Make Noise, Make Change

To the Future Mr./Mrs. President of the United States of America, Members of Congress and The House of Representatives:

Let’s cut to the chase:  No Child Left Behind scares me.  I’m frightened not only by what’s included in the policy (high-stakes standardized testing, and unrealistic and underfunded goals) but also by what’s been left out:  the use of terms such as social networking, Web 2.0, blogs, wikis, online collaboration, etc.

Thanks to the Internet, I was able to research the leading presidential candidates’ education platforms and was saddened;  Senator Barack Obama, Senator Hilary Clinton, and Senator John McCain, you each addressed the need for educational reform, but didn’t include any plans for Internet-based learning.  

While I was conducting my research, I came across some amazing documents on the Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology website.  One, Visions 2020.2: Student Views on Transforming Education and Training Through Advanced Technologies seems to break the mold of government documents.  Not only is it forward thinking, but real students were interviewed and their desires and needs were published.  Among these wishes were “anytime, anywhere learning”, “online classes”, “working digitally-using email and chat for collaborating on homework and schoolwork”.   Great news, right?

Well, the document was released in August 2005;  the survey of students had been conducted in 2004.  So it’s a few years old.  Then I pulled up the Fiscal Year 2008 Budget Summary  for Elementary and Secondary Education on the Department of Education website.  Surely, the use of social networking tools in education would be addressed.  However, I didn’t even see technology mentioned.  If the Office of Educational Technology is aware of these trends, why isn’t educational policy keeping up?

Good news: It’s not too late to learn about the power of these tools and how they could/will/have revamp(ed) the way in which our children learn.  I’ve learned quite a bit about this buzz in the last month.  I plan to continue learning because I’m becoming a better teacher.  I’m asking you to learn with me….so you become better leaders.

Living Example

Ed. Tech’ers, Web 2.0′ers, Tweeters, 21st Century Learners and Teachers:  I’m proposing that we take this opportunity to show our future leaders and lawmakers how social networking can help learners grow.  Please comment on this post…leave your hopes/wishes/desires/needs/demands concerning the future of educational technology.  If you wish, post links to your blogs, wikis, videos, examples of educational Web2.0 tools, whatever.  I’m sending this post to the presidential candidates, members of Congress and the House of Representatives:  not because I believe they’ll listen to me, but I believe they’ll understand the power of this living document and listen to us.

 Please pass this on to anyone else who is “here for the learning revolution“.  Wouldn’t it be great if Metcalfe’s law  led to a change of our laws!

Thank you!

Spreading the “Good News”

Maybe it’s because I’m sensitive to the issue, but this week, I’ve noticed a slight theme in the Twitters and blogs I’ve been following:  Most of the world doesn’t understand the power of social networking.  Specifically, folks don’t understand how Web 2.0 tools can help allof us learn and grow, especially if used correctly with school children.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve plugged myself in to this world and consider this past-time to be personal and professional research.  I know I have a long way to go, but I’m proud of the progress I’ve made so far.

That being said, I’m wondering why so many people, as Dean Shareski pointed out, think these tools are a fad.  Why isn’t the battle cry for the expansion of technology in our schools louder and therefore more difficult to ignore?   Why are so many districts writing policies which limit or ban social networking, rather than promote their use through safe guidelines and support systems?  One reason could be bad press.

Bad press is better than no press at all?  Maybe, maybe not.  Right now, the majority of key players (administrators, teachers and parents) are not active participants in a social networking system.  I’m guessing they hear about tools such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc. via 1) their pre-teen, teenage or college age children or 2) TV or newspapers. 

Parents are led to believe that the sites are a sort of online scrapbook that kids can share with their friends.  Television leads them to believe the sites are dangerous.  (see “Beatrice, you’re way off“ ) Based on those influences why would parents, administrators,  or teachers support the use of social networking tools in school?   What the social networking world needs in good press.

Yes, many very intelligent and highly motivating people are dedicating their careers and lives to making real change in educational technology.  We should all be very thankful to their efforts.  A bit of mainstream positive press wouldn’t hurt the movement, would it?  The last I noticed was the coverage on the Congressional hearing on Second Life by The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  It may not have been exactly positive, but at least it wasn’t negative.  (side-note:  Did Congress ever come to any conclusions about SL?  If they did, most of the mainstream news missed it.)

I’ll do my part to spread “good news” about social networking.  My next evil plan (muahahahaha…) is to post our school’s photos on Flickr.   Hopefully our teachers, administrators and parents will have a chance to use these tools themselves, and create a more informed opinion.

Teaching, Learning, Thinking and Growing with Technology

In my district, elementary students use technology, for the most part, only while they are in the technology lab.  For most students, that’s about 30-60 minutes a week.  I can only speak for my school when I say that technology is considered a “special” subject.  Although I am thankful the teachers recognize my classes as a valuable extension of the curriculum, technology is not generally considered the key to our students’ future.  In their defense, our administration uses much of our teacher’s time for professional development of core content areas.  How much can we expect teachers to learn independently,  when many consider themselves technology novices?  On the other hand, some teachers are lax in their efforts to learn even the basic technology their students are mastering!

Lisa Thumann’s post from yesterday really spurred this idea.  How do we rally our teachers behind the idea that in order to prepare our students for life in the 21st century:

• They need to teach with technology and their students need to learn with technology. 
• Technology is a thinking tool. 
• Technology ignites creativity and promotes intellectual, personal and social growth. 

If I stood up on the table and proudly stated those heartfelt words at the next faculty meeting, the staff might brand me the new village idiot.  Rather, I need the opportunity to show them that technology shouldn’t be “special” anymore. 

I’m dreaming up a list of resources I will use when our administration asks me to sell the expansion of the use of technology in our district.  Although I expect it to be a continuous work-in-progress, I’ll post it when it’s “finished”.

4/24/08  Thank you to Scott McLeod for posting research about educator perceptions.

Absolutely Necessary for Newbies

You’ve Got A Friend…

The great news is there’s another teacher in my district who is interested in breaking open the Pandora’s Box of collaborative technology for elementary students and teachers.  She’s completing a program for Media Specialists and hopes to switch from a classroom position to a Media Center position next year.  (I’ve noticed that media specialists and ed. tech. teachers can become the Wonder Twins for finding/organizing information if given the opportunity to work together.)  The wonderful news is that she’s also Here for the Revolution (check out the button contest for NECC) and is a newbie just like me!  I convinced her to join me at  the Students and Electronic Media:  Teaching in the Technological Age seminar at Princeton University on May 2nd.  She already follows Kathy Schrock, who is presenting at that the seminar, and we’ve promised to share the cool “stuff” we find along the way with each other. 

After I spoke with my new Media Specialist friend, I realized it was difficult to decide which tools are good, important or useful for my students (and me).  I’ve spent the last few weeks gathering information, but left myself little time to weed through it.  My del.icio.us is pretty unorganized…I don’t even know what I’ve saved so far!

You Can’t Live Without…

So I’m asking you to think back to when you started out in the social networking world…back when the possiblities practially caused an explosion in your mind…what tools did you need?  Where should we start?  Please suggest tools/sites/blogs you can’t live without.   Thanks!

My List (under construction):
Twitter
Del.icio.us
Google Reader
People who support this journey!

Parent Communication: “A” for Effort?

Last week, every student in our district received their report cards.  As for the teachers, depending on the grade/school in which they teach, the process in which they reported grades varied.

• Middle School teachers keep their gradebook online using PowerSchool.  Parents are able to keep track of their child’s progress in each class by logging on to the program online.  At the end of the marking period, the software allows the teachers to easily transfer the grades to a paper report card that is sent home with the student.
• In some of our elementary schools, grade 4 and5 teachers follow the same steps as the middle school teachers.  Our IT team worked with PowerSchool to adapt the software to meet the needs of an elementary report card (ex: The addition of check marks for effort/participation/behavior grades).
• K-2 students do not receive letter grades.  Their report card is comprised of approximately 80 check marks that cover practically every objective for each subject.  Some teachers print comments on the back of the report card using a pen.  Other teachers type a paragraph on full sheet labels, print them, cut them out, then stick the comments on the back of each child’s report card.

I help a NCU (non-computer using…yes, really) friend of mine with her comments by typing them for her at the end of each marking period.  (She insists on compensating me for my time.) Rather than printing them on labels, I formatted a Word document to fit the measurements of the report card, so we can run the original report card through the printer.  She likes the fact that her comments are very professional looking, and that by changing the size of the font, she can write much more than before.   My hope is, the more I engage her in computer use, the more likely she’ll be to try something on her own.  She’s retiring this year, and I truly hope she stays in touch…via email at least. 

I bring this up because I wonder how far digital report cards or Web 2.0 tools could take our district.  Or how far they should take our district.  I don’t have children of my own yet, but I know many parents keep report cards in scrapbooks and as keepsakes.  I assume eventually that the parents in our district will be accustomed to digital everything and therefore may not be upset by not holding a hard copy of their child’s report card.  But when will that change be appropriate?

I believe that the more parents know and understand about what goes on in a classroom, the more they are able to help their children, and understand why the children receive the grades that they do.  Web 2.0 tools can help us share more of the classroom experience with parents.  But how much sharing with parents is appropriate?   Assignments, homework, projects, grades, meetings, podcasts of lessons, webcams in the classroom?  Obviously parents are interested, but do they have the time to keep up with it all?

If you use Web 2.0 type tools to specifically communicate with parents about their child’s progress in school, please take a moment to leave a comment describing it.  How far can/should we go?  Will we one day see parent/teacher conferences conducted via webcams?

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Yesterday was interesting to say the least.  The fifth grade students dove deeper into understanding what Web 2.0 tools are and how they can be used.  Thanks to TechDirt:School Boards Notice Internet Isn’t Dangerous, Schoolboards: net dangers over-rated; bring social networks to school, Kids in Danger No More, The Dark Side of Web 2.0 and Kids, Survey: Parents Talk to Their Kids About the Web, Technology for Tots to Teens, Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0 part 1, and Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0 part 2, the students were able to create a class list of the benefits of bringing Web 2.0 into our classrooms and the possible drawbacks. 

I was surprised by the class discussion that occurred after they read these posts.  Many, MANY questions:
“So if I started a blog, a stranger could still contact me through my comments.  Isn’t that dangerous?”
“If I’m posting stuff on a wiki to share it, what if a stranger changes my stuff and pretends to be a kid that I know?”
“If a teacher starts a blog for her students, how will she have time to watch all of the comments to make sure they are appropriate?”

I knew it was time for nuts and bolts.  I pulled up this blog.  (They actually applauded me!)  I showed them my first comment and how/why I had accepted it.  I remembered a post from Dangerously Irrelevant that linked to a wiki called Moving Foward which had a list of elementary classroom blogs. (great resource!)  I was able to show them examples of other students’ posts and the comments that had been left for them.   Suddenly, I wasn’t the only excited one in the room!  Unfortunately, I only see each of the three 5th grade classes once a week, so the project will continue Monday…

Later yesterday, I learned about the Students and Electronic Media:  Teaching in the Technological Age seminar at Princeton University through Kevin Jarrett’s Welcome to NCS-Tech!  I’ll be speaking to my principal about a professional day.  The agenda looks so exciting!

To end on a funny note:  a third grader was leaving the lab yesterday and asked, “Hey Ms. Tvarok, have you ever heard of Web 2.0?”  Smiling, I said, “Yes, your brother’s class is doing some research on Web 2.0.  Has he talked to you about it?”  His response practically exploded out of his mouth, “Well yeah, and we saw on a Web 2.0 video that the Machine owns us and we have to teach the Machine so they know more about us and Web 2.0 will last 2 more years before it crashes…gotta go, bye!”  And he ran down the hall.

I guess “rumors” are bound to spread.  I’m just happy that the word’s out on the street!

Hello World? No kidding…

I’m sure it’s not difficult to tell that this is my first blog post.  Call me wildly daring or dangerously stupid, I just learned about the depths of Web 2.0 about a week and a half ago.   Now, it’s not like I had been living under a rock.  Obviously, I had heard about blogs, wikis, Facebooks, YouTube…etc.  But honestly, the “world” had taught me two things about Web 2.0 tools:  1) they are “toys” that college kids played with and 2) they are the perfect unlocked door for predators to waltz right through and do who knows what to my innocent and Internet-naive elementary students.  As far as I was concerned, I needed no part of Web 2.0.

Then something almost magical happened.  I signed up for a workshop at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.  Lisa Thumann was offering ed. tech workshops and I signed up for one that sounded interesting… (wait for it) “Project-Based Learning”.   Sure, I saw the workshop, “Web 2.0″, but wikis and blogs were blocked in my district for students and teachers alike.  Why would I go to that workshop?  Well, the technology gods had something special in mind for me.  There was a scheduling conflict and I was “forced” to choose the Web 2.0 workshop…and guess what?  I loved it.  Thanks to Lisa, I’m on Twitter, have an active iGoogle Reader and was exposed to many tools that I can’t wait to use with my students.

But wait… wikis, blogs are blocked in my school!!  My IT team and administrators haven’t yet seen the light.  Can I do it?  Is it possible to show them that these tools can change the way our students and teachers learn/communicate/live?  After immersing myself in this “brand new world” I realized my elementary students were NOT Internet-naive.  Each year, we discuss Internet safety and the threat of predators.  Many of them have email/IM services that they use at home.  I’ve always been a supporter of supervised computer use with students… so what’s stopping my district?

Lack of knowlege:  it was stopping me too, a week and a half ago.   My plan for this blog is to share the steps I take with my students and our administrators.   First, my fifth grade students are learning about Web 2.0 by reading ed. tech blogs.  (If they are blocked, I print them out at home so the kids can read them.)  Then, they will use the Persuasive Writing Tools on readwritethink.com to map out a persuasive essay arguing for or against the use of Web 2.0 tools in school.  (I’ll send the final drafts to our administration…sneaky, I know)  Next, I’m working on a project with my GT students.  I’d like their final presentation to be a VoiceThread.  I’ll see how my principal feels about allowing comments!

Thanks for reading.  I hope that if you’re on the same journey as me (or have been through it already) that you’ll take a minute to respond to my posts. I’d appreciate any comments, suggestions or advice you might have!