Fischbowl

This definitely qualifies as "unconfirmed," but it's highly intriguing nonetheless. According to this post on GamePolitics.com (Where politics and video games collide) (via a tweet by Andy Blanco):
We've only gotten one report of this, which seems a bit odd, but an Xbox Live gamer who goes by Dragunov765 has posted photos of what appear to be in-game ads for Barack Obama.

Dragunov (we know his real name, too) says he came across the ads while playing Burnout Paradise earlier this week . . .


Very interesting. As GigaOM asks:
Its veracity aside, the virtual billboard raises an interesting question: Are political ads in video games a good idea? In terms of eyeballs, I’d have to say yes. Roughly one-third of American households own an Xbox 360, Sony PS3 or Nintendo Wii. In terms of effectiveness, Brandweek recently detailed a survey undertaken by its fellow Nielsen Games division in which 11 percent of gamers said they bought a brand after seeing it advertised in a game.Some folks will ask how effective this is when so many gamers can't even vote yet. While there are many gamers that aren't yet 18, the average age of gamers is 30, and 37-year-olds buy the most games (as of February 2006 according to David Perry in this TED talk, statistics at about the four minute mark).



When the historians write the history of this election, how big of a feature role will technology have? Internet fundraising and recruiting. YouTube (Obama Girl, clinging to guns and religion, Reverend Wright, a more perfect union, Tina Fey, . . .). Email organizing, energizing, pushing the current campaign message, and rapid response. Social networking and community building. Voter registration. To name just a few aspects.

Meanwhile, back here in K-12 Land . . .

Update 10-14-08: Thanks to BenH in the comments, this story is now confirmed.

A short video (via a tweet by Dale Basler) just to spur some thinking on our risk-averse schools, teachers and students.



Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.- John Dewey

I ran across a couple of interesting posts from ReadWriteWeb that show the changing nature of politics in a read/write, searchable, always-connected world.

First, this points to a post on the Google blog that includes a real-time graph of search terms during the vice-presidential debate.


Many people were simply interested in understanding the meaning of particular terms. Governor Palin called Senator McCain a "maverick" several times, sending many viewers to Google to query definition of maverick, what is a maverick, and define:maverick.

When Biden mentioned that the "theocracy controls the security apparatus" in Iran, users searched for the meaning of theocracy — as they did when he spoke of the windfall profits tax.Go read the post as they go on to discuss problems with spelling (nuclear, Ahmadinejad, and McClellan/McKiernan), searching for historical references, and checking on which Article of the Constitution actually talks about the executive branch.

Google also has a new post up on last night’s town hall Presidential Debate:


Similar to last Thursday, people sought to understand the meaning of several words mentioned in the debate: morass, commodity, junket, cynicism, and cronyism to name a few. In the chart below you can see four of the most popular queries during the debate. People were quite interested in both Meg Whitman and Warren Buffett, who were mentioned as potential candidates for the Secretary of Treasury, but the biggest rising query was Senator McCain's paraphrasing of Theodore Roosevelt's motto. Both candidates spoke against genocide while discussing the role of the United States as a peacekeeper, and as we saw in the vice presidential debate, nuclear energy and weapons were prominent topics.They go on to talk about differences in searches from swing states, which reminds me a little bit of one of the things I was thinking about when I created 2020 Vision (Google having access to so much disparate data and the ability to possibly bring it together in unique ways to discover new “truths” – could be used for good or evil, I know). I think both of these are fascinating examples of how our ability to access information in real-time can make substantive changes in the way we do almost everything.

The second post on ReadWriteWeb had to do with CurrentTV and Twitter’s collaborative broadcast of the first presidential debate.
In 1960 seventy million people watched Kennedy and Nixon engage in the first Presidential debate ever broadcast live on TV.

And not a single viewer could post a comment.

These days things are different. Tonight, far fewer people probably watched the Current.tv and Twitter collaborative broadcast of Obama v. McCain - but scores of them participated, 140 characters at a time. It worked very well. You can get some idea from the 1 minute of video embedded below.



I agree that things are definitely different, but I think I would have trouble watching, listening and reading the tweets. It’s that old multitasking thing again, but some folks can probably do it much better than I can. But whether I like it or not, things are definitely changing. I could see a debate in the near future when the “spinners” from each campaign are doing live text commentary overlaid on top of the video.

Even more interesting and useful, I think, would be delayed text commentary (or even audio or video) overlaid on top of the debate. Where you get some very knowledgeable folks with an historical perspective (and not overly partisan) to give insightful commentary (text, audio, or video) as you view the debate, with links embedded for viewers that want to learn more. What a powerful learning experience that could be, whether you watched the debate live and then watched it again, or perhaps even skip the live debate and just watch the "enhanced" version.

While it would take more time to view the debate that way, I think it has the potential to be much more useful. For me, I’ve always wondered about how valuable the debates really are. I know that’s a somewhat heretical view, but I’m not sure how much being a good debater – particularly the way our current political debates are run – is related to being a good President. It’s such an artificial situation – questions that are unknown in advance and often unrelated to each other, with a limited amount of time to answer them, and without being able to tap into other resources (both information and human resources). Which is why the answers always end up being mostly unsatisfying, playing to sound bites and talking points. I sure hope that’s not how our President operates day to day. (And, yes, the parallels to the artificial situations we have in school are striking, and somewhat depressing.)

When you look at our current presidential candidates, neither one is a particularly good debater. Senator Obama gives a good speech but tends to ramble in a debate. Senator McCain does well in town hall situations, but doesn’t do particularly well in a debate, coming off as too rehearsed and too much of a scold. And, like in pretty much all political debates I’ve seen, they often answer a very different question than the one that was asked. While I think debates can provide some insight into the character of each candidate, I really don’t think that completely parallels how good of a Chief Executive they would be. It’s a setting that will not be repeated as they perform their job duties, yet we continue to act as though the debates are the ultimate test of whether a candidate is prepared to be President. Yes, I want them to be able to function in such a setting, but I don’t think the “best” debater is necessarily going to make the best President.

Sorry for the digression. In any event, I think the read/write/searchable/participatory/real-time/always-connected web has great potential to make citizens much more informed and knowledgeable voters. Just like the ability to access information illustrated by the real-time searching on Google, the ability to connect with others anywhere in the world in real-time (or delayed time, for that matter) can also make substantive changes in the way we do almost everything. And doesn’t that mean schools need to help students learn how to do these things really, really well?

I ran across a couple of interesting posts from ReadWriteWeb that show the changing nature of politics in a read/write, searchable, always-connected world.

First, this points to a post on the Google blog that includes a real-time graph of search terms during the vice-presidential debate.


Many people were simply interested in understanding the meaning of particular terms. Governor Palin called Senator McCain a "maverick" several times, sending many viewers to Google to query definition of maverick, what is a maverick, and define:maverick.

When Biden mentioned that the "theocracy controls the security apparatus" in Iran, users searched for the meaning of theocracy — as they did when he spoke of the windfall profits tax.Go read the post as they go on to discuss problems with spelling (nuclear, Ahmadinejad, and McClellan/McKiernan), searching for historical references, and checking on which Article of the Constitution actually talks about the executive branch.

Google also has a new post up on last night’s town hall Presidential Debate:


Similar to last Thursday, people sought to understand the meaning of several words mentioned in the debate: morass, commodity, junket, cynicism, and cronyism to name a few. In the chart below you can see four of the most popular queries during the debate. People were quite interested in both Meg Whitman and Warren Buffett, who were mentioned as potential candidates for the Secretary of Treasury, but the biggest rising query was Senator McCain's paraphrasing of Theodore Roosevelt's motto. Both candidates spoke against genocide while discussing the role of the United States as a peacekeeper, and as we saw in the vice presidential debate, nuclear energy and weapons were prominent topics.They go on to talk about differences in searches from swing states, which reminds me a little bit of one of the things I was thinking about when I created 2020 Vision (Google having access to so much disparate data and the ability to possibly bring it together in unique ways to discover new “truths” – could be used for good or evil, I know). I think both of these are fascinating examples of how our ability to access information in real-time can make substantive changes in the way we do almost everything.

The second post on ReadWriteWeb had to do with CurrentTV and Twitter’s collaborative broadcast of the first presidential debate.
In 1960 seventy million people watched Kennedy and Nixon engage in the first Presidential debate ever broadcast live on TV.

And not a single viewer could post a comment.

These days things are different. Tonight, far fewer people probably watched the Current.tv and Twitter collaborative broadcast of Obama v. McCain - but scores of them participated, 140 characters at a time. It worked very well. You can get some idea from the 1 minute of video embedded below.



I agree that things are definitely different, but I think I would have trouble watching, listening and reading the tweets. It’s that old multitasking thing again, but some folks can probably do it much better than I can. But whether I like it or not, things are definitely changing. I could see a debate in the near future when the “spinners” from each campaign are doing live text commentary overlaid on top of the video.

Even more interesting and useful, I think, would be delayed text commentary (or even audio or video) overlaid on top of the debate. Where you get some very knowledgeable folks with an historical perspective (and not overly partisan) to give insightful commentary (text, audio, or video) as you view the debate, with links embedded for viewers that want to learn more. What a powerful learning experience that could be, whether you watched the debate live and then watched it again, or perhaps even skip the live debate and just watch the "enhanced" version.

While it would take more time to view the debate that way, I think it has the potential to be much more useful. For me, I’ve always wondered about how valuable the debates really are. I know that’s a somewhat heretical view, but I’m not sure how much being a good debater – particularly the way our current political debates are run – is related to being a good President. It’s such an artificial situation – questions that are unknown in advance and often unrelated to each other, with a limited amount of time to answer them, and without being able to tap into other resources (both information and human resources). Which is why the answers always end up being mostly unsatisfying, playing to sound bites and talking points. I sure hope that’s not how our President operates day to day. (And, yes, the parallels to the artificial situations we have in school are striking, and somewhat depressing.)

When you look at our current presidential candidates, neither one is a particularly good debater. Senator Obama gives a good speech but tends to ramble in a debate. Senator McCain does well in town hall situations, but doesn’t do particularly well in a debate, coming off as too rehearsed and too much of a scold. And, like in pretty much all political debates I’ve seen, they often answer a very different question than the one that was asked. While I think debates can provide some insight into the character of each candidate, I really don’t think that completely parallels how good of a Chief Executive they would be. It’s a setting that will not be repeated as they perform their job duties, yet we continue to act as though the debates are the ultimate test of whether a candidate is prepared to be President. Yes, I want them to be able to function in such a setting, but I don’t think the “best” debater is necessarily going to make the best President.

Sorry for the digression. In any event, I think the read/write/searchable/participatory/real-time/always-connected web has great potential to make citizens much more informed and knowledgeable voters. Just like the ability to access information illustrated by the real-time searching on Google, the ability to connect with others anywhere in the world in real-time (or delayed time, for that matter) can also make substantive changes in the way we do almost everything. And doesn’t that mean schools need to help students learn how to do these things really, really well?

I blogged about Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World previously. Chor Pharn, who works in the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Singapore and is doing some futures visioning, has remixed Did You Know? 2.0 with a more Asian/Rise of the Rest focus. I think it's worth 5 minutes of your time.


Also, Ahmed Ibrahim ElShabrawy, CEO of EgyptNetwork (an ISP in Mansoura city) has remixed the original version with Jeff Brenman's graphics, the music from Did You Know 2.0?, and added an Arabic translation.

Did You Know? 2.0 -Shift Happens- with Arabic TranslationView SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: arabic happens)
The life of this presentation continues to amaze me.

I presented at the SPARK conference today at Arizona State University and the keynote speaker was Scott McNealy from Sun. He said many interesting things regarding his views on sharing (for it), open source (very much for it), and the financial bailout by the U.S. Government (very, very much against it). He told the students not to pay so much attention to the “mission” of companies, but their cause (a "higher order bit"). He said Sun’s cause was to "Eliminate the digital divide without harming the planet." (Sun’s thin client Sun Ray terminals are inexpensive and use only 4 watts.)

He also spent a decent amount of time plugging Curriki, which I thought was interesting given that this was a gathering of mostly IT folks (the conference was designed to bring together folks from the IT industry and students in ASU’s various IT and Business programs).

At one point, when he was talking about open source and the importance of transparency, he said:

If the trojan horse had been made of glass, do you think they’d have rolled it through the gate?Now, at that point he was specifically talking about transparency and the security advantages of open source software, but I thought it related very nicely to all the conversations we’ve had about transparency in the education space.

Later he talked about how many foreign governments are going open source for both security and cost reasons and that the U.S. is lagging behind in this area. Many of the business and academic leaders of Arizona were in the room and he challenged them to “open Arizona” as a way to get more people "on the network" and involved in 21st century learning and working. That got me thinking again about the use of proprietary software in my own school district and wondering how much longer we can continue to be "closed." No answers to that question, just thinking.

No, don’t worry, this is not a reprise of that post. Anne Smith had her ninth graders complete a word trace from Acts 2 and 3 of Macbeth:
Through our study of acts 2-3 of Macbeth, the kids were put into groups looking at the use of one of the following words: blood, hand, man, night, sleep.

. . . I asked the kids this year to demonstrate their learning using any way BUT PPT . . .

I let my grad school buddies know of this, and Gary Stager our teacher, asked my students to think about the project this way: What Would Shakespeare Do?

After a few presentations today, we debriefed after each one discussing did their presentation merely distribute information or did they go above and beyond the expectations to really show WWSD? I asked the groups that gave a literal interpretation to spend some more time really pushing our understanding of Shakespeare's use of those words. Why those words? Who says them the most? Are there modern connections? What connections can you make between the uses of the words? and being creative with their interpretations. I am anxious to see them progress with their thinking.The students came up with a variety of presentations including writing a sonnet of their own about Shakespeare's use of 'hand' and connecting it to a Good Charlotte song, creating a rap rendition about 'night' and connecting it to Mission Impossible, and creating a series of one man plays about his use of 'man'. Head on over, check out the examples, and leave them some constructive criticism.

I also think it's interesting to contemplate what various historical figures would do to communicate their ideas given today's tools, and challenge students (and teachers) to not only imagine that, but try their hand at creating it. What would Shakespeare do?

Dan Maas, my district’s CIO, has a new post titled Sunset for the Librarian:
So what's in a name? Well, everything. A name conjures an image, a shared understanding and it is from these understandings that we begin to do the work at hand. The term library is rooted in the latin word libri which means paper or books. The very terms library and librarian are obstacles to the future of this critical school service because the business is no longer based in the media of paper and the book. In fact, I don't even like the term media center because the emphasis is still on the containers of information...He goes on to suggest some possible new names for the library and the librarian (Scholar Center and Scholar in Residence). I’m not sure he’s quite nailed the right name yet, but I do think it’s an interesting topic to think about. He goes on to ask:
So, if we were going to write a new job description for the Scholar in Residence at your school, what items would you include?If you have some thoughts, head on over to his blog and leave a comment.

This week is banned books week. From the ALA website:
BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.
Courtesy of Doug Johnson, we also might want to celebrate Blocked Bytes Week:

As Doug says:
Americans need the freedom to read more than just books.As Doug has suggested before, I think many schools interpret CIPA incorrectly (read: too stringently). (Also see these three earlier posts on The Fischbowl.) He then shares some very interesting information in the comments:
Yes, we do block some sites - those specifically required by CIPA - basically pornography. We trust our filter settings to make accurate judgments about this.

What keep us from being "censors," I believe, is that for any non-pornographic site to be blocked requires a formal process be followed similar to a reconsideration process for banning a book.Ahhh, now that’s an interesting idea. The default in Doug’s district is that a non-pornographic site is accessible, and they have to go through a process to block it. In other words, somebody in the district has to show cause and make a case for blocking a particular site, as opposed to allowing a filtering company to make that judgment (typically based on categories) from afar. That lines up pretty well with what I’ve said before about my own school:
Our philosophy is to have high expectations for our students, to educate them to behave ethically, responsibly and safely and then expect that they will do the right thing. When they don’t, they know we’ll have a conversation and try to learn from the mistake, but we don’t assume they are going to screw up. In other words, our philosophy has been to educate, not ban. This filtering approach is the opposite of most districts and brings up an interesting philosophical discussion: should access to information generally be considered a good thing and therefore the default status is allowing access? Or should access to information be considered a bad thing and therefore the default status should be to block it? How much power should schools have to "censor" information and prevent students from accessing it? And who makes that decision? What are our schools' core values regarding intellectual freedom?

And, no matter where you fall on those questions, how do we best prepare our students for the unfiltered world they live in when they step off the bus? (Or open their cell phones? Or pull out their laptops with their own unfiltered connection to the Internet?)

(For the record, my district has a relatively open filter compared to most school districts, and we have a clear process where we can request that sites be unblocked. We also have a teacher override that gets teachers to many - but not all - blocked sites. Of the sites listed on Doug’s graphic, only three of them are currently blocked for students: Twitter, Ning and Second Life. Other sites that are blocked include YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, and all sites deemed pornographic by 8e6, our Internet filter company.)

Update 9-30-08: Heard this related story on NPR this morning. Talks about the intial banning of The Grapes of Wrath, so more about books and less about the Internet, but interesting nonetheless.

On Amanda Crosby's class blog The Devil's Advocate (btw, one of my favorite blog names ever - particularly her tag line: Crosby's Position: A teacher's job is not to tell students what to think. A teacher's job is to encourage students TO think.), the students are having a lively discussion about censorship of the media, particularly in time of war. Viewpoints vary widely:
Emily: My opinion is that I think the government should always have the right to censor news media during a time of war. Otherwise, how will we know if the information we are receiving is accurate?

Sarah: The government wouldn't necessarily sensor the media to make sure it is putting out accurate information. They would sensor it to make sure the press didn't put anything they didn't like out there, and what they don't like isn't unreliable information.As the conversation continues, it's interesting to see students outside of Ms. Crosby's class (which is a 9th grade U.S. History class) jump in. (I don't know all the students, but I know Ben and Hannah are not in the class. Ben and Hannah, if you read this, please leave a comment about how you discovered the Censorship blog post. Was it from the AHS Start Page or the Learning Network page on the AHS website, or word of mouth, or what?)

I think it would be great if readers of this blog who have an opinion on this topic head on over and leave a comment on The Devil's Advocate. I think extending the conversation through additional perspectives would really help the students as they grapple with this complex topic.

My eight-year-old, third grade daughter just began an assignment for school. Each child received a composition book to use for their “travelogue journal.” Inside was pasted this greeting:
Dear Friend,

I am a student in the 3rd grade at Renaissance Elementary School in Castle Rock, Colorado, USA. I am learning about U.S. and world geography. With your help, I can learn more about many different places. Here’s how you can help me:

1. Complete one journal entry in my attached journal by writing about the city in which you live.

2. Send a postcard from your city addressed to me at the school address below.

3. Send my journal on to a friend or relative who lives in a different region of the United States or another country.Then there’s some additional information, a “return by” date of April 15th, 2009, and her school address. Then in the next couple of pages each student wrote a little bit about themselves, what they like to do, and about the Castle Rock area. Each student is supposed to then mail this to someone they know in a different part of the country, that person adds to the journal, then sends it on to another person.

I think this assignment is fine as far as it goes, and we mailed it off to a friend in Kentucky on Friday. But, and you’ve got to know what’s coming, I thought this assignment was ripe to have a “virtual companion” to it. So, I haven’t asked for much on this blog (well, other than changing the world), but I’d like to ask those of you who are still reading this blog to consider contributing to Abby’s travelogue wiki. There’s an explanation on the wiki itself, but here’s the basic idea:

1. Add your information to the wiki (first name, last initial, city, state/province, country).
   
   
2. Upload or link to a picture (a “digital postcard” if you will) that’s representative of your city.
   
   
3. Write a short description of your city.
   
   
4. Then, if you want, send the link to the wiki on to friends or family that you think might be willing to participate. (Note – please not “send this to everyone in your address book!” – I don’t want this to be Fischbowl-generated spam.)
   
   
5. Then, if you really want to go the extra mile, actually send a postcard to Abby at her school (pdf).

Now, I really have no idea if we’ll get five or five hundred responses, but I figured it was worth a shot (and it takes a lot less postage). Not only would you be helping Abby and her classmates learn more about the world, but also helping other students (and adults) that visit the wiki learn about the world. I think it would be especially nice if other students added to the wiki, in addition to adults, but we’ll see what happens.

Update 9-23-08: Wow! The response has been great. Thanks to everyone. That original page on the wiki has so much on it that it's becoming difficult to edit, so please add all new entries to the second page I've created. If you already have info on the first page and need to change/add to it, please email me with the changes and I'll update it (I've locked it now so that people don't accidentally try to add to it). Thanks again to everyone that's participated and, if you haven't yet, please go ahead and contribute.

I recently posted about Anne Smith’s classes creating musical compositions to represent characters in Macbeth. I think you should take another look at the comments on Anne’s post, as the discussion has moved in several different directions since then.

After many comments discussing the process and merits of using music to think more deeply about a literary work, Gary Stager asked this question:
So, do you think one lesson from this experience might be that a good teacher can teach anything from anything else?The students had some interesting thoughts about that. Some of those thoughts touched on the subject of mathematics, including this comment:
In math, there is one answer and one answer only.That led me to ask a question about whether the students all agreed with that statement and asked them to think about a couple of "math" problems. Since then Gary chimed in briefly again about math, and Sylvia Martinez has stopped by a couple of times to add to the discussion, but the students have really done the bulk of the commenting.

I think it would be worth your time to read through the discussion (set aside some time, as there are currently 194 comments) and perhaps add a comment with your perspective on the various topics.

I’m really excited about a new learning opportunity I began this week. I’m helping as a “Community Leader” for the ADVIS Cohort of Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson’s Powerful Learning Practice initiative.


The PLP cohort model has face-to-face, webinar (Elluminate), and online discussion (private Ning) components, and I’ll be helping mostly with the online discussion component. I’m still figuring out what my role is, but essentially I’m supposed to do two things: help with the technical side of things (wiki questions, Ning questions, etc.) and help contribute and extend the online conversations. In other words, it’s very similar to what I’ve been doing in my own building staff development these last few years. The biggest difference is I won’t be part of the face-to-face meetings and, of course, I haven’t met most of the people in the community face-to-face. (I had the opportunity of presenting to an ADVIS group - along with Anne Smith and Will Richardson - back in January, and a few of the folks in the cohort attended that, so I probably have met some in the cohort face-to-face.)

While I’m really excited to be part of this, I’m also really nervous. (And this is the reason for this and hopefully subsequent posts – to share the process and what I learn as I go along.) Folks who know me in physical space know that I’m not the most social person. I’m certainly not anti-social, but it takes me awhile to join in with a group of people that I don’t know well. So this will be interesting for me as I leave my comfort zone a little bit.

Even so, I’m still really excited about this opportunity and thankful to Sheryl, Will and the ADVISPLP Cohort for allowing me to participate. I look forward to learning along with the cohort – and hopefully sharing on this blog what I discover about this type of online professional development.

Well, okay, maybe not a musical. But Anne Smith and her students are doing some creative interpretations:
I decided that rather than me creating the piece of music, it would be a great opportunity to connect music with literature. Gary gave me the suggestion of having the kids connect the piece of music to something they have written. Since we are reading William Shakespeare’s Macbeth in class, we had just completed two papers dealing with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth while watching three film versions (Royal Shakespeare Company -Ian McKellan, Dame Judy Dench, English Shakespeare Company- modern version, and Roman Polansky version) of the first act comparing what each director was trying to show through their interpretations.

My students were quite excited to begin the process of composing a piece of music to fit a character. In period 2, we started talking about Lady Macbeth and her personality. What would we want to show in the song? We decided that we would show her in three stages from act one. We would show her elation at seeing her husband return home, her decision to not let King Duncan leave the castle by killing him so that Macbeth would become king, and finally her anger at Macbeth with his ambivalence about killing the king. We had some students who are as musically inclined as I am and so they worked on the lyrics (a.k.a. quotes) to fit with the music as well as finding visuals to support. The other kids, worked on the song. Amazingly, they all worked so well together testing sounds, putting together measure after measure, playing the notes, time and again. They decided the instruments that would best describe Lady Macbeth (flute) and how her tone would change into a French horn through her change in personality. Then they picked the instruments that would best accompany the sounds of Lady Macbeth. A few different kids took turns running the computer with other kids shouting up their thoughts. It seemed like organized chaos. One thing I must add here is how much I learned by watching and participating with them. I learned all sorts of vocabulary words about music (crescendo, decrescendo, staccato) and how to semi-compose music (you really have to pay attention to the notes you select with each instrument). But mostly, what I am hoping period two took away from today, and what they learned, is that music is a part of literature. When talking with them about the song, they asked my opinion about a particular part. I said it needs to sound like murder. Tristan responded that murder is an A and C sharp. And then another student, John, responding that we need to put in the key of death which is apparently E flat? As my department members were listening into our conversation they were enthralled with what these kids were doing. They were connecting Lady Macbeth’s descent into evil with music. You can hear the three distinct parts which they had mapped out at the beginning of class. It was amazing that I had kids come in on their off-hours to finish the song - and better yet, these were all boys! Boys that were asking to continue the learning. One even asked me at the end if we could do this for every book we read. Tomorrow we are going to play it for the class, make changes, and add the lyrics and visuals.There's plenty more to read, including period 5's approach,What was really interesting about the different approaches between my period 2 and period 5 is that it reflected how they have approached learning challenges in the class so far. Period 2 approached it collaboratively all working together, where period 5 broke into groups of music creators and lyrics composers.examples of what they've created so far, a Picasa web album with pictures of them working,

and Anne will upload the final versions for each period once they're finished.

So, what have your students created today?

My school was contacted last spring by a writer for the German business magazine brand eins (described by the writer as a cross between Fortune and The New Yorker, don't know how accurate that is). They were doing a feature issue on education and wanted to find out more about our school, so the writer and a photographer came to Colorado and spent a day each at Arapahoe. The article ran in the May issue, but it's taken me a while to find someone to translate it.

Here's a PDF of the original article in German, which includes the pictures they used in the print edition. Here's a very rough English translation (without pictures), please note carefully the explanation at the beginning as well as some of my explanatory notes.

Just a quick post to pass along this story from the Rocky Mountain News:
That feeling of being in a strange new land is a common one for many journalists today.

We're doing things that take us to places that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. And sometimes when we arrive, we find our actions have conjured up their own set of troubles.

That was the case this week when one of our reporters was assigned to cover the funeral of the 3-year-old boy killed after two vehicles collided and crashed into an Aurora ice cream store where he was sitting.

I don't need to tell you that the story of three deaths at the hands of a driver who never should have been behind the wheel blew up into a major topic of conversation for the metro area and touched the hearts of many.

As is our custom, we asked the parents of Marten Kudlis whether we could cover his funeral. To be clear: We never enter funeral services to report on them without the family's permission. Period.

What was different in this case was that a reporter sent live updates via text message from his phone to our Web site during the service. He did so using a program called Twitter.My initial reaction was pretty negative (as apparently many reactions were). But John Temple, the editor of the Rocky Mountain News, added this:
Most of us couldn't attend the service. But that doesn't mean we don't empathize with the family and don't want to join in their mourning in some way. Marten was one family's son before he died. But because of the way he died, his loss was felt by thousands.

One way for a news organization to help a community connect is to send information live from the service, just as we do from events ranging from political conventions to road closings to concerts and parties. We don't have to wait to publish in the next day's paper anymore. TV and radio don't wait, and people seem to value that.While I still don't think I would've made the choice to tweet from a funeral, it does raise some interesting questions regarding the "public-ness" of our lives, the immediacy that technology provides, and the ability of that technology to connect a community. I also like how he allows that they are going to make mistakes:
We must learn to use the new tools at our disposal. Yes, there are going to be times we make mistakes, just as we do in our newspaper.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try something. It means we need to learn to do it well. That is our mission.I think those five sentences apply just as well to education.

We’ve talked a lot at my school about how we’d like to do more interdisciplinary teaching. How that helps make everything more meaningful, relevant and engaging for our students, and is more likely to result in deep learning that lasts beyond the end-of-unit test. But we’ve also talked about the obstacles, which include our schedule, our various curricula, and the fact that many of the interdisciplinary topics that most lend themselves to this approach can be controversial topics.

This series of posts has been an attempt to draw in the reader – whether that reader is an educator, other interested adult, or a student at my school – to think about just one topic that lends itself to this approach. I’m not a history or a language arts teacher, so I’m sure these posts could’ve been written much better, with more appropriate quotes or alternative sources or more meaningful connections. But that’s sort of the point. If a former math teacher can put something together that at least made you read this far, imagine what some teachers with some knowledge and talent could do.

Have you read Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother yet? You should. (Cory’s day job is contributing to this little blog.) Buy it. Or download it for free. Then get it on your district’s approved literature list, and add it to your unit where you teach 1984 and/or Fahrenheit 451 and/or whatever else you teach in that unit. Have your students also read this. And this. And this. And a bunch of other things I don’t have time to link to at the moment.

Team-teach this in Social Studies and Language Arts - figure out a way to do it. Have students read folks who support and disapprove of current policy (learn more). Have them research both Presidential candidates’ positions (or, if it’s after the election, have them research the winner’s position). Have them find other writers/reporters/bloggers/candidates that have something to say about this. Have them look into the technology of it all. Have them learn about propaganda and persuasion, politics and history, reading and writing, critical thinking and technology. Have them learn enough to take an informed position, then make them argue the other side. Then challenge them to get involved, to try to influence policy. Have them share their knowledge and efforts with others. Have them participate.

Then do it all again with another topic. Immigration. Stem-cell research. Global climate change. Poverty. Real issues that are meaningful, complicated and messy and don't have easy, pre-determined "right answers." Problems that our students actually care about trying to solve and that we actually hope someone will solve. You’re only limited by your imagination.

Nothing less than the future of our democracy depends on a well-informed, thoughtful, and engaged citizenry. Too melodramatic? Perhaps, but I don't care - deal with it. I have an eight-year old daughter and this is what I want for her from her teachers. What do you want for your kid?

Links/sources for quotes in previous posts:

7
1984
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas


6
1984
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

5
1984
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
Benjamin Franklin

4
Fahrenheit 451
Bruce Schneier

3
Little Brother
United States Constitution
The Federalist Papers #84
United States Declaration of Independence

2
Little Brother
The Federalist Papers #51
United States Constitution, Bill of Rights

1
Little Brother eBook Introduction
Preserving Life and Liberty (a Department of Justice website)
Daniel Solove (summarizing - and then refuting - the “Nothing to Hide” argument)
ACLU Watch List Counter

Fighting terrorism has become the catch-all excuse for every pipsqueak authoritarian with an axe to grind. It’s the reason we get busted for taking pictures in the subway, carrying a bottle of medicine onto a plane, or objecting to being fingerprinted and forced to show ID just to move around the world. Today’s kids are the most surveilled, most controlled generation in the history of the world.
The Protect America Act modernized the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to provide our intelligence community essential tools to acquire important information about terrorists who want to harm America. The Act, which passed with bipartisan support in the House and Senate and was signed into law by President Bush on August 5, 2007, restores FISA to its original focus of protecting the rights of persons in the United States, while not acting as an obstacle to gathering foreign intelligence on targets located in foreign countries. By enabling our intelligence community to close a critical intelligence gap that existed before the Act became law, the Protect America Act has already made our Nation safer.

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The NSA surveillance, data mining, or other government information- gathering programs will result in the disclosure of particular pieces of information to a few government officials, or perhaps only to government computers. This very limited disclosure of the particular information involved is not likely to be threatening to the privacy of law-abiding citizens. Only those who are engaged in illegal activities have a reason to hide this information. Although there may be some cases in which the information might be sensitive or embarrassing to law-abiding citizens, the limited disclosure lessens the threat to privacy. Moreover, the security interest in detecting, investigating, and preventing terrorist attacks is very high and outweighs whatever minimal or moderate privacy interests law-abiding citizens may have in these particular pieces of information.

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In September 2007, the Inspector General of the Justice Department reported that the Terrorist Screening Center (the FBI-administered organization that consolidates terrorist watch list information in the United States) had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007 - and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month.

By those numbers, the list now has over one million names on it. Terrorist watch lists must be tightly focused on true terrorists who pose a genuine threat. Bloated lists are bad because

• they ensnare many innocent travelers as suspected terrorists, and
• because they waste screeners' time and divert their energies from looking for true terrorists.

Small, focused watch lists are better for civil liberties and for security.

Under what circumstances should the federal government be prepared to suspend the Bill of Rights?
In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights.

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

You’re under the mistaken impression that you’ve been picked up by the police for a crime. You need to get past that. You are being detained as a potential enemy combatant by the government of the United States. If I were you, I’d be thinking very hard about how to convince us that you are not an enemy combatant.

The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

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The creation of crimes after the commission of the fact, or, in other words, the subjecting of men to punishment for things which, when they were done, were breaches of no law, and the practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.

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Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.



He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments