Category Archives: thinking out loud

Morning Musings

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I usually reserve morning blogging for my personal blog, but I have a few tidbits to share.

Netvibes Universe: Finally, Netvibes has created a way to make a public page. Here’s mine. It was fairly simple to move whole tabs between my personal and my public Netvibes.

Twitter Troubles: I follow several blogs by librarians. Remember, I like anything that combines books and the web, and librarians are all about books. Of course, now they are also about all forms of media, but I will always associate them with the big brick building on Duke Street in that housed the Lancaster County Public Library, my first library. I was surprised to find this post from Steven Cohen at Library Stuff about taking a Twitter break after evidently offending someone with his Twitter posts last week. It is a reminder that Twitter is different from bantering with our friends at the bar. It is public and we may not always know all our followers. But, does that mean we have to worry about offending them? If you aren’t happy with my tweets, stop following me. Hmm…another one of those dilemmas of social networking that I think we will each have to work out in our own way. But, at the least, we should be having conversations with our kids about how to use these tools to build stronger relationships.

More Books on the Web: Chris O’Neal and I posted a blog about books and social networking software over at Spiral Notebook. Of course, if you know me, you know that I wrote about LibraryThing. Last evening, I stayed up late to work on planning a trip to England. I was mostly working on the London bit: don’t want to miss any of the famous literary sites like Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey. In poking around, I found a great website called “Get London Reading.” The goal of the program, which began in 2006, is to get Londoners to connect to the literary past of their own city. They produced a lively, well-written “Rough Guide” to the London literary life. It includes information about the authors that have called the city home and also highlights books that have drawn their settings from London. I spent a very fruitful few hours reading it, wishing I had more time to read, and putting markers on my London map. I also wished, just for a moment, that I was back in the high school English classroom where I could incorporate Google Maps into our study of English literature.

Here’s the map so far:


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State report shows many students are not ready for college

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State report shows many students are not ready for college – Boston.com

From today’s ASCD SmartBrief, a report that while some 80% of Massachusetts high school grads go on to college, 37% of them are ill prepared and require remediation.  The article quotes a higher ed official and a NJ department of ed official about the report:

“This reports what we’ve known anecdotally for some time, and that is there are certain groups of students that, despite our best efforts, are still not graduating from high school ready to pursue college-level work immediately,” said Eileen O’Connor, spokeswoman for the Board of Higher Education.

Acting Commissioner of the Department of Education Jeffrey Nellhaus said: “We hope that the data in this report serves as a catalyst for steps to be taken statewide to improve the academic preparation and performance of the Commonwealth’s public school students.”

Or, maybe now is the moment for us to realize that children and young people and even oldsters like me learn and mature at different rates and are ready for different learning experiences at different times.  I taught one of those remediation writing courses at a public university, where students had three semesters to pass in order to gain admission.  Sadly, some of them took the course three times and still failed.  Some failed because their skills were still weak, but many because they just didn’t want to be there.  I couldn’t help but thinking that we were really wasting their time, time they could have been using to move into the world and learn more about themselves rather than academic writing styles.

I wasn’t ready for my own first experience with graduate school.  I graduated with honors from William and Mary but didn’t really have the necessary passion to be a literature professor nor the discipline to be a full-time writer.  In addition, my personal life intervened, making school difficult.  I dropped out after taking much of the course work and discovering a love for rhetoric and African American writers that I carry with me to this day.   I know what it feels like to fail educationally.  I just wasn’t ready.  I certainly don’t blame WM.   And that doesn’t mean I gave up.  I just had to wait for the right time and the right program.  Later, I found the perfect MA program, designed for writing teachers rather than English professors.  I loved it, and my thesis on literacy continues to inform the way I think about new media.

I finished that degree in 1991; now, 25 years after completing my BA in English at the same school, I’m moving towards completing my PhD.  In those 25 years, I did public relations for an art museum, taught high school and middle school, learned about technology, got pretty passionate about educational technology, and, voila, the perfect PhD program seemed to materialize in front of my eyes.  I was ready, and the education was there.  While I admire young professors who found their passions early on, I’m happy that I waited this time.

OK, I think I’m starting to sound a little mystical here and getting away from the original point:  students are very much individuals, and as much as we would like it if we could somehow guarantee that each one has identical skills and knowledge when they pick up that high school diploma, that simply isn’t going to happen because each person brings her own dispositions, her own passions, her own concerns, her own learning styles to those skills and knowledge.  Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my vision of education.  I tend to be a pragmatist who tries to work with people where they are, but in my heart, I have a sense that if we really were willing to change everything, school could be this amazing experience, rather than something that kids get through.

So, part of my vision of edutopia includes multi-age classrooms where each child gets the time they need to learn, but more importantly, the room they need to find their passions.  One of the hallmarks of a leader according to Warren Bennis is passion.  I think this is easier to envision at the elementary school level because I think there’s a sense that, at some point if we do it right, all students should be at the same place at least when they hit high school.  At the secondary level, edutopia means that we start redefining “college” and finding ways to blur high school and college experiences.  Helping kids make a plan for the future that makes sense to them and supports them beyond their walk across the high school gym stage.

Judged by Live Journal

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I keep several blogs in addition to this one.  One of them serves as the reflexive journal for my research project.  Since I wanted choices about privacy and sharing, I went with Live Journal.  I have been using it for the past year and am happy with it.  My only friend is my advisor because I started the journal as a class assignment so she needed access.  But, now my posts are completely private.

I had not posted for awhile but now that the proposal process is heating up, I wanted to record some thoughts and questions.  When I logged in, my LJ homepage informed me that I “only” have one friend.  And then helpfully provided a link to organizations where I presumably could find friends.  It was like having your mother appear at the door of room, urging you to get out and meet some people, maybe join a club or something.

But, I have LOTS of friends, I wanted to say to LJ.  And, if I don’t, it’s because I’m happy with it that way.  I don’t want to discuss model rockets or the best recipes for meatloaf…at least not here.  I actually do that other places but LJ is where I just want to tuck myself in the corner, shielding my paper from others’ views and write.  In an increasingly public world, we may need to carve out space for private thoughts in the network.  That’s what I’ve done in LJ; I just didn’t expect to be judged wanting because of that desire for privacy.

21st Century Assessments

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I am doing a presentation on this topic at EdTech 2008. I’ve spent a lot of time considering 21st century skills but haven’t ever formally organized on the topic. So here’s some stream of conscious thinking: sort of what popped into my mind first.

Defining The Subject

I got it wrong (as usual). I was thinking I would be talking about how to integrate 21st century assessments in the classroom. Alternatives to writing another report, which we learned in Frontline’s Growing Up Online, is probably plagiarized. But, at the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website, it’s more about how to assess 21st century skills. They tend to point towards tests. But I’m wondering if the two ways of coming at assessment could work together: the way to assess 21st century skills is by incorporating 21st century assessments.

So, what’s a 21st century assessments? (Don’t you like how I managed to justify talking about what I wanted to talk about?) Here’s Tuttle’s (2007) suggestion:

Effective 21st century assessment reaches beyond traditional testing to look at the broader accomplishments of learners. Assembling an e-portfolio, or electronic portfolio, is an excellent method for assessing students’ progress toward school, state, or national academic standards, as well as 21st century skills. An electronic portfolio is a purposefully limited collection of student selected work over time that documents progress toward meeting the standards. Work may be collected over a semester, a year, or even several years, passing from one grade level and teacher to the next. E-portfolios reflect more in-depth, more comprehensive, and better thought-out evidence of student learning than on-demand tests. For instance, a student’s three-hour state benchmark essay offers the feedback of a 5/6 score, while an e-portfolio allows students to document the many aspects of their essay writing improvement over the course of a year.

Excellent: eportfolios cover a whole host of the 21st century skills. Of course, portfolios were available in the 20th century, too; my high school collected student work over the course of middle school and high school. But it was haphazard to say the least, boxes of folders that had to be divided each year, with no way to get them to kids who left over the summer, etc. Digital is definitely better, pushing this into the 21st century category. Plus, if we’re incorporating the ICT skills, our kids should be creating digital artifacts that will fit nicely into those portfolios. (Although I’d like to put in a plug for having kids make “real” things out of shoe boxes or cereal cartons at least every now and then. I still remember fondly the model of the train from The Great Train Robbery that I made in 9th grade. Then, I could create the digital tour of my train to post to my portfolio. Aaah…now, I think I’m getting the hang of developing 21st century assessments.)

So, we’ve covered the core content, ICT, as well as things like self-reflection and taking ownership. Maybe even creativity and communication.

20th Century Skills

There are a few skills that were definitely 20th century expectations, too. Things like punctuality and personal responsibility. My K-12 career happened during the 20th century, and I often sat with mothers of middle schoolers scheming about how to help them develop more initiative, self direction, productivity and personal accountability, to use their 21st century names. In fact, if you looked at my grading system, some of it at least was an attempt to encourage these skills: I gave a homework grade. I gave a notebook grade. I took off points when you failed to meet a project deadline. If you looked at my plan book, some of it was an attempt to encourage these skills: built in check points for students to engage in self reflection about their work, explicit instruction in notetaking and organization, and, right at the end of my classroom time, using technology to communicate.

Leadership Skills

I am most intrigued by the Life and Career Skills. As I mentioned, a lot of them were 20th century expectations that seem to have taken on an urgency as we move into the 21st century. Others seem to be more about the kinds of skills kids develop when they participate in after school activities. Taken together, I think they represen a roadmap for leadership. And, the question in K-12 becomes the same question in graduate school: can we teach people to be leaders?

The Easy Ones

I think the 21st century skills we have at least started to figure out are the Information, Media and Technology skills. Why? Because they have 20th century counterparts. And they can be taught in isolation. The librarian, now the media specialist, has always taught information skills. Media literacy has often been a part of the language arts curriculum. Even technology. It overlaps a lot with information literacy; it’s about accessing information, so in my day the technology was the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature.

And, it’s about using technology to organize knowledge and information. I think that’s the biggie here. We didn’t have so many choices for organizing our knowledge: write a report, make a poster, maybe do something creative like a song or poem. I can still do all those things but add the collaborative, network-based component as well as the access to materials and easy publishing for sharing that knowledge and we’re into the realm of the 21st century.

Yet Another Video

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Found a link to this video in my delicious account: http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=40c570a322f1b0b65909

I don’t really disagree with any of the sentiments expressed. After all, it simply asks questions, encouraging educators to think about their practice. But I do think there is an implied criticism, perhaps. One question asks, “What do your students create?” Well, when I was still teaching my kids created a lot of stuff; some of it was digital but lots of it was physical. They made book covers, dioramas, mobiles and posters. If I were still in the classroom, I suppose I would be doing more digital creation, but I would still want my students to make physical things, too.

But there are a couple issues. One is the text-based nature of the video. Why not save the bandwidth and just turn this into a webpage? I guess videos are preferable because they can be shown in workshops and as part of presentations, but seven minutes of text on the screen is too much. Is that because the creator is considering the audience and assuming that because they are old teachers, they would prefer reading? Personally, as an old teacher, I would like some graphics.

Here’s my main issue, though: where are the teacher voices? Don’t they get any kind of say in this whole thing? Do students have no responsibility for learning?

And, then, there’s that statement: perhaps they wouldn’t hate school if they could use their iPods in class. Perhaps…but I think the abysmal drop out rate in our country is a bit more complicated than that. And, let’s just consider a couple assumptions here: every student has an iPod, schools have the resources to give students an iPod, teachers have received the training and support they need to integrate iPods effectively and efficiently in their classrooms. Lots of questions that don’t get considered.

And, maybe, that’s the ultimate point of the video: get people discussing the role of technology in education. Thanks to jsd4 for prompting that conversation.

Evidently, He’s Never Heard of Godwin’s Law

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Just got my afternoon update from the Chronicle of Higher Education. It referenced this article from The Birmingham News.  A fight has been going on over two-year colleges.  Joe Reed, the number 2 man at the Alabama Education Association, wrote a scathing letter to the chancellor of the two-year college system in which he compares him to Adolph Hitler.  I guess Reed has never heard of Godwin’s Law.  While this law usually refers to online discussion forums, I believe it applies in this case.  It says, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”  In addition, according to Wikipedia, “There is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically “lost” whatever debate was in progress.”  Guess Reed loses…

Sick Day(s)

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I managed to contract bronchitis, and the doctor mentioned pre-pneumonia, which was enough to scare me into bed. Actually, I couldn’t really do much else anyway…too wiped out. The meds are starting to help me and I’m on the road to recovery, but my husband reminds me that I don’t want to take a detour, so I’m spending yet another day on the couch. Thought it was a good chance to catch up a bit on this blog. So, media-wise, here are a few things I’ve been thinking about:

Paris Hilton: OK, so I never thought I would blog about Paris Hilton, but I’ve been watching a lot of television for the past few days and got caught up in the story of her impending jail sentence. Actually, this article from YahooNews gives lots of interesting details about her unwillingness to take responsibility for herself along with insight into the parenting skills that have led to this situation. (Her mother called prosecutors “pathetic,” an epithet she might well turn on herself at least in the mothering department, especially considering the fact that the reason her daughter is in the situation in the first place is for a drunk driving violation. She was over the legal limit and never attended the alcohol classes that were required. Where were her parents then??) But the saddest part is where the media commentary comes in. This, according to several sources, will actually help her, not because she will learn that she is accountable just like everyone else but because it will simply add to her mystique as a celebrity. EEK! She is already making the most of it: using her myspace page to appeal to her fan base to petition California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is, IMHO, wisely staying out of it. We live in a really screwed up time when going to jail can actually be good for your career. Maybe I’ll organize the Paris Hilton boycott.

Speaking of television…we do not have very good cable access, mostly use it to get internet access so choices are very limited for me or, maybe it is just limited in general. My recurring headache makes it tough to read so I’ve been surfing the channels. First, I’m wondering if I can market my own new weight-loss plan: the bronchial pneumonia cure. Just get really sick so all you can imbibe is orange juice. Do that for a week and voila, lose 10 pounds! Then, there was the Jerry Springer show that I only saw for a few minutes…a woman in a bikini painting a half-naked man then rolling with him on the floor. Please tell me why this is allowed at a time when kids are watching TV? It is clearly pornography. We filter the Internet like there is no tomorrow, but this kind of garbage seems to get no comment. Mostly, I end up at Food TV; I can always watch someone cook. Sorry…didn’t mean this to be a rant, actually, but I’ve been through all my Netflix movies.

I’m going to escape it all by taking a nap…

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Meme: Successful Habits

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From Sheryl over at 21st Century Collaborative:

List the top 5 to 10 things that you do almost every day that help you to be successful. They can be anything at all, but they have to be things that you do at least 4 or 5 times every week. Anything less than that may be a hobby that helps you out, but we are after the real day in and day out habits that help you to be successful.

Source: Miguel Guhlin responding to Ed Tech Journeys‘ Guest Blogger, Sylvia Martinez (GenYESBlog) writing on this meme by Thea Westra, Simply Successful Secrets

Before I start, I’ll say that I have a lot in common with Sheryl in terms of organization and getting up early (well, maybe not THAT early), but I’ve got a few twists that I’ll include here:

Writing:  In his book, On Becoming a Leader, Warren Bennis says that all leaders should be writers.  He writes, “Writing is the most profound way of codifying your thoughts, the best way of learning from yourself, who you are, and what you believe” (p. 43).  While I do a variety of writing throughout the day, it is the writing that I do first thing every morning that seems to lend itself to the kind of learning Bennis is talking about.  About six years ago, I adopted Julia Cameron’s practice of morning pages that she describes in The Artist’s Way:  three pages of long-hand writing every morning, first thing in the morning.   It isn’t journaling although there is some of that.  It isn’t a to do list although there is some of that.  This is stream of consciousness, get all the shit on the page kind of writing, and if I do it right (although there is no right way–how’s that for a little Zen this morning?) I find that as I begin to write the last page, ideas that have been floating around come together or problems that have been looking for a solution start to find one.  It’s weird the way it works, I can’t explain it, but whenever I think about stopping the practice, I get scared because I don’t know anywhere else in my day when I have the opportunity to commune with myself in this way.

Organization:  This is one area that I have been working on for the past year.  Like Sheryl, I try to touch things only once and have learned how to delete email and throw out paper.   I take advantage of web-based tools like Google docs and netvibes to organize electronically and am very close to my goal of living online.  I use a whiteboard for my to do list and calendar.  Oh, I use an electronic calendar, too, but I like having a hard copy to glance at quickly when I’m planning the day or the week or the month.  Staying organized is a habit I am still developing so I have to think about it every day.  But my efforts are paying off because I am better able to focus on the stuff that needs my attention instead of trying to carry my schedule or to do list around in my head.

Quadrant II Time:  I think I’ve got the quadrant right…this is from Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the best self-help books I’ve ever read.  Quadrant II is the one about closing your door and doing something that, while it is not directly related to an immediate problem, will lead to personal and professional growth and learning.  For me, this might be getting caught up on some reading or playing around with a new technology or even writing a blog entry like this one.  The important thing it is MY time for me–not to prepare for a workshop or work on an article but just to learn–and I try to fit at least a few minutes in every day.

Communing: With nature, with my husband, with my dog, with my friends…as I write this entry, I am watching the sun rise over my neighbor’s woods out back.  At the start of the new year, we moved my desk in front of the new window so I look out on our back yard and the bird feeders.  I just saw the first hummingbird on Friday, and I can watch the progress of my husband’s vegetable garden.  I try to get outside every day, either for a walk, or this time of year, to dig in the ground.  One of the benefits of working from home is being able to take advantage of nice days, and this past Friday was one of them.  I gardened hard, and it was a pleasure but it also afforded me time to just mull over stuff while I puttered.  I haven’t always done this, but I am learning that it is an essential part of being successful because without it, I just don’t feel healthy.

Health:  This one goes along with communing, I suppose, but I’m listing it on it own because I think it’s a tough one for all of us.  The busier I get, the more my health suffers.  I don’t mean that I get sick, but I just lose the energy and vitality that is essential for me to be at my best.  When I’m busy, I don’t take the time to make healthy meals, or I don’t take the time to exercise or meditate, and it shows, even more so as I get older.  For much of the past winter, I suffered from a lower back pain that, at its worst, would extend to my lower leg making it impossible to sit comfortably.  I was taking ibuprofen every day and just feeling lousy with no energy.   Finally, one morning, I decided that enough was enough.  I took a hard look at my eating and exercise habits.  I had been walking quite a bit in the fall, almost every day, but the cold weather kept me inside.  So, I drug out the yoga mat and added 30 minutes to my day.  I also got a Weight Watchers account online so I had a place to keep track of the food I was eating.  Turns out those crackers and cookies really added up.  So, I started exchanging fruits and vegetables for empty carbs like crackers.  I feel much better now.  Don’t know if I’ve lost any weight, but the back pain is gone and I feel energetic and refreshed.  No more heartburn either!

Music:  I LOVE music and considered a career as a musician.  I’m not sure I can draw a straight line between music and being successful, but I know that my life would be much less rich if it weren’t for music.  I listen to it–all kinds from classical to Broadway show tunes to good old rock-n-roll–and I play it.  In fact, this morning, the recorder group that I belong to is heading to a local elementary school to do a program for the fourth graders who are learning to play.   Like gardening, playing music gives me a chance to move away from my primary concerns and do something different even while some part of my brain is still thinking about my work.  I come away from a rehearsal or performance refreshed and ready to go.

So, there’s my list.  Hope it’s helpful!  I don’t think there’s anything really unusual on it, but I think it helps to know that others are struggling with the same sorts of concerns.  I think the biggest lesson I ‘ve learned about being successful is BALANCE.   I love my work, but I need my time, too, for things that aren’t work.  I love talking about educational technology issues with my colleagues, but I also need to talk to people who don’t know anything about what I do and have their own interests and ideas to share.  I need days of hard work and days of hard play.  And, at night, as I sip my ritual cup of tea before bed, I need to look back and see the balance then look forward and plan for it the next day.

In Less Than A Decade

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During the summer of 1998, my husband and I drove across the United State in our Tioga Arrow motor home, following in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark. Besides using the web to do a lot of our planning, we used technology to record the trip, too. We took a Macintosh PowerBook and a Sony Mavica camera with us. We used Pagemill to create webpages and then stopped by Kinko’s to upload them and email our friends. We felt very cutting edge.

Now, we are planning a trip to San Antonio and another to Vancouver. I’m using a wiki page to keep track of the itinerary, my delicious account for web resources, and Google Earth to plot the maps. Of course, I also made my flight and car reservations on the web, too, but that seems really old at this point.

I anticipate being able to find wireless widely available. I have become very fond of public libraries since many of them offer wireless. But it’s also currently available at my credit union, too! And, I’ve heard from camping friends, that many campgrounds are offering it just like hotels.

And, the publishing tools are so much easier, too, allowing us to take advantage of the wide spread access. We’ll use our flickr account to upload pictures and put digital video on YouTube or my iWeb site.

Just for fun…here’s video from our last road trip:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2irIT7uJnxc]

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Federal Way schools restrict Gore film

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Federal Way schools restrict Gore film

After conservative parents complained, the Federal Way schools adopted a new policy towards this film in which teachers must get permission to show it and then include alternative views.  Since the parents who complained also believe that the world is only 14,000 years old and that the Bible provides actual information about how the world will end, I wonder what other alternative views they think should be provided?  For instance, when we teach about dinosaurs, do we also need to suggest that despite all evidence to the contrary, the Jurassic period could not possibly have happened?

This really, though, is a media literacy debate.  Students should be given both sides of this controversy and then allowed to make up their own minds say the protesters.  Really?  Since when did fundamentalists allow anyone to make up their own mind?  The goal here is to further an agenda that, IMHO, is out of touch with science and the real world.  Yes, there is controversy among scientists about global warming, although the recent news about polar bears seems to have at least convinced President Bush, but it seems pretty ridiculous that educators are expected to incorporate a Biblical view in the classroom?  And that the complains of some pretty right of center parents can influence everyone in a school division.