The Tempered Radical

Educon Notes: Citation and Attribution in Today's World

As a guy who creates a heaping cheeseload of content---both the copyright kind and the Creative Commons Share-and-Share(ski)-Alike kind---the session I was most interested in attending at this year's Educon conference was How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Citation, offered by Bud Hunt and Joe Bires.

Basically, Bud and Joe were playing out two ends of the fair use spectrum---Bud arguing that the ideas of others are important enough to honor that citation is essential in almost every circumstance and Joe arguing that citation is 1). increasingly difficult in a world driven by co-creation and 2). a barrier to innovative thought.

The session really got me thinking.  Here's my notes:

 

Do YOU Know the Difference between Citation and Attribution
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What Does Citation Look Like in Today's World
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Any thoughts?  What are you doing to teach your students about attributing the sources for their ideas and inspiration?

 

Educon Notes: What DO Parents Want?

So I gotta tell you that I hate keynote presentations.  I almost never go to them.  I just can't stand any more 'sit-and-git' in my life. 

But this morning's keynote at Educon was different.  It featured Leroy Nunery---the Deputy Superintendent of the Philadelphia Public Schools---talking about the challenges faced by public schools and the steps that they're taking here in Philadelphia to address those challenges. 

About halfway through Leroy's slides---you can see 'em all here---he mentioned the results of a survey given to Philadelphia parents designed to highlight what the general community regarded as "must haves" in a good education system.  As Leroy explained it, once you know what the community values, you can work to protect those components of your system.

Well, look at what the community listed as their top "must haves:"

 

 

What Do Parents Want
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Question: How do your school/district/state's investment and spending decisions align with the programs identified as "must haves" by Philadelphia's parents?

Better Question:  Would the results turn out the same if you surveyed your community?

Best Question:  Isn't a bit arrogant to design a system that completely ignores the very programs that parents value the most?  When the choices that our schools and systems make don't align with parent desires and interests, aren't we setting ourselves up for an #epicfail? 

 

Educon Notes: Innovation in Education

Last night's Educon panel discussion was on the nature of innovation.  It was pretty remarkable, to tell you the truth---with the exception of the fact that my Livescribe pen failed to tie the audio recordings to the text files. 

Figured I'd at least share my handwritten organizers, though. Maybe you'll find them valuable:

What is Innovation?
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Why Innovate?
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What Does Innvoation Look Like in Action?
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Innovation in Education
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Teaching and Learning with Livescribe Pens

Back in September, I stumbled across this New York Times article detailing the ways that students in Brian Licata's Staten Island middle school were using Livescribe pens to review content in a math class that I'm sure I couldn't even pass.

That introduction to Livescribe pens---digital tools straight out of Jetson's cartoons that, when paired with special Livescribe paper, can digitally track every stroke of a student's handwriting and pair it with a time-synched audio recording of whatever is being spoken at the same time---caught my attention. 

Here's the segment from the Times article---describing how one student used her Livescribe pen and notebook to complete a challenging homework assignment---that really resonated:

To refresh her memory, Dervishaj pulled out her math notebook. But her class notes were not great: she had copied several sample problems but hadn’t written a clear explanation of how exponents work.

She didn’t need to. Dervishaj’s entire grade 7 math class has been outfitted with “smart pens” made by Livescribe, a start-up based in Oakland, Calif.

The pens perform an interesting trick: when Dervishaj and her classmates write in their notebooks, the pen records audio of whatever is going on around it and links the audio to the handwritten words. If her written notes are inadequate, she can tap the pen on a sentence or word, and the pen plays what the teacher was saying at that precise point.

Crazy, isn't it?  Imagine your students pulling out their spiral notebooks and clicking on any point on any sheet of paper and being able to listen to an audio recording of the lesson happening at that exact moment in class?

For middle school parents and teachers---charged with supporting students who are notoriously bad notetakers---that sounds like a complete digital dream, doesn't it? 

Developing Technology Vision Statements

Dear Principals,

Let me ask you an honest---albeit uncomfortable---question:  If I asked you to explain the rationale behind the technology choices that your school is making, could you do it? 

Could you:

• Describe the kinds of things you'd like to see students doing with technology---and more importantly, how those actions and behaviors will ensure that your students and your school are more successful than they currently are?
• Describe the core technology expectations you have for every teacher and team in your building---not just those who are drawn to new digital spaces and behaviors already?
• Guarantee that every teacher in your building was aware of---and invested in---the same core technology expectations that you've embraced?
• Prove that the choices made when spending your technology budget are supporting your school's mission?  

If these kinds of questions are hard for you to answer---if developing a systematic plan for integrating technology into your building's practices that is connected to your core priorities has been more challenging than you expected---consider giving these planning documents a look:

 

Technology Planning Guide

High-functioning learning communities are driven by the core beliefs detailed in their mission, vision, values, and goals statements. Working together, parents, principals, and teachers define priorities that carry great implications for instruction.

Those priorities should play a role in all of the choices made by a school—including choices about the kinds of technology to incorporate into classrooms. Use this handout to ensure that your technology plans align with your school’s mission, vision, values and goals.

 

Technology Planning Scenario

Stories help to make complex ideas concrete—and will keep you focused on the core beliefs of your learning community when making decisions about digital behaviors, tools and projects to pursue. While every school should write their own collection of technology integration samples that detail the decisions of fictional teachers and teams that are effectively translating their mission, vision and core priorities in action, this piece is designed to serve as an example of the kinds of stories that can help to guide actions.

 

Crafting Technology Vision Statements

In Professional Learning Communities at Work (1998), Rick DuFour and Bob Eaker argued that effective vision statements in a PLC articulate, “a vivid picture of the organization’s future that is so compelling that a school’s members will be motivated to work together to make it a reality.”

Use this handout to begin crafting a set of 5-10 vision statements that articulate a vivid picture of what technology use will look like in your school’s future. Remember that all vision statements must be connected to your school’s mission.

 

Here's to hoping that these documents---which I've created as a part of a two-day workshop that I'm developing centered around my newest book---are valuable to you. 

And on that note, if you've got any feedback for me, I'd LOVE to hear it!  How could I improve these tools?  What am I missing when it comes to creating a pervasive, school-wide vision for teaching and learning with technology?

Thanks in advance for helping me to improve my work!

Rock on,

Bill

Why do Teachers Resist Professional Development?

One of my best professional friends is Matt Townsley, a math teacher turned district level leader in Iowa that challenges my thinking time and again. 

Recently, Matt wrote this post sharing his perspectives on driving change efforts from beyond the classroom.  At times, he sounds really frustrated with trying to elicit support and buy-in from the teachers in his district—and that caught me off-guard. 

The good news is that understanding why teachers resist change efforts isn’t an impossible task.  In fact, most resistance can be tracked back to four basic questions that school leaders often fail to answer when choosing new programs for their schools.

I detailed those questions in a comment that I left on Matt’s blog.  Here’s what I wrote.

New Slide: One Tweet Can Change the World

A bunch of y'all have already read my One Tweet CAN Change the World post, right? 

It's the bit I wrote about how sharing in digital spaces can have a profound impact on one's instructional choices and fundamental understandings of teaching and learning?

Well, that post was picked up by the folks over at OpenSource.com---and they created this terrific slide for the bit that I thought you might be able to use in your work somewhere:

Image credits: andyofne

 

The image file is small right now and I haven't had time to recreate something bigger---but when I do, I'll update this post with a better file. 

Hope this helps,

Bill

Can Texting Help Teens with Writing and Spelling?

One of my parents dropped me a line today, asking for a bit of advice about her daughter—who, because of a bit of reading reluctance has always struggled with spelling proficiency. 

Specifically, she was wondering whether or not texting might be a good forum for spelling practice for her daughter—and if so, whether cell phones with autocorrect become a crutch for kids who struggle with spelling.

Interesting questions, aren’t they?  And they’re right up my alley, considering I can’t spell to save my life! 

(Didn’t know that about me, did you?)

It’s true.  Even though I’m a professional writer who just finished his third book and his 500th blog entry here on the Radical, spelling has never been a strong suit of mine.

That bing siad—sorry, had to do it—here’s a few thoughts on texting, spelling and teens.

Read This: Death of an Awards Ceremony

"If you are a person who believes school is all about grades and awards, I am afraid that you will not like the decision made by our school yesterday; if you are a person who loves the idea of the “proud parent of an honour roll student” bumper sticker, you may be frustrated by our school.

June 1, 2010 marked the end of a tradition at our school – a tradition that awarded top students not for their efforts and learning but for their grades and achievements. The staff at Kent School decided to abolish the “awards” part of the year end ceremony."

via mrwejr.edublogs.org

I was doing a bit of reading today when I stumbled across this brilliant post written by Chris Wejr, one of my favorite digital minds who happens to be a principal in Western Canada.

It's an old article---if you can call anything written six or seven months ago old---but it resonates. You see, Chris's school decided to completely ditch assemblies that gather large numbers of students together to see a small handful of their peers recognized for being "accomplished."

Their argument---and it was a collective decision voted on by his entire faculty---was that we send really poor messages to kids when we celebrate the accomplishments of just a few of our students. Sure, it's nice for the moms and dads of the "special kids," but what kind of damage to we do to the dozens of kids who won't ever hear their names called?

This thinking has sat in the back of my own mind for a long time.

As a middle school teacher in a relatively accomplished suburb, our Honors Assemblies are always really well attended and the pressure on students to be recognized for academic honors are always high. The hitch is that the same kids are recognized time and again---and more importantly, the same kids AREN'T recognized time and again.

That's sad to me.

I really want to steal an idea that I heard about a long time ago but can't find the source for today and begin "On A Roll" ceremonies that recognize every student on my team.

Any pushback?

Are there strengths in holding ceremonies that recognize the few while leaving out the many?

If not, why are they still so common in our buildings?

Maybe Reading ISN’T Fun

A friend of mine who teaches in a high poverty school dropped me a really discouraging email today. 

She told me that a training specialist assigned to her school had dropped in to one of their faculty’s vertical articulation meetings to offer feedback on the school’s attempts to integrate annotation into their reading instruction. 

Her message was less than inspirational, though.  Here’s the most disturbing quote:

"I tell kids this is not fun…This is work, and most of the reading you'll do in life will not be for fun."

My first reaction was to load up the digital bazooka and blaze this woman. 

Not only can annotating text be fun when teachers decide to tap into the social nature of today’s students and integrate  shared annotation tools like Diigo into their work—something I’ve written extensively about before—but what kind of failed thinking leads any teacher to tell kids that “most of the reading you’ll do in life will not be for fun.”

Then, I just plain felt bad for the woman. 

As a guy who is literally consumed by reading—I probably finish 60 books a year and damn near all of them are fun even when they are tied to my profession—I want everyone to feel the same rush that comes from getting lost in a new title for a few hours. 

More importantly, I want every student to know a teacher who loves reading more than most anything.  That modeling matters.

But then I started to think that maybe—just maybe—this woman might be right.  Maybe reading—especially in high-poverty schools—ISN’T fun.