Blogush

There is a kimillionzillion readings on the potential impact of our kids not learning 21^st Century survival skills, but what about our teachers?  I am not talking about just the veterans. I mean all teachers, all subjects.  I don’t see teachers desiring any change– how long would change even take if it was “forced.”  How long would it take for a teacher to go from putting numbers on a board to a year’s worth of conceptual authentic learning that the kids could place in context?  How long would it take for a teacher to go from making their kids memorize the capitals of all the countries they are studying to talking live with people in those countries?  Most teachers I know have zero interest in 2.0 tools.  I might be off here, but I can’t recall a single person in my building who has asked me even one question about any of the tools I use, why I use them, or the impact they have on instruction — which means there is no interest or I am just totally and completely  wrong about hopping on the bandwagon, a thought which has seriously crossed my mind several times.  A list of all of the “Teachers-of-the-year” for each of our schools was just released and I “googled” most of them and did not find one that had an online presence(only did the first two pages of google ; ).  How many years until change starts shaking the foundation of my building?  My guess….15 years.

Last week in a conference with my student teacher I asked him what can you give the students that they can’t get from the internet. Today I can across a comment Charlie Rot left on Wesley Fryer’s blog post about “Actively opposing creativity fatigue.” I think it is perfect and would like to post it here.

Creative fatigue is what prevents schools from changing and moving away from the industrial model based on an agricultural calendar. I think one interesting way to jolt the reality home at a faculty meeting would be to do the following:

Bring in a savy 12 year old from another school. Ask each teacher to have brought a copy of their latest test with them. In most schools this will be some multiple choice or true / false bit that is easy to grade and requires memorization.

The 12 year old with google in a matter of minutes answers all the questions correctly having had no previous experience in the class. The presenter then poses the question, “Why do we need you?” “Are you relevant?” “In light of what just happened why should the district, state, school employ you?”

It would be fun and powerful.

Powerful yes. Fun? I would love to be there and see the facial expressions! Can I guess what the reaction of the teachers would be — “That’s why we don’t let the kids use the computers. They wouldn’t learn anything. They would just rely on their computers.”

In a similar post that I read the author suggested that the teachers bring in their lesson plans from the month to their faculty meeting. At the meeting their would be baskets with the different levels of Bloom’s taxonomy labeled on each. The teachers would place their lessons in the baskets that match the level of thinking in the lesson. Which basket would be overflowing?

As an 8th grade teacher it is sometimes difficult to get a conversation going with some of the male students. Now I do speak five different dialects of male: jock, mountain man, book worm, farm hand, and metal head. I am currently learning gamer, skater, and emo. But every once in awhile I do come across a kid whose dialect I don’t understand and our conversation go something like his…

Hi my name is Paul Bogush, and I think I am addicted to Twitter.

When I was young there was this house on my way home from most places that my mother would make my father slow down whenever we went past it at night. At night they always had the light on in this second story window and the drapes were always left open. On the walls was the most wonderful silver and black wallpaper that made the 70’s the shaggiest decade of my life. I was always intrigued by the people in the window, and I loved getting a glimpse into their life. My dad would never slow down long enough to let us get a really good look at them or to be able to figure out exactly what they were doing. The house has changed owners, the silver and black wall paper is no longer up, the light is usually off, and the shades are now usually drawn – but I still slow done and look in.

Twitter reminds me of that window – except that the window is open and the people inside want to share what they are doing with me, and in return care about what I am doing. It is kind of scary actually. I feel like I am snooping. But for some reason I find myself really caring about a Board of Education 2000 miles away serving food, or what conference someone is attending. I feel a connection to this group of information nerds. I am addicted. What’s remarkable is that I was an outspoken critic of Twitter when it started, I did open an account early on and never liked it. What made a difference is making the information easily accessible. Ginger Lewman told me about Tweet Bin, threw it up on my Firefox, and bada-bing-bada-boom…I only follow about twenty people, and get followed by 700…opps…I mean 7 — which might be more impressive than my 2,347,195 Technorati blog rating. Luckily I have a twitter fairy that sends my tweets to her worldwide following. I wonder what kind of pressure would come with having more followers? Would I have to start wear matching socks, re-check my spelling? I’m not ready for matching spocks.

The internet has allowed me to come into contact with people that I want to be more like. Does that make sense? I can follow people who are doing things or possess qualities that I want to emulate. I have noticed that many of the people that I follow are “doers.” They are not just thinking and proposing ideas, they are taking action. Twitter has taught me not to just think, but do. The blogs, podcasts, and websites I follow represent where they land on topics, Twitter lets me know about the steps they take to get there.

I have had several student teachers over the last decade and usually work with at least one undergrad student each year. Most are from Quinnipiac University near my school. I will say that I think the school has an excellent program — the best of any school that I have worked with. However I do wish the school would add a few things to their program. Here they are…with a very short explanation for each:

1-Technology:They need to be up to date with the latest tools and how and when to use them. Too often they include computers in a unit not to create, but just because they can. This can’t be taught by a current professor — this stuff just wasn’t around when they were teaching.

2-Create: They are very good at following lesson planning “rules.” Open unit with question, give opening facts, follow-up with primary source, ask open-ended question, etc. I want to see them creating far-out units that push themselves and the kids.

3-Risk-taking: I want to see units that crash and burn because the kid had enough guts to try something that pushed of what is the norm. I don’t want ok safe units that are guaranteed to succeed. I want an attitude that says watch out kids, this is special, and together we will give it our best shot, even if it floops.

4-Know-themselves — Hmmmm…self-reflection(?)I want someone to sit down and reflect with them. I want them to know why they are doing things, who they are and what made them that way. When that happens they start to no longer see a group of kids, but individuals.

5-Know the answer to “Why?” Why does Billy need to know this? Why is he going to remember it 10 years from know? Why is it valuable to him immediately? Why did the kid not hand in his HW? Why did she fail the test? Why does the mother’s actions at the conference explain the actions of the student?

I hope what is written above is not seen as negative statement about my past colleagues.  It is a statement about the colleges that they come from.   I will say that many of my past student teachers were some of the greatest educators I know.  They created a classroom environment that I have only seen surpassed by a few veteran teachers.  I am very proud to have shared a classroom with them, and I would be happy to have my children in their class(alright…except for that one guy who wasn’t going to teach anyway).

Tim Holt recently wrote a post asking people to give their 500 words about why they use technology:

I thought it would be nice to see what all of us “edubloggers” and podcasters in educational technology really believe about education technology.

Why do you do it?

Why do you think it is important?

Who is listening to you?

I want to hear from you. I want to start the conversation about why you do what you do in education technology. What drives you?

Here are the rules:

Can be written or multimedia. ( I chose to record my essay).It cannot be longer than 500 words.

Here is my response with transcript below…feel free to leave a comment on it. Place your cursor on the little “ball” going across the timeline and then click on the “+” sign to leave a written or video comment. Enjoy…wha ha ha….

Almost everyone’s answer I have listened to or read has gone well over 500 words. So because I play by the rules and am not a rebel, here is my answer in exactly 499 words. Hopefully it will be a bit different from all the others:

I believe technology should be infused into our class to connect connect connect. Before discovering 2.0 tech stuff I was like Tom Hanks in that movie where all he did was talk to the ball stuck on an island. I was just looking for a way to survive and get off of my island classroom. Every bottle I threw out for help came back with a message saying you’re crazy, stay on your island. Using technology allowed me and my crazy idea island full of weirdness to connect with other like minded islands. What I realized is that I was actually part of a huge island chain that stretched across the world. My discovery last year nearly blew up my brain with all of the stuff I was doing and learning! I developed health problems and had to practice meditational breathing techniques to relax, was sleeping like three hours a day. I read and listened to everything that had to do with 2.0 stuff…I am not kidding…I even went through the archives. I am so pumped that my kids are starting to make connections with their blogs wikis and podcasts – from Texas to Australia, talking to small children and interviewing old men — By dipping into this pool of knowledge, the connections they make will lead to a world that is a little less scary, a little kinder, and a whole lot wiser.

I believe we should use technology to create create create products that can be used by other people. I can’t even remember the last time we did something in class that ended up in the garbage can. Practically everything we’ve made was created for a specific predetermined audience that the students met either live or at the very least through their blogs and wikis. These creations will be digested and accessible to people for a long time. It really neat to see what links to our wiki – the kids find it amazing that other teachers have chosen their work to use at professional training sessions and with individual classrooms. Who in the world would expend energy and spirit creating something that will just be for a grade, and then just thrown out. Blah! We create create create for real, for people to use now, not to prepare us to be able to make things in the so called real world that they are supposedly entering in seven years. They are in the real world now—they should be creating for people today—thinking inside the box? Nah…the kid’s innovation broke the box months ago.

I believe we should be using technology, and listen carefully because I am going to use some technical jargon here…because its cool cool cool. Come on…the reason I started doing this stuff is because it is just plain cool. Do you really need another reason?

I believe in using technology because kids get into constant state of connecting and creating…How cool is that!

If you would like to join us, just ask.

What do you learn from your students?

Learning in a classroom should be two-way…actually how many combinations can you make with 26 people in the room. If teachers are observant, if open channels of communication exist, teachers should be learning from their students’ everyday.

Today I learned the most incredible thing. It might be the most exciting thing I learned all week. You know that song that is played to introduce the Chicago Bull’s players…can you hear it in your head? Nothin’ goin’ on up there…then click here. Ok now that you have the tune in your head – I want to come into the classroom everyday with that music playing, blaring from loudspeakers, with spotlights swerving back and forth. How cool would that be? Yesterday I was telling the kids about how I always dreamed of being able to do that, and today a student (Thanks MC!!) came in with the name of the band and song title. Within 60 seconds I had it downloaded from iTunes and the class was rocking. That made my day. Simple things…

Then within five minutes another student proposed a solution to a problem we were having. We had just finished a collaborative project with a class from VA with 100 kids on our end. Another school was interested in doing the same project with us but my kids voted to take a break and we had to write back that we could not participate. Today a student proposed an idea on how to accomplish the project with a small break-out group of ten students – a solution I never saw from a perspective I never considered. Thanks kids.

I know, not an origional question.  It was in my head for an hour after school during a workshop on the legalities of IDEA and 504s.  An hour long powerpoint presentation with lots of bullets and text.  Here is a lawyer being paid LOTS of money.  He has a captive audience, they have to be here, and can’t leave.  I guess all the extra time it woyuld have taken to make it more appealing was not worth it.  It was our responsibility to just sit, listen, and learn.  Come to think of it…teachers get paid to “train” a captive audience that has to be there and can’t leave.  They don’t get any extra pay to make the class interesting and spend extra time to design presentations that suck kids in.  I spent four hours picking slides for a 3o minute powerpoint on editorial cartoons.  I could have spent less time on the design and spent four minutes picking my slides. That would have given me alot of extra time.  When your kids are working on presentations of any kind — visual, audio, written — do you spend any time helping them design an engaging presentation?  Can you?  Should you?  All kids should be taught how to create final products that are “sticky.”

Do you tell stories?

Today I told the story about how my dog, who we declared dead last Friday, had actually left my farm and taken over another farm across the valley.  It is a great story about a lost dog, the eccentric man whose farm she had taken over, my chance meeting with an acquaintance who was giving him old cat food to give to my dog, my phone call convincing the man to give me back my dog, and the drive over to his farm and big dog hug he received when he ran across the field to me.  I then followed it up with a reading of the Skeetches by Dr. Seuss as an intro to our unit on editorial cartoons – won’t go into how I connected it here : )  While some teachers never tell a story, and some teachers have their students tell stories, how many teacher’s model storytelling? Sure it’s great that this wave of digital story telling in sweeping the web 2.0 world, I just wonder if the teachers are getting swept up, or just holding the broom.

I really want to blog.  But I normally find myself in a quandary when sitting down to write a post.  Add to my blog or read other blogs.  So I have decided to try a new strategy.  Every day I have lots of questions flowing through my brain. So everyday…every other day…once a week I will try to write down one question I pondered in a post.  Simple title.  Lead with the question.  A few lines about why the question popped into my head.  Done.  I think I can handle that.  Then I will get all warm and fuzzy knowing that I am adding something to the blogosphere and possibly increase my technorati from 1,654,252 to 1,654,253.  I really need to get higher than the guy with the blog dedicated to his three legged cat.  I can dream, I believe it is my destiny.