Learning is Change

01.08.08

Cores 1+4:

  1. What perfect books did your parents talk to you about? How were they different than your own?
  2. Write-On: How can one person’s utopia be another person’s dystopia?
  3. What are the different types of dystopias we encounter, or could encounter if we try to reach utopia?
  4. What would be your own personal dystopia given modern circumstances?
  5. How does your personal dystopia compare to that of Harrison Bergeron?
  6. Extensions:
    • Is equality a virtue? Should we be striving for it? Why or why not?

Core 2:

  1. Write-on: How can social action break the law and still be considered okay?
  2. Level 2 Words
  3. Watch exerpts from A Meditation on the Speed Limit:
    • How can this be considered a form of Social Action?
    • Is this an important movement to lead?
    • How is your social action like this?
    • Are all social actions rebellious by nature?
  4. Extensions:
    • Continue to work on SAP (Due next Friday).

Core 3:

  1. Write-on (to be turned in): Which of Pink’s 21st century senses do you most exemplify and which one do you wish you were better at? Why?
  2. How much do you believe that your physical brain affects your beliefs?
  3. What would you call Pink’s belief structure? (What kind of -Ism?)
  4. What are beliefs based upon?
    1. What kinds of beliefs do you think that the WFS hold?
  5. Extension: Should we look toward the future or to the past for our beliefs?

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01.07.08

Cores 1+4:

  1. Perfect Book Record-on: Speak the most important factor about your perfect book into the iPod recorder.
  2. Explore the concept of Utopia through definition, brainstorms, and writing:
  3. Brainstorm ideas about utopias and write down ALL responses:
    • What words come to mind when you think about utopia?
    • What changes may have taken place as humans redefine the term utopia?
    • What things or places might be considered utopian?
  4. Categorize the ideas that were written down.
    • How could you categorize these ideas into groups?
    • What could you call each group? Why?
    • What are some commonalities of utopias?
  5. Brainstorm a list of things that man throughout the ages would consider utopian?
    • What can you say about these things?
    • What do you call each of these groups? Why?
    • Are the following characteristics of utopias: paradise, heaven, new worlds, perfection of some sort? Why or why not?
  6. Make generalizations about utopias and human’s changing ideas regarding them.
    • What can you say about utopias that is usally true? How are our examples alike?
  • Humans have been searching for or trying to create a utopian world in some way since time began.
  • Humans corrupt their utopia after finding it or creating it.
  • Each human strives to create his/her own personal and societal utopia.
  • Dreams memories, nature, emotions, and time help shape our ideas regarding utopia.
  • Individuality can be lost in our quest for utopia.

Extensions: Continue your search for your perfect book: Ask your parents what their perfect book would be (or is).

Core 2:

  1. Level 2 word-on
  2. What can the OLPC project tell us about:
    • Learning/Education
    • Social Action Plans
    • Computers
    • Change
  3. Extensions: Continue to work on your SAP.

Core 3:

  1. Write-on: What is one thing that you own that you think is designed well? Describe it.
  2. Continue discussion of Pink’s Six Senses of R-directed thinking.
    • How would you boil down his belief structure?
    • Even if you don’t believe all of it, do you think that it adds something valuable to our world? Why or why not?

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01.04.08

Cores 1+4:

  1. Write-On: Imagine that there were a perfect book out there for you.
    It has just the right mixture of content (the stuff it is about) and
    form (the way it is written). What would it look like?
  2. Construct your perfect book on our handout.
  3. Meet with me to discuss your personal curriculum plan:
    • Is your personal curriculum limited in scope?
    • Is your personal curriculum authentic to you?
  4. Extension:
    • Try to find a perfect book based upon your handout.

Core 2:

  1. Level 2 word Act-on, Think-on, Discuss-on.
  2. What will you do if the results of your Social Action Plan are different than you had predicted?
    • How will you reflect on surprises?
    • What happens if it goes against what you believe or what is socially acceptable?
  3. Read Violent Music study.
    • How did they design their data study?
    • How did they express surprise and finding things that go against public opinion?
  4. Extension:
    • Continue to work on your social action plan.

Core 3:

  1. Interview-on: Go around to other students and ask them about their image grammar:
    • After you have heard their sentence and their rule, ask them how they know that they are right about their rule.
    • Ask them what exceptions to the rule, if any, there are.
    • Ask them how they have/could use this rule in their own writing.
  2. Belief is so much a part of our every day lives that it seems to consume us. Because of what we believe, we act, think, feel and speak the way that we do. But, beliefs fit into belief structures, or ways of believing. Each person has his or her own, but they may not be fully aware of what this structure looks like. Most people never stop to think about where their beliefs come from, and for that matter where others’ beliefs come from. The unit we will officially begin next week will be all about trying to figure out what people (authors, thinkers, us) believe and why. By the end of the unit I hope that you will know yourself better than at any other time in your life.
  3. Read excerpts from “A Whole New Mind” by Dan Pink.
    • What does he believe about the past, present and future?
    • How would categorize his beliefs?
  4. Extension:
    • Start to look for evidence that how people act is a function of their beliefs.

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01.03.07

Cores 1+4:

  1. Reset expectations for the quarter.
    • What changes and what stays the same?
  2. What is a personal curriculum?
  3. Brainstorm your personal curriculum with a partner.
  4. Extension: Write your personal curriculum plan for one of your ideas on your blog.

Core 2:

  1. Reset expectations for the quarter.
    • What changes and what stays the same?
  2. What is the most powerful thing you have ever said?
    • How did you know that it was powerful.
  3. Discuss Rev it Up…
    • Why did we switch?
    • How is it better?
  4. Read Aloud.
  5. Extensions:
    • Say something you really mean to a friend today.

Core 3:

  1. Reset expectations for the quarter.
    • What changes and what stays the same?
  2. Write-on: What is image grammar?
  3. The Elements of Style: Illustrated
    • How does each image and corresponding caption convey a rule of grammar?
  4. Extensions: Create your own Grammar caption.

The First of Many

Well, I have to start off the official Learning is Change blog with something good. I can’t go from Discourse about Discourse, a blog and podcast that were very good to me, to an overly theoretical writing style or business-only approach. That just doesn’t work. I don’t think that way, and I certainly can’t write that way all of the time.

My writing is about making connections between the vastly different elements of the classroom, the pedagogy, the technology, and the entirety of educational institutions. It is not something I take lightly, but it is also not a humorless pursuit.

One of my students showed me mebeam.com the other day while we were having technical difficulties with uStream. He knew exactly what we were trying to accomplish, create a backchannel for a debate we were waging on censorship. So, why was it that while each student made the most astute comments in the backchannel, they had to continuously make the most ridiculous faces into the webcams. Why is it that the most engaging use of technology has to be both academic and absurd. Well, because we are dealing with kids.

Every time I try to get abstract and theoretical in my EdTech theory, my kids always have a way to bring me back. I want to always remember that my students will use the technology in whatever way they see fit, and it is up to us to both learn from them and to teach them. Sometimes, we see education, and they see the entertainment. We meet in the middle as often as we can.

There are so many middles that I am trying to meet within on this blog. The middle of technology and pedagogy, the middle of theory and practice, the middle of conflicting stakeholders (parents vs. students vs. administration vs. school board vs. etc.), the middle of online and offline, and the middle of tradition vs. change.

I will try to manage these middles on this new blog. It won’t be the same as Discourse about Discourse, but I hope to take the best of what was there and hone in on the most important aspects, framing them into something palatable to a wider audience. Please let me know what you think about the change. Leave me a video or audio comment.

12.19.07

Core 1:

  1. Prepare-on:
    • Arrange desks
    • Talk about filter issues.
    • Do any last minute preparation
  2. Host the debate.
  3. Judge’s Decision
  4. Extension: Reflect on your debate. Turn in Thursday.

Core 2:

  1. Write-on: Where are you at in your social action plan? What are your next steps?
  2. Talk about filter issues.
  3. What obstacles do you think might get in the way of your social actions? How will you combat them?
  4. Work on your Social Action Plan (one person at a computer):
    • Describe problem
    • Design data collection
    • Describe process for collecting data
    • Collect data
    • Design Actions and how you think they will change things.
    • Design reflection questions
    • Reflect
    • Conclude
  5. Extension: Continue your SAP work to turn in tomorrow.

Core 3:

  1. Share-on: Share your non-human representations with your peers. Explain your choices.
  2. Talk about filter issues.
  3. Activity: Create a 2 page comic based upon your representations of you and your friends/family upon a particular injustice that you have experienced or could experience. DO NOT rush through this. Think about the visual and textual aspects of the comic.
    • How will you express your problem?
    • How will you express the stereotypes of you and your friends/family?
  4. Extension: Finish your comic for tomorrow.

Core 4:

  1. Prepare-on:
    • Arrange desks
    • Talk about filter issues.
    • Do any last minute preparation
  2. Host the debate.
  3. Judge’s Decision
  4. Extension: Reflect on your debate. Turn in Thursday.

12.18.07

Core 1:

  1. Prepare-on:
    • Arrange desks
    • Talk about uStream
    • Do any last minute preparation
  2. Host the debate, Stream the Debate.
  3. Judge’s Decision
  4. Extension: Reflect on your debate. Turn in Thursday.

Core 2:

  1. Rectify-On: Go into your google docs and make sure that both of your Academy Authentics for this quarter are labeled as Academy Authentics (1 and 2)
  2. Learn about how our What elements are missing from our Social Action Plan?
    • [flash http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=action-research3519]
      • How will you reflect? What questions will you ask yourself?
      • How will you capture the learning? How will you present it to others.
  3. Continue to work on your Social Action Plan for turning in your planning draft on Thursday.
  4. Extension:
    • Continue to collect data and to plan out your actions.

Core 3:

  1. Blog-on: How do you make sense of a world that is capable of such atrocities? How do you keep on going in your life if you know that these things have occurred and continue to occur?
  2. Discuss the final frames:
    • What is the significance of the pictures and the way that they are portrayed?
    • How does Vladek assimilate back into “normal” life?
    • How does Art seem to deal with the weight of his past?
    • How much artistic license is Art allowed to take with the holocaust?
    • What do you think is missing from Art’s depiction of his father’s story?
  3. Extension:
    • How would you portray you and your friends/family as non-human entities? Why? (Draw or write or both)

Core 4:

  1. Prepare-on:
    • Arrange desks
    • Talk about uStream
    • Do any last minute preparation
  2. Host the debate, Stream the Debate.
  3. Judge’s Decision
  4. Extension: Reflect on your debate. Turn in Thursday.

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The Most Change For The Most Kids

June 27, 2007 12:30PM

 

It is with some hesitation that I post this podcast. I am a teacher, and I will always be a teacher. However, I have been given the opportunity to do more. I have been recruited (although not formally given the position) for a Technology Integration Position in a nearby school district. This podcast is all about coming to terms with the idea of leaving the classroom so that I might create change and achieve School 2.0 in a larger way. At this point, I am very much interested in following my passion for finding solutions, and if this job provides solutions for more teachers and more students and also for my family, I don’t know that I can do anything other than pursue it. I am, however, still looking for others who have either made this transition or who have rejected it in favor of the classroom. Please e-mail me at benwilkoff@gmail.com if you have any questions or ideas.

Show Notes:

The 1.0 to 2.0 Transformation

June 19, 2007 09:24PM

 

Well, there are two main elements to this podcast. 1. This is my first blog post/podcast about being named the 2006 Totally Wired Teacher by Edutopia and Yahoo Teachers. I am honored, but I hope that the one thing that comes out of flying to San Fransisco is that I meet as many would-be advocates for School 2.0 as I can. I really would love to be a larger instrument for change than merely by blogging and podcasting. 2. I am challenging everyone to come up with a description for Teacher/Classroom 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, and 2.0. I would really like to know what it should look like at all of these levels. What should we be striving for in our classrooms? What should a stranger be able to come in and observe?
Show Notes:

The New Job Description

June 11, 2007 05:02AM

 

The more that I think about doing something “different” in my classroom, the more that I feel that process should be transparent. Not just for my students and their parents, but also for my administrators. Principals, Assistant Principals, and even Super-Intendants should be aware that there is change happening in the classroom. They should also want that change to occur, meaning that they should actively support it. But the only way that this is going to happen is if we start advocating for it. So, this podcast is all about how we should be writing our own job descriptions for the jobs that we dream about doing as teachers and presenting them to our administrators. I think that if we take this proactive approach, many will listen and start to think differently about what should be going on in the classroom. Show Notes: