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”).
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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Well its been a week since I got back from NECC. Last night was the first night I fell asleep before 1 a.m., so I guess I’m officially “recovered”. I promised/wanted to reflect on my experiences at NECC and now that I have had some time to think about it all, here it is:
First: I feel like an Academy Award recipient but I can’t help but acknowledge the Pennsylvania Bureau of Career & Technical Education. They, along with the “Tech Prep” people at Harrisburg Community College, had the foresight to see that a conference like NECC could actually be beneficial to a teacher in a vocational-technical school. Thanks to Joanna Stoms at that college for pitching not only to reimburse my conference and hotel, but to also convince the Department of Education to pay for airfare, excepting their rule of “no out of state conferences”.
Highlights of NECC: I must admit, Saturday’s EduBloggerCon was everything I expected. Props to Adam from Wikispaces to upgrading the EBC wiki to “Super” status. Having a dynamic schedule that was voted on by way of PollEverywhere was way too cool. I know some people didn’t like the format – not enough time. If you were in the “Web 2.0 In Teacher Education” session, you found out that you could break the rules, go into a “work” session, and extend the talk time a bit. Sure, we could have spent the whole conference talking about the role of Web 2.0 in preservice teacher education. By the way, you probably DIDN’T attend that session because you were in the Web 2.0 Smackdown. Boo. You missed a great session facilitated by David Warlick – who only asked questions and didn’t steer the conversation, instead allowing all of the attendees to debate and discuss just what new teachers should apply in their classrooms. Thank you David, for that. I’ve listened to you speak and frankly you do a much better job questioning people’s beliefs than to try to change them via lecture. I know its tough to do that in a room of 1000.
I think the most significant thing about EduBloggerCon was the fact that EVERYONE felt that someone’s opinion, comments, and ideas were valid. They are. But sometimes a classroom teacher like myself feels like he has nothing to add to the conversation. EBC reminded me that I DO have a lot to add.
As far as the general sessions at NECC were concerned, I felt like I was chasing something that just wasn’t meant to be. Either I got into a session where I heard rhetoric that I’d heard before (granted many people need to hear it), or I walked into a session that was overfull, and the San Antonio Fire Department had dictated no standing audience members. Sorry Cliff, I really wanted to see the manipulatives session that you and one of your colleagues were teaching.
So time and again I ended up at the Blogger Cafe – partially because I had a poisoned IP address at the convention center (there were 253 addresses that were not getting off the local network). But partially because there were people there I had never met. Christine Southard, a Special Education teacher from Long Island, was fascinating to talk to. I’d “virtually” met her cooperative teacher in a inclusive classroom (Lisa Parisi) but Christine was interesting to talk to. First of all, she drives 80 minutes ONE WAY to work – across two bridges (she spends $10 a day just on bridge tolls). Now that’s a dedicated teacher. I also talked to several people from other state ISTE affiliates. All in all, the “meeting and talking” was much more rewarding than sitting and listening to presentations.
That’s not to say that some of the sessions weren’t really neat. I attended a session titled “The Walls Came Down” about how professional development has transported itself from programmed to “just in time”. I knew several of the people on the panel, had heard from nearly everyone else, but had not seen the neat things they are doing until then. I logged back into Second Life for the first time in over a year as a result of that session.
Steve Dembo posted a discussion that he and I had about “meeting people that you didn’t already know”. I’ve posted my reply to his post here:
Steve:I think part of my “I want to meet different people” mantra came out of David Jakes’ post after EduCon2.0 in Philadelphia titled “Tragedy of the Commons” where he noted that many of the attendees spent time in the school’s library talking with people they’ve met digitally but not
personally – when they could (should?) have been spending time talking to the students and teachers at that school. I’ll be honest, I felt like I was interrupting the teachers and students, but I relished the opportunity to talk with the students and teachers – maybe because I’m still just a “lowly teacher” and I really wanted to hear from the mouths of babes what worked and what didn’t.So I started NECC off seeking out people that I had little contact with – I didn’t care if they were FB’s or even whether other people regarded them with respect or contempt. I was looking for ways to improve my craft, to see how other people are doing things that I didn’t already know about. I met people often without asking their names, because what they had to say was valid and interesting. I helped a very nice woman with her laptop. I talked with someone from the
University of Oregon about how we can effectively measure technology use in the classroom. I talked with other state affiliate members about how to foster educational leadership in our state (Pennsylvania).And you know what, as I’ve posted in my blog, the conversations were again so much more valid than the presentations I saw. And of the few “official” NECC presentations I did attend, the ones that included input from the audience were more genuine and interesting than ones where I was spoken to.
I think that sums my thoughts up rather well. And with that, I look forward to meeting everyone again next year. My conference reimbursement for NECC 2009 has already been approved.
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Two days into NECC and I’m finding that many of the “sessions” presented fall short of my expectations. Perhaps EduBloggerCon ruined NECC for me? It seemed like EBC was about examining, discussing, and debating the problems and issues that surround educational technology. It was an exchange of ideas – and in the spirit of NECC Keynoter James Surowiecki’s concept of The Wisdom of Crowds, the input that a diverse group of teachers, teacher educators, technologists, and otherwise-employed bloggers could give meant that there was more than experts with obvious answers to problems.
So as I listen to experts speak this week, I’m starting to crave the dialog and perhaps even conflict that would come about by a discussion rather than a presentation.
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Well today was the final day for my students to present their programming projects. I’ve been keeping two wikis for my two sections:
http://cpavts.wikispaces.com/ - Juniors/Seniors pick their own topics
http://learningbasic.wikispaces.com/ - Sophomores work in teams towards the same project specifications
So my reflection:
“How you are going to be graded” can NOT be said enough. I went over it with my students at week one (of five), but when I went over the project specifications with them again (which remained the same on the website over the five week period) at week four nearly all of the students panicked because they didn’t realize the scope of the project. Next time: have a meeting each week re-addressing the “Project Specification”.
“I’m done” means I’m stuck but I’m too embarrassed to admit it. Especially when students work in teams – I found that there were leaders and followers, and when the leader didn’t get it, they didn’t want to look “dumb” in front of their peers. Next time: in the weekly meetings have teams show off their work thus far.
There CAN be misunderstanding in a rubric. Some of my students skipped things in the “Project Specification” because the rubric didn’t specifically mention them. Next time: write the rubric at the same time as the project specification. Because this was the first time, I wanted to be fluid and I tweaked the project as we went along, writing the rubric at week three. I just forgot to say “and yes you also must do x”.
All in all, my students had a great experience. I had some real flubs, and I had some particularly amazing results. One student admitted that he spent about 50 hours out of class (10 hours per week for 5 weeks) writing the code for his project, and he even played sick one day to stay home because he wanted to dedicate the whole day to catch up on his personal computer. I was very impressed with his work. His mom is a SysAdmin/dbAdmin (computer nerd) so the apple does not fall far from the tree.
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