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| Christmas Day in the Queen City |
Monday, December 27, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Sinking Ship
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| Who are the stakeholders in the standards and accountability movement? When in comes to literacy learning, whose literacy are we measuring? How do we know what future literacies our children need most? |
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Video Book Reviews
'Freedom' video book review with Ron Charles
Why ever do a diorama again? I understand we all have a lot of shoe boxes lying around just waiting for a project, but that's not an excuse. Above is a perfect example of where book video reviews can go: Ron Charles of the Washington Post.
I don't expect that 1st graders will be this erudite or sophisticated. but I suspect that they will be even more creative. I also image that creating a space for video book reviews, such as a place on your edmodo site, will allow K-12 students to share reading interests much the way amazon.com reviews do. The literacy practices involved in creating a video review are manifold--reading, writing, speaking, collaboration, revision, editing. Don't worry about not meeting your SCOS. Do a task analysis of this activity and then go through and match them to what your students are actually doing and you'll be blown away at what they are accomplishing. Many of them will have no idea they are accomplishing any of the standards because they are having so much fun.
I also envision excitement and possibility in the use and creation of digital book talks like those at DigitalBookTalk.com from the University of Florida.
Again, this is another way to engage students in digital composition that may motivate them beyond their recognition that they are working and learning.
You can put away the diorama. I promised Dr. Hipple (RIP) almost 20 years ago that I'd never assign one. I haven't. I'm not asking you to promise that; just asking you to try something else instead.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Facebook Fast?
I have many friends who post things like,"I'm taking a week off from Facebook, so you won't see me around for a while." Or "Facebook is taking too much of my time, so I'm taking a break. Check you later." Maybe not those words exactly, but something like that. Then last night as I was squinting through tired eyes at my 1000s of feeds in my Google reader, I saw an evangelical preacher's call to take a Facebook fast. Now I don't make a habit of doing what evangelical preachers ask me to do, but I thought this was an interesting challenge. The fact that he issued it on a Wednesday did not escape me. Why not a Sunday, for Pete's sake? It could be so much more easily done on a Sunday. And his challenge wasn't limited to Facebook. It was to Twitter and email and texting and all electronic communication. In the middle of the week, this guy issued an evangelical decree to get up out of our chairs and go talk to people or write a letter on a nice piece of stationary instead of using electronic communication.
That's sweet.
For some odd reason, all day I've been guilty avoiding Facebook--as if it's the source of my sins. In reality, I never had the home addresses of most of the people I'm friends with on Facebook. And really, it's better that I communicate with most people over email. A handwritten letter runs the risk of 1) being illegible, 2) sounding pitiful or harsh, and 3) never reaching the intended because I hardly ever have stamps. Yes, we may be moving into a world where as Tao Lin said "good things can only arrive through email." But I guess the main issue I have with an externally imposed Facebook fast is that it is one more thing to feel guilty about; one more way for someone one else to say that what we are doing is not good, and that certain ruin is to come from it all. Instead, I am going to ask myself, what does Facebook and Twitter and email and texting do for me that is good? Where are the places that it gets in the way? I do see times that I could set better limits on technology in my life, but I also see amazing benefits. So no more guilt over social networking. Let each person decide her own limits and those who need "fast" days get together and free up some bandwidth for the rest of us.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Why I struggle with Diane Ravitch
http://kindle.amazon.com/work/death-american-school-system-ebook/B002ZSJTHA
The link above is to an Amazon Kindle quote page for The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch. I have not read the book, so for those of you looking for a review or for someone knowledgeable on the book, please note that I am not claiming that here. In fact, I am not claiming much knowledge of Diane Ravitch at all except some strange generational skepticism and confusion.
I am absolutely thrilled that someone as powerful as she has come out against the tyranny of the test. Her bold statements such as
...it assumed that higher test scores on standardized tests of basic skills are synonymous with good education. Its assumptions were wrong. Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools. CHAPTER SEVEN
The link above is to an Amazon Kindle quote page for The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch. I have not read the book, so for those of you looking for a review or for someone knowledgeable on the book, please note that I am not claiming that here. In fact, I am not claiming much knowledge of Diane Ravitch at all except some strange generational skepticism and confusion.
I am absolutely thrilled that someone as powerful as she has come out against the tyranny of the test. Her bold statements such as
...it assumed that higher test scores on standardized tests of basic skills are synonymous with good education. Its assumptions were wrong. Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools. CHAPTER SEVEN
Highlighted by 131 Kindle users
assure me that she is no longer an advocate for the old ways of No Child Left Behind. Still, I wonder what she envisions when I read that she dubs 21st century skills "the latest fad."
Misunderstanding of the connection between standards and curriculum: That is an interesting idea to ponder as we head into the new era of common core standards. Is it even possible at this point to turn away from way has been set in place? I guess that is where I am really confused with Diane Ravitch. How can she purport to want to stop something she helped put into play? How can she fail to support innovation for curriculum that is founded on multiple forms of literacies, including those valued in the common core, not simply on "baking nut bread."
These are thoughts I ponder heading into a new semester. I am thrilled to focus on Teaching Comp. this semester, especially coming off a summer of immersion in digital composition across the curriculum. Sad to say, I have also been transformed by my smart phone. But even before I could Twitter, Google reader started changing the way I read. Sharing news and images has become exciting. I'm looking forward a growing community in which to share!
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Social networking for the younger set
Oh I should be writing so many other things right now. That is why this is so critical.
Today I promised my 7 year-old daughter I would open her a Facebook page. I did think ahead enough to say I would only do so under our dog's name as an alias. I messed up though because I entered in my daughter's birthday, and quickly learned that my daughter does not meet Facebook's minimum age of 13. I didn't even know that you had to be 13 to have a page. My hand was sort of forced into this thing because my daughter's best friend, who is 8, has recently opened her own FB page. This has been sort of annoying for me because, even though I've blocked her from seeing most of my information, she can still see when I'm online and she jumps in to chat--ugh. My daughter quickly began insisting that she was old enough, and as a compromise, I thought, maybe a dummy page.
She did not take the blow well. I sent her out of the house with a promise to find something age-appropriate. We'd tried last year, but there was nothing there. I searched around quickly and found Togetherville. It looks ok. We're trying it today. I've already had to tweek my own FB settings because it was posting what I was saying to my daughter on my page, which was embarrassing. It was also posting invitations to family and friends to my page. So it's a little like a Farmville app in that sense. You can go into your settings and adjust them to not allow the applications to post to your wall. There are games, art projects, quizzes, and some pre-chosen Youtube videos in the app. It says it's ad free, but the pre-chosen You-tube videos contain enough trailers for movies to pay for the site, I'm sure.
All this is weighing on my mind enough to postpone what I really should be writing on imagetexts because I think that parents do play a role in children's early online education. When my daughter got online for a while, we talked about the layout, about the safety issues, about the privacy, even about the way advertisement was built into the site. She saw a girl with the same name as a girl in her class and thought it was that girl, so we started the conversation about the power of connectivity of the web. I do not want to leave these conversations up to her teachers. I hope (and know) her teachers have these conversations with her, but I also know that parents cannot count on media and technology literacy being covered in the classroom. Engaging children on the web, even social networking sites like Webkinz, Club Penguin, and Togetherville, is engaging the very real literacies they will be interacting with throughout their lives.
Now to Blake, anime, and imagetexts. Wish me luck.
Today I promised my 7 year-old daughter I would open her a Facebook page. I did think ahead enough to say I would only do so under our dog's name as an alias. I messed up though because I entered in my daughter's birthday, and quickly learned that my daughter does not meet Facebook's minimum age of 13. I didn't even know that you had to be 13 to have a page. My hand was sort of forced into this thing because my daughter's best friend, who is 8, has recently opened her own FB page. This has been sort of annoying for me because, even though I've blocked her from seeing most of my information, she can still see when I'm online and she jumps in to chat--ugh. My daughter quickly began insisting that she was old enough, and as a compromise, I thought, maybe a dummy page.
She did not take the blow well. I sent her out of the house with a promise to find something age-appropriate. We'd tried last year, but there was nothing there. I searched around quickly and found Togetherville. It looks ok. We're trying it today. I've already had to tweek my own FB settings because it was posting what I was saying to my daughter on my page, which was embarrassing. It was also posting invitations to family and friends to my page. So it's a little like a Farmville app in that sense. You can go into your settings and adjust them to not allow the applications to post to your wall. There are games, art projects, quizzes, and some pre-chosen Youtube videos in the app. It says it's ad free, but the pre-chosen You-tube videos contain enough trailers for movies to pay for the site, I'm sure.
All this is weighing on my mind enough to postpone what I really should be writing on imagetexts because I think that parents do play a role in children's early online education. When my daughter got online for a while, we talked about the layout, about the safety issues, about the privacy, even about the way advertisement was built into the site. She saw a girl with the same name as a girl in her class and thought it was that girl, so we started the conversation about the power of connectivity of the web. I do not want to leave these conversations up to her teachers. I hope (and know) her teachers have these conversations with her, but I also know that parents cannot count on media and technology literacy being covered in the classroom. Engaging children on the web, even social networking sites like Webkinz, Club Penguin, and Togetherville, is engaging the very real literacies they will be interacting with throughout their lives.
Now to Blake, anime, and imagetexts. Wish me luck.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Standardized Tests
I have had the opportunity to volunteer at my daughter's school these past two weeks. Subscribing to the volunteer ideal that it's not what I want to do but what they need me to do, I do what I'm asked, which is how I found myself volunteering to proctor standardized tests. I do not support the use of standardized test as a major decision making factor for funding schools and their teachers. So I was quick to recognize the irony of my position as I sat, passing the time by reading Mark Prensky's book Teaching Digital Natives. In my head I was enacting partnering pedagogy with teacher education students and in professional development workshops. Physically, I was practicing a banking model of teaching by complicity supervising this test. What a contradiction I was in!
The testing reality of the public school system is antithetical to the student-centered, passion-driven pedagogy encouraged by writers and researchers such as Prensky, Gee, and Schaefer. Weeks of time at the end of school are spent preparing and testing. In some places, benchmark tests are given every week to assess student's progress. These tests take time and energy. Take a week when there are 5 school days. Assuming that the course or class meets every day, which is not necessarily the norm, a test a week means that there are only 4 instructional days left. However, some teachers spend significant time doing test prep during those 4 days and sometimes use the day after the test is taken to go over the test. This is not teaching. This is assessment-driven drill and skill. Most teachers I know do not like this at all. In fact a teacher recently said to me that she wished parents would do something about this.
I am a parent and a teacher educator and researcher. I am in a perfect position to do something, to raise voices against the tyranny of the test. Yet, I don't. Maybe next year I won't volunteer to proctor. Maybe next year I will say, "I can't support testing by being there to help you with it." But that doesn't seem right to me. They need help, but I'd rather be of help by volunteering to lead an exploratory class. Well, my conscience nags me and surely will not let this rest.
At least it gave me time to read.
The testing reality of the public school system is antithetical to the student-centered, passion-driven pedagogy encouraged by writers and researchers such as Prensky, Gee, and Schaefer. Weeks of time at the end of school are spent preparing and testing. In some places, benchmark tests are given every week to assess student's progress. These tests take time and energy. Take a week when there are 5 school days. Assuming that the course or class meets every day, which is not necessarily the norm, a test a week means that there are only 4 instructional days left. However, some teachers spend significant time doing test prep during those 4 days and sometimes use the day after the test is taken to go over the test. This is not teaching. This is assessment-driven drill and skill. Most teachers I know do not like this at all. In fact a teacher recently said to me that she wished parents would do something about this.
I am a parent and a teacher educator and researcher. I am in a perfect position to do something, to raise voices against the tyranny of the test. Yet, I don't. Maybe next year I won't volunteer to proctor. Maybe next year I will say, "I can't support testing by being there to help you with it." But that doesn't seem right to me. They need help, but I'd rather be of help by volunteering to lead an exploratory class. Well, my conscience nags me and surely will not let this rest.
At least it gave me time to read.
Monday, May 24, 2010
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