The Tools of the Future

One fact that rattles through my brain constantly... we have no clue as to the technology that will be available to us in 10-15 years. When I think back to what the world was like 15 years ago, I am amazed of the changes that have occurred.

Then...Cell phones were only owned by people with money, the Internet as we know it was non-existent, most homes did not have a PC, music was available at the record store on tape and limited Cd's, and MTV actually played music video's.

Now... 5th graders have cell phones, the Internet is a world of publishing and creativity, most homes have multiple PCs, music is available at the touch of a button, and MTV is unwatchable.

Many more changes have occurred. One fact will remain the same for the remainder of time... we do not know what is coming next! We can assume and make predictions, but, the technology of tools is moving at an exponential rate. This sometimes can be quite frightening. To think of the future and the new literacy's we are faced with as teachers makes me wonder... As an education system, are we ever going to catch up? When will we start to recognize, as a whole, that kids are learning in an entirely different world.

One example is our publishing capabilities. I grew up in the 90's. This was a short time ago. Being "published", meant you had to go to school to be a writer. Then, by a stroke of luck, you had to write a great book that people would buy. Then you would take this book and pitch it to a publishing company. If the book had potential, they may write you a book deal.

There were many "ifs" in this process. Now, there are many online publishing tools that can be used on the Internet. Publishing is as simple as having a creative idea and creating it with software on the Internet. You then click a button that says PUBLISH, and there you go. I created a 52 page book of pictures with commentary in a few hours, and had it on my doorstep in a week. It was a great alternative to a boring picture album. Now, I have a published book of my own pictures on my coffee table at home. I'll have to admit, the book was published with professional quality. It is also available for anyone to buy. The possibilities are endless with tools such as lulu and blurb.

What tools do you think will be available for us in the future?

Fearing the Unknown...

I just read a great post by David Warlick. Check it out! The report can also be found here. This report shines a little light on what parents actually know about how their kids are using the internet.

MEDIA Specialists?

Standing outside yesterday loading our daycare vans in the rain, I began a discussion with a fellow teacher about students and their hobbies. The conversation ended up becoming somewhat of a debate. The quote she added... "Kids today only care about sitting in front of the television with a bag of chips or playing video games". I began by adding my opinions on the differences of the 2 activities.

Watching television is a passive activity. It doesn't take
much thought to sit down on a couch and watch a television. One positive attribute of watching television is that one can gain a little knowledge of the world around them, if they are watching intuitive programming.

Playing a video game is an active activity. A child constantly needs to learn, create and rethink their actions through the course of a digital video game. Problem solving techniques are constantly being tossed about. A child doesn't only watch, they have to constantly think of their actions, learn from their mistakes and try new strategies to reach a different outcome.

The teacher, being a Media Specialist, didn't necessarily agree with me. I thought it was quite sad that this media specialist is so disconnected from the students that she teaches. Shouldn't all forms of media be her forte'?

This leads me to believe that we need to look at the function of a media specialist in our schools. I have read posts from other bloggers describing media specialists in other areas of the country. I am aware that there are media specialists that are turning to digital means to teach in their libraries. As the information revolution changes the way we use media, shouldn't the job description of our media specialists change? Has it changed already? If their job descriptions have changed, then why havn't they changed with it?
The only changes that I have seen occur in libraries is the computerized system to check out a book. This is the only change in 20 years. I do not want to generalize, but this is what I am seeing.
There needs to be reform in our libraries. We need to get the media specialist on board. Now, I ask the question... what is your media personnel doing to engage students with the tools of the information revolution?

Can we ever get it right?

A great post from a great blogger has prompted me to chime in on the topic of curriculum. Curiosity begs me to ask some questions...

Who is writing our curriculum?
Do they actually care about the outcome?
Are they concerned for our students?

Across the board, I feel the answers are concerning. I feel as though they do not have the best interest of the children in mind. If they aren't thinking of the children, who are they thinking of? I can't answer that question. The theme is one of more is better. The more curriculum that we can possibly fit into one school year = better educated students. Being a product of this system, I feel slighted.

Why can't we get it right? Why are those in power blind to the fact that we teach to educate the student, by the best means possible. By definition, this means we give the student the best possible tool to complete the task. We give the student every opportunity to have rich experiences to reflect upon. The current system sets students up to fail. We don't give students enough time and experience to master anything. There is just enough time to be exposed to the information. We expose students to information and expect them to be masters. We wonder why the majority of students would rather be at home on the computer or watching television than be at school. Of course, they have mastered these tools!

If you don't want the world to know, then...?

Sitting in staff meeting yesterday after school, our community police officer gave us the normal talk about drugs, gangs and violence in our neighborhood. Being in an elementary school, he skipped most of his normal talk because he feels as though we don't have to deal with all of these problems in our school, yet.
The officer went on to tell us a story about how the County Police arrested several gang members near or around our school. He asked us... "How do you think we caught these gang members?". It was a baited question of course. He just clicked on his next slide to show us these students MYSPACE pages. These students published pictures of themselves on MYSPACE in front of large amounts of illegal drugs and guns in their hands. Needless to say, these students from a local high school were wanted for a number of offenses and were arrested when the officer recognized them on the Internet.
Some people would say that this story is quite laughable. Everyone laughs at the bad guy when they are responsible for getting themselves caught. I think there is a television show about this very idea. I did not laugh at the story though. I think this story scratches the surface of what we as a society are up against right now and in the future. Kids growing up today have to be guided as to the amount of personal information they share with the world.
I know that my school district has a whole team that sits behind computers at the Board of Education Central Office that scrolls through MYSPACE pages all day long. They use these pages to find out about trends in schools, fights that may happen, and illegal activities that may be done by students. They have been very successful at preventing many occurrences from taking place in the past few years.
This gets me to my point. If information is put out there for the world to see, it will be used. We need to teach kids at a young age that if they don't want the information known by the world, don't put it on the Internet. Some get it and some don't.

A Vision of Students Today

What a great video about how 21st Century students spend their time learning. Interestingly, it seems as though they are spending less time watching television. They have figured out that there are more interesting and meaningful means of acquiring information available today.

How can we expect students to continue to validate attending institutions of learning, when they can seem to do all of the learning on their own with tools in which they already are proficient?

SCRATCH me some...

The challenge was to teach SCRATCH to a group of 4th and 5th graders. What happened after an hour of giving the students the basics was amazing. Giving the students the remaining 20 minutes of our meeting to "play" around with the program, they were teaching us.

This was a powerful moment. With the possibilities endless as to what they could accomplish, the students found ways to incorporate their own voices and make seemless moves with their sprite's. The goal is for this group of students to create a collective presentation using this program for an upcoming MESA competition in April '08. The ultimate goal for me is to expose these students to a world of creativity and collaboration to reach a collective goal.

With laptops in hand, headphones and mics on head, and smiles on their faces, these students used their creative minds to explore the program with no boundaries. The feeling after the meeting was one of hope and expectation.

After I become more familiar with the ins and outs, I will begin to incorporate SCRATCH into the Science curriculum. This is a true example of collaboration in our education system. Believe me... these students will teach me everything there is to know about SCRATCH. I am looking forward to learning.

Progress?

When thinking of the conversations that have been taking place for years, I often wonder why progress is too slow in our education system. Reading through my archived articles in the New York Times, I came across an example of what is slowing the progress. Margaret Spellings, our nations secretary of education is blinded by the hype of "Every Child Pushed Along Act".

The first river that needs to be forged is one of complete and ultimate reform. This "Act" is doing what it is intended to do. The children in our education system that need the most help get pushed along to make our National Report Card appear great. I see this happening every day. We can't continue to lie about the success of our education system. The current protocol is not working.

Our task at hand for educators is to TEACH children. We need to find anything and everything that will motivate these individuals to learn how to learn. Right now, we are teaching children to memorize. We are teaching children that the grades they get, reflect what type of person they are. We teach them that the most important reason they are in school is to pass a test in the Spring. We push them along, even if they do not understand the information we are teaching. The results are accumulative. The students are learning how to be helpless. We make decisions for the students, because we don't trust them to make important decisions on their own.

This effects the students that are the most vulnerable in schools. Until the people that understand the task at hand have positions of power, this will continue.

I am not claiming to know the ultimate solution. I am claiming to be able to recognize the fact that their needs to be a solution, and fast.

The list of students that currently have ADD or some other type of Attention disorder is growing at a staggering rate. Many times I wonder if this problem would still exist if we as teachers could find ways to keep their attention. I know the answer is not constant memorization, boring worksheets, time fillers, and days spent studying for a test to beef up our nations report card.

No time!

I can't seem to find the time to blog. I have been mixed up between teaching 14 different classes, organizing a Science Fair, parent conferences, running our schools MESA club, grading the labs of my 14 different science classes, feeding and taking care of 2 birds, 2 aquatic frogs, 557 guppies, a red eared slider (turtle), and 2 Jack Dempsy's (fish), and trying to keep up with reading my feeds. Some where in between this I have managed to start a concrete job at my parents house and have been closing pools on the side.

I have some reservations about heading the mandatory MathEngineeringScienceAchievement club at our school. It feels as though it is another attempt by our government to make themselves look like the hero. The mandatory DVD we had to show was filled with the glorification of government jobs. It even came with a complete section of Math Raps about the importance of these jobs.

I don't know how I feel. I will have to get further into the guts of the operation before I form an opinion.

Editing... revisited

I enjoy revisiting topics. Every day I come across an instance where I hear or see someone not using the skills to edit information put out into the public. Next time you watch the news on your local television channel, pay attention to the reports on "health studies" that they report. Usually, they preface the report with a teaser before a commercial so that you continue to watch. This usually sounds something like this... "When we come back, find out why walking down a city street in the middle of the day may lead to an early death". They rely on the shock of the report. When they finally get to the story, they interview someone that was walking down the street and came across a man hole cover that was loose. This person decided to get on the news by calling the news station and reporting their near death story. The next day, everyone that sees this report, immediately fears man hole covers and stays clear of them.

This is a made-up story of course. I was using it as a metaphor for how ridiculous I think some news reports are. A great example of this fear reporting... 3 drinks daily increase risk for breast cancer . I recently saw this report on the news and then looked it up of the Internet. Now, the report says that if a woman is to drink 3 alcohol drinks daily, she increases her risk of breast cancer by 30% or as much as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. First of all, I don't know any women who drink 3 alcohol drinks a day. If they do drink three drinks a day, they probably already smoke a pack of cigarettes.

This is not the point though. The report did its job. Now everyone equates drinking 3 drinks daily with smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. People go to work the next day like they are intelligent and start barking statistics out that they heard on the news. Now everyone thinks that drinking a few drinks every day is as harmful as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. The report told you what they wanted to tell you and didn't mention all of the other harmful effects of smoking. The news focuses on the shock value of the report and wants you to watch their station.

This is where editing needs to come into play. As a society, we need to listen, learn, and then decide what is a true and valid study. These statistics may be true, but we as a society need to learn how to question a study and not give so much credit to the reports.

How creative can you be in 2nd Grade?

This week, I just finished doing a great and simple activity with my 2nd Grade students. We discussed physical properties of objects and how they can be altered/changed. This engagement lesson is the starting point of another lesson in which the students create a paper puppet from an ordinary paper lunch bag.

This is how it goes...

I start by listing physical properties of myself. I ask them to start chiming in. We talk about some physical properties of other items in the room and they begin to catch on. Before you know it, the students can define the term physical properties. They have to be helped a little to get the word "describe" added in there.

Any way, after you talk about physical properties, hand out a quarter sheet of notebook paper. You tell them that they are going to use their creative minds to change the physical properties of this piece of paper. We then discuss the properties as the paper appears now. We purposefully do not discuss the ways in which we can change the physical properties (they would use all of the ideas discussed, that is how they have been trained). I tell them that they can use a pencil, some crayons, and their hands to change the properties of the paper any way they want.

I emphasize that they can CHANGE THE PROPERTIES OF THE PAPER ANY WAY THEY WANT.

When I tell them to begin, almost on cue, I have hands flying up in the air. The students all want to ask me permission to do certain things to their paper. They are deathly afraid to alter the paper any way that would get them in trouble. They need someone to hold their hand through the process. Even though I have told them repeatedly that they could do anything to the paper, they still do not understand that concept. I continue to just say to them "You can change any properties of the paper that you wish". I do not answer their questions.

How I look at this situation...

These students, at the age of 7, have what I like to call learned helplessness. They have been taught and have learned to be completely helpless in this situation. Out of 3 classes of 2nd grade students (95 students), only about 5 or 6 students had the ability to use their complete imaginations and do this assignment with a creative and unique agenda. One student balled up the paper and colored it. When I asked him what properties he changed? he said " I changed the shape, the color, and the texture". Yes, he used these exact words! Only about 4-5 students ripped the paper into pieces. The thought of altering this perfectly good paper seemed almost taboo for these kids.

The final product was eye opening, and I think we actually had some reversal of the learned helplessness. These kids can learn to be self-sufficient learners. This is a concept that needs to be looked at in a beginning of the year professional development course.

The Wiki Project

After much thought and reflection, I have decided to take the wiki to a new level. The project will consist of creating somewhat of a club at my school. Being after school, I will be able to have the time to create a group of interested students that want to use this vehicle for collaboration and learning. The group/club/project will consist of a few students from each 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th grade classroom. These students will be responsible for editing, creating, deleting and maintaining their own grade level wiki page. Each grade level will be organized as a committee not unlike we as teachers are a part of at our schools. These committee's will meet and organize the information that will be created on this site.

After presenting the idea to our Principal, she was elated. She doesn't quite understand the power of a wiki quite yet... it will take time. I explained to her the passion I have to change the methods in which we teach. I went on to explain the ways in which this wiki will change the structure of learning information. I have mentioned this idea to a few other teachers, and have received nothing but positive thoughts and ideas.

The wiki will be used for publishing factual information that is curriculum based in our science program. Students can use the wiki for study guides, science project ideas, and unique publishing purposes. Parents can use the wiki for informational purposes along with keeping up with the curriculum that is being taught throughout the year. Teachers can use the wiki for informational purposes in their class and side projects that can be fused with science. Science Project ideas will be posted along with any important rules governing them.

I am maintaining my optimism and am looking forward to getting the project on the road. Stay tuned for any further updates on this project and remember to check it out, as it is a work in progress.

Information in line for EDITING

The ability to edit information is the single most powerful skill one will need now and in the future in order to make sense of the world around us. As of now, I see editing in practice in the blog/web 2.0 world.

Editing does not only encompass looking at text and deciding whether or not it is credible. Editing to me involves the ability to edit all forms of media, entertainment, and any other information presented to us daily. This is not an innate skill. Humans are not born with the ability to consume information, have the skills to check credibility and decide to use the information in a way that makes sense... we need to teach this in our schools.

Our information revolution is not going anywhere. We can't take a break from the information, and come back another day. Information is omnipresent. Taking a break from the information flood would only involve us delaying the information that is presently available to us.

In the coming years, this will be a highly regarded skill that will be needed to sustain every day life. This skill is not only needed by adults... we need to teach children strategies to begin the process at a young age. Children need to be able to hear something in the media and know that it may not be the entire truth. They need to be able to watch the MTV Music Awards Show and know that they do not have to agree with the ideas of an artist presenting. They need to be able to pick up a magazine and read it not as truth, but as a practice session for their editing ability. The skill of questioning and not automatically believing comes into play. Always question, discuss and then decide.

These skills need to be used everyday in order for students to know how to use them. The fragility in our society will begin to show if generations are not using the skills of questioning and editing.

Disturbing trends

The school in which I am employed, as many other schools, rely on fundraisers to gain funding for the many student programs. I agree with this means of obtaining money for programs. However, in the past few years, I have noticed a disturbing trend taking place in our elementary schools. I am not aware if this is taking place everywhere in the country, but in my district it is prevalent.
Waiting for a class to come to science, I was drawn to the gymnasium, where I heard screaming and yelling coming from the mass of students enthralled by a speaker. I knew from a previous announcement that this assembly was for our beginning of the year fundraiser. Standing in the back of the gym, I was shocked.
The man at the helm was about 45 years old and dressed as if he was appearing on MTV. I couldn't help but notice that his rant sounded more like an infomercial about getting rich quick. Every word uttered from his mouth was filled with empty promises of students winning money for selling items to people in their neighborhood. If you sell 10 items, you can pick from envelopes containing amounts of cash. If you sell 20 items, you can get the envelope, and a spin on the cash wheel. If you sell 30 items, you can get the envelope, a spin on the wheel, and a bonus reward. If you are the top 2 sellers in the school, you get all of the previous rewards, and you can stand in a box with cash being floating around you while you grab as much as you can grab.
I had already heard enough. As I watched the teachers in the room roll their eyes in disbelief, and the students yell in excitement, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. If this wasn't enough, it continued with the speaker showing a video. The video contained students and "adults" walking around flashing stacks of money in their hands, students dancing around like adults at a dance club, and stretched limousines parked outside of the school. As the video was playing, the students were so excited about the life they were going to lead after gaining all of this money and fame. It was a surreal moment in a public education facility.
At the end of the assembly, the speaker told the students how they could get free prizes the very next day. He went on to explain that if they took home this form to their parents, filled out 10 addresses of people they know, and returned it to school the next day, they would get 2 free prizes. What a way to generate a mailing list to mail junk to people.
I know that I cannot be the only educator that sees the ill values that we are pouring into the glasses of our students lives. As a parent, I would have issues with this. As an educator, I have issues with this. We are showing the students what we think is important in life. We are showing these students that gaining fame and money and not an education is the goal. There are many other ways to motivate these students. I think we have sunk to a new low level. There will be more to come on this topic...

Focusing on Common Sense?

Recently, in a staff meeting at school, the idea was brought up that we need to be careful when we punish an entire class for the actions of a few. I do agree with this idea, but the entirety of the conversation is what I do not agree with. Me being outspoken, I asked, "What event occurred to invite this comment to the party"?
It turns out that an irate parent had come to school yelling about how their kid had to write an apology letter to a teacher, when their kid would never do anything wrong.
The poor student had to take a few minutes out of their leisure filled day to do some writing. We actually spent about 10 - 15 minutes at our staff meeting discussing this "problem" and some solutions to the "problem". We spent more time talking about the situation than it probably took the student to do the assignment.

Schools are putting their tails between their legs a little too often now. Why do we fear a parent? What will a parent do to us that is so terrible? Is it our litigious society that has brought us to fear what might happen?
I think we need to put these instances in perspective. Common sense needs to move back into our lives as a staple of making better decisions. This student didn't miss recess, didn't get publicly reprimanded, and wasn't treated any different than any other student in the class.
Parents need to stop crying and schools need to stop putting their tails between their legs when a parent yells.