A Whole New Problem

I have been working with a friend to put together a technology project for our 8th grade class. My school has single gender classes and we are working on a humanities topic for the boys. We are lucky enough to live in a large city with wonderful theater. The boys will go to Steppenwolf Theater this week to view their production of A Separate Peace and will be also completing a novel study of the same book. We decided to use this opportunity to introduce the idea of contributing to wikis . They have used wikis in the past, but primarily as a web page/textbook type resource for tech class in the 6th grade.

The challenge that we wanted the boys to accomplish was to talk/write about their experience with the book, focusing primarily on critical analysis and deeper thinking. We determined to create a lit circle based concept with 3 teams of 5 boys each. Each team would distribute the 5 roles and be responsible for covering a total of 4 chapters each. Those roles are partially based on the traditional roles of Harvey Daniels and partially modified to accomplish some tech goals of visual literacy . I realized in trying to determine some of the roles that a great likelihood existed that some of the boys ( maybe most, for all I know) will go to the Internet ( Wikipedia, Bookrags, Sparksnotes and the like) for a quick and easy overview of the book,its characters, themes, and even test questions before they even open a page of the book. In their perfect world, they would be able to respond without actually reading the novel itself. They are well aware that with a little bit of their time and very little effort, it is possible to get an overview of all that content that is usually covered in writing assignments and class discussions. These possibilities present a good argument for trying to teach more contemporary books that do not have so much material available on the web to "borrow" or read in lieu of a book. However, these possibilities also provide an opportunity for the instructors to create and demand more inventive ways of being held accountable for reading material and providing interpretation.

I am looking forward to having a discussion tomorrow about how to accomplish the goals mentioned above. I am going to assign one role as a Graphic Interpreter and hold that student accountable for finding an image to capture an idea or theme from the chapter, making sure to cite the artist who created it as well as the source. I am going to use this opportunity to talk about Creative Commons and copyright protections. Instead of the role of summarizer and theme, I have decided to try to create a set of more "essential" type questions that will require using real life examples or discussions of ideas such as heroism, healthy competition, war, and lies. Each student will need to respond to the events of the chapter as one of the characters in the book who are responding to what they see they narrator do or hear him say.

I am hoping this will be an excellent adventure- or at least, an excellent exercise in trying to get the students to think for themselves.

Funding summer?

Well, every year we find out about title funds being available for one thing or the other through our relationship with CPS. The last 2 years I have travelled to the November Learning Conference in Boston. In my opinion, this is a great conference that has it right. In addition to a variety of international experts, social networking is key. What I love is that it is not so much electronic, but face to face. Lunch served in a banquet hall to tables of 8, parties in the evening, outings into town or to a concert. Real live human interaction that encourages conversations about learning more than technology,engaging versus teaching. All of it, good stuff.

This year, we are hoping to send a couple of other faculty members, but the school's push to have people get master degrees is really working against us in many ways. Many teachers are too busy with classes, papers and projects in addition to ( sometimes at the expense of) their regular classroom preparations. This same thinking extends into thinking about the summer. Either people are taking classes or burnt out from trying to teach, go to school, and for some, teach after school classes for extra income. Others have to pick up summer employment to help pay the bills, while others just want to enjoy the break.

This year, I am hoping to attend something, but just can't decide what it will be. ISTE is too big for me; I attended the San Antonio conference 2 years ago.The sea of humanity overwhelmed me. I am interested in some offerings through Pearson on literacy and 21st century skills that are being offered in Maine and North Carolina, a 1:1 conference in Memphis in July ( Am I nuts?), a Gray Stager conference in New Hampshire, or a Brain Conference in Groton Massachusetts on the campus of a boarding school. Half of these qualify for title funds, the other half would come from my professional development money. Which one to attend?

That decision awaits another day. As for tonight, going to take a listen to Steve Hargadon's interview with Dan Pink about his new book, Drive. I just finished reading it this weekend, and like A Whole New Mind, it has me thinking. That's a good thing. I am interested to hear how he applies it to education. I think the idea of learning for intrinsic purposes or for the joy of the journey is something that escapes a lot of students these days, particularly as they get more and more pressured by parents. Hope more light is shed on it all for me tonight!

Let's see if I can deliver!

I am going to try to present myself with a Lenten challenge. I have always contended that it is harder to do something more than to give something up, so here is my opportunity to try. I have been trying to do MORE exercising, but that is easy to write off with " I have not time" or "I am too tired" or "I'm just too busy." Well, since I work in front of my computer most of the day, I will either have to stick to my guns on this or get far more creative with my excuses. Either way, I will need to be thinking on another track.

I am on the Independent School Network list serv which is attempting to gather educational blogger sites. I am going to take the leap and see if I can follow through. I can't imagine anyone else wanted to read what I have, but I had originally started this blog as a way to reflect on things I have learned since beginning the 2.o journey. that journey AND that learning continue.

Currently, I am only teach Grade 6, mostly about Internet Literacy. We call the class Tech, but my personal preference would be Digital Literacy. The students have spent time on validating sources, investigating sites, learning about back links, various algorithms of search engines, the wonderful tools provided by Google Search that the kids didn't even know existed, and just general ideas about being more efficient with their use of technology and how to find things.

Our present project is a follow up to our study of the features of Google search. We are engaged in an Olympic Scavenger Hunt of sorts on our Olympics wikipage . The students have recorded their answers on a Google doc that they have shared with me. After class, I make comments and corrections on their documents so we can get practice with collaboration and drafts. The students seem to be pretty engaged and are getting a feel for the idea of keywords and search shortcuts. Our next step will be to create a Voicethread on the Olympics using not just our vocal skills, but learning how to find appropriate images and give credit to the creators. In addition, we will be creating medal pictographs using Excel and also create a medal spreadsheet with Google. i suspect , however, that Google spreadsheets won't provide us with the option to insert images, but I will find that out later today!