Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

It’s been amazing to be able to virtually participate in a number of conferences thanks to bloggers and servcies like hitchhikr.

Alan November’s Building Learning Communities in Boston would have been another great conference to attend.

Steve Dembo’s post on Dr. Andy Hargreaves keynote has caught my attention. I’ve been involved in supporting teachers establish and build professional learning communities for the past several years. I would be the first to admit that it hasn’t always been smooth. The issues that have been most difficult to deal with has been time and focus.

PLC’s need time. We’ve relied on the work of Rick Stiggins and Rick Dufour (good luck finding a suitable hyperlink to Dufour) for much of our framework. Both recognize that teachers likely need at least an hour a week in these teams. That has not been the case for the majority of our teams. We’ve been lucky to get them together once a month for a hour.

We’ve also struggled with finding a focus. Initially we started by giving teachers a wide open format for their choice of focus. This ranged from teachers wanting to develop webpages to unit creation to working on instructional strategies. The teams were all over the map in terms of focus and satisfaction. We decided to steer them more towards a data driven team where the focus would be on student learning. This concept might be good but my fear was/is if teachers are asked to make this shift with little time, it will turn into a focus in increasing scores and that would be lead to shallow learning.

I think this is the essence of Hargreaves address.

Professional learning communities, what passes for professional learning communities is often teachers thrown together to look at test score data in math and literacy. It’s rhetoric. And it’s definitely not a learning community. Professional learning communities are about more than just throwing groups of teachers together after school to look at achievement data and figure out quick ways to raise their scores. It’s about challenging each other to move ahead.

It’s the previous paragraph that really interests me.

Successful schools promote stimulating conversations that are also committed conversations, that translate into some kind of action over time. It’s not enough to discuss the ideas, they need to influence actionable decisions that transform the school community.

Stimulating conversations. That’s what I experience daily. That’s what excites me about my job right now. I fear that teachers for the most part do not experience stimulating conversations as often as they’d like and need. This is partly due to time but also due to our obsession with data and scores. Yes, even in Canada.

Where I think I’m still struggling is what we mean by “student learning” and if it is always measureable? I also think that if teachers were engaged in stimulating conversations aobut learning, the scores would take care of themselves.

Steven Levitt writes today about some disparity in wifi pricing within Hyatt hotels. Price ranging from $10.95 to $300 a day. He goes on to look at the economics of this. By the way, if you haven’t read Freakonomics, it’s an easy, interesting summer read.

With the number of free offerings, how long will this type of pricing last? Even in little old Moose Jaw, we have free wifi in some places.

I’ll even add my house to the list. Come by 161 Marlborough and knock on the door and I’ll give you my WEP key.

When I was a kid I loved watching Johnny Carson. I particularly loved Monday nights because he’d often have a guest host. Although I liked Carson, it was always interesting to see how others handled the monologue and interviews.

Wes Fryer, who recently moved to Edmond, Oklahoma, is one of my favourite reads and certainly gets my vote for pumping out the most stuff, has asked me to do some guest blogging on his site while he’s on holidays. This, to me, is a rather new concept and one that offers me an opportunity to write to some new people and also keeps his content fresh.

I’m going to be quite busy the next few days, trying to get a daughter married off and  preparing for some workshops. I don’t quite know what will happen to my blog. I don’t want to simply cross post everything and yet when I think I’ve got some good stuff, I don’t want to have to choose where I’ll post.

I’ll do my best to keep things alive on both fronts but it’s kind of a neat opportunity and so I’ll likely focus my efforts on Wes’ site. It’s a nice honour to be asked to write on someone else’s blog.
He has agreed to do some guest blogging for me next month. I imagine I’ll double my postings for the year during that time.

On Monday, July 24th I’ll be giving a workshop entitled, “The Joys of Social Software”. I’ll be working with a small group of teachers introducing them to many of the great tools and applications to design a Read/Write classroom.

Having done a number of these types of workshops, I realize I’m simply creating an awareness….exploration, application, immersion, and implementation is something completely different. I need to keep this in mind as I’m often overly enthusiastic about the possibilities only to realize that for many, it’s just too much to wrap their heads around and in many ways are not really ready for all the awaits them.
Given the basic advice of taking one idea and developing it, what advice would you give them about transforming their classroom? How would you encourage them to use the tools to create a new type of classroom? What should they pay attention to? What should they be weary of?
I will try and provide an opportunity to bring in those who wish to speak live via Skype. I haven’t completely set my agenda but there will only be 5 participants so we can be fairly informal.

So add your thoughts and I’ll be sure to pass them along.

Many of you may have heard of the fellow from Montreal who has been trying to trade a red paperclip for a house. This week he will accomplish his goal.
Will Richardson mentioned this at one of his sessions at NECC. I’m assuming he used it to illustrate the power of the internet to express and explore ideas and make connections. This experiment reminds me of two other recent web ventures. One is the million dollar homepage and the other is the guy who sold all his stuff on ebay. These rather obsure ideas illustrate the possibilities of the web. The ideas behind these innovative projects need to be examined by teachers and their students. Are these “new stories“? Perhaps have students do some research and reflection on why these ideas work.

On a personal note, the house he will be getting is in Kipling, Saskatchewan which is about 100 miles from my house. Before gaining permanent employment in Moose Jaw, 18 years ago, I interviewed for a job in Kipling.

Wes, just sent me this link and it’s one of the few balanced views from the media on myspace.

The writer quickly identifies the hype around myspace:

Folks, we are in the midst of a mass hysteria. The media has found the latest way to drive readers and ratings: the good ol’ fashioned gumbo stew of children and teens, sexuality, murder and death, new technology, and fear. Lots and lots of fear. Fear that freaks out parents and those in authority and leads to bad decisions made in the name of security.

He continues on the make the comparison between pre-internet phone harrassment and wonders about why we never banned phones.

He then describes an exchange he had as a young teacher during a parent-teacher interview:

I’m reminded of another story from my days as an English teacher years ago. It was parent-teacher conferences, and I was meeting with the parents of Sandy, a 9th grade girl who was quite smart but never did a lick of homework. I was a youth of 23, still green, while Sandy’s parents were in their 40s. The conversation went something like this (and this is the absolute truth, I promise):

Sandy’s Dad: We just can’t figure out why Sandy’s grades aren’t any good.

Me: She doesn’t do her homework.

Dad: Ah. Um … how do we get her to do her homework?

Me: Do you have a dining room table?

Sandy’s Mom (proudly): Oh yes!

Me: What does Sandy do after dinner?

Dad: She goes to her room.

Me: Well, how about after dinner, you have Sandy sit at the dining room table and do her homework instead?

Mom (leaning over to Dad): Write that down!

(Dad takes out a slip of paper from his pocket and a pen and - I swear to you - wrote down “Do homework at dining room table.”)

Dad: What else?

Me: How about one of you get up every half hour or so and ask her what she’s working on and then check it?

Mom (excitedly leaning over to Dad): Write that down!

(Dad writes down “Check homework every 30 min’s.”)

This astonished me. Here I was, only 23 and childless, and I was telling adults how to parent their teen! At that point I realized the awful truth: lots of people just don’t know how to raise their kids.

If you aren’t already, you should be bookmarking these type of responses because if you’re not already, you will be discussing these issues with policy makers.

I’ll echo the words of Wes, well not the part about the Oklahoma adminstrators meetings but certainly the part about the Skype in for any session or the blogger meetup.

I love the way these conferences expand way beyond the physical space.

Technorati tags: NECC2006, NECC, Skype

Happy Canada Day!

Highlights included:

• Breakfast on the neighbours deck
• Park Art
• Walk Crescent Park
• Martha in the Water Park
• Shea and her friends at the pool
• The nap
• Icecream
• Street Art
• Martha and her scooter downtown (listening to the fake Bee Gees)
• Fireworks