Learning is Change

02.21.07

Core 1:

  1. Close to 50 people have downloaded your two conversations on Perfect Learning Environments and the Internet as Utopia, and about 100 more have listened to them online. Not many students have the kind of audience that you do.
    • Discuss-On: How would recording each class for a worldwide audience change the way that we conduct class each day?
  2. Start work on Unit 10 of your Vocabulary books.

Core 2:

  1. What is the difference between an -archy and an -ism (i.e., Patriarchy and Feminism).
  2. Read excerpts from “The Yellow Wallpaper”
    • Draw what you believe the  “Yellow  Wallpaper” looks like.
  3. What is Patriarchy and why was it such a heavy influence on the lives of women in the 19th century?
    • How have things changed?
  4. What are the -archy’s that hold you up or hold you back?

Core 3:

  1. Look at Digital Storytelling Rubric.
  2. Work toward getting your Storyboarding done.
  3. Show it to Mr. Wilkoff to sign off on it and start working on your Digital Story.

Core 4:

  1. Group 4 Survival Simulation Presentation… Finally!

02.20.07

Cores 1-4:

  • Read the Google Video Challenge
  • See the new type of Nomination on del.icio.us
  • Get comments from Mr. Wilkoff on del.icio.us
  • Trade Comments
  • Write your Weekly Authentic for Sem2_Week7 and submit to del.icio.us.

The Case for Google Video

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.

The Internet as Utopia

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This was a discussion I had with my 8th graders about how the Internet could be used as a vehicle for creating a utopia in their everyday lives. I was truly surprised and intrigued by some of their responses. Many of the students believe that the internet is a “0.” Meaning that there are just as many bad things on the internet as there are good. One student also identified the three most influential groups for his (and other young people’s) life: The Governement, Celebrities, and The Internet. Another student proposed splitting the internet into different sections, so that no one who was looking for educational materials would be able to stumble upon to pornography and misinformation.

I am encouraged by my kids’ ability to think so abstractly on this subject, but I am disheartened to find out that so many of my students hold such a bleak look of the most amazing resource of our time. I wonder if each of them were immersed in a School 2.0 experience they would feel the same way.

02.15.07

Cores 1-4:

  1. Revisit Personal Curriculum.
  2. Write out on a half sheet of paper:
    • What you have done for your Personal Curriculum Project.
    • What you still need to do in order to present.

Core 1:

  1. Take the Internet as Utopia poll as a class.
  2. Discuss the four chapters of Utopian Art.

Core 2:

  1. Based upon what you have read and learn about industrialism, what are the roles that it creates for society (for men, for women, for businessmen, for workers, etc.)?
  2. Discuss the industrialism mood in the remaining excerpts from Life in the Iron Mills.
  3. What does our society (and the societies of the near future) value that is different from the values of industrialism.

Core 3:

  1. Continue to become an expert on your Digital Storytelling topic and start to look for the facts that would make for a good story.
  2. When you are done with your research and are fully satisfied that you have become an expert on your topic, show me your notes and I will ask you a few topic questions. If you can answer them correctly, you can go on to the storyboarding phase.
  3. Start storyboarding.

Core 4:

  1. You are always asking me how I find all of the things that I do on the web. Well, with so few of us in class today, I have decided to show you how.
    • I have become an aggregator, a great collector of information. I store it up in my cheeks like a squirrel. Del.icio.us is my main resource, and we really haven’t tapped fully into it. I would like to show you just how cool finding things can be.

02.14.07

Core 1:

  1. Discuss-On: What is a society judged upon?
  2. Continue to work on the Utopian Art projects.

Core 2:

  1. Write-On: How can a movement be influenced by mood or tone?
  2. Read Excerpts from Life in the Iron Mills.
  3. Describe how these Excerpts represent industrialism.

Core 3:

  1. Continue to become an expert on your Digital Storytelling topic and start to look for the facts that would make for a good story.
  2. When you are done with your research and are fully satisfied that you have become an expert on your topic, show me your notes and I will ask you a few topic questions. If you can answer them correctly, you can go on to the storyboarding phase.
  3. Start storyboarding.

Core 4:

  1. Group 3 to present their Survival Simulation.

Parents as School 2.0 Stakeholders

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Convincing parents that the skills of School 2.0 are important is going to be one of the biggest jobs facing all teaching in the very near future. I have outlined in this podcast three possible ways of accomplishing this goal:
1. Student exemplars of continual advancement.
2. Constant communication and reflection on learning between parents and teachers, students and teachers, and parents and students.
3. Parent and Student testimonials of engagement and achievement.

My hope is that by identifying the things that are the most convincing to parents, we can create a compelling argument for technological school reform.

A Personal Curriculum Post.

The first piece of my personal curriculum that I have decided to tackle is reading 3 boy coming-of-age novels and starting one of my own. This is not something I have done absentmindedly, but rather with the strange focus of something that has true importance for my life. You see, I keep coming back to coming-of-age novels about boys who struggle within their teen years. All of my favorite books are ones that I can see from the awkward perspective of pubescent life. The only problem is that I don’t know why.

Sure, I had a pretty tough time in middle school, but everything worked out in high school, if in an overly eccentric way. I always identified with the loners and nerds, but I stopped thinking that those were bad things long ago. Why then do I seem to obsess over the minutiae of teendom. Why do I care if a boy picks up a cigarrete out of boredom or explores his city for the first time? Why am I so concerned with the first time around, when I am at least on my second? Well, in an attempt to try and figure this part of my personal curriculum out, I will be analyzing these books that have left such an impact on my reading life.

For a while now, I have been compiling a list of all of these particular influential books, and here is what I have come up with:

  1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
  2. The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green
  3. Looking for Alaska
  4. Catcher in the Rye
  5. Old School
  6. King Dork

I would like to analyze my affinity for each one of these books individually in the hopes of find out why they force me to keep looking that this part of my life with a critical eye. I think that I am both up for this challenge and up for doing something, anything to work through this obsession.

02.12.07

Core 1:

  1. Based on all of the things that you have seen, what are the truest statements that you can make about utopias?
  2. What does a Utopia visually look like?
    • Can we visualize it better than we can do it?
  3. Explore the Utopian art exhibit at the New York Public Library.

Core 2:

  1. What do you think that Romanticism and Industrialism were a reaction to?
  2. Watch excerpts from the day the world took off.
  3. Read about the revolution first hand from our blue books.

Core 3:

  1. Write-On: What does it take to become (or be called) an expert?
  2. Become an expert on your digital storytelling subject
    • Take at least one page of notes in your own words.

Core 4:

  1. Apology
  2. Group 2 Present survival simulations.

How do we assess School 2.0?

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I’ve been trying to figure out for a while just how assessment is going to look in School 2.0. I have developed (or at least half-baked) 3 types of assessments that I would consider in this new type of environment:
1. Conversation
2. Reflection
3. Aggregation