Home Posts tagged "The Weekly Authentic"
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Classroom of Distinction: Tools vs. Learning

Published on May 15, 2007, by in Uncategorized.

Last Week, I was at the Intel Classroom of Distinction Interactive Forum. Technically this was a technology conference about the future of education, but I have learned much more about 21st century learning by listening to NECC, TIE, SXSW, and many others on my iPod.

I have been hearing from so many educators (Wesley Fryer, Steve Dembo, Paul Allison, David Warlick, and others) that all of the learning comes from the conversations, not the sessions. They are absolutely right. In the hallways we were talking about pedagogy and authentic learning with people who have a vision for education, but in the presentation rooms, we only discussed a well formatted agenda for specific (always proprietary) tools.

After going through all of the motions of this day, I have decided that gadget wonks are of no value to me. Although I see that they are disconnected from the classroom, that isn’t what bothers me. Many people who aren’t in the classroom have great ideas for the future of education. What bothers me is that they have can’t see the entire vision. They can’t see the affect of reflective practice, of piecing together the scattered collaborators into a movement.

The entire vision for School 2.0 is of desperate importance. It is the only way that the learning environment will change. Gadgets do not create change, people create change.

If I really believe that, I need to stop asking myself how I can get more gadgets into the classroom. What I really need to start asking is how I can get more people into the classroom, through collaboration.

I want to cram as many people into my classroom as possible. I want parents, students (both mine and others’), teachers, community members, and anyone else who has something of value to feel as though they are a part of my learning environment. They should not feel like a foreigner in my learning environment. But, how do we do this? How do we start to bring in all of the rich voices from the outside world without the dependence upon gadgets and proprietary methods? How do we stop teaching for tools themselves and start teaching for learning?

It may sound like I am making a semantic distinction, but I feel, especially after spending an entire day at an extended sales pitch, that our students will never transfer learning if they believe that they can only do it on one tool, or in one classroom. We need them to know that learning happens everywhere with every person they know in a key role. The only way that they will learn is if the people they are connected to learn with them.

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Safety vs. Panic

Published on May 10, 2007, by in Blog.

For over a month, my students have engaged in working on a few different wiki projects (Utopias, -Isms, and Book Discussions), but the excitement climaxed when they started collaborating with a group of 8th graders from Wallingford, CT. The students started to create their own spaces to talk about the issues that were close to them as well as some issues related to the projects that they were collaborating on. Daily, I would have students come up to me and tell me about a conversation that they were having with a middle schooler on the other side of the continent. This, needless to say, was unassailably cool.

Last night, though, every student from Wallingford was removed from the spaces that they formerly had called home. The following were the reasons given for this total reversal of technology integration and collaboration:

A parent has complained about wiki and even contacted the State General Attoney to see if it violates anything. Her grievances about the wiki were the following1-there were three personal pictures — all on the map of the home page
2-some kids used their real names on pages or as a username
3-in my post on icon I identified that where I live and that I teach at a “blue collar school”
4-I had pictures of the school and the rooms which could provide a blueprint for a killer
5-some kids put personal descriptors “I am five feet tall with brown hair named Sam”
6-on my “lesson plan blog’ One thing i wrote down last Thursday was something like “Myspace words of Wisdom” which she interpreted as me telling the kids about how they should join. I actually had a heart to heart talk with the kids about what they were including and the problem with the public sites. We just had two students in CT have full scholarships revoked after the University saw their MySpaces.
The other part of this is that the school system looks down upon “outside” websites run by teachers.
So because the attorney general is now possibly involved, that implies risk to a minor, and that’s frankly not something I am going to play around with.

The question I kept thinking about after reading this e-mail is, “Who failed?” Was it the teacher who didn’t set up enough rules and guidelines for the students that were written down? Was it the parent who failed to work with the teacher and understand the nature of the collaboration? Or, was it the students who couldn’t grasp the public nature of the internet?

Because of one or a combination of these factors, these students are being shut out of an avenue for self expression and learning. What can we do so that this doesn’t happen to us?

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What’s in a name?

Published on May 1, 2007, by in Uncategorized.

I hate to resort to cliche, but I’m afraid that there isn’t much that I can do about that now. I have already committed way too too much of my time to choosing a name for a podcast that doesn’t even exist yet. Cameron Reilly over at The Podcast Network in a recent conversation over Skype has charged me with producing a podcast about the following (my words, not his):

Creating an educational movement based upon technology integration, student-directed authentic learning, and anywhere/anytime collaboration. However, this show is not merely for educators, rather it is an easily accessible look at what 21st century classroom are capable of. The show will be grounded in practice rather than theory, so as to convince all of the students, parents, teachers, and bystanders who may still be clinging to the ways in which they have been taught. The show will have an interview-based format, in which I will be probing the experts on what can be done to create change. I will be searching for ways to cultivate School 2.0 in the minds of all who are interested in seeing our children meet their true potential as thinkers, leaders, and doers.

Sounds pretty exciting, right? Well, here is the rub. I have no idea what to call the thing. All of these really terrible names are jumping around in my head asking me to use them for a project that may go on for years. I can’t be tied down like that. I need something clever, something with hope and promise. Not something like the ones I have already written down:

  1. The EdTech Vision Podcast.
  2. The EdTech Community Podcast.
  3. The Open Education Podcast.
  4. The TEACH Podcast (Technology in Education through Authentic Collaboration and Heuristic learning)
  5. Technology in Authentic Education Podcast
  6. The Next Generation of Education Podcast
  7. The Education Collaboration through Technology Integration Podcast
  8. The Education 2.0 Podcast (This one was Cameron’s)
  9. The Educational Technology Collaborative Podcast

None of these will do, mostly because I don’t think that any of them really encompass what we, as a community of teachers and learners, are trying to accomplish in transforming education. So, I put it to you, humble readers. What should a podcast be called that is trying to spearhead an entire movement into a weekly episode. If I am going to envision so much collaboration in the classroom, it had better start with me.

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Web Presence

Published on April 10, 2007, by in Uncategorized.

There is a new type of reputation out there. It lingers and builds long after you you have stopped caring about it. Managing it is hard. Too many elements to focus on, and too little time to maintain them all. So, you do what you can.You look for just the right resources to update at just the right time to get you exposure. You believe that in doing some good, you will get recognized. But this kind of reputation doesn’t work like that. Your expertise can go unrecognized for years. So long as you have a well founded web presence, others will find out just how amazing you are, eventually.

I often think about this digital trail that I am leaving behind. It is amazing to me to know that many of the ideas I am having right now will affect others years from now. I still receive e-mail about a band webpage I put up when I was 16. It is scary how much the internet has a memory. It is cataloging every keystroke I publish. And this is beautiful. The internet knows that my name is associated with my ideas. This makes me truly happy.

So, in an effort to make concrete something that is so disparate, here are the key elements of my web presence (these will have active links in the near future):

Podcasting:

  1. Discourse about Discourse: Educasts
  2. Discourse about Discourse: Educasts Digg Page
  3. Weekly Authentic Gcast
  4. Yongesonne Gcast
  5. 2005-2006 Discovery Podcasts

Blogs:

  1. Discourse about Discourse
  2. Daily Lesson Plans
  3. Isabelle’s Dandelife

Wikis:

  1. Academy of Discovery
  2. Discovery -Isms
  3. Discovery Utopias
  4. DC Edusphere
  5. Yongesonne’s Educational Technology Resources
  6. LA Cresthill Collaboration
  7. Lesson Planning Wiki

Social Bookmarking:

  1. WeeklyAuthentic del.icio.us
  2. bhwilkoff del.icio.us

Social Networking:

  1. Myspace
  2. Standpoint
  3. Stop CyberBullying
  4. Facebook

E-mail:

  1. Gmail
  2. Firstclass

Public Accounts at services I regularly use:

  1. Teacher Bloglines
  2. Student Bloglines
  3. Discourse about Discourse Feedburner
  4. Flickr Account
  5. Google Calendar
  6. Google Documents
  7. Google Reader
  8. Conversate
  9. Jotform
  10. Wufoo
  11. Technorati

Number of Google hits for “Ben Wilkoff” – 891.

I hope that none of this comes off sounding narcissistic. This exercise merely meant to show the beginnings of my digital legacy. It is also meant as a challenge for you to estimate your web presence and to start to think about how your digital trail of breadcrumbs will help others down the road.

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The Value of Amateurs

Published on March 30, 2007, by in Uncategorized.


I was at a wedding this past weekend and I had a sort of epiphany. I’m not really sure why it was at a wedding rather than anywhere else, but I immediately took the white paper napkin clinging to the bottom of a cold water glass near me and I scrawled out the greatest fallacy of modern education. It is so ingrained into the way in which I teach, I’m not sure I ever would have even recognized it without my constant reflection of how I am using technology in the classroom.

Without too much further exposition, the fallacy is as follows:

Professionals create more valuable content than amateurs.

By calling this statement a “myth” I am not aiming to devalue the work of people who have a lifetime of experience or that I would like to declare that students officially know more than their teachers. Instead, I would like to analyze the way that we define professionals and amateurs, and the kind of respect these kinds of definitions can and should provide.

In our stereotypical understanding these two words, we seem to glorify the professional and vilify the amateur:

We value all that the professional can do for us. He gets the job done. Although you pay a premium for his services, it are always worth it. He has the credentials that tell us he can do what he advertises, and he packages everything so nicely, presenting us with just the right amount of content as to not over or underwhelm. We feel safe with the professional in charge.

Now, the amateur on the other hand, works on his own schedule, according to his own interests. He gives us more information than we need, and more specific details than we could possible comprehend. His excitement is annoying when you consider that he doesn’t have the experience to back up his work. Sure, he is willing to collaborate with you, but you don’t have time for it anyway.  The amateur makes connections to others’ work by remixing it, sometimes by breaking intellectual property laws. The amateur is dangerous.

I would like to now enumerate the actual traits of each worker/learner. This is not an exhaustive list, but I think it gets the point across.

A professional is:

  • Someone who has experience with marketable skills in a given discipline.
  • Someone who has achieved accredited education based upon standardized performance measures.
  • Someone who requires compensation and/or credit for products and ideas.
  • Someone who’s work must remain consistent and thematic.

An amateur is:

  • Someone who has specific skills that allow them to create a specific product.
  • Someone who has achieved personalized education based upon self-assessed interest and achievement.
  • Someone who does not require compensation and/or credit for work.
  • Someone who’s work can be sporadic and follow inspiration in any field.

I may be oversimplifying things a bit in making these statements, but I believe that this dichotomy is the way we encounter the entire field of education. Each student we encounter is an amateur, and we see them through the stereotype. We should, instead, give them the respect that that word really commands.

My examples of amateur wisdom do not come from wikipedia or from digg. They come from my classroom. I would like to show you what my amateur students are capable of.

Professionals would never have created these. No one would have paid money for them or said that they are achievements equivalent to 1400 on the SAT, but they still have great value. Their value is in their their amateur status. Their value is in their passion and authenticity. Their value is in the fact that each one of the students involved in these projects are learning for themselves. To me, that is amazing.

Professionals will always be among us, and I think that they deserve credit for their work. But, real learning happens in the realm of the amateur. Real challenge and job satisfaction happens there to. The real challenge of School 2.0 is incorporating more amateur moments, encouraging all students to become true amateurs.

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Thoughts to get me through the Colorado Student Assessment Program

Published on March 13, 2007, by in Uncategorized.

CSAP can do weird things to you. It kind of goes to work on your head. There is nothing unique about your test. It is the same as everyone else’s. And so you crave to do something original, to snap the unending monotony of test giving and test taking. The Colorado Student Assessment Program provided me with an abundance of time to think and be creative this year, and unlike my students, I was actually allowed to write out my ideas. (Students can’t write out their ideas because we are afraid that they will write out an answer to the test or pass a note, as if they wanted anything more to do with the test after it is over.)

This year I chose to think about next year that seems to be approaching so rapidly as to be nearing terminal velocity. All last week, I said what I have always said about next years, “I am determined to get it right next year.” But this year the “it” is different. This year I am not referring to classroom management. This year the “it” is not referring to teaching a book or unit the right way. The “it” this year is that I am going to get the next generation of my classroom right. I am going to make sure that I have all of the research and ideas in place so that I know and everyone else knows what the Discovery Team will look like when it comes through this fundamental change.

So what will change next year? Well, it is my hope that teaching will become a more collaborative process and learning will become more student-directed. This may sound far-fetched and somewhat hollow, but I have outlined everything, down to the assessments (much better than CSAP if you ask me) in a wiki. The fact that it is a wiki means that it can change. This vision is malleable by anyone who is interested in taking a stab at making thing better for teachers and students.

The Academy of Discovery is more than just a vision, though. It is a gauntlet that is being thrown down. It is a statement that says education will not be effective without collaboration, context, conversation, change, connection, and continuous support. This ultimatum, however, is more for students than teachers. It means that once we provide you with all of the infinite resources, creativity, potential of a connected classroom, it is your responsibility to be amazing. It is your responsibility to direct your engagement. It is your responsibility to learn.

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Paper is outdated.

Published on February 27, 2007, by in Uncategorized.

Paper is:
•   Static.
•   Linear.
•   Finite.
•   Singular.

Digital Writing is:

•    Dynamic.
•    Multi-dimensional.
•    Infinite.
•    Pluralistic.

With these things in mind, all writing should be:
•    Infinitely editable
•    Inherently clickable
•    Continually discussed
•    Focused on revisions and the history of revisions.

Dave Cormier turned me on to the idea that we are still writing for the technology of paper, even if we have moved beyond it in terms of its capabilities. I found intriguing and more than a little frustrating to think that we are still formatting our ideas to be read in a linear and static text form. We have put so much investment as a society in the technology of paper that very few people are ready or able to move past it. Yet, in order to fulfill the potential of a fully connected society, we must start to think in new ways, read in new ways, and especially write in new ways.

First, the idea of ownership must be changed. All writing should have the ability to be edited at any time. Just by clicking on the letters, you should be able to add your own piece of understanding. Anyone should be able to see the original iteration, but they should also be able to see any additions, subtractions, contextualizations, or expansions. This is the only way to have true collaboration. If we stop setting up boundaries for ideas—yours vs. mine—we will all become better writers and visionaries.

All words should blue and underlined; they must be clickable. There is no reason for a story, a poem, an essay, a blog entry, a novel, a biography or even a letter to lack context. Each word should take us to someplace new. Each word should let us explore the web of thought that caused it. Now, if one person were trying to accomplish this, it would never happen for want of a real life. Yet, if each user can add his or her own contextual links, the writing context would grow, the webs of knowledge would spin themselves, and reading and writing would change forever.

If there is anything that blogs have taught us it is that writing should not exist in a vacuum. Ideas that are not read and discussed are of no value. So, logically, we should share all of our writing, discussing each aspect of our discourse and getting instant feedback on our vital work. Comments focus us upon revision, but they shouldn’t be at the bottom of the page. They should be attached to the words, never separated from the context of the ideas. Paper doesn’t allow us to hyperlink our comments, connecting them to the words that made us think of the comments in the first place, but digital writing can allow this if we can move beyond our vision of the internet as Digital Paper.

Digital Paper does not allow us to push writing to what it can become. It limits us to think of writing as a singular and static process. Things like Google Documents are great resources, but they lack the pervasive nature that digital writing needs to have. The entire Internet should be editable, discussable, and clickable. Only then will we be able to shrug off our dependence upon paper as a substance and a metaphor.

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The Case for Google Video

Published on February 20, 2007, by in Uncategorized.

Getting a service un-banned is much harder than getting it banned. Whether it is a book, a substance, or a website, once something has been declared undesirable, it is nearly impossible to see it as wholesome again. It has now something to be guarded against, something to be feared. It holds too much power, and so we must be protected from it. Google Video now falls into this category. Google Video poses too great a threat to our children to be viewed on school property, and therefor has been blocked by our district as well as many others. Like so many other decisions about new technology and resources, this one has been seen as merely one more filter must be put into place in order to ensure a safe educational environment for all. Unlike so many other decisions about new technology and resources, this one must be fought against and overturned. I am throwing down the gauntlet for logic and for progress, for authentic learning and for a flat world.

Because Google Video has already been banned, I must first take a look at the reasons (or potential reasons) why it was banned and address each issue individually.

  • Google Video has “R-Rated content” defined by 8e6 technologies (our filtering software) as “Services pertaining to anything that involves 18 and over material such as lingerie and swimsuits, revealing pictures. Sites that are adult in nature without being explicitly pornographic.”
    • Although I cannot refute the fact that there are a few Google videos that have these elements, I take exception that this filtering is a one size fits all solution for a question of content that many if not most students see every commercial break in prime-time. This solution means that a first grader needs the same protections as a 12th grader.
    • This also leads us to believe that there is no way to filter out certain content, rather than an entire resource. The mere fact that 8e6 can filter out the video portion of the Google domain leads me to believe that this is possible.
    • This solution asks us to accept that teachers are inept at verifying that students are working with valuable video resources, and that students are merely hungry for the smuttiest pictures they can find, which on Google video are pretty sparse.
  • Video resources, like Google Video, provide only augmentations for the curriculum and are not an integral part of the learning experience.
    • All of the research currently being done on learning styles comes back with the same conclusion: our students are growing more and more visually engaged. Although Google Video is not the only visual way of presenting materials, it may be the most dynamic. Google Video clusters content by user defined “tags” or categories. These tags provide students and teachers with multiple chances at learning the same thing. Not every student is going to learn in the same way, and many students need the contextual elements (background knowledge) that a collective history on film can provide.
    • Taking away Google Video and other services like it is not like taking away a student’s No. 2 pencil, but rather their colored pencils. Students can still write out their responses, but they cannot illustrate their words, conceptualizing them into proof of actual knowledge. Google Video is not just about consuming video content; it is about creating content. My students respond to videos on a regular basis, critiquing them or expanding their boundaries. They have made video content an integral part of their writing and blogging life. In fact, many of them do not see any boundaries between the act of inserting a picture, a video, or text into their writing. My students are living in a culture of remixed information. When they see something that should be questioned or drawn attention to, they need to be able to do it, at school. By making sure that they can only talk about this content at home, we are insuring irrelevancy in the lives of our students.
  • Not enough teachers and students are taking advantage of Google Video on a regular basis for this decision to affect many people.
    • True, Google Video has not reached a tipping point in our schools. Most teachers are not using it as a daily or even weekly classroom resource. This logic, however, is backward. The fact that most teachers are not using this resource does not mean that it should be taken away, it means that Google Video should be promoted and talked about, touted as an ingenious way to create engaged learners. We should be leading the charge to change people’s perceptions about what constitutes learning. We should not wait for the outside pressures of popular culture, and the glacial speed of institutional change. We should educate our students on the potential that video sharing provides for teaching, so that they may better make their own decisions about what content to consume.

Along with all of the reasons above, I think that there are still more that need to be brought up so that our school district can see the value of Google Video and other web services like it.

  • Google Video is free, and unlike any paid service, provides up to the minute coverage.
    • I do not believe that you get what you pay for. I believe you get what you share for and what you build for yourself. Because Google Video is built by its users and all of the video files are shared with entire world, the resource can remain free yet be essential. The fact that Google Video gets most of its content through non-traditional means (read non-institutional) it means that much of the time it contains content that can provide for a more varied viewpoint, a more in-depth look, or a more timely expose. For example, if you search for information on the London Bombings, the videos that pop up are not only excerpts from cable news channels but also first-hand accounts from people who were there with camcorders and cameraphones. This kind of citizen journalism is exactly what we are trying to teach our students to do. What better way of showing them its potential than by letting them use it in the classroom.
  • Google Video asks students to become content evaluators and validators.
    • Along with my previous example of the London Bombings, the search results also turn up a few “documentaries” on conspiracy theories for the government’s involvement in the bombings. These films are far from the mainstream, but they present a perfect opportunity to teach our students the value of content evaluation. Our modern students are presented with many conflicting reports of events, ideas, and relative values on a daily basis. It is our job as educators to show students how to judge the validity of each claim they hear. They should be responsible for researching the credibility of each story, rather than just accepting it because it is on the internet, or in a textbook.
  • Google Video is not about the content; it is about the potential.
    • The real value of Google Video is not the content that is already there. As I have said previously, it has not reached a tipping point for education yet. Google Video is valuable, instead, for its method of content distribution, its potential to change the way that we share information. If our students have the ability to create and upload their own investigations, if they have the ability to critique and evaluate the content of others, and if they have to potential to hover around certain topics of interest and forge organic learning communities, then there is no end to power that Google Video can give them.

To be sure, Google Video is not the only resource out there that our students would benefit from use at school, but I believe that getting it un-banned is a first step in creating the conversation about un-banning 21st century learning. So, I challenge everyone who feels the same way as I do about Google Video and other resources like it, to throw down their own reasons and examples for why Google Video is so valuable to the classroom. I would like to compile them all together and send them to 8e6 technologies and our District technology administrators to see if we can find a solution to this rather misunderstood problem. Link to this post, comment on it, or build upon it. I would hate to think that the power of all of our voices would go unheard when it is put in such inherently understandable terms.

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The maddening search for resources.

Published on February 6, 2007, by in Uncategorized.

Resources are scarce. People are scrounging around, negotiating uneasy solutions, forgoing all tact. The truth is: people are desperate. They want what other people have.

The computers. It always comes down to the computers.

“When can I schedule my class in the lab? What times exactly do you need the laptops? Can I just use a few of the computers in the library for a research project?”

These are the questions I hear all of the time from the hungry hoards, myself included. You see, there is significant disconnect between what the people need, and what is available. This situation is creating a power differential, a hierarchy of computing power. How can we possibly survive in such dire straits as these? With teacher pitting themselves against teacher, signing up for more than they need just so they are guaranteed some.

“You want a projector? Well, I’m afraid you are going to have to do a little dance for me to get it? Mhuahahaha…”

 Who sees this tragedy of unrealized potential? Who notices the loss of interactivity? Who understands the lack of new knowledge being created in the minds of young ones? All for want of a few laptop carts.

We can end this horrific state. We can come together and guarantee a laptop for every child, but only if we recognize the problem. Only if we take the time to care.

Please go to the following links and see what you can do for 1:1 learning. It is the only chance we have to end this unfortunate situation.

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Morning Podcasts and the New Class

Published on January 30, 2007, by in Uncategorized.

    I started podcasting in my car on the way to school. This is the one time that I am completely alone during the day. Barring a hideous accident that threatens life and limb, nothing is going to interrupt me and my thoughts. So, I started thinking really big. I started talking about the future of literacy and then meandered into convincing every teacher to pick up a laptop and start blogging with their classes, I have finally settled on constructing better schools for the current generation (You).

Yesterday I began my podcast by asking myself about the current Graduation Requirements. Are all of these things really essential if many of you will never need to know how to explicate a poem or find the derivative of cosine. We are building students that are all alike. How will you ever stand out in high school, college, or life if we are merely creating different sized versions of the same student. So, I started thinking about what the real graduation requirements should be. I came up with these skills as essential, the ones that all other content can be filtered through:

  1. Collaboration, and building upon other’s ideas
  2. Writing for specific purposes
  3. Creating and pacing your own learning
  4. Thinking critically and coming to evidence-based conclusions

But what kind of classes do you take in order to get these skills?

Well, I am proposing that the first class that would get at these new Graduation Requirements would be a class in Collaborative Writing. This class would consist of personally selected projects that involved research, writing, revision, and a huge dose of communication. All students would set up two ways of writing/publishing their work: a wiki and a collaborative document editor. The wiki would be used mainly for research and idea generation. The students, working in teams, would start pulling resources together and linking and writing about them on their wikis. They would also be doing the scholarly writing on their collaborative document editor (like Google Documents). In order to generate more ideas, they would hold weekly podcasts/interviews that measured how they were doing on their projects. They would post these so that all students in the class could see just what others were doing in order to accomplish their writing goals. We would also set up a space and time for students to interview experts on their topics using a blog, a skypecast, or a simple e-mail. Throughout the class, the students would constantly be revising their definition of collaboration in the 21st century, aiming for a class definition that gets at all of the skills they think will be useful later on in life.

Obviously, this particular class needs some fleshing out, but I think that it would be one worth taking and worth teaching. I believe that more writing and thinking would get done in a class like this than in any two composition classes. And I think that is really the point.

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