Learning is Change

11.05.07

I am at NACOL’s VSS 2007 in Louisville, Kentucky today. Here are my sub plans.

Cores 1-3:

  1. If you get stuck in your blogging today,  please go here and find inspiration.

Core 4:

  1. If you are “finished” or “stuck” in your essay writing:
    • Get a couple of people to read it and comment.
    • Comment on other students’ essays.
    • Look for revisions to make your piece more persuasive
    • Edit using one of the following checklists if you like:
    • For added flavor, record your essay as a podcast (on garageband with music if you like).

If and when you finish working on your essay, you can start/continue your Academy Authentic work.

Without Community…

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This is my first time blogging from in on an airplane. My daughter, Isabelle, may be the cause of that. She is cleverly intriguing, so much so that it is difficult to be very reflective when she is saying “da da da” at you. My trip today, and the reason for this blog post, is to find out what the North American Council for Online Learning has to add to the School 2.0 conversation.

I was not the only one with this idea, however.

I just so happened to sit next to Kathryn Knox, Ph.D. (Senior Director of Curriculum and Instruction at the Colorado Virtual Academy) and we struck up quite the conversation about online learning.

My favorite part of the discussion was when we stumbled upon community as a tenet for a successful online school. She put it this way: “Without community you don’t have a school. You have a program but not a school.” This idea really caught me and it hasn’t let go yet.

Are we trying to create programs that are viable and sustainable, or are we trying to create communities that constantly need tweaking and guidance. The first is easy: Set up the systems, install the software, write the content. The second is terrifyingly hard: engage all stakeholders, listen, change.

I really need to keep looking at the Academy of Discovery to make sure that I am not just creating a program, I am creating a community.

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Combined Word Dictionary Video Podcasts

This is our first attempt at a video podcast. Because not all of our students have agreed to have their pictures posted online (and because I hold security at a premium), I have obscured their faces somewhat with CamTwist. This project is about creating new words and putting them into our modern lexicon. Please feel free to use these words in your everyday speech. Also, Please comment on this project.

11.02.07

Core 1:

  1. Debrief-on? How many new words can we expect in our lexicon based upon your work with the Combined Word Dictionary.
  2. Record a few definitions for classroom podcast.
  3. Turn-in Essay, and self-assess according to Kid-Friendly Rubric.
  4. Read Pied Piper of Hamelin:
    • How can music create changes in the ways people feel and act? Are these changes always positive? What are some examples of ways in which music may have affected events in history?
    • What assumptions did the Mayor make about the Piper?
    • What was the Piper’s point of view about how he was treated? Were his actions justified? Why or why not?
    • What is the lesson of the poem?
    • Why do you think the Piper chose music to charm the rats and the children?
    • What did the Piper mean by the words, “And folks who put me in a passion/ May find me pipe after another fashion”?
    • Why was no one able to stop the children?
    • How did the Piper persuade the Mayor to allow him to get rid of the rats? What evidence did the Piper use to support his argument?
  5. Extensions:
    • Answer the following question in a paragraph: Should the mayor have paid the Piper? Why or Why not?

Core 2:

  1. Practice-on: Practice your interview with your partner.
  2. Record interviews using iMovie and CamTwist
  3. Finish reading Chapter 4:
    • How does someone detach themselves enough from humanity to laugh about burning someone else?
  4. Extension:
    • If you forgot to share your Academy Authentic with me, do so.

Core 3:

  1. Group-on: Get into your “Best” groups and be ready to vote on your categories.
  2. Vote on Categories 1-5.
  3. What new categories should we add for next year’s students?
    • How are these better than the current categories?
  4. Extension
    • Read your AR books.

Core 4:

  1. What is revision in persuasion?
    • Why did the founding fathers make the changes that they did?
    • How has their persuasion benefited society?
    • How do you give that kind of importance to your own writing about a book.
  2. Choose two revisions made in the Declaration of Independence and write out your theory on why these particular revisions were made from the viewpoint of one of the founding fathers.
    • Speak as if in the continental congress and try to convince the assembly to revise the document before sending it out into the world.
  3. Extension:
    • Continue working on your body paragraphs for your persuasive essay.

101 Resources and Tools for Authentic Learning

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I have always shied away from making absolute lists of resources. They are dated a few months after they are penned. I much prefer the enigmatic, socially tagged nature of a delicious account. Why take one person’s word for it, when you can see exactly how many people have found a resource to be a good one?

But…

More and more I am coming to realize that most people are not looking for this. They do not want a searchable database of thousands of Web 2.0 offerings. Instead, they want a well organized document that makes the connections from technology to pedagogy for them. Most teachers are not trying to find a new way of mashing up two web pages so that it gives off a split screen effect (if anyone knows of something, let me know). Most teachers would say that is pretty geeky. And each and every one of them would be right.

I have made peace with my idiosyncratic geek status in the education world. I don’t want to be defined by it, but I am still proud of it. I think it is about time that I stop trying to make others like me, though.

Our model of success should not be to see how many people we can get to be WebHeads. Our model should start somewhere more along the lines of Step by Step: Building a 2.0 Classroom. Or prehaps, as simple as a series of documents. Something that could exist as paper, that could still have value in the analog world.

So, about a month ago I started working on such a document. The document is supposed to be an introduction to the essential tools and resources needed for creating an authentic learning environment online. It is not perfect, and it is not finished. When I started sharing the early version on Starting from Scratch, quite a few people contacted me wanting to know if they could use it. Please use it, upload it, change it, but keep me a part of the conversation.

  • What should be there that isn’t?
  • What can be eliminated as inessential?
  • Can this document be used for other purposes?
  • How can it be refined?
  • What is the next step for teachers when they have the document?
  • Is it enough to get people started?

If you missed the link to the document above: 101-resources-ver-2.pdf

Please let me know what you think.

10.31.07

Core 1:

  1. Discuss-on: Do you have to organize the examples and quotations in your essay chronologically as the book has?
  2. Continue working on your essay, perfecting it into a form that you would want to turn in.
    • If you finish, get a couple of people to read it and comment.
    • Comment on other students’ essays.
    • Look for revisions to make your piece more persuasive
    • Edit using one of the following checklists if you like:
  3. For added flavor, record your essay as a podcast (on garageband with music or on the iPod recorder without music).
    • Or, you can work on your next Academy Authentic.
  4. Extension:
    • Make sure that your essay is ready to turn in by Friday morning. (I changed it because of Halloween.)

Core 2:

  1. Act-on: Print out your oppression piece from your blog or take it out of your notebook. Share it with one person so that you can get feedback on it and practice reading it.
    • Did the mood of the story come through to your writing?
  2. Record 4 oppression pieces for the classroom podcast.
  3. Explore the images of the time period:
    • How do these images help you to understand the desperation in the Logan’s voices?
    • How do they change the way that you think of owning land?
    • Which images are most closely tied to your piece on oppression?
  4. From within your niche (or not), finish work on your next Academy Authentic (due Friday).
    • Share with others on docs to receive comments (or receive comments on your blog)
    • Revise to the point that you would be proud to turn it in.
  5. Extension:
    • Finish your Academy Authentic for Friday and share it with Mr. Wilkoff

Core 3:

  1. Using your own book or the searchable google merchant of venice, answer the questions in this word document. Then e-mail it to me using your http://mail.academyofdiscovery.com account. (Try to take no more than 20 minutes doing the quiz.)
  2. From within your niche (or not), finish work on your next Academy Authentic (due Friday).
    • Share with others on docs to receive comments (or receive comments on your blog)
    • Revise to the point that you would be proud to turn it in.
  3. Extension:
    • Finish your Academy Authentic for Friday and share it with Mr. Wilkoff

Core 4:

  1. Write-on: Take one of your quotes and try to prove your thesis with it.
  2. Reflect upon how well you have accomplished a good quotation.
    • What have you learned about writing with quotations?
  3. Continue working on your essay, moving into your body paragraphs that prove your thesis statement with examples and quotations.
  4. Extension:
    • Finish your body paragraphs for Friday.

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Imagery in Blogging (and Cell phones in the Classroom)

As my students work more and more in the non-fiction realm due to their new found niches, they have a tendency to lose sight of just how descriptive and beautiful their writing can be. As a blogger, I have found that some of my greatest pleasure is derived from my ability to string together an image or a particularly well described passage.

A blog is informative, but stylistically so. The ability to craft a unique image within the information is a virtue that we should all be striving for. So, in an attempt to put these words into practice, here is what I am talking about.

Topic: Cell phones and iPods in the classroom

With his two fingers pushed together, carefully spreading them outward across the screen, one of my students was doing something that I had never thought of a couple of years ago. He was blogging from his iPod. Immediately, we gathered around the gadget, pondering its significance. It was distracting and powerful: the ability to blog about anything at any time. Just think if twitter wasn’t blocked at school.

I still can’t quite wrap my head around cell phones being used for things other than voice. I have been saying for quite a while that we need more laptops in the classroom, as many as there are laps. But can’t we get done most of what we need with our plans from verizon and AT&T? Watching the mini-safari browser spin into action leads me to believe that we aren’t far off from this reality.

I want my students to be thinking about how they can utilize their cell phones in my classroom not how they can sneak a look at what time it is on the display when I am not looking. Their cell phones are bejeweled with authenticity. In many cases, their cell phones are so representative of their lives that given the choice of losing a cell phone or a limb would cause them to pause to think.

Where is the research that says cell phones are great for the classroom. Well, mostly it doesn’t exist yet, at least not that I know of. If anyone has seen any great studies or has done some great work with non-laptop ITC, please share. All I have right now is anecdotal evidence from my classroom and the presentation from K12 Online 2007. Surely there is more to it than that.

I have italicized (for my students) the moments where I intentionally added imagery or description in order to make a potentially boring subject interesting (at least to me). My hope is that blogging moves closer to this style and further away from the dense writing of academic papers. Let me know what you think about either idea.

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10.30.07

Core 1:

  1. Discuss-on: What makes a conclusion a good one?
  2. Check out some good feedback about revision.
  3. Continue working on your essay, perfecting it into a form that you would want to turn in.
    • If you finish, get a couple of people to read it and comment.
    • Comment on other students’ essays.
    • Look for revisions to make your piece more persuasive
    • Edit using one of the following checklists if you like:
  4. If and when you finish working on your essay, you can start/continue your Academy Authentic work.
  5. Extension:
    • Make sure that your essay is ready to turn in by Thursday morning.

Core 2:

  1. Write-on: What is creative non-fiction?
  2. From within your niche (or not), finish work on your next Academy Authentic (due Friday).
    • Share with others on docs to receive comments (or receive comments on your blog)
    • Revise to the point that you would be proud to turn it in.
  3. Finish work on your chapter three Oppression piece. (You can use it for your Academy Authentic if you wish.)
  4. Extension:
    • Finish reading Chapter 3 and write your Oppression piece which was outlined in yesterday’s agenda.

Core 3:

  1. Write-on: What is creative non-fiction?
  2. From within your niche (or not), finish work on your next Academy Authentic (due Friday).
    • Share with others on docs to receive comments (or receive comments on your blog)
    • Revise to the point that you would be proud to turn it in.
  3. Extension (or in class after blogging):
    • Finish Act II and your scale(s) for tomorrow.

Core 4:

  1. Act-on: Grab a laptop.
    • Go onto morguefile.com and grab an image url for an image that
      represents your thesis. Start by searching for things to do with your
      book.
    • Put that image at the top of your essay for inspiration.
  2. Work on writing your essay in any order you like. Please ask neighbors and Mr. Wilkoff for help if you need it.
    • Introduce your thesis.
    • State your thesis.
  3. If you finish early, publish it and have others comment on it. You can also continue working on your Academy Authentic.
  4. How can you use another author’s words to prove your point?
    • What are the attributes of a good quotation?
    • How do you plug that quotation into a persuasive paper?
    • How do you use those words to weave your own theories and ideas?
  5. Extensions:
    • Refine your Introduction so that it in only introduces what is essential.
    • Write down 3 quotations that would help to prove your thesis.

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The Complexity of Relationship Scale for MOV

Bassanio and Portia engage in a relationship based upon nothing but a look from one to the other. They are overcome with this psuedo-love. So much so that Bassanio is willing to risk his friend’s life to pursue Portia. The total amount of time that Bassanio and Portia have spent together is so slim that it hardly seems worth the three thousand ducats he solicits from a sworn enemy. On the other side of this relationship, Portia is hardly involved. She merely believes that she could love Bassanio, that he is better than any other suitor to come her way. Of him she says, “I remember him well, and I remember him worthy of thy [nerissa’s] praise” (1.2). This hardly seems to be a description of true love.

Lorenzo and Jessica, however, have real affection and true experiences together. Their plans to be with one another do not involve schemes or money. They are simply interested in being with one another, not being with one another’s fortune or lack of fortune. Jessica is willing to give up her religion in order to be with Lorenzo, providing the old adage that “love is blind” to the follies and transgressions of the individual (2.6). Lorenzo is a master of action, and unlike Bassanio, he needs only to catch Jessica in her earnest confession of love, a leap of faith. Their relationship clearly is both more filled with true love and is more complex in deeds rather than words and money.

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