Sparks of Hope |
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Chris Champion: teacher, father, and thinker
I was inspired to create this Wordle for today’s speech. No time to comment yet, just wanted to post it and get back to teaching my class:
Click to see it full size.
You can see the full text here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/
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I’ve been thinking about Google’s Innovation Time Off Model – that which employees are expected/encouraged to spend about 20% of their time working on new things that don’t necessarily relate to your job functions. Quoting a New York Times article:
It sounds obvious, but people work better when they’re involved in something they’re passionate about, and many cool technologies have their origins in 20 percent time, including Gmail, Google News and even the Google shuttle buses that bring people to work at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.
Here’s another blog that discusses more thoughts about the process.
Why have I been thinking about it? I have a group of really motivated students who love to “play” with computers – be it programming, building up, playing with the operating system… and often only the kids who get their work done early have the time to do this – or kids blow off class work because another kid who DID get done early is doing something that is far more interesting. Understanding that I want ALL kids to have the opportunity to innovate, I’ve decided that maybe I can implement this rule in my classroom. It should be easy to do – pick the day where they are the most rambunctious, the least likely to try hard at “class work”, and then insist that they do something new and creative. If you didn’t already guess, that’s Friday for most teachers.
So this year, Fridays are time off to innovate, Google style. I’ll report back here how it works for me this year. I’ll be asking my students to create a wiki to track their projects (whether they work alone, or in “grouplets”).
I heard about a neat website that takes your Twitter followers or those you follow and makes them into a shirt (website here) and I just had to have one. I customized mine with the code listed there and some help from a screen capture program to pick people I thought I’d likely meet at NECC 2009. As it happens, I did meet many people on that shirt at NECC, and Kristin Hokanson was armed with her digital camera.
So, thanks to her, I present to you “I’m Following YOU at NECC”:
The Flickr Set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/khokanson/sets/72157620859666386/
The Slideshow:
Thanks, Kristin for carrying the camera all day and helping me find almost everyone on my shirt – you are the best!
Well – thanks for checking here – sorry it’s a bit sparse, but I tried to “tweak” my domain and thoroughly killed WordPress.
Please check back in a day or two – I have all my posts, but I’ll have to back-date them and repost.
UPDATE: Thanks to a colleague, I have all my posts and will be re-posting them. Apologies to those of you that read me in RSS because you will see them again.
UPDATE2: Well, I think actually the old RSS feed won’t work 
So feel free to resubscribe.
Note: do NOT mess with technology on a Friday evening.
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Had a great day today geocaching with PAECT members and Keystone Technology Integrators. It’s late, but since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few thousand words 
Thanks to Kristin Hokanson for the camera skills.
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Well, it’s finally happened. Due to budget cuts, my school has decided to save a significant amount of money by reducing its power consumption – first on the list are all of the computers in the computer labs and the entire server room. Starting today, the servers will be online only between 8 and 9 (in order to take attendance, check emails, etc), and then again for an hour after lunch.
The computer labs (my class included) will be scheduled on/off on a rolling schedule similar to the way the power company does rolling blackouts. I have been told that I will have approximately 15 minutes out of every 50 minute period, and that I need to plan lessons that don’t use the computers (thereby don’t use electricity).
I’m really frustrated now because all of my lesson plans are out the window. Sigh.
(April Fools, by the way 
)
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I’ve been quiet here for a while, letting Diigo fill up the space. But now I’m headed to EduCon 2.1 tomorrow and I’m really looking forward to recharging my educational batteries.
I’ve had a tough time at school this year – everything I thought was working really well was thrown away for me, and in its place a less-energizing initiative has been thrust. I say “less energizing” because many of my peers had tried and true methods for teaching – and while those methods are still really good ones, there has been SUCH an emphasis on integrating this reading and writing curriculum into every classroom (remember, I teach at a vocational school – so we’re talking about integrating reading and writing into the carpentry, automotive technology, criminal justice, etc. curricula). What this emphasis has done is change the spirit of what we feel that we do. Once we were craftsmen and women in our respective fields – now we are asked to integrate more and more “other” things besides what we’re good at.
That is probably the crux: that almost all of us feel that we do what we do because we want to see our students excel in their chosen field – to do better than we did if possible. And when we are asked to include something else (no matter how noble the reason), we feel like we must set aside what we know best and stumble through something we do not. And the kids catch on. “Organizers” quickly become worksheets (remember dittos?) that the kids detest. New methods quickly become distractions from the “meat” of the lesson.
So… as I leave a week of real frustration over funding for my students, a really unfortunate timing of an observation (where I received near-reprimand feedback), and a hostile work environment, I look towards EduCon 2.1 to pick me back up and get me on the right track.
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I’ve always been conscientious about recycling when it comes to electronics – I take my old rechargeable batteries to Lowe’s to be recycled – I don’t throw computers out (although right now I have a LOT of computers sitting in my home office). And when I see an announcement of e-Recycling, recycling of electronics, I pack up the car and take my “no longer needed” junk there.
Now I’m wondering if I’m actually saving the environment by doing so. Last night on CBS’s 60 Minutes, they ran a story called “The Electronic Wasteland”. I’ve embedded it here:
I’ve already had the “embed” link change – Here’s a direct link to the story on CBS’s website.
I’m stunned by the story. I’ll be playing it in my computer classes – and I’ve created an anticipation/discussion guide for other teachers who wish to do the same. Here’s the guide:
Anticipation / Discussion Guide
The guide is provided with a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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I know I’ve been quiet lately – I’ve been taking courses as well as teaching a grad class and I feel like the end of the day comes before I’ve completed all the things I meant to. But I did want to reflect on the grad classes I’m taking in Edinboro University’s Educational Leadership program. If you can’t stand principals and superintendents, that’s fine. I don’t want to be one of those people either.
I wrote a post this Summer about leadership, and quoted Lee Iacocca’s book Where Have All the Leaders Gone? – and I’m still wondering that myself. I can count the “leaders” I’ve met on one hand – mind you, any principal can be a supervisor, but few are truly leaders.
What’s an educational leader? Don’t look at them. Look at the people that work for them. Or rather, WITH them. Do they sing the praises of their “boss”? Do they feel like they are all part of a team striving for success? Is there a defining mission that they can all describe in their own words? Do the students feel it too?
Here’s the thing that gets me the most: I don’t think leaders rise to the top in education like they do in business. Maybe part of it is that being a principal or superintendent is largely thankless and certainly not glamorous. Do schools have headhunters to lure principals? I’d be surprised if more than a few do. So where are the true leaders in education? Look around you, because they’re among us. Leading their students. Why? Because you CAN be thanked, you can feel a bit like a hero when working with kids and parents.
But what does that mean for the future of schools? What if all the good leaders are unwilling to take the reins because they don’t want to be the “bad guy” (assistant principal in charge of discipline) or feel like they have no life (out on a Friday night for another football game instead of out with friends). Who is going to lead?
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I spent the past week co-presenting at the Keystone Technology Integrators Summit, held at Bucknell University. In as many of the cases as I could attend, the presenters/instructors tried to hold the “lecture” to a minimum so that people could have time right then and there to apply new skills. In my case, I tried to use my 90 minutes as such:
I thought it worked great. We DID have desks that teachers could move or collect around for group activities.
But how many times have you been to a conference, or even professional development where the delivery style was lecture? Can you fully learn something when it is presented lecture style? Now, I recognize that you can “pack” 50 people in on chairs where you might only fit 30 with desks. But still – why not ask people to turn around and talk to people nearby to discuss a topic? Probably the best conference I’ve been to was EduCon at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia. We utilized existing classrooms with desks and chairs – and nearly every speaker (there were some exceptions) asked the audience to contribute, to add to the material being delivered. At the end, not only did we the participants learn something, but the presenter learned something as well. And in at least one session we created something new with the guidance of the presenters.
At NECC, I attended the Constructivist Celebration hosted by Gary Stager and I have to tell you – I was blown away by the format: let us tell you just a few nuggets of information – now go play while we, the experts, are still standing here. I learned about ONE thing, but I mastered it. I would not have been able to do that if we had instead received 6 presentations throughout the day.
So I hope at this point you realize that my title of this post is sarcastic. If we truly believe that people have multiple intelligences, learning styles, and that they should learn things differently even if they are in the same room – we should all take this into account when we present at conferences. AND at teacher inservices. AND in our classrooms. Take the time to present, allow time for practice and discussion, and reflection. Use multiple methods of presenting information. Provide attendees with visual and textual cues, as well as resources for them to use if they need more time than your session to digest the content.
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