MSM, NMSA08, PodcastBy Troy Patterson

Podcast #55 Disrupting, NMSA 08, This Changes Everything!

Items & Events

  1. The Michigan Association of Middle School Educators (MAMSE) Annual Conference will be held in Saginaw Township on March 12 & 13 at White Pine Middle School.
  2. The Ohio Middle School Association’s Annual Conference will be held at Kalahari February 19-20.
  3. The National Middle School Association’s Annual Conference will be November 5-7 in Indianapolis, IN.  The theme will center around globalization and service learning.
  4. The Middle Level Essentials Conference will be held at the Red Rocks in Nevada April 23-34.  Tell your high school colleagues about the special “conference in a conference” on ninth grade teams.
  5. A link to Will Ricardson’s featured presentation at NMSA ’08.
  6. The LEAGUE’s Knight Scholarship Competition:
    The KNIGHT scholarship is a national scholarship competition where 3 students will receive $5,000 each for their writings or reflections on civic experiences in one of three categories: Persuasive Essay (building awareness and inviting action for change in your school, community or the world), Personal Narrative (experiences with service and volunteerism), or News Story (creating newspaper articles that reports acts of service and volunteerism by young people). The scholarship is open to high school seniors from all over the country, even students who are not part of a LEAGUE classroom can apply! 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.
  7. Virtual Pioneers invite you to their website:  www.virtualpioneeers.ning.com.  VP conducts virtual social studies trips in Second Life.
  8. See the folks who attended NMSA08 this year and left a message on the virtual wall at SchoolTube! Videos are posted for you to either relive the experience or get a taste of the convention from the folks who attended.
  9. Recommended website: http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/ Thanks to Teresa for the recommendation on the website!
  10. New report posted on NMSA’s website:  Middle Level is the Turning Point for College and Career Readiness.

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?

advisory, PodcastBy Shawn McGirr,

Advisory Research & Support

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.”

UncategorizedBy Shawn McGirr

It’s coming.

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 …

NMSA08, Podcast, TechBy Troy Patterson, ,

MSM #54 Families and Media Ecology, What is the Future of Education? NMSA Wrap Up continued.

Items & Events

  1. The Michigan Association of Middle School Educators (MAMSE) Annual Conference will be held in Saginaw Township on March 12 & 13 at White Pine Middle School.
  2. The Ohio Middle School Association’s Annual Conference will be held at Kalahari February 19-20.
  3. The National Middle School Association’s Annual Conference will be November 5-7 in Indianapolis, IN.  The theme will center around globalization and service learning.
  4. The Middle Level Essentials Conference will be held at the Red Rocks in Nevada April 23-34.  Tell your high school colleagues about the special “conference in a conference” on ninth grade teams.
  5. The MacArthur Foundation is spending $50 million dollars on a 5 year study seeking to understand digital life and youth.  Three years of the study are reported out in Living and Learning with New Media:  Summary of the Findings from the Digital Youth Project.  Read about the study here in the New York Times article.  We might pull this for discussion in a future podcast.
  6. A link to Will Ricardson’s featured presentation at NMSA ’08.
  7. The LEAGUE’s Knight Scholarship Competition:
    The KNIGHT scholarship is a national scholarship competition where 3 students will receive $5,000 each for their writings or reflections on civic experiences in one of three categories: Persuasive Essay (building awareness and inviting action for change in your school, community or the world), Personal Narrative (experiences with service and volunteerism), or News Story (creating newspaper articles that reports acts of service and volunteerism by young people). The scholarship is open to high school seniors from all over the country, even students who are not part of a LEAGUE classroom can apply!

    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.

  8. Virtual Pioneers invite you to their website:  www.virtualpioneeers.ning.com.  VP conducts virtual social studies trips in Second Life.
  9. See the folks who attended NMSA08 this year and left a message on the virtual wall at SchoolTube! Videos are posted for you to either relive the experience or get a taste of the convention from the folks who attended.
  10. Congratulations to Lorri MacDonald who was honored by the State of Michigan as the Michigan Virtual University Teacher of the Year! MacDonald (PR Newswire) Dr. MacDonald talked about the future of learning in virtual spaces at this year’s Michigan Virtual University symposium.

Top Ten Signs You are Addicted to the Internet

  1. You find yourself typing “com” after every period when using a word processor.com.
  2. And even your night dreams are in HTML.
  3. All you daydreaming is preoccupied with getting a faster connection to the net: 28.8… ISDN… cable modem… T1… T3…
  4. You spend half of the plane trip with your laptop on your lap… and your child in the overhead compartment.
  5. You finally do take that vacation, but only after buying a cellular-modem and a laptop.
  6. You refuse to go to a vacation spot with no electricity and no phone lines.
  7. You find yourself brainstorming for new subjects to search.
  8. Your eyeglasses have a web site burned in on them.
  9. Your bookmark takes 15 minutes to scroll from top to bottom.
  10. You kiss your girlfriend’s/boyfriend’s home page.

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:

  • “… a large share of young people’s engagements with new media-using social network sites, instant messaging, and gaming-occur in the context of home and family life.”
  • Computers, video cameras, related software and associated training are considered an investment in their child’s future.
  • New media is leveraged for good behavior.
  • Parents are a little nervous about this whole thing while learning to embrace it with their kids.
  • “We begin by concentrating upon the spatial and domestic arrangements that shape new media use in the home, such as the placement of computers. We then turn to the creation of routines and other forms of temporality, including the amount of time and textures of kids’ media usage. In the final section, our analysis centers upon parents and kids’ rules and the creation, bending, and breaking of rules. We conclude by considering how parents and young people transform, negotiate, and create a sense of family identity through new media.”
  • Parenting in the New Media Ecology
    • Along with broader social changes comes the uncertainty of a parents role and parenting since the 1960’s.
    • Parents feel aware and accountable to society at large for their parenting decisions:  “reflexive parenting.”
      • Working class parents:
        • believe in informal play in and around the house.
        • use a laissez-faire approach to parenting.
        • believe that kids will grow and develop naturally as they navigate the world.
        • value respect for authority and prefer to give children the autonomy to navigate their own relationships with peers.
      • Middle class parents:
        • believe that it is their responsibility to develop their children through outside school activities (sports, music, etc.).
        • cultivate activities and interests in their children.
        • organize their student’s daily schedule and get involved in the inner workings of their activities at school or other school type settings.
        • advocate for their students in institutionalized settings.
    • These attitudes towards parent reflect what kind of media is selected for their students in the home.  (Externalizing those previous values).
  • Crafting Media Spaces at Home
    • Public Spaces:
      • Creates a sense of ownership and inherent control over all media devices.
      • Creating Media Rooms within the house as shared media controlled spaces.
        • Wealthy families created entirely new spaces for computers.
        • Other socioeconomic groups “multi-tasked” space for new media to coexist with existing purposes (e.g. the computer is in the kitchen because that’s where the kids do homework while parents make dinner.)
    • Private Spaces:
      • Creates that sense of anxiety in parents’ mind akin to the Dateline reports.
      • Students realize that their bedrooms become partial public space if media are accessible in their rooms (both tv and computers).
  • Mobility and Other Media Spaces
    • Students will explore other media experencies, even ones their parents don’t allow at home, when they visit their friends’ homes.  They “work the rules” in each place to experience media.
  • Making, Taking, and Sharing Media Time
    • Families that structured their media time viewed it as a bonding and relaxing time together.
    • Some families come together to produce their own media as a form of bonding and staying involved with their kids.
      • Transmission of values
      • Gives the kids ownership and some control over their role within the family.
  • Routines & Rhythms
    • Parents use of controls on the computer help kids develop media habits.
      • In single parent homes where there is access at both homes, the parents negotiate a schedule together so the rules are the same in both locations.
      • In nuclear and extended families, it falls to the mother to be the upholder of morality and new media standards.
  • Growing up
    • Parents change and adapt the rules as the student grows chronologically.
    • Cell phones tend to be given at middle school levels and represent a type of freedom.  Its also an easy way to restrict and rein in when students cross the line.
  • Making, Breaking, and Bending the Rules (examples:  AskMeanMom, Cell Phones for Kids?, Mayor Blumberg!, cell phone contracts)
    • Rules end up as intentions and actual practice turns into a negotiation.
  • Plans, Minutes, and Cards
    • What consequences are established for going beyond the boundaries set by parents?
    • Students that have to purchase their own phones and plans tend to be more discerning about their usage.
    • Some parents feel it improves communication with their student if they learn how to text on a phone.
  • Going Online:  Bandwidth, Passwords, and Privacy
    • In lower income families, internet usage is a matter of having the equipment and what level of bandwidth the family can afford in the home.
      • Not part of the study directly:  Thinking about the intense preoccupation with the social domain as transescents, can you imagine the frustration created by a slow connection to a social active student?
    • Some parents restrict it all together based on negative reports on internet usage and social networking.
      • Some parents take the modem with them if they leave their student at home alone for a period of time during the day.
      • Some parents restrict it to the single use it was intended:  homework or schoolwork.
    • While parents control access, students are largely responsible for structuring their online worlds.
      • Redefining privacy:  Parental viewing of a Xanga or MySpace is considered by teens as an invasion of privacy, yet the rest of the world can see it.
        • Think the “Diary” experience:  should parents pick the lock and read the precious pages?
  • Conclusion:  ” …the need to balance independence and dependence, parents’ values and beliefs, and parenting style shapes participation.”
  • Observation:  Perhaps we as educators should be designing experiences like open houses for parents as a way for them to gain experience using the net and social networking.

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.

MITOPENCOURSEWARE

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.

MSM, NMSA08, Podcast, TechBy Troy Patterson

Podcast #53 – Getting on the Bus with Jim Collins and the Gang at NMSA08!

Items & Events

  1. The Michigan Association of Middle School Educators (MAMSE) Annual Conference will be held in Saginaw Township on March 12 & 13 at White Pine Middle School.
  2. The Ohio Middle School Association’s Annual Conference will be held at Kalahari February 19-20.
  3. The National Middle School Association’s Annual Conference will be November 5-7 in Indianapolis, IN.  The theme will center around globalization and service learning.
  4. The Middle Level Essentials Conference will be held at the Red Rocks in Nevada April 23-34.  Tell your high school colleagues about the special “conference in a conference” on ninth grade teams.
  5. Crime does not pay!  Worried teaching tech skills might open doors to nefarious activities?  This creative internetter used Craigslist to create a caper outside a bank in Washington.  A suspect is in custody.  Bonus points for creativity, not so much for community service content.  Considering the recent economy let me also add this:  Don’t do this at home.
  6. We’ve compared education and technology to the RIAA and piracy laws.  Here’s another take on that conversation for your perusal.
  7. The MacArthur Foundation is spending $50 million dollars on a 5 year study seeking to understand digital life and youth.  Three years of the study are reported out in Living and Learning with New Media:  Summary of the Findings from the Digital Youth Project.  Read about the study here in the New York Times article.  We might pull this for discussion in a future podcast.
  8. What if we thought of internet access like water, gas, electricity and other utilities?  Will Richardson has found an interesting quote from a future Obama official concerning the regulation of the internet and increasing availability in communities across the country.  As proposed, the deregulation would increase competition and lower price making it more available to households.
  9. Quote for the week: “In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”  – Eric Hoffer
  10. A link to Will Ricardson’s featured presentation at NMSA ’08.
  11. The LEAGUE’s Knight Scholarship Competition:
    The KNIGHT scholarship is a national scholarship competition where 3 students will receive $5,000 each for their writings or reflections on civic experiences in one of three categories: Persuasive Essay (building awareness and inviting action for change in your school, community or the world), Personal Narrative (experiences with service and volunteerism), or News Story (creating newspaper articles that reports acts of service and volunteerism by young people). The scholarship is open to high school seniors from all over the country, even students who are not part of a LEAGUE classroom can apply!

    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.

  12. Virtual Pioneers invite you to their website:  www.virtualpioneeers.ning.com.  VP conducts virtual social studies trips in Second Life.

News:

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:

  • Take Me Seriously
  • Challenge Me to Think
  • Nurture My Self-Respect
  • Show Me I Can Make a Difference
  • Let Me Do It My Way
  • Point Me Toward My Goals
  • Make Me Feel Important
  • Build on My Interests
  • Tap My Creativity
  • Bring Out My Best Self

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).

TechBy Shawn McGirr, ,

Social Studies and Virtual Environments: ISTE SL

Tonight I had the opportunity to “attend” the presentation in Second Life on Social Studies and virtual environments.  The presentation was hosted by ISTE and presented by Spiff Whitfield who leads the Second Life group, Virtual Pioneers.  They meet every two weeks and tour together.  It began as a small group of teachers in New England and has expanded to include teachers in other countries.  They can be found over at the Lighthouse Learning Island (Kathy Shrock).

“Spiff” highlighted several places they have visited:

  1. Chateau de Versailles:  Tour guides available.
  2. The Alamo at ISTE Island.
  3. Antiquity, TX – a real town, includes role play simulations
  4. Olana History Museum:  a replica of Frederick Church’s home.
  5. Alhambra, Spain – The site is a crossroads between Muslim and Spainish cultures.
  6. Virtual Babylon (somewhat locked down) – actual pictures of artifacts.
  7. Holocaust Museum – delivers the same effect as the Washington D.C. Holocaust Museum and includes some of the elements of the D.C. exhibits.
  8. Land of Lincoln – replicas of Lincoln’s Whitehouse, a typical town of that era, Civil War encampment, a library, and numerous resources on all things Lincoln.  (Thanks Daisyblue Hefferman for the info!)
  9. Virtual Harlem – a virtual tour of Harlem in the 1920’s including the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater.
  10. Caribbean House Oronoque Brownstone – architecture from 1920’s Harlem.
  11. Plymouth Replica, Plymouth 1620 – There are native islands around as well as this one that pertains to Pilgrims and Puritans.  There is a tour of the Mayflower in the harbor as well.
  12. Capitol Hill North – Tour government buildings.
  13. Norma Underwood’s Island (EduIsland) – resources for teachers.

Check out the Virtual Pioneers video describing their tours and association.  They also have a Ning site where you can connect with them.

MSM, NMSA08, Podcast, TechBy Troy Patterson, , ,

Podcast #52 – Snowed Under! NMSA08 continued

Items & Events

  1. The Michigan Association of Middle School Educators (MAMSE) Annual Conference will be held in Saginaw Township on March 12 & 13 at White Pine Middle School.
  2. The Ohio Middle School Association’s Annual Conference will be held at Kalahari February 19-20.
  3. The National Middle School Association’s Annual Conference will be November 5-7 in Indianapolis, IN.  The theme will center around globalization and service learning.
  4. The Middle Level Essentials Conference will be held at the Red Rocks in Nevada April 23-34.  Tell your high school colleagues about the special “conference in a conference” on ninth grade teams.
  5. Crime does not pay!  Worried teaching tech skills might open doors to nefarious activities?  This creative internetter used Craigslist to create a caper outside a bank in Washington.  A suspect is in custody.  Bonus points for creativity, not so much for community service content.  Considering the recent economy let me also add this:  Don’t do this at home.
  6. We’ve compared education and technology to the RIAA and piracy laws.  Here’s another take on that conversation for your perusal.
  7. The MacArthur Foundation is spending $50 million dollars on a 5 year study seeking to understand digital life and youth.  Three years of the study are reported out in Living and Learning with New Media:  Summary of the Findings from the Digital Youth Project.  Read about the study here in the New York Times article.  We might pull this for discussion in a future podcast.
  8. What if we thought of internet access like water, gas, electricity and other utilities?  Will Richardson has found an interesting quote from a future Obama official concerning the regulation of the internet and increasing availability in communities across the country.  As proposed, the deregulation would increase competition and lower price making it more available to households.
  9. Quote for the week: “In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”  – Eric Hoffer
  10. A link to Will Ricardson’s featured presentation at NMSA ’08.

News:
Seven Skills Students Desperately Need
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=56127
Teaching to the test is a mistake, Harvard’s Tony Wagner reminded the audience of his Nov. 18 keynote address to the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), because it interferes with transmitting the seven “survival skills” every student should acquire before graduating.
“A lot of people think the skills that students need to learn for the workforce and the skills they need to learn to be a good citizen are two separate sets. But they’re not. What makes a student successful in the global workforce will make a person successful at life,” he said.
Wagner said the problem is that you can have all the equipment and technology you want, but “if you don’t teach kids how to think, how to think beyond multiple choice, you’ve got a problem.”
“I realize education is a very risk-averse sector,” said Wagner, “but assessments either drive instruction for the better or for the worse, and right now in the U.S., it’s for the worse. If our assessments measured performance and 21st-century skills, like the European PISA assessment, that would be another story.”
According to Wagner, students of this generation are not unmotivated; they’re just differently motivated.

“They’re multi-taskers, they are drawn to graphics, they like instant gratification, they use Web 2.0 tools to create, and they love collaboration,” he said. “If we can figure out how to grab their interest in learning, they’ll become great thinkers and be eager to learn the basics.”

Wagner presented a list of seven “survival skills” that students need to succeed in today’s information-age world, taken from his book The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need–And What We Can do About It. It’s a school’s job to make sure students have these skills before graduating, he said:

1. Problem-solving and critical thinking;
2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence;
3. Agility and adaptability;
4. Initiative and entrepreneurship;
5. Effective written and oral communication;
6. Accessing and analyzing information; and
7. Curiosity and imagination.

“We are making [Adequate Yearly Progress] at the expense of failing our kids at life. Something has to change,” he concluded.

Tony Wagner’s Web Site (Note that he has a bunch of articles free for download to registered users – registration is free).


Session 2:
Staff Motivation – Diane Hodges.
US has 2.8 million teachers serving 46 million students
Employee Needs & Motivators:
_____ Good wages
_____ Job security
_____ Interesting work
_____ Full appreciation for work done
_____ Feeling “in on things”
_____ Sympathetic help with personal problems
_____ Promotion/growth opportunities
_____ Good working conditions
_____ Personal loyalty to workers
_____ Tactful discipline

Elements of a staff recognition program:

  • Staff members need to be part of the development and implementation program
  • Define what behaviors you want rewarded (attendance, trying new strategies, initiative,
    teamwork, positive attitudes, etc).
  • Recognition should be differentiated
    • Auditory – some want to “hear” the recognition (public praise)
    • Visual – Some want to “see” the recognition (letters, articles, bulletin board)
    • Kinesthetic –  some want to “feel” (hug, handshake, pat on the back)

The techniques that have the greatest motivational impact are practiced by the least number of managers, even though they are easier and less expensive to use.


 Motivating Behaviors:
Motivating Behavior Rank Frequency
Manager personally congratulates
employees who do a good job		 1 42
Manager writes personal notes for
good performance		 2 24
Organization uses performance as
a major basis for promotion		 3 22
Manager publicly recognizes
employees for good performance		 4 19
Manager holds morale-building
meetings to celebrate success		 5 8
* Professor Gerald Graham, Wichita State University 1991

Some motivational ideas:
http://www.dianehodges.com/motiv.php
http://playfair.com