Vergil’s Coffee

It looks like Utterz has just updated its services and has focused its site around discussions (no more Cow theme?). I think Utterz has always emphasized this, but the recent facelift (and the changing of its calling menu) seems to be a clearer presentation in positioning itself as the Audio/text/video place for communication around topics or just whatever you like.

Which brings me to this Utterz from gtowna that I listened to this morning and feel compelled to share. Why? Not because I completely agree with him–I don’t know much about international politics; I think I know that we in an election year here in the States–I share it because I think I have to be reminded of how the actions of my country affect others (aside from Iraq). 

I get the feeling that folks in the US are a bit antsy about not being #1 and that as long as we can still be in the superpower club, then we can still call the shots. It’s the popular kids sitting at the popular kid table and everyone is (or should be) looking at what the popular kids are doing. All the while, there’s those who aren’t popular, having to deal with own issues of relevance and identity. 

I think that’s why I listen to NPR and BBC radio, read Christian Science Monitor and The Week, listen or read from sites like Twitter and Utterz: to try and get a better handle on a few of the single voices outside Goshen, Indiana.

Now, I’ve got to run to Wal*Mart.

We’re simply not ready for this: the state of the Indiana actually matters on a national level election (well, even if it is the Democratic nominee, it still is probably the most exciting voting thing here in the Midwest since… let me think about that for a moment).

Anyway, I got my first attack mailer from the Republican the Democratic challenger to Barack Obama that tells me that Obama is a liar and is in the same poker game as the “Bush/Cheney Administration.” Oooo, that just is so poetic, isn’t it? Not just Bush or Cheney, but BushCheney.

Why are you lying to me, Barack? I thought you were going to be the person to change things, to give me something to hope for and in? Now, I learn from www.citizen.org, and, well, “Paid for by Hillary Clinton for President,” that “Indiana families can’t afford Barack Obama” because “Energy company employees donated over $650,000 to Barack Obama and GOT WHAT THEY WANTED.”

Perhaps I should just vote for McCain.

It was Mrs. Addis who told me that I’d be blind in twenty years if I looked at the solar eclipse back in 1978; I looked and I’m still looking. She also was the first person I remember to complain (or comment) about the poor, or those on welfare. She was telling us how she was in a family’s house who was poor and that “They had a color television set…one nicer than ours,” she said. I think she then went on to make some comment about how it wasn’t fair or right that people who weren’t working to have more comforts than those who actually worked for a living.

My mom sent me to the Christian School in the sixth grade because she didn’t like what she saw at the school my brother was attending. She told me later that “almost every kids was stoned out of their minds” and she was not going to have neither me nor my sister Stephany go to “that public school.” So, she looked in the phone book and decided against the St. Eugene’s (”too expensive and too much guilt”) and enrolled us in Rincoln Valley Christian School in the fall of 1977. Mrs. Addis was my 6th grade teacher and I listened to her most of the time. I remember trying to explain to my best friend, Brad Frost, that I was transferring schools and that we’d probably not hang out a lot. Brad’s dad was a car salesman and I think the Frosts were a bit better off than we were. They had a pool and we had the Santa Rosa Creek.

I know my mom didn’t make a lot of money and the court-order child support checks from my cardiologist father helped us to be clothed and fed and kept a decent house functional until we moved in 1980 out to the Russian River area. Those support checks continued until I turned 21 and I remember appreciating those checks because they basically paid for 3 years of college in Grand Rapids, MI.

I think I became more aware of our lack of money during my sophomore year of high school. We moved back to Santa Rosa into a 3-room apartment and I remember people from the church doing a lot of nice things for me. In fact, I think someone even bought my letter jacket for me because they realized what I knew: we didn’t have much extra cash for luxury items. And though that was to my advantage when I applied for financial aid (for, on paper my family had little), it was an odd feeling using my mother’s food stamps to buy her some groceries when I visited her during the Christmas break of my freshman year of college.

I don’t pretend to fully understand what it’s like to be poor as I come from a family which was upper middle class, then middle class, and then lower middle class. It’s all labels anyway, isn’t it?

I suppose that’s why I had to snap myself when ConcordLive! ran the “Where are you going for Spring Break?” piece last Friday. It’s an annoying topic because you know what’s going to happen: all the rich kids are going to shove in everyone else’s faces what tropical climate they’ll be sunning in while everyone else is stuck in this “nothing-to-do” permaclouded area known as Elkhart County. (I’m hoping you were reading that “all the rich kids” part in an annoying nasal tone; it’s fun. Go back and do it…really; it’ll be fun and effective for the tone I’m trying to set…Spencer, do it; Chris, that’s a great nasal tone).

At least that’s the impression I got when I look on the faces of some of the students in my classes. Their families are working poor or certainly can’t afford to go on holiday for a week or so. These families may or may not own color televisions or letter jackets. But why do those who have more get to tell us about their seemingly wonderful exploits? Do the rich even deserve the wealth they have?

And it’s at this point where I silently slink into another conversation because you’ve heard this rhetoric before. You’ve heard it recently as a battle cry against the “have’s” who make big profits and who get huge tax breaks. The reason I tend to back away from this line of thinking is because of the eventual cliché:

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Cliché because I don’t even know if it’s accurate, but man you can get the Democrats “Amen”ing about this one. We might as well recite the labeling:

• Republicans = Big Business,
• Democrats = Social programs for the individual,
• Ron Paul = Sancho to Don Quixote.

As the ConcordLive! piece ended, I remember making some comment about how each person in the piece were going somewhere warm and exotic, while not one student said that they were staying in town. And at that moment I wanted to make a value judgment, but I stopped myself because the implications are unjust and illogical. People like to blame their misfortune on the fortune of others and that makes for a fairly miserable and cynical permacloud on one’s day. Some days I’m ready to pick up the lance and fight windmills; most days, I’d like to think I might just aim a little lower and be happy with a cup of $1.98 coffee and some blinding sunshine.

Sunshine feels good, doesn’t it?

Even in Elkhart County.

The first comes from @scobleizer (Robert Scoble) who reported that @dotBen said there was an earthquake in China (7.2).

The next, is from @davewiner (Dave Winer) who reports well ahead of major networks that he’s gotten a tip about the Obama passport breach. @stevegillmor has been comparing this to Watergate and that it may go to the top.

Update: The first blogpost (from people I follow-this is @Karoli) in an attempt to put a timeline on the passport breach.

Now, we’ll see the reporting that will happen as a result of these two events (but, you heard it first on Twitter).

Hint: It’s really simpler than you think.

Let me tell you a story:

It begins yesterday when I’m listening to simply the best version of “Mack the Knife” (Sinatra and Buffet) in my 1993 Ford Escort Wagon heading north on US 33 South toward school. If you remember this version (and probably like other versions) there’s the part toward the end when the whole brass section builds to an explosion: Pow! and I’m hitting the “back” button on my iPod Shuffle to hear it again. In my mind, this is one of the best recordings of music ever.

I’m at school and after 3rd hour one of the music teachers motions me to talk and we’re discussing some arrangement for a student of his to get out of my class to listen to a pretty famous musician. I’m cool with that, but what I really want to ask him about is “Mack the Knife.”

“You doing the Jazz band thing, eh?” I verify.

“Yes, I’m the other director,” he says.

And then I ask him if they’ll be playing “Mack the Knife” at the Jazz Cafe this year and he says “Yes” like they always play it.

“It’s a standard, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he says.

And then I launch into my experience of listening to “Mack the Knife” and how it’s incredible the way that “ol’ Blue Eyes” includes himself in the list of names in the verses that he and Buffet add to the song. And then I ask him if he thinks it’s a violent song as far as the lyrics and I think it is and he stops for a moment.

“You know,” the jazz director says, “I don’t think I remember the words…I just listen to the music.”

And I say “Oh” and he responds “But I’ll have to look at the words now that you bring it up.”

Here’s another story:

After I got my teaching degree, my wife and I moved to Bloomington, IN so she could complete her graduate studies in speech/language pathology. It is simply impossible to get a teaching job in any school district within an hour’s drive from Indiana University for someone who is from the outside and who has no contacts. I did, though, interview twice for a school within 25 minutes and those were sorry interviews (mostly because I’ve been told that I don’t interview well). But in one case, I realized that I hated some of the people that did the interviewing.

I was answering the usual questions and trying not to sound too desperate in wanting to do anything to land my first teaching job. (In our senior ed. seminar class, we were encouraged to say “Yes” to any coaching assignment or an extracurricular activity). I was working as a bill collector in Indianapolis at the time and I was ready to mop the floors if the school asked. I simply wanted to teach.

The principal then looks at my application and is unsure of where Grace College is at and “where’s Winona Lake anyway?” I tell him it’s by Warsaw and he still doesn’t get the geography of Northern Indiana and then looks back at me and asks/tells “You know, you can’t evangelize in the classroom, don’t you?”

I was amazed at this man’s inability to understand my application. First he didn’t know his Indiana geography and second, he was being an idiot (or at least that is what I thought at the time). I took a breath and then calmly pointed out to him that I had been a bill collector for 5 years and it wasn’t my general practice to “share the Good News after I had just asked a person to pay their hospital bill.” I don’t think he wanted me and I certainly didn’t want that type of a person as a principal.

And a last story:

Last Friday, a student in my Expository Writing class (senior composition) challenged my requirement of a 15-20 page paper when I was teaching them about how to write good sentences.

“If we can’t write a sentence, then how are we to write a 15-20 page paper then?” he said. And the kid next to him was saying “Well, there’s simply no way I could write a 15-20 paper.”

When the murmuring died down enough for me to answer–and maybe he didn’t want an answer, maybe he just wanted to say aloud what was going around in his mind–I asked him for a favor: to ask me the same question after he wrote the paper and to let me know if it was worth it. And, if he could, to then let me know in a year (after some college/life work) if he could see why I had the class write a massive paper.

And I think he backed off a bit and I’m not sure if he believed me, but I added: “You might just have to trust me on this one” and walked back to the front of the class.

Each day, teachers and students and staff engage in sharing their religion with one another by the stories they tell. We talk about our passions and we sometimes actively try and convince others that they too should see or hear or feel those same things that rouse in us the stuff that dreams are made of. Other times, some folk may misread us and instead of seeing a person full of passion, they’d rather see a label and restrict human potential through an incomplete sentence. But most religious of all school practices is when someone asks the simple question “Why?” For in that very question, one is attempting to figure out place and perspective and purpose. And as long as public schools encourage questioning and discussion of ideas with others, the public school will continue to be a place of religion.

These are notes from my rough draft idea blog (http://blogs.opml.org/chrisjudson) that I used to present a concurrent session at the 2008 Indiana Computer Educator conference last week. Here’s the abstract of my talk:

Most of the successful transitions to moving instruction toward technology suggests a shift in pedagogy. Many times, incorporating technology into the classroom has amounted to the “Napoleon Plan” of decision making. Instead of merely putting up a static .html page with class rules, an assignment schedule, and perhaps some online quizzes, the effective online classroom makes use of the social aspect of the internet and structure and some would suggest moving toward a social constructivist approach to pedagogy.

We got a website! (The Napoleon Plan of Technology Integration)

And we’ve all done it: either it was coded by hand in some text editor or we used a visual web-editor such as Claris Homepage or Adobe Pagemill, but the school’s site was live and we had presence on the world wide web. Now all of our students, community and the world could come to our school website and … well, see our crafted table-layout or the more elusive frame-based text with stock gifs and scrolling java banners. And not much has changed, has it?

Well, swap out java and frames for Flash and perhaps add a lot more information (especially your school improvement plan and a link to the DOE school snapshot page) and that’s about it. The potential of the Internet got duped by the politics of the technology to put a computer into every classroom and wire all the schools so that all of our students could access all of this information. All for what? Besides cost a lot of money for our “shareholders” and a lot of headaches for teachers and IT folk to keep the little kiddies on task rather than any or all game sites, it reinforced that idea that we as educators and tech leaders are most guilty of: a Napoleon Plan [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0707436/] of technology integration: 1. Show up and, 2. See what happens. The new technology is purchased or presented to teachers and then we’ll just see what happens.

It’s no wonder why David Shenk in his 1997 book Data Smog stated that putting in the internet into every classroom is like putting a power station into every home. There was a fury of internet love last decade and seemingly everyone connected with education and technology was “on board” with the national plan to wire all schools and get Internet access for every child (the lesser No Child Left Unwired plan ). More energies were spent in acquiring Internet access for schools and honestly, it would have been viewed undemocratic not to get the access for “the students.” (Insert teacher and staff jab here for all of the eBay purchases and ESPN streaming video highlights that have been done by the adults). The most pedagogical the conversation got was which educational site the staff could visit or the latest online teaching “tool” javascript we could copy and paste on to our stale, static HTML pages.

BTW, we could say the same for each new technology through the decades as Todd Ophenhimer did in his Atlantic Monthly article from 1997: “The Computer Delusion” [http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jul/computer.htm] (which he later developed into the 2004 book The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology). There is a pattern of “Showing up” and “Seeing what happens” and then it repeats all over again (almost like our educational reforms but we have chosen the technologies as silver bullets — but we will always say that they’re not…we’ll deny it).

We like shiny objects, we like the new new, we like CES and MacWorld announcements, we like computers, Palm Pilots, digital cameras, scanners with OCR, iPod touch, iPhones (or we have iPhone envy but can’t seem to justify the data plan to our bosses: that is, our superintendents or spouses). In short, we like the new shining object and we’ll talk for days on what it does, but the conversation slips into generic terms when we are asked how and why is it important or useful for learning.

Here’s my favorite response to “How” and “Why”:

These are the current tools of the trade and we should be using X (or having students use X) so that they will be better prepared for the real world.

What a load of desegregated data. Logically, there’s problems with that answer and I think you can figure it out. (Hint: How much does your school spend on making paper copies…I thought we were supposed to use those document scanners).

Herein lies the heart of my talk: We have been guilty of acquiring a lot of gadgets and URLs and just hoping that something magical educationally will happen, and it hasn’t. We’ve sometimes used the software companies own “studies” as justification to purchase Inspiration [www.inspriation.com] or Writer’s Workbench [http://www.emo.com/wwb/] because it says here that research says or that–and here it comes– it connects with most of your state standards. (BTW, probably one of the few pieces of software that has done real and reasonable educational research is CMaps [http://cmap.ihmc.us/]. Their white papers are for review and study and not for marketing alone). Instead, there is some hope out there and it happens to be connected with a product that some in the state of Indiana think is really great. It’s a framework for building and managing learning communities.

It’s really nice and I stumbled upon it about 3 years ago and now I’d like to give you some advice regarding Moodle: Don’t use it. Don’t install it. Well, okay, you probably will…but at least listen to the reason why it’s good for education and presents a solid case as far as pedagogy.

It’s based on an evolving idea of social constructivism and I’d like to talk to you about how doing education this way, in your classroom and schools, makes sense when using a framework such as Moodle [moodle.org].

Getting the “Those who can’t” on board (or Those stubborn teachers are like sticks in the mud)

It’s not about tools and more about how and why of doing things. And that’s the conversation we should be having and it is the conversation of teachers: pedagogy. It’s a much longer conversation than a demo of the latest site or shiny object; it’s a conversation, not a lecture. These people are a stubborn sort and many folk from different walks of life and points of view are wondering when these teachers will just “get on board.” The great thing is that they usually just don’t…you got to talk the talk of teachers and that, again, is pedagogy. And if there’s something that technology folks have done a lousy job is just this: explain how to use technology for learning. Not as a “learning tool” or how technology help with record keeping…nope, technology for learning. And that pedagogical conversation now turns to an idea–not a new one–but an idea that when individuals create and share information, something really cool happens. This is the general idea of social constructivism.

Here’s the bulleted list from Moodle’s site [moodle.org/philosophy]:

• Constructivism–This point of view maintains that people actively construct new knowledge as they interact with their environment.

• Constructionism asserts that learning is particularly effective when constructing something for others to experience. This can be anything from a spoken sentence or an internet posting, to more complex artifacts like a painting, a house or a software package.

• Social Constructivism–This extends the above ideas into a social group constructing things for one another, collaboratively creating a small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings. When one is immersed within a culture like this, one is learning all the time about how to be a part of that culture, on many levels.

• Connected and Separate–This idea looks deeper into the motivations of individuals within a discussion. Separate behaviour is when someone tries to remain ‘objective’ and ‘factual’, and tends to defend their own ideas using logic to find holes in their opponent’s ideas. Connected behaviour is a more empathic approach that accepts subjectivity, trying to listen and ask questions in an effort to understand the other point of view. Constructed behaviour is when a person is sensitive to both of these approaches and is able to choose either of them as appropriate to the current situation.

• Conclusion–Once you are thinking about all these issues, it helps you to focus on the experiences that would be best for learning from the learner’s point of view, rather than just publishing and assessing the information you think they need to know. It can also help you realise how each participant in a course can be a teacher as well as a learner. Your job as a ‘teacher’ can change from being ‘the source of knowledge’ to being an influencer and role model of class culture, connecting with students in a personal way that addresses their own learning needs, and moderating discussions and activities in a way that collectively leads students towards the learning goals of the class.

Again, these are not entirely news ideas (I’m thinking of Project-Based Learning [mindmap: http://www.vergil66.com/pbl/]) and there’s been other software that have attempted to bring collaboration into a teaching moment (Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment [http://www.daedalus.com/] comes to mind). What is interesting is that there is so much talk of social networks and the maturation of Web 2.0, once again we might just be missing the boat with our stubborn colleagues by telling them about all the cool stuff they could be doing with X.

You should notice that this is going to be a shift in how folk approach teaching. BTW, please don’t think that this is small groupings or merely student-centered classrooms; both of those ideas were and are good but their implementation was and still is pretty lousy. It’s the mindset we sometimes live in: Education is broke, let’s fix it by the end of the next NCA cycle or before the next ISTEP scores are released.

It’s about time to pause for a moment and find a way to use technology for learning and the social constructivism model is well-supported with in a little CMS called Moodle.

The good, the bad and the ugly of managing a Moodle site

Don’t get me wrong: I love technology and gadgets and all things shiny. I’ve been trying to talk my principal and technology folk into purchasing things since I’ve been teaching. I advise student publications, so I’ve been able to get my hands on hardware (had a lab of the original bondi blue iMacs after they came out…that was cool). But as I started making class webpages in the late 90s and then as I noticed that not everyone came a clicking to my static html page, I started to look at my practice as an educator and how in the world could this fun stuff be useful beyond a “yeah, my teacher has a web page.”

Probably like many folk, I started to add opportunities for students to leave comments and make social comments on my page (I think I was using iBlog at this time). I wanted my students to read and comment on each other’s papers, so I made a link to some discussion doc site (I think it was QuickTopic.com). I had a shout box on the site and invited students to leave messages for me or anyone who went to the page. But the whole thing was so duck-taped together, I continued to look around for something to manage all of the social activity along with integrating assessment.

Three years ago, I installed Moodle on a hosting site that I paid for out of my own pocket. Students in my classes we already used to the blogging way of me organizing our class info, so the jump to Moodle was a bit more polished. So since using Moodle for 3 years, I’d like to leave you with some advise on the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of using Moodle.

The Good.

• It’s Open Source (or, free…for the most part). This is the buzzing that’s sweeping through IT department across the state and nation. Stress budgets are now looking manageable as folk are seeing the possibility (and strength) of FOSS. Moodle is like Blackboard without the money concerns and there’s no financial obligation to a company who needs to make money off of their product.
• No coding! Yeah! I love to dabble…I like to mess around with putting things together, but Moodle (like many other Web20 apps) allows you to focus on creating and managing content rather than figuring out how it works. For most of your non-tech colleagues, training should be harmless and there’s wonderful documentation and online, in-context help system on each page. It’s easy to use…really.
• Full integration of all your classroom activities. That’s online stuff and offline stuff. Assessment presents some newer ideas and I especially like the Workshop module.
• Tons of opportunities for student interaction through bulletin boards and messaging to even blogs (if you so desire). More reasons to visit a site means more investment in its cause. Students can interact (along with the teacher) outside of the classroom day.

The Bad.

• Frankly, it takes more of my time outside of class and that’s because if I want something to be interactive, I just can’t build it and wait until they come. Tons of opportunities for interaction. I usually spend time each night responding to student’s messages and questions (though, for questions, I remind them to make a post and seek the help of the other students).
• Not every student has Internet access and so yes, those students miss out…a bit.
• You got to step down from the pedestal and allow stuff to happen. You have to let students argue things out for time to time and not always be the morality police. Sometimes you just have to not comment and allow other students to be consciousness of the classroom.
• There’s hiccups in the program and I think I’ve learned many workarounds in the gradebook module (which is going through a revision). Look, this is Open Source and many people are working to make it great…and it is. The wonderful thing is that if you have a question, there’s a great support community out there on the Moodle.org site.

The Ugly (only two things here…more cautionary things).

• It would be ugly to force every teacher in a school, district, region or state to use Moodle. That would be ugly because Moodle, like every other new idea or shiny object in education, is not for everyone. It supports a wonderful and dynamic way of approaching learning, but that’s not the only way of doing education. Sometimes I wonder how long some of the great teachers of the ages would last in the classroom (”Oh, just who just quite after one day?” “Oh, that was Socrates…he just asked ‘What am I doing here?’ and left.”)
• Another ugly thing, and this is all editorial comment, is that as schools discover great FOSS such as OpenOffice, Firefox, Audicity and Moodle, that the educational community wouldn’t feel an ethical and I would say moral obligation to give back to the OpenSource community. Sure the stuff is free, but with the freedom is an obligation to help pay for or help develop which ever project that we’re using. All of these FOSS projects list how you can get involved and I would encourage all of us to give back.

During lunch today, I did what many folk do when we go to conferences: made small talk. And I’m eating my cheeseburger and fries and I say “Hey” to the suited man at the next table. Dave Dobos was here at the conference as an exhibitor for a company that sells supplies for math and science classrooms and so I wasn’t really his target audience. He did thank me (as the representatives of high school English teachers) for teaching him how to write clearly and concisely (not that I’ve spoken that way today). We talked about how long it takes to learn to do just that: to communicate clearly and concisely and I think that is precisely what I’ve attempted to say in today’s talk: that education and learning take time and that something new and shiny may or may not have an impact on the stuff of learning. Let’s pause and think about broader and deeper issues such as pedagogy and it’s impact on using a content management system such as Moodle. Why are we using technology and to what real purpose are we aiming for? Let’s go beyond an endless cycle of Napoleon Plans for technology integration and try to speak clearly and concisely on why we do what we do.

Thank you.

Questions and some demonstration of actual classroom site using Moodle.

I’ve just finished emailing a former student and saying that I couldn’t attend her wedding reception in a few weeks. And it’s got me thinking about a previous comment that I’ve made to a student when they asked “Do you like all of your students?” To which I replied simply “No.” And I think that conversation then pushed the limits of typical classroom scripting when the same student asked “Are there teachers here that you don’t like?” And I simply said “Of course.”

And you can probably see where the script goes from there…well actually this is more improv stuff as we’ve strayed from some point about Sentence Patten 2 and making sure that the verbs are in the same tense to create balance. It’s the stuff I like about school: the unscripted things.

“What teacher or teachers don’t you like?” he asks and before I can answer he says, wisely: “You said we can ask anything…you said that you are looking for us to ask honest questions…”

(I hope you can envision that smiling, smart alecky senior boy, trying to use the teacher’s words again him). It’s a double-dog dare moment and I still answer him truthfully in front of the class.

Nope, not going to tell you my response because you didn’t ask the question. But I think it may be safe to say that teachers are as much students in school as the students are.

My mom tells me that she simply couldn’t find me and that the office would call her and say “Mrs. Judson, your son is here at the school. Will you be picking him up?” The son was me and I was 4 years old. I wasn’t in preschool and I wasn’t enrolled. And here’s how I remember it:

When my mom wasn’t looking, I would simply walk down Washoe Court, turn left on Neotomas Ave, cross Tachevah Drive and walk across the amazingly large field to Yulupa Elementary school. You’d run into the original playground first (the one with “all things metal-tubed”: monkey bars, balancing bars, swinging bars and lots of kid-smashed sawdust). The community chipped in a couple years later (I think the National Guard even showed up) and built a huge playground to the southeast out of recycled tires. Anyway, from the playground you crossed the blacktop and headed through a corridor and I decided to turn right and opened the door in the corner.

No one saw me slip in and so I waited a moment, closed the door and saw that several classes were spread out this enormous open space (California was still playing with the open classroom concept). I scouted the groups, found one that seemed interesting, and simply plopped myself indian-style (as we called it then…now it’s “criss-cross apple sauce,” so my sons tell me) and listened to the story being told.

I’m not sure how long it took, but eventually (I think it was about an hour) I was asked a question by an adult (such as “So what is your name?”). And I remember her looking at me with that look. I think the expression was a cross between the look that Julie Vogel gave me after our first kiss and the look that Lois gives me when I say something in which I am trying to cross a social line. And I think it was my response that prompted the look, because, I’m told, I had a speech problem. Apparently, as my mom reminds me, I was inarticulate and what came out of my mouth sounded more Chinese than English.

[Insert way-too-obvious student quip here such as: "Not much has changed, eh?"]

The adult then walked me to the office (sort of that “lost boy in the big mall thing” scene) and I was greeted by soothing and understanding tones (yes, I could understand English…I just couldn’t speak it very well). The secretary (that’s what we called them back then) called my mother while I got to do “real school work”: color. Mom arrives, nervous smiles/apologies/thankyou’s, driving away in the 1968 Ford Galaxie.

I don’t think she yelled at me, but I think I remember some type of “You had me worried” thematic explanation. What I do remember is that I couldn’t wait to go back…and so I did–a year later–sort of legally. My mom’s gift to me was to sort of fudge my birthday date so that I could be in school a bit earlier than originally planned. And that was okay by me, because I couldn’t wait.

And I have to say, most days I still can’t wait to get to school. And I find that what I like and hate about school is about the same as when I was a student. Under the “Things I like” list, and at the top, is one of the reasons why I keep coming back. Sorry, it’s not students. They’re probably second or third. But really, it’s the same reason why students come to school: their friends. I like the people I work with. We drink coffee and occasionally go out to breakfast and, yes, we might even sit by the same people at lunch. We have stuff in common and we know each other and they let me hang around with them. Yes, students are a big part of my day, but frankly, you people don’t stick around for very long. I’m not sure if you realized this, but we get you for maybe an hour or two a trimester and then you’ve graduated. The constant in my work are the people I work with and that’s what brings me back.

Ah, I can see the smart alecky kid ready to ask about the things I hate and to that I will list the usual suspects (and, btw, some of these are fairly universal along many career lines):

• A seemingly endless amount of non-classroom things-to-do that simply lack cohesion, for the purpose of trying to show something that the organization is not. (Busy work)
• A loss of vision of what we are really here for and in its place check lists from outside experts who are not even practitioners of education. (Vision)
• A underlying, smirky and patronizing attitude from the people that make the decisions– that don’t acknowledge the teacher as professional. (Respect)
• A society that has given into the notion that one can effectively, efficiently, and accurately quantify learning. (People as numbers)
• A belief that all people learn the same way and the same pace and that a moving target called a “benchmark” is the trump card for whether a student passes or fails. (No achievable goals)
• A notion that education is the magic bullet for all of societies ills. (”We can always do better”)
• A belief that students are simply not as smart as they were back when and that schools are simply watering down the basics of a good education.
• And, my favorite: A “commonsense” notion that education’s purpose is to turn out better workers in society (say nothing about living and thinking).

I simply hate and abhor those things; some are out of ignorance and most are simply not true.

And I take a look at the list of things that I like and the things that I hate and I think “Not much has changed from when I was a student.” I have about five or so people that I really like and, I have control issues. And, I still sometimes show up in the classroom simply speaking something Chinese…oh, that’s for next year.

As sometimes I do when I have extra time on a Spring Break where it is snowing outside, I cruise on over to the Indiana DOE site to see what is “coming down the pipe” from Indianapolis. I know that 7 Habits encourages us to not concentrate on the Circle of Concern that is not within our Circle of Influence, but I still think what I say about an educational matter still has merit.

So today found me looking at the “Indiana Plan for Digital-Age Learning” (Jan 2007) publication and apparently final report. I know that I read it looking for the key words that gets me a bit keyed up (heck, I’ve begun a separate blog just for technology and education), but here are some things that will still be there when I go back and do a closer read (and my apologies to twitter readers for my ranting):

The makeup of the committee that brings the recommendation are truly shareholders in education: they are mostly business owners or administrators in the technology field. The only “educators” are either school IT people or school administrators. The only active teacher is Jan Weir, a high school chemistry teacher. My bet, and I pick this up from the report, that most of the data to support their recommendations came from other sources rather than real knowledge within the classroom.

The “proof” data itself is based upon projections and even if you didn’t like it, the book Freakanomics should be a lesson for us that those who try and forecast trends and especially educational ones are merely just giving a guess and not prophecy. You know this because there is little “here’s the other side of the story” discussion. About the only concession you’ll get on reports such as these are the obligatory “technology alone is not the magic bullet” and “technology is a tool” comments. But the rest of the report will sing the glories of the report’s conclusions.

Speaking of “proof” you always need an “edge” in scaring those who might disagree with your recommendations, and in Indiana it is “the brain drain.” All of our brightest kids are leaving the states to go elsewhere. Don’t you think that it might have something to do with the weather in Indiana (hey, it’s snowing today…and it’s Spring Break!) Bring in the woes of the economy and then use it as proof that you as taxpayers need to spend more money on computers. This is a logical fallacies because nowhere in the report does it give proof that if we spend more time and money on computers and this approach to how we do school will our kids be “more competitive” in the workplace (and btw, what about actually learning?)

My favorite part is the survey of teachers, because they come across as, well, a bit technologically dumb in the results (represented by handy Excel-generated bar graphs). And this is my favorite because it’s the most true: teachers are cautious because each 7 years, someone says that that “THIS IS THE BEST WAY TO DO SCHOOL” and teachers are human and pretty smart and will know that if it is as promised, there will be proof. For technology in the classroom (all the new whiteboards and snazzy software to make Johnny finally appear to be reading because of the report at the end of the session) the proof is not there.

So, all of this on a quick read. I fully admit my lack of close read and will do that later. My gut feeling is that my instincts are right: people love the new stuff and want a magic bullet, but rarely want to talk in depth about the relationship to pedagogy. Education as a whole has been the whipping boy of public discourse and politics for too long (you realize that the “Nation at Risk” document in 1983 is responsible for most of this and, surprise, may based on faulty data and conclusion).

Sure, we do things differently now than we did when I was in high school (1984); so, as we try and infuse some of these ways of communication into our classrooms, ask a teacher first…and pull up a chair and take note, because it’ll take awhile to see how solid pedagogy directs technology’s usage.

I’ve been following the local case of a school newspaper staff being reminded of the rules of prior review by the principal. The high school is Woodlan Jr/Sr High School (outside Ft. Wayne, IN) and the adviser is Amy Sorrell–a teacher with 7 years experience and also teaches AP English Language and Composition.

The story’s conflict begins (or, at least heats up) when a student writes an editorial about homosexuality and is trying to reason with her audience (and perhaps herself) of being a bit more tolerant of one another. Sorrell, who usually runs “controversial” stories past her principal, Ed Yoder, but she thought this particular editorial wasn’t that controversial. Yoder instructs for stronger prior review and student newspaper staff contacts the SPLC.

(Here is a copy of the initial news report with the editorial in question).

The student newspaper decides to not publish anymore after a delay in prior review in early March. And that’s where I thought the story would stop.

But today, the local news (along with being sent via AP wire) states that Sorrell has been put on “paid leave.”

This will–most likely–open the debate of the provisions of the Hazelwood decision and the allowance of prior review by school officials and what exactly that means.

Following a “natural trend” because of perceptions: (From PEN)

MILWAUKEE POLICE TO BE STATIONED INSIDE SOME SCHOOLS
Milwaukee police officers will be assigned for the first time to full-time duty inside city public schools under an agreement between police and Milwaukee Public Schools leaders. The effort to improve school safety will begin small — with two pairs of officers in the spring semester, which begins in late January — but all involved hope that it will grow by next fall, provided that money can be found to do that. Mayor Tom Barrett said the pilot efforts to have police work as “resource officers” in schools should help curb school violence and are a step in the right direction. “Students, staff, parents and the community all want kids to feel safe going to school and want the schools to be safe,” Barrett said in an interview. An opinion poll shows strong public support for safety measures, reports Alan J. Borsuk. Asked what services were important for MPS to provide, city residents in the poll put three things connected to safety at the top of the list. The services — violence prevention, drug and alcohol use prevention, and improved safety and discipline — were each rated as “extremely important” by more than 80% of all people surveyed.