May 2012
9 posts
3 tags
The Literacy of Access
Few quotes that I have found sum up the complexities, challenges and potentials of this new information landscape better than this one from Brian Solis. I’m thinking this would be a great starting point for discussions around how to best help our students navigate these spaces effectively:
Access to information and people is intoxicating. Creating an online portrait of who we are or who we want...
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Downingtown STEM is Bold on the Test (And More)
(From the “In Search of Bold Schools Dept.”)
One of the points I’ve been trying to make to school leaders and others (with mixed success, I think) is that moving toward more student-centered, inquiry-based, connected classrooms and “passing the test” are not mutually exclusive. That if we’re focused on developing learners instead of making kids...
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"We Love Schools." Say it.
I’ve long said that few people have inspired and motivated me more than Lawrence Lessig, author, law professor, scholar, father, advocate, and speaker. I’ve had the honor of seeing Lessig present a number of times, and I’ve had some brief conversations with him that have left me motivated and have pushed in my thinking. When I first started speaking, I blatantly ripped off his...
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This "Anti-Intellectual" Moment
A couple of weeks ago, George Siemens published a lengthy post on his experiences at the Education Innovation summit, the conference that produced the Jeb Bush talk that I posted earlier. As usual, George is thoughtful in his reflections, though he does admit to a good deal of unsettledness by the conversation. The post is definitely worth the read.
But what struck me was a comment by Lisa Lane...
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“The traditional degree, with its four-year time commitment and steep price tag,...”
– http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/05/jailbreaking-the-degree/
This echoes the lack of disruption that tech has brought to the K-12 world as well.
“Today knowledge is ubiquitous, constantly changing, growing exponentially… Today...”
– Tony Wagner from his new book Creating Innovators: Why America’s Education System Is Obsolete - Forbes
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The Parent Factor
I had a chance to facilitate/participate in a fascinating 90-minute conversation with about 15 parents in the Dobbs Ferry, NY school district yesterday that has left me feeling a bit more optimistic about what’s ahead than I have been in a while. Last month, I blogged about Dobbs Ferry Superintendent Lisa Brady (who is also a good friend), and I spent the day in her district talking to...
April 2012
11 posts
3 tags
Wake Up Call
I think this series of Tweets by Chris Lehmann from the Education Innovation Summit at Arizona State University yesterday pretty much speaks for itself. Read from the bottom up:
I know I’m not the only one who has been suggesting for some time now that we’re at a critical moment in the education conversation in terms of the future of public schooling as we know it, but if...
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Opting Out
Just wanted to share that next week while thousands of New Jersey school children will be subjected to the annual ASK standardized tests, my 12-year old son Tucker will not be among them. We made a formal request to opt out, which is our legal right in NJ, and he’ll be staying home during the testing periods. (The absences are excused, btw.)
Wendy and I came to this decision after seriously...
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I'm Giving Away $1,000. Interested?
Last year as I was finishing up the edits for my Learning on the Blog collection of blog posts from my decade of blogging, I decided to take whatever royalties the book earned over its lifetime and give the money to a deserving group, school, educator, etc. Here’s what I wrote in the introduction:
Finally, I’ve decided to donate all of the after tax proceeds from the sale of this...
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“If a story can be written by a machine from data, it’s going to be....”
– Can the Computers at Narrative Science Replace Paid Writers? - Joe Fassler - Entertainment - The Atlantic
In many ways, I think the same holds true for education. If an education can be delivered by a machine, it’s going to be. But so much of learning is filled with nuance and ambiguity,...
“Shouldn’t we be looking at the Internet as an amazing network enabling...”
– Reading the dictionary - Joi Ito’s Web
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What's Our Responsibility?
I posed a question on Twitter the other day that was seriously on my mind:
It’s been something that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: how do we best use the reach that we have in our networks to articulate a different vision of “reform” than the current narrative? And is there a point where our “reach” compels us to be more provocative in that cause?
...
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Real "Work" for Real Audiences
Introducing my 12-year old son Tucker’s new website:
It’s all basketball drills for middle school players, and it’s hopefully just in the initial stages of becoming something that develops into something meaningful for him and others.
Right now, it’s just play. My wish is that for Tucker it might be a vehicle to learn all sorts of stuff around something he really has a...
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Getting Bold With Parents
As promised, I’m going to start trying to highlight some “Bold School” practices that I hope might serve as models for others to follow. (Note: I’m still looking for examples of those practices, so let me know if you’re being “bold” at your school…would love to connect.)
To that end, I want to offer up some of the work that Lisa Brady is doing as...
“Let’s be clear: We are living in the age of disruption. You can’t do big things...”
– Practically Radical: Not-So-Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself
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The Real Shift is Not Technology
From the “I Know I Keep Saying This But I Just Can’t Stop Dept.” comes yet another example of how out of whack our language is when talking about what student learning should be. In this long, celebratory piece from the Las Vegas Sun today we learn that students at a Nevada charter school have had their learning “transformed” at the Explore Knowledge Academy, the...
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Blogs, Wikis...4th Edition?
Looking for some feedback from those of you who have been kind enough to have either read or used my Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms over the years. It’s getting close to 100,000 total sales, and I just want to say, once again, sincere thanks for reading. I hope it’s been of value to your practice.
The publisher of that book, Corwin Press, is interested...
March 2012
7 posts
3 tags
Someone's Getting It
According to Marc Tucker, education leaders at the 2nd International Summit on the Teaching Profession are telling a much different narrative of learning than here in the States.
Singapore:
They reminded themselves that what they do in education is for the learner, their needs, their interests, and not simply to cover the content. They said they wanted to help their students achieve...
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Too Much to "Teach"
It’s early, and I’m trying to make some brain cells come together in a coherent thought. Help me out, ok?
Some truths/assumptions:
1. Schools have to act as if every child has easy access to the Web or will have it sooner rather than later. For now, we have to provide it to those that don’t, but more importantly, we have to provide to every student the skills, literacies and...
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Test Scores = Learning
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was on the Cornel West NPR radio show recently, and I just wanted to point to one snip that I think clearly shows that problem we’re having when it comes to how we define learning. Here’s Duncan:
Secondly, on the test scores, it’s a really, really important point. We could spend a whole conversation on it. I think if test scores are the only...
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toddzoroyamat122 asked: Hi Will, I have been using your book Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts for a number of semesters with my undergraduate class. So I was wondering if you were going to update it soon? Two years seems like forever with technology. Also, if you are will you change from Blogger to Tumbler for blogs? Thanks.
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Entrepreneurial Learners
John Seely Brown’s keynote from the recent DML conference is worth the watch if nothing else for his overview of “entrepreneurial learning.” I could summarize, but I found this snip from Sarah Vaala to be a more than adequate overview:
Entrepreneurial Learning. The morning began with a keynote address from John Seely Brown (University of Southern California; Deloitte Center for...
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Education 2012
danah boyd has an interesting analysis of the Kony 2012 video phenomenon that a) went viral and b) is basically disseminating an inaccurate message as to the realities in Uganda at the moment. (See Ethan Zuckerman’s post for a full deconstruction of the video.) She raises a number of points about the spread of the video, from the networks that Invisible Children already had in place, to the...
February 2012
6 posts
3 tags
Rebranding Teachers
A couple of weeks ago, I ran across this post on “Rebranding Teachers” at Hyperakt, a design firm for “the Common Good.” Here’s the gist:
We began with a simple premise, that education is the key to human progress, therefore teaching is among the most important professions for humanity. Our new visual vocabulary should capture the excitement and magic of activating...
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Learning to Fly
When I was a little kid, at least once every few weeks in the warm months my mom would fill a big wicker picnic basket full of sandwiches, drinks and some hidden sweets, pack it and me and an old blanket in the back of our long, white Chrysler station wagon, and drive out to a parking lot behind a factory that was a stone’s throw from O’Hare Airport outside of Chicago. As soon as the car would...
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The "Shift to Networks"
Just a couple of quotes that found me this morning, some pattern recognition in my sleepy brain.
Joi Ito in the New York Times:
I don’t think education is about centralized instruction anymore; rather, it is the process establishing oneself as a node in a broad network of distributed creativity.
And George Siemens at his blog:
Planned information structures like textbooks and courses simply...
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"Open Network" Tests
I just recently ran across Jonathan Martin’s posts regarding the “Open Internet” tests that he’s piloting with some teachers at St. Gregory School in Arizona, and I’m just loving the thinking. In November of 2010, he first asked:
We know that content memorization must no longer [be] the goal of our learning programs; what our goal must be is that students can make...
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Quote of the Day
“The mess from this generation’s political paralysis and refusal to address looming problems can’t be cleaned up using the same education that helped create it.”
—Marion Brady
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The Sorry State of Standardized Writing
A couple of items from the world of writing and assessment have been niggling at me of late.
First, news that the Hewlett Foundation is sponsoring a $100,000 competition to create automated essay scoring software that, in theory at least, will do as good or better job of assessing student writing on standardized tests than the current human graders do. I get the reasoning behind this. Current...
January 2012
10 posts
4 tags
The New Resume
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A Couple of Bold Ideas at Educon
The past couple of Educon days at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia were, as always, packed with fun catching up with old friends (and meeting new ones) but, as always, also filled with conversations that have me thinking more about what “reform” looks like and what bold schools might do to get there. It was fun not to lead a session this year and just be an attendee (though I...
6 tags
SOPA in the Classroom
As Royan Lee points out, there’s every reason to have a conversation with students about SOPA and PIPA in almost any classroom right now. (If last Wednesday wasn’t a teachable moment, I don’t know what was.) For most older kids, the debate strikes at the heart of their practices online, and even for younger kids, the larger themes are well worth the mention in general terms. My...
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2 in 2000
So here’s a little state of the world update from my recent trip to Wisconsin to speak at the state school board association conference there.
First, let me say there are a lot of folks who are beginning to talk with more relevance around change when it comes to education. The rhetoric, at least, around inquiry and problem based, student-centered classrooms seems to be expanding despite the...
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The Rise of State Schools
So this pretty much sums it up as well it can be summed up right now:
U.S. schools under the jurisdiction of state and federal governments are now scripted processes that view knowledge as static capital, students as passive and empty vessels, and teachers as compliant conduits for state-approved content. The accountability paradigm is antithetical to human agency and autonomy and thus to...
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What Qualities do "Bold Schools" Share?
First, let me thank everyone who commented and Tweeted examples of “bold schools” over the last few days. Very much appreciated, and over the next few weeks I’m planning to dig into the list and make some connections and inquiries around the learning that’s going on in those places. Meantime, if you have any other ideas for schools that might be worth checking out,...
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It's 2012: Help Me Find Some "Bold Schools"
For lots of reasons, some of which I articulate here, 2012 feels like it’s shaping up to be a critical year in the conversation about schools. Politics and money are no doubt driving the mainstream conversation, but I sense an Occupy Wall Street-ish push back coming from a lot of parents and educators that seems to be finding some traction as well. In fact I’ve had some interesting...
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"The Network is Literal Survival"
Some interesting thoughts on networks by Deborah Mills-Scofield:
For me, the network is literal survival. My family, throughout history, escaped to places where we had family or friends who would support, hide, and in the case of America letting my mom and grandparents enter, sponsor us. No sponsor, no entry; no entry, Auschwitz. Without the network, the odds of survival were slim to none....
The Pearson Graduate
The Texas Observer on the decline of “public” schools:
With the prevalence of companies like Pearson operating in Texas and many other states, the U.S. education system has become increasingly privatized. In some cases, the only part of education that remains public is the school itself. Nearly every other aspect of educating children—exams, textbooks, online classes, even teacher...
December 2011
5 posts
5 tags
The "Dirty Work of Education"
No question, one of the most talked about, Tweeted about, blogged and written about ideas in the past year has been the “flipped classroom,” the idea that we can use technology to deliver the “lecture” as the homework and then use class time, ideally, to bring the concepts to life in meaningful, real world ways. And it’s been interesting to watch the...
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"When Test Scores Become a Commodity"
Teacher Jonathan Keiler from Maryland absolutely nails it in this essay in EdWeek:
When student scores become like orange juice, pork bellies, or yen, the people with the greatest incentive to cheat are the weakest teachers and administrators. These people might be weak, but that doesn’t mean they are stupid. Weak but clever educators will inevitably find ways to game the system, sometimes by...
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Teachers - Thank Goodness!
A couple of days ago, my friend Howard Blumenthal sent along this essay that his 86-year-old father wrote in response to a post here about online learning from a few weeks ago. I thought it might make for some uplifting Sunday reading, so I’m sharing it here. Enjoy!
By Norm Blumenthal
As the fourteen year old son of a widowed mother in 1939, I had to contribute to the lowly household...
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"Forget About Your Children"
One of the things I’ve been wondering more and more as I’ve been reading and thinking at length about the recent wave of corporate and private (mostly online) inroads into education is what happens when it no longer is about the best schools for our kids but, instead, the best education service? As more and more choices and paths crop up for MY children to “get an...
November 2011
10 posts
4 tags
Questions for Knewton
I’m looking forward to spending about an hour or so on Thursday morning in NYC with Jose Ferreira, the founder and CEO of Knewton. In case you may not be familiar with the company’s work, here’s a short synopsis from a release announcing their new partnership with Pearson:
Knewton’s award-winning Adaptive Learning Platform™ uses proprietary algorithms to deliver a personalized...
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Privacy in a Networked World
danah boyd articulates the move from private to public in online spaces about as well as anyone, I think:
Social media has prompted a radical shift. We’ve moved from a world that is “private-by-default, public-through-effort” to one that is “public-by-default, private-with-effort.” Most of our conversations in a face-to-face setting are too mundane for anyone to bother recording and publicizing....