More Than Baseball

A post I wrote on one of my favorites, legendary hitter Tony Gwynn, his battle with cancer, and on teaching kids.

http://creativestir.blogspot.com/2011/03/more-than-baseball.html

Think Spring, Adam

NYC’s School of One Customizes Math Learning

The New York City schools' program is restructuring school time and deploying digital-learning tools to customize education and raise math achievement

It's a Family Affair

Computers for Youth works with low-income schools to put computers in the homes of sixth-grade students and bring parents into the learning mission.

Boston Arts Academy

Another reason why I'd like to visit the Boston Arts Academy and chat with Linda Nathan.


-- Posted from batphone

Computer-based homework and grading

Ok, so I have implemented technology-based learning, now what?
I used to grade on a strict time-based basis, but now what? In the past, paper-based homework was due in class the next day, or one day late for 1/2 credit, after that it was a 0. Our homework policy at BBA is similar in principal. I have found that to counter-balance the absoluteness of the computer grading on homework, I need to have them do it for credit or no credit, and I also set the activities so that they can be tried an infinite number of times until they are satisfied with their performance. I still, however, struggle with the "due date" idea, because if the power is out, or the cable was down, or they were away at a game and couldn't get online, or one of the divorced parents doesn't have internet...you get the idea. What I have done temporarily is to be relaxed about the due dates - if you haven't done the activity, you won't know what's going on in class, but I don't put the grade in (100/100 for 10 completed activities) until the end of the unit, so there are no "late" homeworks gradewise unless it was a paper homework that wasn't turned in on time.
Computer-based activities, practice, and projects are fun, comprehensive, and build skills students need for their futures. However, they turn some of our accepted grading practices on their heads and I would love to have someone to discuss this issue with so that I can be clear and firm and logical with my students. I spent years developing my grading system before, and I liked it, but it doesn't work with what I am currently doing with my students. Any ideas?

Personal Learning Network

Saw this post... someones take on building a personal learning network.

http://plpnetwork.com/2011/03/09/gearing-up-for-the-big-game/

Innovation Tour

EduCon and our visit to Science Leadership Academy introduced me to Sam Chaltain, an educator and consultant who works with schools to help them become more democratic. His work intrigues and inspires me. Through Sam and his blog (http://www.samchaltain.com/blog), and through IDEA (http://democraticeducation.org/), I happily discovered this:

IDEA helps transform education by showcasing what works in education and equipping others to learn from it. And this April 3rd-5th, IDEA will shepherd a group of people through an “innovation tour,” during which participants will explore four exemplary NYC schools, with opportunities to see and experience classroom and school culture, discuss instruction, and meet with school leaders.

IDEA’s Innovation Tours offer an in-depth opportunity to really see and engage with the most innovative schools in the U.S. The NYC tour will take participants through the NYC iSchool, Urban Academy, Calhoun School, and The Green School.

Tours are designed to offer participants a chance to see dynamic schools in action, to learn from school leaders about the challenges and evolution of their culture and instructional program, and finally, to discuss ideas and applications with other teachers, students, parents, school board members, business leaders, and policy-makers involved in the tour. Tour participants will also attend Columbia University’s Seminar on Innovation featuring IDEA leaders Kirsten Olson, Scott Nine, and Dana Bennis on Monday evening, April 4th

I am excited to take part in this "innovation tour" with colleagues from BBA and to return to VT, as we did after EduCon, with new perspective and fresh ideas.

Why Twitter?

Here's an assignment I posted for one of my classes recently. I'm working with students to build a 'personal learning network,' to find folks who enrich their thinking and expand their horizons. Here's what I posted for them:

Assignment 15: Twitter

Thursday March 10, 2011

When I started using Twitter I thought it might just be the dumbest, well one of the dumbest, things I'd seen. I followed some advice to stick with it and keep searching and following people with like interests. After a few weeks of chipping away at it, things started to take off. I've discovered a great group of people who post valuable, thought provoking material. I'd say at this point that it's proven to be one of the best learning resources in my life so far. Here's how I did it:

1. Sign up for an account at Twitter.com

2. Follow some of these people to get you started:

@willrich45

@chrislehmann

@andycinek

@edutopia

@budtheteacher

@shannonmmiller

@garystager

@teachpaperless

@courosa

@jutecht

Take a look at what these folks are posting. They provide links to loads of material on education (which will fit into some projects we'll do later on here).

Then try following @guykawasaki

Guy Kawasaki posts... a heap of stuff. He uses it as a personal marketing tool and actually hires some folks to do posting for him. Collectively, they dig up a lot of cool material.

3. Then try searching for some words on your Twitter page in the search box related to your project. It might take some time to find the right words but try to make it work.

Some examples:

music

greentech

photoshop

By searching for different terms you'll find people with like interests. If you find someone interesting, visit their Twitter page and see what they post on a regular basis. If it looks good, then click 'Follow' and you'll see what they post on your page (like your Facebook wall).

Bit like hiring research assistants... for free.

4. Next, we'll move on to one of the more powerful options in Twitter called Hashtags.

You may notice in some posts you see that there is a word with a # in front of it. Welcome to hashtags! Hashtags are used to categorize your posts, to make them easy to find. Once you find what people with like interests are using for hashtags things really start to take off.

Example: Check out some of my posts... (@batman44) and see that I've added #education and #edchat to some posts. Currently about 200 people follow me on Twitter. When I post something it just reaches those 200 folks. If I post something and include a hashtag like #edchat... my post will reach everyone who scans Twitter for that hashtag. Suddenly, my post may reach, who knows, 30,000, 50,000, 100,000 people, who knows how many people... worldwide.

A recent conference I went to, Educon, used the #educon hashtag. Everyone who attended (in person and virtually on the web) the conference posted thoughts, resources, and questions on Twitter about Educon using that #educon hashtag. It produced a great buzz around the conference, a slew of great ideas brewing that otherwise would not have been heard.

5. This #edchat hashtag is one I found that people routinely use when they discuss education. Try a search for #edchat yourself on your Twitter page. You'll see a load of results, resources, ideas... powerful learning mojo. Using hashtags, it becomes easy to see how Twitter can expand your learning network. 

6. Give it a shot... and keep at it. Try searching for terms within your project and some try finding hashtags related to your project and see what it conjures up for you personally. Follow people you think are interesting, unfollow those who you don't like.

Your blog searches in assignment 14 might reveal the Twitter IDs of some people too.

The trick: 

It's easy to use Twitter simply for entertainment, to dismiss it as trivial or something that you are just not interested in. Challenge yourself to build your knowledge with it, to start building a network of people who enrich your thinking. Never know what might turn up. 

It takes time, patience and some diligence. Have fun with it and collaborate with the folks around you about how it's going. Engage.

Anatomy of a blog post: Personal Learning Networks

Blogs have a common anatomy to them... for the most part. Here's an intro for some folks who may not be used to prowling blogs.

Name Header at the top, information about the author etc on the left or right columns, then a column of blog posts themselves.

As for the blog posts themselves:
Headline
Entry (the guts)
Comments (and usually followed by a number that represents how many people have left comments).

When you read a blog post give the comments people submit a look too. To see them, click on the 'Comments' word (usually followed by a number that represents the number of people have commented on this entry) at the bottom of the post. That's where a lot of great banter occurs on what people write. That's also where you click to leave your own comments.

Here's a long post by Will Richardson called Personal Learning Networks. It talks about branching out beyond the walls of the classroom, engaging in collaborative practices and how much it can add.

Well worth a read... comments too.

Adam

Ideas for Planning Projects II

Building off that earlier post, the example of project design from Tim Best, here's how another teacher at SLA frames up their design process.

They started with three columns:

Column 1. Introduce the idea for the assignment, understandings and questions.

Column 2. List skills it introduces, concepts, new learning required, State standards you want to cover, etc.

Column 3. Intro some ideas on how a project could be built and ask for feedback. Run it by peers, and students. Likely the ideas and creativity will expand exponentially.

Choose if you'll use a class theme as in, 'everyone makes a video entry,' or more individualized, as in 'show me what you can do,' where students have more creative control on how they'll incorporate the information into a project. Analyzing the availability of the equipment you have available is key here. Consider having students utilize all the tools available. 

I noticed SLA tended to do split project scope by discipline:

Math: Folks tended to work on the same type of project.

History, English, Social Studies: Tended to offer more creative choice to students on project scope: Video, audio, blogs, wikis, web sites, etc.

Then, discuss how the project will be assessed: The rubric they use at SLA is quite good. I've used a modified version of it in the Lab for quite a while. It's better than the one I used to use.

http://www.scienceleadership.org/blog/Assessment_at_SLA 

Then…

Introduce the concepts, the new material, the skills, content discussions, etc and discuss ways to apply them in a project. Encourage students continually chime in ideas on how things could be done.

The projects are put into an archive of sorts so that every faculty member in your department (and possibly the school) can learn from.

I've shown this model to many folks over the years and the initial feedback is often the same. Here are the frequently asked questions / statements:

*I don't have time to do this.

Does getting everyone in class actively discussing and exploring the course content in deep, meaningful ways sound interesting?

You bet.

Here's where that phrase "learning is messy' comes in handy. uBd is not scripted. It'll take collaboration and compromises. That's the challenge, and the fun of it.

The teacher at SLA I spoke with said they build roughly 1/2 hour to plan each assignment with students. The design activity can be issued homework style as well, aka 'be prepared for tomorrow's discussion on this.'

*What if the path we choose in the assignment doesn't work?

Make adjustments on the way! 

Asking students (and peers I think) for constant feedback is the key. The more you do it the more your facilitation skills will build for building creative capacity.

SLA seems to have a growing theme of sharing project ideas with peers in your department as well. Often this will help frame up ideas prior to tossing it on the table with students.

*If the assignments are so dynamic, what if I don't have answers to questions that come up?

Explore the question with the group. Creates a collaborative, problem solving environment.

I don't have the tech skills necessary to do this.

If the students have creative choice on how they will present the information it becomes, for lack of a better term, less uniform. Each student will be using their own skills to build things rather than making everyone a video editor. If you pick theme based projects, everyone uses video, keep it simple and see how it goes. Ask students to collaborate to solve problems and prowl for tutorials to help. There's a lot of expertise in the room and this type of collaborative model (facilitation) taps into it.

The access your students have to  technology is a key consideration. The elephant in the room, so to speak, and why SLA's initiatives are quite successful, is the fact that every student has a laptop to explore creative capacity.

The important part to understand is that this need not be an 'either / or' option for your entire course out of the gate. Get your feet wet. Give it a try. Take on one project based assignment first and see how it goes. Discuss it with students. Explore these project ideas with students. Scale is important as you adjust and build diverse schools. Pick something simple first. The most common mistake is to make the first projects you do far too large, too complex, too cumbersome.

The part that the SLA folks collectively seemed to enjoy the most is exploring ideas for new assignments. Build off success, make adjustments as you go. Keep moving forward.

Ideas for Planning Projects

Here's a great post from Tim Best, a teacher at SLA, on how he designed a project with peers and his class.

http://practicaltheory.org/serendipity/index.php?/archives/1279-Guest-Post-Planning-a-Project.html

Adam

Faculty Meeting Summary of the SLA Trip