a story that is bound to raise the hackles of many. Starting with this misleading headline, "Parents, kids don't see need for math, science skills," the article focuses on a report titled, "Important, But Not for Me: Parents and Students in Kansas and Missouri Talk About Math, Science, and Technology Education." The report, commissioned as part of a $25 million, 10-year initiative by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to improve math, science, and technology (MST) education throughout the Kansas City area, suggests that the "2,600" parents and students surveyed clearly understand the importance of math, science, and technology skills -- they simply do not see it as important for themselves.

The report was compiled by Public Agenda, a nonpartisan opinion research organization. They include in their report details of their data collection methods lending a certain level of validity to their findings.

Interestingly enough, I found it a bit odd that Public Agenda offers a video on it's site that argues for the critical importance of math, science, and technology education in Kansas and Missouri:

This led me to wonder why a self-proclaimed, nonpartisan research organization would provide a video outlining the importance of math, science, and technology education on a site offering a "non-biased report" about parents and students being unenthusiastic about math, science and technology skills?

In then struck me that Public Agenda clearly has an agenda on controversial topics.  As a matter of fact, Public Agenda has a clear agenda about many topics including abortion, child care, the economy, the environment, gay rights, immigration, medical research, race and many others. I am not writing today to take issue with Public Agenda's agenda, but I am concerned about the credulity of their research given their claim of unbiasedness.

If we look at their methodology section provided with the report, we can see that they based their findings on three data sources: (1) a telephone survey consisting of "over 50 questions" presented to 1,295 participants; (2) 12 focus groups composed of different teacher, student, and parent groupings; and (3) 15 "expert" interviews. What we don't know is how the focus groups were selected, as well as what counts as "expert" status, and who selected the experts.

This then leads me to wonder about the accuracy of the research findings. There is no mention in the report about the triangulation of data. In other words, how do the three data sources combine to support the findings and conclusions?

Luckily, you don't need an advanced degree in science, mathematics, or technology to review the full survey results (.pdf) which are provided on the report's website. Here we are able to see how the questions are framed (e.g., positively, negatively, neutrally) as well as the response percentages.

On page 2 (item 6) of the questionnaire I noticed that the respondents seem to show a strong agreement about the importance of understanding advanced sciences like physics (23% reporting "absolutely essential" and 63% reporting "important but not essential"). A complex issue the report seems to focus on is the categorical distinction between "absolutely essential" and "important, but not essential." Is the notion of importance clearly different from the notion of essential? Well, that depends. Both connote significance and authority, yet "essential" connotes an absolute necessity which is not quite conveyed in the notion of importance. Plus the category clearly states, "important, not essential" so as not to confuse respondents. In this context, essentiality carries much weight. Either science or mathematical skills are critical or not so critical. This framing reminds me of the essential nature of the boiling point of water. At 100 degrees celsius, water is said to be at the boiling point. At 99 degrees celsius, it's near boiling, but not technically boiling. Are they both extremely hot to the touch? Yes. Will they both cook my pasta at about the same rate? Yes. But one is boiling and the other is close to boiling, but not officially boiling. Does this seem relatively banal? Am I splitting hairs? You bet. Does the questionnaire split hairs by asking respondents to categorize answers as "essential" and "important, but not essential"? Perhaps.

For some one who never took physics or never had a good physics teacher probably is not aware of the role physics plays in their daily lives. Thus they might be inclined to down play the essential need of a solid understanding of physics. For some one who had a great physics experience, perhaps then physics would be an essential part of their child's curriculum. Is this splitting hairs or does it point to the situated nature of decision-making?

If asked if I think it is important for my kids to go to school and take advanced physics or calculus, I would ask my children if this is something that interested them. If not, I would say, no, they do not need these courses in high school. If my daughter said she wanted to build bridges for a living, I would think physics and calculus would be quite important for her to understand. Would I expect her high school to do the job of educating her appropriately? To be honest, I would hope so, but sometimes I just don't know if I believe so.

I find that, with the exception of my daughter's international baccalaureate (IB) program, most of the secondary schooling my boys have received has been close to rubbish. I think this can be traced back to the tracks that children are assigned to early on in their academic life. If your child is assigned as "gifted" then education is often framed in terms of being playful and adventurous. If they are assigned to a general curriculum, then make way for a monotonous skill and drill train that regularly takes all the fun and excitement out of learning. Even my children's advanced coursework was relatively tedious overall. Again, with the exception of my daughter's IB program, my sons teachers rarely worked as a team in constructing lessons and activities. It was each teacher for themselves, damn the rest.

Two of my favorite questions,  21 and 22 (page 6), ask, "When compared with other teachers your child has this year, would you say that your child's current MATH/SCIENCE teacher is: especially good, average, below average, don't know." For math teachers, respondents reported 43% especially good, 43% average, 10% below average, and 3% don't know. So what does this say about the way parents and students feel about their mathematics teacher? So-so? How do we judge our children's teachers? Do we spend time in the classroom? Do we take the word of our children? Hmmm. Makes you wonder. I applaud those respondents who report "don't know." This tells me they do not have enough information to make an informed decision. These are the parents whose opinion could potentially be most valid. However, we could also say with some reliability that most people make decisions off the tops of their heads without gathering all the facts, and thus this survey clearly reveals this condition.

In the end, the Important, But Not for Me report shows us that parents have different opinions and understandings about schooling. Surprised? Public education is a complex enterprise where some individuals come out ahead, others behind. Will this ever change? Can it be changed? At some micro and meso levels, yes. But again, it depends on the collective effort of individuals in their community. Regulating education sounds good on paper, but the everyday realities of life make that a much more political and thus difficult enterprise.

Luckily for us at UF, this situation will not go away with the next sensational attention grabbing news event (e.g., can the media focus on health care for more than one day?). Here at UF, the media, students, and administrators will continue to work on getting a better sense of what happened, why it happened, and what we can do to prevent something like this from happening again.

I have wanted to speak up yet I feel I need to be careful as I have only a partial understanding of the facts and events surrounding the Tasering of Mr. Meyer. I found the video clip from Stephen Colbert posted above an interesting slant worth sharing. While Mr. Colbert regularly wags his parodic finger, his nod to student indifference in an age of entitlement is rather thought/discussion provoking.

So rather than marching in the streets, I have succumb to blogging about it -- more fodder for Mr. Colbert's canon [sic]. As always, your thoughts and opinions are welcome.

"Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change."
                                        -- Economist Milton Friedman

Here is a trailer for a film by Alfonso Cuaron and Naomi Klein called The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

OUCH!

This video presents a perspective that is often overlooked. It is blunt. It is dripping with cynicism. And it is definitely NSFW (not safe for work).

I have been listening to George Carlin for as long as I can remember. As he has aged, he has gotten a bit more crotchety, a bit more angry. But I have a hard time blaming him for it. While I may not always agree with his views, this video says something important (in graphic detail -- read: lots of cursing) about education, power, and control.

Am curious to hear your thoughts. 

Sunday's New York Times offers a real social networking gem.
The headline reads: Logged In and Sharing Gossip, er, Intelligence.

The article reveals that there is a new covert social operating system for spies and members of national intelligence agencies using the same types of features found on MySpace and Facebook. A-Space, which stands for Analyst Space, is where members can swap satellite photos of nuclear sites and missile bases, as well as blog about patterns, connections, insurgent activity.

A-Space joins the spook's version of Wikipedia known as Intellipedia where intel officers pool their collective knowledge for sharing and updating.

This begs a difficult question for many within the ego-centric intelligence community who are afraid of being scooped by colleagues and will lose credit for their diligence. Of course, these same critics fail (once again) to recognize how the hoarding of intelligence and critical information leads to national tragedies (e.g., the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001).

What the article unfortunately points out is that the U.S. spy families (e.g., CIA, FBI, NSA) are dysfunctional at best. That is, besides each agency employing different operational protocols, critical information often fails to reach or circulate among those within each agency who need it most.

The hope is that an A-Space will make sharing information easier, linking 100,000 employees in the same way middle schoolers around the globe are linked via MySpace.

A critic of technology, Amy Zegart, a public policy professor from UCLA, believes that the benefits of social networking are overemphasized, and that the "most important fusion takes place inside people's brains." This may be true, but how are we going to get the right information the right people? Zegart keenly argues, given that the intelligence surrounding 9/11 existed before the attacks, what difference will the Web make?

Perhaps it's not so much a technology issue as it is a cultural issue. If a spy culture is used to operating "in the dark," how will social networking opportunities emphasizing openness and transparency change the culture? Perhaps this could be just what these bumbling, secretive agencies need -- a better way to share knowledge and communicate. Of course, just because social operating systems aid communication, it is still a GIGO issue.

Similarly, many insiders fear that a technologic solution will make sensitive intelligence open to hacking, moles, turncoats, and a confusion between "expertise" and "opinion." (Where have I heard this argument before?) Given the current U.S. governments' track record with technology, there is much to fear. Can private enterprise offer more viable solutions? (Now I sound like a Republican -- what is going on?)

I feel like many members of the edublogging community have been proselytizing the values of technology in support of education in a similar vein. Perhaps once a large number of baby-boomer spooks retire, a path will be cleared and new ways of thinking about social networking, information/knowledge management, synthesis and assessment can occur more easily. I know it's not about how old you are, but I regularly confront a generation of educators still angry about technology because they chose to remain ignorant. So I inquire: What are our options?

I wanted to take a moment and point you to an article in Mother Jones that you may find a bit disturbing.

While there are at least two sides to every story, I am having trouble relating to the need to use "pain" as a way to control human behavior as depicted in this story. While I enjoy the "pain" of a five mile run and 400 sit-ups, I never learned much from being spanked in school. The article focuses on the use of shock therapy (as opposed to prescripted medications) and other "strategies and tactics" utilized in the treatment of mentally handicapped students at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center. 

While the school has a litiguous history associated with mental and physical abuse cases, it has apparently served some students and family well (or so certain family members report).

This article is guaranteed to raise an eyebrow or two and is well worth sharing with colleagues in terms of discussing the management of student and instructor behavior.

eSchool News Online recently reported on a survey that shows 96 percent of teens and tweens between the ages of 9 and 17 with Internet access in the U.S. are using social networking technologies such as chat, text-messaging, blogging, or visiting online communities such as Facebook and MySpace. 

The study, titled Creating & connecting: Research and guidelines on online social and educational networking (pdf), was released by the National School Boards Association and Grunwald Associates LLC on August 14 of this year. The study is comprised of three surveys: an online survey of 1,277 nine- to 17 year old students, an online survey of 1,039 parents and telephone interviews with 250 school district leaders who make policy decisions on Internet usage. The final report did not include a copy of the survey instruments or questions asked of school district representatives. The study was carried out with support from Microsoft, News Corp. (which owns MySpace), and Verizon (hmmm... a little market exploration and needs assessment?)

The report reveals that participants' time on the Internet rivals the television for their time and attention. Here's a break down of some of numbers:

Who's on first?

• 81% students report visiting a social networking site within the past three months.
• 71% report using social networking tools weekly.
  
• 59% report talk about "education" in their online social networks. 
• 50% report talking specifically about schoolwork.

Posting messages

• 21% students post comments on message boards every day.
  
• 41% post comments on message boards once a week.

Sharing music

• 32% students report download music or audio that other users uploaded at least once a week.
  
• 29% upload third-party music or audio themselves once a week.
  
• 12% upload podcasts of their own creation at least weekly.

Sharing videos

• 30% students download and view videos uploaded by others once a week.
  
• 9% upload videos of their own creation at least weekly.
  
• 22% report uploading videos they have created at some point.

Sharing photos

• 24% students post photos or artwork created by others once a week.
  
• 22% post photos or artwork created by themselves once a week.
  
• 49% report uploading photos or artwork at some point.

Site building

• 12% students report updating their website or online profiles every day.
  
• 25% report updating their website or online profiles weekly. 
  

Blogging

• 30% students report having a blog.
  
• 17% report adding content to their blogs at least weekly. 

Creating content

• 16% students report using online tools to create and share compositions and virtual objects (puzzles, games, clothing and houses (?)).
  
• 14% create new characters at least weekly.
  
• 10% start or contribute to online collaborative projects weekly or more frequently.
  
• 10% send suggestions or ideas to Web sites at least once a week.
  
• 9% submit articles to sites, create polls, quizzes or surveys at least weekly.

Against Me! School rules

• 92% school districts require parents and/or students to sign an Internet use policy.
  
• 98% districts surveyed use software to block access to "inappropriate" sites.
  
• 84% districts have rules against online chatting.
  
• 81% districts have rules against instant messaging.
  
• 62% districts have rules against participating on bulletin boards or blogs.
  
• 60% districts have rules against sending and receiving email in school.
  
• 52% districts prohibit use of social networking sites.

For me!

• 49% districts report schools participating in collaborative projects with other schools.
  
• 46% districts report students participating in international pen pal projects.
  
• 35% districts say their schools and/or students run blogs.
  
• 22% districts report classroom use of wikis or sites that allow users to edit/remove content.
  
• 27% districts support online professional development communities for teachers/principals.
  
• 71% districts report active/influential parental involvement in decision making and social networking. 

Required Access

• 96% districts report some teachers assigning homework requiring Internet access.
  
• 35% districts report more than half their teachers assign homework requiring Internet access.
  
• 94% districts of low socioeconomic status report some teachers assigning homework requiring Internet access.
  
• 27% districts of low socioeconomic status report more than half their teachers assign homework requiring Internet access.
  
• 95% districts report that at least some of their teachers use Web pages to communicate assignments, curriculum content, and other information.
  
• 88% districts subscribe to to online educational services or use learning management systems, or both.

Indecent proposals

• 20% students report seeing "inappropriate" pictures on social networking sites in the past three months.
  
• 18% students report seeing inappropriate language on social networking sites (16% parents concur).
  
• 7% students report someone asking for personal information.
  
• 7% students report experiencing some form of cyberbullying.
  
• 4% students report having conversations that made them uncomfortable.
  
• 3% students report unwelcome strangers trying repeatedly to communicate with them online.
  
• 2% (1 in 50) students report a stranger they met online tried to meet them in person.
  
• .08% students report actually having met a person from an online encounter without their parents permission.
  
• 52% districts report students providing personal information online as a "significant problem."

 Value of social networking

• 48% district representatives expect social networking to introduce students to "new and different kinds of students."
  
• 43% districts "hope" social networking will help students "learn to express themselves better creatively" and "develop global relationships."
  
• 29% districts report believing social networking will improve academic abilities.
  
• 36% district reps "hope" social networking will help students learn to work together to solve academic problems.
  
• 76% parents report believing social networking will improve academic abilities.
  
• 75% parents expect social networking to improve their child's ability to resolve conflicts.
  
• 72% parents expect social networking to improve their child's social skills.

Prove it!

• 87% district leaders say "strong educational value and purpose" will be a requirement for them to permit students to access social networking sites.

Staff communication and professional development
"In districts where structured online professional communities exist..."

• 59% report at least half of their staff members participate.
  
• 37% report ninety percent or more participate.

 
Other Findings
Nonconformists
22% report breaking one or more online behavior rules such as using inappropriate language, posting inappropriate pictures, sharing personal information with strangers or pretend to be someone they are not. Nonconformists reportedly communicate regularly with their parents except in person. They possess strong sets of conventional and 21st century skills, yet they are more likely to have lower grades than other students (read: bored!)

Parents and Value(s)
The report suggests that district leaders and parents believe that "social networking could play a positive role in students' lives" (p. 1) and both groups believe that there could be opportunities to use them in education. Parents seem to think there is some form of "gold" in them there Internets which oddly seems to fly in the face of the Internet policies that prevent students from accessing such environs. 

There are still major questions surrounding the value of social networking, skilled use of social networks to support personal and professional development, informal and formal learning, and equitable access. Reading through the report it feels as if educational use of social networking environments boils down to how do these spaces support academic achievement as opposed to supporting social or cooperative practices. How to assess such networks still needs to be fleshed out.

Literacy
There is also a question of media literacy--how is it being taught? Is it being taught? What qualifies someone as being "media literate," etc. Are the blind leading the blind? This also points to a question of how districts are supporting teacher development as well as their own administrative development involving Internet usage and management in schools. Who are administrators listening to? Where are they getting their information?

WWDD--What would Dewey do?
In the end, districts and parents want to see some tangible product arise from the use of social networks in and out of schools. The question of democracy and democratic practices seem curiously absent from all discussions within the report. In light of an educational system built on a No Child Left Behind policy perhaps I should expect nothing less.

In a recent Time magazine article, John Cloud reports on an issue that often falls to the side of educational debates: "our education system has little idea how to cultivate its most promising students."

Cloud argues that "What's needed is a new model for gifted education, an urgent sense that prodigious intellectual talents are a threatened resource" -- a bold statement from a news reporter -- one you would think might be uttered from a political candidate if he or she were paying closer attention to the issue of educating our youth.

Cloud argues that the No Child Left Behind conception of public education, where the goal is to raise all learners to a minimum standard, squanders our best young minds. He earnestly quips: "Has the drive to ensure equity over excellence gone too far? If so, is the answer to segregate the brightest kids?"

The article focuses at length on the Davidson Academy in Reno, Nevada, founded by a wealthy couple who made their fortune in educational software. The Academy, (a chartered, tuition-free school) was designed to serve those children whose academic abilities supersede those of their peers by several standard deviations. The academy begins its second year in August hosting 45 of the nation's smartest children aged 11 to 16, who are taking classes "at least three years beyond their grade level."

At the Academy, there are no grade levels, only three tracks ("core," "college prep" and "college prep with research"). "The curriculums are individualized and fluid--some students take college-prep English but core-level math." Cloud reports sitting in on the Algebra II class one day: "it wasn't so much a traditional class as a study session guided by the teacher, Darren Ripley. Kids worked from different parts of the textbook. (One 11-year-old was already halfway through; most Americans who take Algebra II do so at 15 or 16.) Occasionally Ripley would show a small group how to solve a problem on the whiteboard, but there was no lecture."

Hmmm. No lectures. Individual and group work. Differentiated instruction. Sounds somewhat appealing, no? Could this same pedagogical technique work in conventional school settings for all types of students?

While I applaud the efforts of individuals and districts to aide and cultivate our geniuses, it has always struck me as odd that we do not treat all kids as if they were autodidacts. Like our muscles, intelligence cannot be built if it is not exercised.

Measuring genius, or in this case, academic giftedness, is a complex and controversial subject where intelligent quotient (IQ) testing is still used to separate the wheat from the chaff. Schools across the globe house kids whose academic abilities far exceed those of their peers, yet is such talent truly being squandered? Cloud plays a wonderful "what if" game that posits if only nourished, these powerful young minds might find a cure for cancer, stop global warming, or become the next James Joyce -- "or at least J. K. Rowling" (snip!). Of course, such thinking aloud is a wonderful rhetorical exercise that stirs readers juices as opposed to offering any real or credible solution.

NCLB has indeed made an impact on gifted education in the United States. As Cloud points out,

"It [NCLB] has forced schools to deeply subsidize the education of the least gifted, and gifted programs have suffered. The year after the President signed the law in 2002, Illinois cut $16 million from gifted education; Michigan cut funding from $5 million to $500,000. Federal spending declined from $11.3 million in 2002 to $7.6 million this year."

So what are we to do with our best young minds in school systems designed to support and teach to minimum standards? From his position, as an observant bystander, Cloud suggests the answer may lie in allowing the super-bright to skip grade levels or dual enroll in community colleges or universities. This is an answer I would expect from some one standing on the outside looking in, after all, this is already what is currently happening all across the U.S.

What strikes me as most disappointing is, as a member of the academy where teachers and administrators are educated and trained, there is no serious discussion about changing the system that keeps kids quarantined in academic circles based on age rather than ability. Many within the academy see the problem as being far beyond their means of control and choose instead to keep the current system propped up, turning a blind eye to the troubles we face in public education.

For me, the real issue is: how do we break the mold that currently forms our current, inflexible system? I want to say the answer is not evolution--it's revolution. I want to see teachers walking out of their classrooms and saying -- "This is bullshit. We all deserve better and can do better." I know from experience that this is unlikely to happen. I also am aware of many educators around the globe who feel the same and are taking concrete steps to revolutionize teaching and learning opportunities.

As a parent and educator, I know the responsibility of educating my children is not the school's alone. Perhaps this is where the revolution starts. Parents (i.e., taxpayers/business owners/voters) are a powerful educational lobby that, if organized, could have a major impact on the future of education.

Perhaps the question is: how do we involve parents more? How do you, as an educator, involve parents in your classroom? Parents are often an overlooked and underutilized resource that teachers and schools haven't quite figured out what to do with. Perhaps, colleges of education should offer courses in how to involve parents more than as chaperones and suppliers of Kleenex.

The issue of educating all children, bright, dull, gifted, average, is a complex issue that requires complex thinking. For the most part, schools are designed to teach masses not individuals. How are colleges of education addressing this complexity, you might ask? In most cases, the same way -- en masse. Differentiated instruction courses are often offered in one semester, if they are offered at all. Young teachers are mostly taught how to survive and, if they stick with the profession, can learn over time and through experience how to individualize instruction, if we're lucky.

Fixing public education requires more than luck. So I ask you, who are we really failing in our school systems?

Thoughts?

Found this video recently that you might find helpful. It is always good to remind ourselves of why we're here. You might recognize the animation style from here.

Here are two videos (each less than a minute long) from the Ad Council designed to bring attention to the effects of cyberbullying. I apologize if these are reposts. 

What I like about these ads is their directness: the script and images are designed to make an impact on the audience quickly and the message is clear: words can be powerful and hurtful-- bullying hurts -- think about the impact it can have on others.

The ads don't tell you to do anything but to think for a moment how a certain behavior can cause a pain for others. The message is about prevention and not locking up computers or banning children from participating in online social networks.

Other cyberbullying resources

While on the subject, I've compiled a few links to online cyberbullying resources. Again, the relationship between our understanding of the potential of Read/Write technologies and how we educate parents and students will ultimately impact how computers will be used and funded in schools. We as educators need to be sure we know how to handle bullying situations and how to show parents and administrators how we are handling them.

Cyberbully401 -- What is Cyberbullying? and Other Resources

Stop Bullying Now! -- What Can Adults Do? 

Center for the Safe and Responsible Internet Use --  Mobilizing educators, parents, students, and others to combat online social aggression

Kansas Safe Schools Resource Center -- Links to educational sites promoting Internet safety materials

Cyberbullying: Legal Issues -- The legal role of schools in dealing with cyberbullying cases.

Demystifying and Deescalating Cyber Bullying in the Schools: A Resource Guide for Cousnelors, Educators, and Parents (pdf) -- terminology, policies, procedures, interventions, and more.

STOP cyberbullying --  Why do kids bully?

In the video, Shopping in 1999 (1967), the future Internet/World Wide Web is imagined and somehow feels oddly/relatively congruous compared to our current series of crude, interconnected tubes. Imagine owning an "electronic correspondence machine" or " a home post office." A rich piece to deconstruct with friends or colleagues; gender stereotyping throughout. 

The future as it can only be--imagined.

Wired’s August 2007 Jargon Watch has minted a term many will find too delicious to pass on. The term Social Operating System is defined as

“n. A social network site like Facebook or MySpace that seamlessly integrates activities, including entertainment and shopping, to become a platform for online living” (p. 50).

Seamless integration. Now there’s two words the IT industry has bussed around for years (seriously, what piece of Web 2.0 software isn’t defined by its designer/marketers as easily and seamlessly integrateable?).

As a follower of Personal Learning Environment (PLE) and shared learning environment (SLE) development including fabled EduGlu visions, I wonder if Facebook or MySpace could possibly be the stuff many have been dreaming of?

Two recent posts (here and here) positing the possibilities of Facebook triggered this imagining.

Perhaps it is only a matter of time before learning management systems such as Blackboard and Moodle develop APIs to plug directly into Facebook. What will that mean in terms of a PLE vision? Can a social operating system like Facebook seamlessly integrate “formal and informal learning episodes into a single experience” across institutional boundaries, and use “networking protocols (Peer-to-Peer, web services, syndication) to connect a range of resources and systems within a personally-managed space”?

Hmmm…

Comments are clearly warranted.

I recently ran across an essay by the neoconservative sociologist Nathan Glazer titled "Some Very Modest Proposals for the Improvement of American Education" (1984).

In the essay Glazer offers 7 proposals for improving education ranging from disconnecting the loudspeakers within schools to enlisting children in keeping their schools clean. Not bad ideas, really.

The one item that really captured my attention was "No. 5. Look on new hardware with a skeptical eye." For Glazer, and I suspect many others, the “passion for the new” hardware, i.e., computers, smartboards, etc., serves as a distraction and a means for avoiding the “real and hard tasks of teaching—which require almost no hardware at all, besides textbooks, blackboard, and chalk.”

Glazer goes on to note that when “Japanese education was already well ahead of American, most Japanese schools were in pre-war wooden buildings.” While they are now up-to-date, Glazer insists that their “up-to-dateness” has little to do with their record of academic success.

Schooling for Glazer is about reading, writing, and calculating. It is just that simple. New hardware means spending money, not only on equipment, but also staff, training, software, and security, both physical and virtual. As Glazer puts it:

“When it turns out that computers and new software are shown to do a better job at these key tasks [reading, writing, and calculating]—I am skeptical as to whether this will ever be the case—there will be time enough to splurge on new equipment.”

For Glazer, the teacher, “alone, up front, explaining, encouraging, guiding, is the heart of the matter.” The rest of it is just fun and helpful to corporate income, and gives an over-inflated district staff “something to do.”

For Glazer, students can learn about computers at home and college. After all, getting into college has little to do with what you can do with a computer as compared to the level one’s verbal and mathematics scores as documented by standardized tests. (Ouch!)

The bottom line for Glazer is the same ethos that frames No Child Left Behind legislation--focus on basic skills-- creativity and innovation can be “learned” in college or during extracurricular activities.

Ungainly as it may seem, in a way I find myself nodding in agreement to many of these ideas. Have we really gained any measures of success by introducing computers into classrooms? What are computers being used for: creativity and innovation or skill and drill? How many students are using weblogs as a learning log or for persuasive writing exercises? Given the “security” risks of opening access to the Internet, how effectively is the World Wide Web or Read/Write technologies being incorporated into learning activities? (These inquiries also beg the question as to who decides what is effective and how it’s being decided/measured—more on that later).

Clearly, if you follow my weblog, you are aware I am a huge proponent of the Read/Write Web (pdf) and computing in general. But when I begin to survey educators in the K-12 arena, most computer use in the classroom is hardly creative or innovative. In most cases, computer use is not possible in the classroom at all for a variety of reasons. I do not want to throw the blame for this fact at educators’ feet alone; there are many reasons why creativity and innovation languish in classrooms, computers or no. Yet, literacy skills and multimodal literacy do not necessarily require a computer. Skills such as play, performance, navigation, resourcefulness, networking, negotiation, synthesis, sampling, collaboration, teamwork, judgment, and discernment can take place without the use of computers.

So what can computer really do for kids in the classroom?

I think this is a critical question that needs further thought and explication. While I have my opinion, I encourage you to share yours.

Reference:
Glazer, N. (1984). Some very modest proposals for the improvement of American education. Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 113(4): 169-176.


LOLCATS: retrieved from ROFLCAT