Will Richardson is holding an impromptu discussion on 21 Century Web Literacies. Follow this link. (Please note that the link was hot during the discussion and now will only point to Elluminate in general.) Interesting conversation on literacy itself as it unfolded throughout the hour or so. Here are some links associated with the online discussion.
Educon (conference)
21st Century Literacies transcript
Thanks to Will Richardson for hosting!
Items, Events, Calendar, Eclectic Stuff (truc et chose)
Features:
149 Parenting School-Wise Tips by Carol A. Josel
Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts,a store-bought roaster, or package of pre-cooked chicken
one package of frozen peas and carrots, thawed
one 10-oz can of cream of chicken soup
one store-bought pie crust, such as the Wholly Wholesome brand
Steps to Take:
1. If not using pre-cooked or roaster chicken, cook chicken breasts in pot of boiling water for 5 to 10 minutes.
2. Chop chicken into cubes.
3. Mix chicken with thawed peas and carrots.
4. Stir in can of cream of chicken soup.
5. Place mixture in Pam-sprayed pie plate.
6. Top with pie crust.
7. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes or until crust is golden.
News:
All’s Fair in Middle School Scramble:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/education/26fifth.html?_r=1
In the quest to find the perfect middle school for her 10-year-old daughter, Aimée Margolis has zig-zagged across Manhattan for 11 school visits, grilled pre-teenagers at a school fair on music classes and the preferred attire at dances, and compiled a dog-eared folder full of notes.
Then there is the bathroom test. Ms. Margolis casually slipped away for what appeared to be a quick pit stop. She carefully occupied a stall, waited for a cluster of students to walk in, and listened.
Unlike another school, whose impressive tour was undercut by a dismal bathroom test in which Ms. Margolis heard students poking fun at teachers, making grammatical mistakes and using “trash mouth,” Clinton’s bathroom-goers revealed themselves to be articulate, friendly nonswearers who at least momentarily refrained from gossip.
Too much testing cuts into learning
THE GOAL of the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 was to make schools more accountable to their neediest students and to the public. Students must demonstrate competence by passing an English and math test, the MCAS, in order to graduate from high school. But now, passing merely two tests is no longer enough, and an ever-increasing number of tests and retesting opportunities has been imposed upon school systems. Consequently, testing has transformed urban schools into testing and test preparation centers.
The Department of Education requires high schools to schedule 28 days of testing, amounting to 15 percent of the 180-day school year.
Website Of The Week:
BrainyFlix:
We’re trying to help kids prepare for the SAT by offering fun and free videos about SAT vocabulary, made by YOU!
We’re offering $600 in prize money to the video that receives the most number of votes. $200 of the payout will go to the maker(s) of the video and $400 to the class or school club of his/her choice.
And to make this viral, we’ll give out 1 free iTunes download for every 5 videos you submit or referrals you provide.*
Contest begins January 1, 2009. Sign up to be notified when the contest starts.
http://www.brainyflix.com/
NMSA ’08
Formative Assessment: What is It And How Can It Improve Student Learning?
Handouts will be available on NMSA web site. (Presenter didn’t prepare for this, “I can’t think of everything”.)
Overview:
Knowledge base for formative assessment.
The Big Picture
The Process of Formative Assessment
The Big Idea: Use of evidence of learning to adapt instruction to meet student needs.
Resources:
How People Learn (NRC, 2000)
Knowing what Students Know, (NRC, 2001)
Laurie Sheppard is the guru on this stuff.
Congnitive & Constructivist Learning Theories:
Metacognition is important in formative assessment.
Reformed Vision of Curriculum:
All students can learn
Challenging Subject matter at HOT & problem solving.
Equal opportunity for diverse learners
Classroom Assessment
Challenging tasks
Learning Processes as well as learning outcomes
Shout Outs:
Special Notice: Due to web server space limitations, we will be removing some early shows. If you’d like to hear a show that is unavailable, please email us!
Items & Events
Book Update! – Disrupting Class Latest reading update from Troy.
Space Concern: Due to web site space issues, we will be removing some of the early shows.
News!
Student Sues High School over Facebook Suspension:
A former Florida high school student who was disciplined for “cyberbullying” a teacher on Facebook is suing the school principal on allegations of violating her free speech rights.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/12/us-student-inte.html
Sending Racy photos via phone common amongst Teenagers:
Sending or posting nude or semi-nude cell phone pictures starts at a young age and becomes even more frequent as teens become young adults, according to a new survey that suggests the racy-photo problem might be bigger than many adults realize.
“Teenagers are early adopters of technology–from the latest social-networking sites to the hottest new cell phones,” said Susan Schulz, special projects editor for Hearst Magazines (which publishes Cosmo Girl). “While this tech savvy can be seen as positive, our study reveals there’s also a negative side. Teenagers should be aware of the real consequences of this type of behavior, and we need to provide them with guidance and encourage them to make smarter choices.”
The survey also indicated that 15 percent of teens who have sent sexually suggestive content such as text messages, eMail, photographs, or videos say they have done so with someone they know only online.
To help warn teens and young adults of the dangers associated with sending or posting sexually suggestive material online, the National Campaign has published a list of 10 suggestions.
For parents, the initiative recommends:
1. Talking to kids about what they are doing in cyberspace.
2. Knowing who kids are communicating with.
3. Considering limitations on electronic communication.
4. Being aware of what teens are posting publicly.
5. Setting expectations.
For teens:
1. Don’t assume anything you send or post is going to remain private.
2. There is no changing your mind in cyberspace–anything you send or post will never truly go away.
3. Don’t give in to the pressure to do something that makes you uncomfortable, even in cyberspace.
4. Consider the recipient’s reaction.
5. Nothing is truly anonymous.
Shout outs!:
Teaching the Middle School Brain (Stop by the booth for a handout on the session.)
1. Principles of Brain Friendly teaching.
2. Align instruction with how brain best learns through structures.
3. Silly sports & Goofy games that align with brain friendly instruction.
4. Deepen our understanding of our 3 pound miracle.
The quiet signal:
1. Raise your hand.
2. Full focus attention on Dr. Kagan
What the brain attends to the more the brain retains.
3. Signal others.
Good brain instruction involves structured interaction and a high level of engagement.
Structure: Take off, Touch Down
If it’s true, stand up. If the second statement is true move again.
Why is it brain friendly?
It increases blood and glucose and oxygen in the brain to stand up and sit down a couple of time.
The brain consumes 20% of all the glucose in the body. It is only 2% of the body’s weight.
Put your two fists together. That’s the size of your brain. Disappointed?
Brain dendrites fire 200 times per second.
100 billion neurons.
Standing up and sitting down puts more glucose and oxygen in the brain.
Better nourishment: Frequent muscle movements are important.
Book: Spark by John J Ratey, MD.
Evidence for more phys. ed. in the schools to grow better brains.
Aerobic movement is required.
Brain attends to Novelty.
Stand up, Hand up, Pair up
RallyRobin
Why is RallyRobin more brain friendly?
Frequently stop and have students process information.
Why frequently process?
1. More energy for new learning.
Inhibiting impulses takes a ton of energy.
2. Clarify and refine thinking.
Became aware of what you know and what you don’t know.
3. Store in long-term memory.
4. Clear working memory.
It’s what we can hold in our heads at one time.
Not usually more than ten things.
Number 11 replaces one of the original 10.
5. Engage multiple intelligences and multiple memory systems.
Episodic memory is the most engaging of the memory systems.
The brian processes in episodes, something that takes place at a location, has a beginning and an end and a location.
More brains active
More brain parts active
Social Interaction
Episodic memory
Team Interview
Teambuilding
Favorite snacks
anything fun will serve as a teambuilder
Ways to spend $1000.
Fun things to do after schooll
Movies you have liked.
Describe a sceene from a movie you enjoy.
See the Personal Questions page he has prepared. (Sells?)
Favorites
Academic content
Science: View on cloning; inert elements
Math: Geometry Proof; prime numbers
Language arts: Verbs; metaphors
Social Studies: Causes of event; consequences of an event.
How will I use?
Interview each other (gambit chips?) and create a 5 paragraph essay based on the information they’ve gleaned from their partners and incorporate transtitions between paragraphs. 3 main paragraphs are based on each of the 3 people interviewed.
What happened in the brain?
The amygdalae
There are 2.
Left processes tone of voice
Right processes faces.
Both sides are threat sensors
When do they fire most?
Stranger
Other race
Fearful face
Angry face > Happy face
out-group > in-group
Linked to all major parts of the brain.
Prefrontal Cortex
Decision making
Emotional Control
Attention, thinking, working memory
The Amygdala can shut this down.
The Amygdalae explain
Impared learning (high stress destroys brain nerves).
Silly Sports
Hagoo: Inuit game.
If they can make the other person smile, they cross over the line and join their team. Teams are in two lines.
No touching, can say anything they like.
Great picture of a “teenage brain”
What is white matter?
Myelination of neurons helps them fire 200 times faster.
The teenage brain is not completely myelinated.
Independent Memory systems
There is not one thing called memory!
Memory Test
1 Night
2 tired
3 wake
4 dream
5 sleep (not on list!)
6 bed
7 rest
8
9 (
10 (slumber)
Memory pinciple: Memory is not a place it is a process!
SPEWS & Structures (matrix made by Kagan)
Items & Events
Book Update! – Disrupting Class
Algebra on YouTube:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j27byHk1EAb3KhBo1ePXyg0h7rogD950NKS80
YouTube is perhaps best known for its cavalcade of homemade performances and TV clips, but many people like Nissim are turning to it for free tutoring in math, science and other complicated subjects.
Nissim typically scours the video-sharing Web site for clips of bands and comedy skits. But this time she wasn’t there to procrastinate on her homework. It turned out YouTube was also full of math videos. After watching a couple, the psychology major says, she finally understood trig equations and how to make graphs. (Khan clip)
Session I: A Web of Connections: Why the Read/Write Web Changes Everything (601)
Blogs Wikis, and Podcasts: Book related to this session. Will Richardson
http://willrichardson.wikispaces.com for the notes to this session and the links.
Provide feed back at the discussion space of the wiki.
Begin with stories about kids to contextualize.
1. Laura Stockman (Buffalo, NY)
25 Days to Make a Difference is her blog.
This turned into 10 months of making a difference.
All the conversations are monitored by Mom and Mom makes the posts.
This site is blocked at her school.
2. Sara’s Story
She texts over 600 messages a day.
The point: She has a learning network that is local. That is if we use the technology to make it learning.
Schools response
We don’t let them blog.
We don’t let them text.
We don’t let them use the technology that they are already are using.
The web is now a Read/Write Web technology today.
The Big Shift is coming in access to this technology and how it is being used to engage students, either for good or evil.
Book: Here Comes Everybody: How Digital Networks Transform Our Ability to Gather and Cooperate by Sharkey
The Techtonic Shift: This changes the game, think Printing Press and its impact on Western Civ.
We cannot escape this group forming ability provided by the Web.
Will Richardson is an upset pubic school parent because his children are not being prepared for their future.
8,000 affinity groups within the Obama campaign which in essence is the platform of the campaign.
This gives the members power of choice within the groups and in the campaign and as a result empowerment. (Local control)
Kansas State Rep running for office:
Kid put up a post about needing a “group” and got an average of $8.19 per donation and a total of $90,000 for his campaign.
Newspapers aren’t going to survive in the current business model.
Christian Science Monitor is going web based totally.
surfthechannel (The TV guide to illegal content on the net.)
Can go to see all the tv channels of the world.
Pick your tv show and you can watch.
Based in Sweden. Different Laws Apply!
Amazon.com
Businesses are about groups with common interests.
People read the posts about the product to make a decision on purchase.
Book: Wikinomics (The more you share, the more you get)
Facebook
“For Mike” A social spot to grieve for a fallen friend.
Kids are going home to unfiltered worlds. Ironically we’re doing harm by not giving them the opportunity to fail.
Learning is changing.
His blog (as example).
Clustr-Web Traffic tracker
Each dot becomes someone in his group and someone he can learn from.
www.fanfiction.net Write a new chapter to the book that you really like.
Twilight. Harry Potter
Kids are going to be Googled during their lifetimes.
We need to teach them the best way to do this without exposing them to the damaging things of social networking.
Social networking is not inherently a bad thing.
Richardson wants his kids found on the net as a networking tool.
We’ve been Datelined to death on the dangers of the internet.
Clarence Fisher and his blog.
Teaches his kids how to blog and as a result increases their learning opportunities.
Learning is changing.
Text 46645 to text google to find the answer to a question.
Why are we asking kids to memorize information when they could use a device to find it more rapidly.
Joke: Give an open phone test!
Content is not scarce, it is ubiquitous.
MIT has every course online for you to take. (MITopencourseware)
Teach content evaluation skills and then turn them on to other content sources to learn and bring to the classroom.
Content is not static anymore.
Wikipedia.
Considers this the most important website on the the net at this time.
Content has been proven to be current, accurate, and dynamic.
Textbooks are not dynamic enough.
We need to teach in hypertext environments.
FLYP media.com www.flypmedia.com
Making our classrooms with “thin” walls.
Learning is a everywhere experience.
Yugma- tool for ?
Flat Classrooms project.
Teachers are everywhere, we need to help our students find them and identify.
Key advantage: Create a web page or blog and kids will use the experience to learn from their productions.
Willow Web (Radio WillowWeb)
Kids become invested in the learning. They do real work for real audiences and create real learning in the process.
Its not enough to just do a paper on it.
Challenge: What’s stopping you from doing this stuff in your own personal learning environments?
Think about this as building networks and not just a transfer of what we did on paper to now doing it on the web.
How are you going to build your Map?
Looking for a reason to keep Advisory around? Check out the dissertation and its findings here with the abstract listed below. You can also find this on the NASSP’s podcast in iTunes.
Abstract: “This study examines the characteristics of advisors and advisory programs that foster student connectedness and the ways in which students and their advisors perceive the impact of advisory programs on academic achievement. Student connectedness, a concept that refers to a school culture in which students have meaningful relationships with adults within the school, are engaged in the school, and feel a sense of belonging to the school, correlates directly with low instances of student dropout and high academic achievement. While improving school connectedness is critical at all educational levels, it is particularly urgent in middle school because the roots of alienation take hold during young adolescence. The sample was comprised of 501 students and 31 advisors in three California middle schools. I used student and teacher questionnaires to identify advisories producing high levels of student connectedness, and then used student focus groups, teacher interviews, and advisory observations to further analyze my quantitative findings. My findings show that both students and advisors report that advisories improve students’ academic performance. In the nine strongest advisories, the perception that the advisory improves students’ academic performance is significantly stronger than in the other 22 advisories in the sample. The nine advisories with the highest connectedness scores engender students’ and teachers’ positive associations with the advisory program, address topical community issues, and foster open communication amongst all members of the advisory. The common characteristics of these nine advisors is that they all know and care about their students as individuals, monitor their academic progress, and help them to solve academic and social problems. Comparing the advisory programs at the three sites indicates the importance of the developmental stage, structure, and role of the advisory program in determining school connectedness.”
As we move into some serious cold weather, what about making some door draft dodgers in Advisory to help the kids stave off the cold at home (or your room)? Directions can be found here.
It’s rumored that Walmart will begin selling iPhones at the rumored price of $99.00. One of my students today caught me after school and asked me what they were getting for Christmas. (It should be noted that I am Santa’s stunt double.) Thinking that I was reaching beyond the pale, I guessed he was getting an iPhone. The look of surprise quickly replaced with a look that the air had been let out of his sails told me I had hit the nail on the head more precisely than I ever could have imagined. Before I could recover, he mumbled something about my being right and gave me that “how in the world did he know” look as he moved into the crowds headed for the busses.
The bigger stunner for me is what am I going to do with a kid who can surf the web without district restrictions, pretty much at will? Change or die? Ok, maybe a little hyperbole …
Items & Events
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (http://www.knightfoundation.org) promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities. Since 1954, the foundation has given more than $300 million in journalism grants. Applications will be posted at www.theleague.org beginning January 5th. Students must submit their applications before the March 6th deadline. For more details about The LEAGUE and the KNIGHT scholarship please visit www.theleague.org.
Top Ten Signs You are Addicted to the Internet
Scientists: Is technology rewiring our brains?
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=56280
What does a teenage brain on Google look like? Do all those hours spent online rewire the circuitry? Could these kids even relate better to emoticons than to real people?
Shawn has an Announcement. It’s official! I’m a Friend of Jack! (FOJ)
Is Second Life in decline? Forbes thinks so. Reuters pulls their full time reporter from Second Life.
Heather A Horst: Families and Media Ecology
The MacArthur Foundation sponsored a study which we talked a little about in last week’s podcast. The link is in the Items & Events section if you would like to read the entire document (pdf). Part of the entire report is a section written primarily by Heather A. Horst covering the adoption of media by families. Several case studies are cited and worth the read as examples of the class distinctions and their differences in approach to adoption of new media. Key points worth mentioning from the study:
Session #4
2191 Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education
Steve Haradon
(You can also catch his presentation on SlideShare).
Information is changing:
Who produces it
What it costs to produce
How it is filtered
How it is distributed
How we find it
How it finds us
How we manage it
How we evaluate it
What is Web 1.0? Traditional
reading
receiving
Content is
Web 2.0
Contributing
Collaborating
Creating
No only ha
The Go-Giver (book) and a blog.
The printing press broke more industries than it fixed.
Christian Science Monitor no longer prints a paper copy- web only.
Trend #2 – A tidal wave of information.
The answer to Content overload is to create more content. Analogy of a cocktail party. You don’t try to talk to everyone, or worry about every conversation, but to be a good participant.
Trend #3 – Culture of Openness
Clay Shirkey – Here Comes Everybody.
Craig’s list only charges for job listings. Everything else is free to attract interest. The cost of everything else is so low that it works to get them the job listings market.
Trend #4 – Participation
Changing how we do things:
ProAm
ProSumer
Trend #5 – Long Tail (Chris Anderson’s Theory)
Trend #6 – An Explosion of Innovation
Pro/Am Culture
ProSumer Culture
Trend #7 – Age of the Collaborator
Historical periods favor specific traits.
Picture of Microsoft founders from 1978 – would you invest?
Is the age of the resume over? IS it being replaced by your online presence?
The wisdom of the group trumps the expert.
Trend #8 – The world is flat and getting flatter.
Trend 9 – Web is becoming a conversation
First came blogs…
Then came Wikis…
a web page with an edit button.
Level 1 – Publishing
Trend 10- Social Networking
Read /Write
No talent needed. No skill set needed.
Classroom 2.0 Social Network. Classroom20.com
the aggregation of web tools for Building Content.
Analogy of building materials. You could use the building materials to build a casino or a school. It is the use of the tools not the tools themselves.
Learning Tools:
Profile Page =Personal Portfolio
Forum= Announcements, Assignments, And Asynchronous discussions.
Photo/Video = Content repository
Directory = Learning network
Groups= Learning Teams
IM/Chat = Personalized Attention
We face becoming irrelevant.
Intellectual Isolationism
RIAA & Music = Schools & Learning? (will be become like the RIAA and be in the way).
We must harness the built in capabilities of web 2.0.
email Steve for slides.
Medline Plus- learning surgery online.
GlobalLearner – tutors
Wikipedia – allows for the dissemination of information that previously wouldn’t have previously been available.
Looking for some Second Life activity? Head over to the ISTE Island on Thursday, December 4 for a Thursday Social: a tour of the University of Michigan’s Wolverine Island. I will be at a “Family Fun Night” at school slinging sloppy joes and hot dogs and won’t be able to make it. Anybody want to go and post on the event?
Items & Events
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (http://www.knightfoundation.org) promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities. Since 1954, the foundation has given more than $300 million in journalism grants. Applications will be posted at www.theleague.org beginning January 5th. Students must submit their applications before the March 6th deadline. For more details about The LEAGUE and the KNIGHT scholarship please visit www.theleague.org.
No Effect on Comprehension seen from “Reading First”
The $6 billion funding for the federal Reading First program has helped more students “crack the code” to identify letters and words, but it has not had an impact on reading comprehension among 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders in participating schools, according to one of the largest and most rigorous studies ever undertaken by the U.S. Department of Education.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/11/18/14read.h28.html?tmp=2107097694
Middle School Substitute Teacher & Spyware: http://www.pcworld.com/article/154611/how_spyware_nearly_sent_a_teacher_to_prison.html
Amero was an unlikely porn surfer. Four months pregnant at the time, she said she had only just learned to use e-mail. The case ruined her life. She believes that stress from the arrest caused her to miscarry her baby, and her career as a teacher is finished. A heart condition landed her in the hospital after she fainted several times. And while she was briefly employed at an area Home Depot last year, she was fired from the job shortly after an employee posted news clippings about her trial in the employee lounge. Alex Eckelberry, the CEO of Sunbelt Software, who contacted her after hearing about her case. After looking at the evidence, he and other security professionals concluded that Amero had been wrongly convicted.
What Students Want from Teachers:
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/nov08/vol66/num03/What_Students_Want_from_Teachers.aspx
Session 3
Exploring the Role of the Literacy Coach in the Middle Grade Schools:
Literacy coach is walking, talking Professional Development.
Watch the perception that the coach knows what they are doing while the teacher doesn’t. Be sure to differentiate between the HS coaches and ours.
See notes Coaching Implementation
Literacy Lunches:
Teachers get an article to read and/or a strategy to highlight. If they’ve read the article, they get pizza and a pop. Held once a month.
Friday morning:
Jim Collins Keynote:
Good is the mortal enemy of Great
Greatness = Conscious choice and Discipline
Beat of the Odds Study – Arizona Center of Education website
The Signature of mediocrity of not lack of change. The signature of mediocrity is constant change. It is not allowing enough time for changes to work.
jimcollins.com
There is a free diagnositic tool. There
How many key seats do we have on the bus?
How many are filled with the right people?
What is our plan for getting to 100%?
On a personal level:
Build a council
Write out a vision
What is your ratio of questions to statements? Can you double it?
Work is infinite – Time is finite.
Manage your time, not your work.
Not a job but a responsibility.
Shout Out to MikeTeacher for the iTunes Comment. Thanks MikeTeacher wherever you are.
Happy Birthday! to Us. (Since this is our 53rd show, in some strange sense, we are a year old. Never mind that we’re quite a way into our second year of podcasting).