Learning is Change
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The new natural: blogging with iPod touch.

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Well, this is my first blog post from my new iPod touch. I have to say that once I got it up and running (it only took me 10 hours of hacking, jailbreaking, researching and troubleshooting) in really started to bond with it. Now, as I am tapping away at a pretty quick clip, I am wondering if I will ever want to go somewhere that doesn’t have wifi access. This experience has really gotten me thinking about where things are going and how tools can actually make a difference sometimes.

What it will be like for my childen? Will they ever experience disconnectedness? Will there ever be a place for them or a need for them to get away from their network. When learning is limitless because the very atmosphere is filled with information, it is hard for me to imagine a way to escape.

Do we need to protect our kids from overexposure to tech, to hyper-stimulation?

Well, perhaps (I’m pretty sure this is the best response I’vw got). You see, my daughter grabbed a hold of the iPod earlier and she proceeded to get as much fresh snot on it as possible. She is 16 months old and she already knows that you can create hints with touch. It makes me think tat a lot of these hangups we have about ubiquitous tech are ours and ours alone. We can either impart them to our children or we can learn to embrace their willingness to break things, use them for unintemded purposes, and look beyond the multi-tasking moniker and trust that this is the new natural.

Does it make sense for me to think these these things. Should I be contemplating these consequences all because of a simple iPod?

Is there a particular technology that really will shift us like we keep saying it will? What do you think?

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Podcast: It’s All Happening

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This podcast is all about how budget cuts and justifying every expenditure does not have to stop the process of creation and respect for that process. What has been your experience?

Links from podcast:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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The Case for Purpose, The Case for Better

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The purpose in putting pen to paper, making those marks across the page. The purpose in pressing keys and moving the mouse. The purpose in proposing change, in newly minted hope. Are they the right ones? Are they the ones that we will be most proud of tomorrow, or in ten years.

The reason why I ask is because of all of the things that our skeptics have challenged us with, the charge of purpose is the one that weighs the heaviest upon me. Even the would-be advocates and the late-adopers, these people matter because they cause us to push ourselves into the areas of purpose. Why would we use Google Docsrather than Word? Why should we push for open standards? Why should we create learning drastically different learning environments using tools that require a lot of professional and personal investment?

The purpose matters in what we do.

We should be able to articulate it clearly and readily. In speaking to the Math teacher on my team, she asked me what the purpose of a scribe post was in the face of other, more simple techniques for getting kids to collect what they have done in the classroom from day to day. It took me aback after we had watched the wonderful K12 presentation on the subject (Release the Hounds). My breath was caught in my throat for just one second. Am I a charlatan? Do I, in fact, have a reason for working so hard to implement blogging in the classroom other than the fact that it is my natural instinct as a connected teacher to want to connect my kids to one another and the world.

For too long I have shied away from questions about whether or not blogging will help teachers do things quicker, more efficiently, or better. I have made the argument that blogging and other environment influencing tools help to create a different system, a different type of classroom, so how can you possibly compare the two. But that is not giving a purpose. That is shifting the target. That is saying to all of the potential stakeholders that your goals are no longer valid; these are the new and improved measurements of success.I’m not sure that we can win with that argument because it dodges the whole concept of purpose.

‘Why should we change’ is a fundamental question that cannot be answered by a hypothetical appeal to a 21st century economy that may or may not exist in the near or distant future. That cannot be our main avenue to get change accomplished. To a certain extent, we must be able to explain how the collaborative tools and the pedagogy of creation and authenticity will help to get kids and teachers to someplace better, not just someplace different.

We have to make the case for “better.”

So, my question to everyone who reads this is how have you made the case that the way you do things is not just different, but better? How have you taken your learning network and been able to show that it isn’t just a bunch of educational nerds in a vacuum? How have you shown someone purpose behind what you do?

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The Man with a Plan.

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My new principal gave out some really great ideas at today’s professional development day. What would you think about having someone with this kind of vision in your own school?

Lesson Plans, Uncategorized

02.29.08

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Cores 1+4:

  1. Write-on:
  2. Tour through the Choice Reaction Novels.
    • What is your first reaction?
    • What ideas are you interested in or turned off by?
  3. What are you going to do with prompts when you get them next week?
    • How are CSAP prompts different from or the same as the prompts I gave you on Wednesday?
    • What do you do differently when you are asked to answer a CSAP prompt?
  4. CSAP Q&A.
    • Knowledge-Bowl style review.
    • Video Review.
  5. Extensions:
    • Relax as much as possible over the three day weekend and come to school on Tuesday ready to show ’em how its done.

Core 2:

  1. Rev-it-Quiz
  2. Write-on:
  3. What are you going to do with prompts when you get them next week?
    • How are CSAP prompts different from or the same as the prompts I gave you on Wednesday?
    • What do you do differently when you are asked to answer a CSAP prompt?
  4. CSAP Q&A.
    • Knowledge-Bowl style review.
    • Video Review.
  5. Extensions:
    • Relax as much as possible over the three day weekend and come to school on Tuesday ready to show ’em how its done.

Core 3:

  1. Write-on:
  2. What are you going to do with prompts when you get them next week?
    • How are CSAP prompts different from or the same as the prompts I gave you on Wednesday?
    • What do you do differently when you are asked to answer a CSAP prompt?
  3. CSAP Q&A.
    • Knowledge-Bowl style review.
    • Video Review.
  4. Extensions:
    • Relax as much as possible over the three day weekend and come to school on Tuesday ready to show ’em how its done.
Lesson Plans, Uncategorized

02.28.08

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Cores 1+4:

  1. Blog-on:
  2. Work on personal curriculum with a view toward sharing your knowledge with a specific audience.
    • How will you demonstrate that you have learned something to that audience?
    • What do you still need in order to get your personal curriculum goal accomplished?
    • Will your audience be able to learn from you, and will they be able to repeat the feat of learning?
  3. Work on your long-running Academy Authentic, to be shared out for commenting at the end of this week.
  4. Comment on the Utopian poems from one another’s blogs.
  5. Extensions:
    • Continue your work on personal curriculum and academy authentics.

Core 2:

  1. Review-on: Rev-it-Up
  2. Brainstorm:
  3. Three possibilities for working with laptops today:
    • Write your day 15 journal on your own google doc.
    • Help your group out with their goals and what if’s (of which you will get one more today).
    • Start to create your voicethread for your presentation of your island like this one:
  4. Extensions:

Core 3:

  1. Read and think on:
  2. Comment on at least 2-3 reflective pieces of your friends and peers.
    • What do you think they believe about the subject they are writing about? What is the truth they were putting forth.
  3. Continue your pursuit for a new genre of writing on your blog.
    • Talk about why you would like to attempt this genre.
    • Challenge yourself to do something that you wouldn’t ordinarily write about.
    • Tell Mr. Wilkoff when you are finished so that we can talk about them and your writing style 1 on 1.
  4. Extensions:
    • Finish your “new blogging” piece (and your reflective piece if you still need to post it).
Lesson Plans, Uncategorized

02.26.08

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Core 1:

  1. Blog-on:
  2. Starting to work on personal curriculum with a view toward sharing your knowledge.
    • How will you demonstrate that you have learned something?
    • What do you still need in order to get your personal curriculum goal accomplished?
    • Will others be able to learn from you?
  3. Work on your long-running Academy Authentic, to be shared out for commenting at the end of this week.
  4. Comment on the Utopian poems from one another’s blogs.
  5. Extensions:
    • Continue your work on personal curriculum and academy authentics.

Core 2:

  1. Write-on:
  2. Start your own Journal document (you don’t have to share it with anyone) and type up your Day 1 Journal Entry, revising it for detail as you go.
  3. Finalize your goals today and get your first what-if.
    • Choose a what-if out of the hat and react to it in a new section of your collaborative document.
  4. Extensions:
    • Continue to work on your Survival Simulations.

Core 3:

  1. Goal for today:
    • To receive feedback on your reflective writing piece from your classmates.
  2. How to get it done.
    • Post your piece to your blog and ask your friends to comment on it.
    • Tell them to write about what truth or beliefs are explored in this piece.
  3. Goal for today:
  4. How to get it done.
    • Write a new post of your choosing within a new genre of blogging in order to expand what is possible on your blog and to grow our community without another assignment blogging piece.
  5. Extensions:
    • Continue to comment on the reflective pieces and finish your “new blogging” piece.

Core 4:Core 1:

  1. Blog-on:
  2. Starting to work on personal curriculum with a view toward sharing your knowledge.
    • How will you demonstrate that you have learned something?
    • What do you still need in order to get your personal curriculum goal accomplished?
    • Will others be able to learn from you?
  3. Work on your long-running Academy Authentic, to be shared out for commenting at the end of this week.
  4. Comment on the Utopian poems from one another’s blogs.
  5. Extensions:
    • Blog your utopian poem and ask 2 people to comment on why they think it is utopian or which images and metaphors they think are particularly effective.
Lesson Plans, Uncategorized

02.25.08

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Core 1:

  1. Write-on: (Simile, Metaphor, Alliteration, Rhyme, Imagery, Symbolism, et.c)
  2. Talk about Literary Devices and Terms
  3. Return to Utopian poetry.
    • How does the Tipslastt format help you to understand and appreciate the poems you read?
    • Which literary devices are present in the poems (yours and theirs) and how do the underscore the meaning?
  4. Share your poems with the class and look for imagery and other literary devices.
  5. Extensions:
    • Post your poem to your blog if you haven’t already.

Core 2:

  1. Describe-on:
  2. Rev-it-Up: A Story
  3. What is your first day on the Island like?
    • How would you describe it?
    • What do you see? Smell? Taste? Touch? Hear?
    • Where do you go?
    • What do you suspect?
  4. Write your first island journal entry.
    • Discuss it with your group.
    • Does it go along with other people’s conceptions of their first day?
    • What do you need to revise.
  5. Extensions:
    • Work on your Survival Simulation Google Docs
    • Finish your first journal entry.

Core 3:

  2. Read Hospital Sketches
    • Why did Alcott write this piece?
    • How is it an example of Romanticism?
    • What beliefs do you think that the narrator holds?
    • Why is the journal form chosen for this piece?
  3. Do your own bit of reflection on starting a new endeavor. What was it like? How did you hear things differently?
  4. Extension:
    • Finish your reflective piece for Wednesday.

Core 4:

  1. Write-on: (Simile, Metaphor, Alliteration, Rhyme, Imagery, Symbolism, et.c)
  2. Talk about Literary Devices and Terms
  3. Return to Utopian poetry.
    • How does the Tipslastt format help you to understand and appreciate the poems you read?
    • Which literary devices are present in the poems and how do the underscore the meaning?
  4. Create a unique perspective in your own utopian poem.
    • What images are you going to invoke?
    • What metaphors would help to explain your vision of utopia?
  5. Extension
    • Finish your utopian poem for tomorrow.
Lesson Plans, Uncategorized

02.22.08

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Cores 1+4:

  1. Write-on:
  2. Using the survey for discussion.
    • How does learning about new types of Utopia teach us about the old?
    • Is our society changing fundamentally because of our need for utopia on the internet?
  3. (Core 1 only) How did your Utopian poems inform your conception of Utopia?
  4. Extensions:
    • Have a good weekend.
    • Read out of your AR book.

Core 2:

  1. Describe-on:
  2. Rev-it-Up: A Story
  3. What is your first day on the Island like?
    • How would you describe it?
    • What do you see? Smell? Taste? Touch? Hear?
    • Where do you go?
    • What do you suspect?
  4. Write your first island journal entry.
    • Discuss it with your group.
    • Does it go along with other people’s conceptions of their first day?
    • What do you need to revise.
  5. Extensions:
    • Work on your Survival Simulation Google Docs
    • Finish your first journal entry.

Core 3:

  1. Write-on:
  2. Finish discussion of Poe:
    • What makes the situation so sinister?
    • Who are you in the situation, the victim or the aggressor?
  3. Delve into Hospital Sketches.
    • What do you think of when you describe a hospital to someone?
  4. Extension:
    • Finish reading Hospital Sketches.