Diagnostic Assessment

So because I travel in somewhat ornery education circles, the very title of this post probably meant I'm the only person who is reading it.

But I wanted to get a point across.  I've heard multiple people highlight that true "diagnostic assessment", as opposed to thinking about testing and data rather than thinking about students, is about creating relationships with kids and understand where they are coming from.  I agree with this.

But I also think that the first day is about kids testing you.

Testing whether or not you're ready for them.

Testing whether or not you're going to get unreasonably mad at little things they do.

Testing whether you're going to read a list of rules and a syllabus.  Or you're going to do some icebreaker you saw at a conference.

Testing whether you're going to design things that are captivating, but not corny.

Testing whether you're kind, compassionate, and caring.  And testing if you're also resolute, passionate and firm in your beliefs.

Testing whether or not you're cool, but not just cool because you want them to think you're cool.

Testing whether or not you trust them.

Testing whether or not you're going to respect them.

Testing whether or not you're going to be worth their time.

Testing whether or not you're going to do things that are really important.

Testing whether or not you care about the things they care about, but also care deeply about the things you care about.

This "diagnostic" that your kids administer to you is more high-stakes than any multiple choice test.  Thankfully, this isn't the kind you have to shade in a circle to do well.

Good luck and have fun with them.

First Day of School is About Marketing

First day of school tomorrow.  And it makes me think about what Godin says about fostering tribes.  Find people with passion, and provide them with vehicles to communicate.

In many ways, the first day of school consists of a good bit of marketing.  Now, not the kind of "investment" marketing that happens in traditional classrooms.  Where teachers trick kids into liking something they don't, akin to selling a ketchup popsicle to a person wearing white gloves.  This is about marketing their role in connecting with the world. About marketing their own self-confidence.  Their own self-discipline.  Their own right to and hand in this changing world.
I have to "market" the idea of my kids being self-directed learners.

I have to "market" the idea of my kids being responsible with their equipment and relationships online.

I have to "market" the idea of my kids being respectful to each other and safe in an environment that looks drastically different than the learning environments they are accustomed to.

I have to "market" the idea that school can be about what you passion, not what you find boring.

To focus this year, my third in teaching, I want to "market" four new ideas.

1. Communicating with actual people from around the globe.
2. Making sense of global misunderstandings by understanding yourself.
3. Finding your own engagement.
4. Creating new things and telling stories that are interesting to people outside the classroom.

I've always used video to "market" these ideas.  It provides support that these ideas come from outside my own head, and were created by groups of people who believe these four things are crucial to the future.

Here are the videos I've chosen for tomorrow, I hope other teachers might find them helpful.

Idea #1: Self Control

As kids walk into the room, every student from Kindergarten to 8th grade, I hand them a marshmallow.  "If you can resist eating it" I say, "you have proven to yourself that you have the sort of self-control necessary to make a difference".  The ones who can't resist (usually only a few each year): "we have some work to do : ) "

Idea #2: The world is a much different place than even when I was your age, just 11 (or 13 for 6th graders) years ago (I began 8th grade in August 1999).  Anything is now possible (with access and knowledge)

Idea #3: Social Media has changed the way this world talks and works with each other, even in places you wouldn't immediately think.

Thought #4: Things are changing...really fast (sometimes for good, sometimes for bad).  The world will be different when you are older too.  Don't you want it to be your choice?

Thought #5: Language helps us understand each other.

Thought #6: Other people think other languages are important, other than me.

(I'm always careful with using Obama, because lot's of people use Obama as an example that Black kids can do anything, which a lot of my kids find incredibly insulting).

Thought #7: You need to get better at something everyday.  This is an opportunity for you to work on something exciting.

After watching the last one, my students will eat their marshmallow while writing their "sentence" on an index card to post on a wall in my room.

I'm super excited about tomorrow.  I get to start a relationship with students I've never met, and to continue relationships with kids I've known for 2 years.

Good luck starting school everyone.

DIY Tech in Your Classroom

img via edvc on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/edvvc/1248693031/

I posted this as a comment on @mbteach's blog post today over at edutopia. I want to help others aggregate these resources. I totally believe that it's unfair distribution of resources that keeps learners from the stuff they need, and one of our responsibilities is to go and and redistribute it.

I would recommend scavenging thrift stores, pawn shops, craigslist, etc. for used equipment. Might not be a lot, but you will find some gems of video cameras, digital cameras, ipods/mp3 players, etc. In an afternoon of work you can cheaply pull together some really great stuff.

Have lots of conversations with friends about buying new technology. Urge them to upgrade if they are able, or to go buy that new gadget, as long as they donate the old version to your classroom. I have 3 (albiet older) video ipods and 4 digital cameras from this. Laptops too. Any laptop with at least 256MB of Ram and less than 8 years old can run a lot of internet applications. People have these laptops in their basements.

Throw a "techluck" party where friends bring their old digital cameras, video cameras, laptops, microphones, headsets, etc. You cook and provide hospitality. This interaction also provides a community of people interested in what you do. They'll be fans of your classroom and can interact with your kids.

These new tools make a huge difference in how my kids can share their learning.

Lastly, I recommend finding the 10 largest companies in your city.

Explain to them you are a teacher with limited resources and how laptops (I only recommend laptops, since they have screens, mice and keyboards built in, and are portable) will fundamentally transform the world you can open to your kids.

Tell them that laptops will provide students with a depth of thinking not found with paper and pencil.  Tell them everything you believe in (but be concise).

Send this email to the human resource person at each of these companies, asking that person if there are any laptops that have completed their IT cycle, or if there is a program for computer donations to schools or organizations. If you email 10 (or more) a few will bite. I know of 3 people (including myself) who were able to piece together 1:1 classrooms in similar ways.

Don't be shy, and be creative.

We are not suffering from a scarcity of resources, but rather an abundance of resources that are not equitably distributed to the most important users: learners.

Equitable student sourced mapping: Crowdmap

I guess new things always feel this way, but I think crowdmap is going to transform how my students interact with their city and their new language this year.  Talk about utilizing cognitive surplus to do something worth sharing.  This came on the same day that I found out my students can follow my classroom twitter page via sms, even without a twitter account (they're under 13).

Those of you who know of ushahidi (recently brought back into consciousness via Shirky's Cognitive Surplus examples) will remember that it is an open sourced platform for crowd sourcing documentation of various things happening around a city, neighborhood, state, region, country, whatever.  It's had a wide array of uses, from documenting violence in Uganda to sharing information about Haitian earthquake damage/victims, more can be read about all around the net.

I found out yesterday via Read Write Web about how Ushahidi was trying to make crowdsourcing "easy".  Previously, ushahidi had to be installed on a server and confingured, something difficult to do for the average user, and even complicated for the more than average if the environment isn't right.

Now ushahidi is a "hosted" service, much like having a wordpress.com hosted blog would be as compared to installing wordpress on your own server.

I had to try it.  This represents the kind of equity Monika Hardy has been talking about this summer.  This is authentic learning, as well as an impactful use of communication.  And it can be done by any device my students have, a boon for inner city schools.

So I shared this with a few students on facebook and they told me they would be excited to create this map of things in the city they notice or feel are important.  We've wanted to make school more authentic and more impactful this year, it looks like we have one tool to do this just in time.

Students will post (via phone, email, or the site) things they see in the city in Spanish, which will then show up on a map on our site (sanluis.crowdmap.com).  The best thing about this for us, being that so few of our students have internet access, is that they can use a mobile phone (or even a landline via googlevoice) to upload information as they walk around the neighborhood or city.

This will not only be used to spur conversation in the classroom, but also to share with other people outside St. Louis how our kids imagine our community.

I'm very excited about this.

I can also see how a history student would use it: post significant places around the city or state and describe what happened there (even pictures of historical markers).

I can also how math students could use it: post examples of fractals in nature and where they occur, or pi, or theorems, etc.

I can also how writing students could use it, post their inspiration for a poem and a short writing via text.

How would you use it?  How would your kids use it?  Is it valuable?

Try crowdmap.com, or comment on our site when we get it past the "test phase".

Support is a rhizome, not a root

I've been blogging with the cooperative catalyst group (coopcatalyst.wordpress.com) recently. Really enjoying the conversations over there.  Check it out.

I posted this one over there too, but hoped a few more folks would have the chance to look at it over here.  Not sure how this whole blogging in two places thing works yet!

Also, @Larryferlazzo posted this tonight, that relates to what we've been thinking about recently: http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2010/07/30/my-most-popular-blog-posts-on-parent-engagement-over-the-past-year/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

In edtech and learning stewardship circles (thinking of conversations with the #edopenmic last week and with @johntspencer specifically), the idea of parental involvement seems to have come up often recently.

I noticed it but really didn’t understand it until last year.  The complexity of the support networks many students in low-income communities have (and I’m assuming in many suburban ones too) is something we’ve yet to really tap into.

Shouldn’t social networks help us tap into this interconnected rhizome better than previously possible?

This is more than just a linguistic shift (i.e. moving away from saying “parent involvement” to be more P.C.).  It’s a conceptual one.  It transforms how we look at the network that raises our kids.

This rhizome of support, advocacy, accountability, and learning should be seen as a strength, or in @johntspencers words, a solution and not as an enemy to many of the things our kids face or need help with.

Roots branch out, but rhizomes interconnect and support.  I can be facebook friends with a student, his older and younger siblings, titi (aunt), grandpa and mama simultaneously.  I can mass text an entire family to make sure I get some important information to at least one of them, which could spread afterwards anyway they seem fit.  I can just ask what folks use, and tap into it, rather than forcing them to fit in the box I feel most comfortable with.

If you’ve ever pulled out weeds, you know that roots are easier to pull out than rhizomes.  Rhizomes are stronger.  Rhizomes are resistant.

We should be attaching ourselves to these networks, and leveraging to meet the needs of our students.  We should be seeing them as assets, and not as liabilities.  I can see something like this as indispensable and impossible to ignore by school communities and reformers alike if played right.

How do you all connect with these networks?

What successes have you or others that you know had?

What setbacks?

How do you intend to tap into these networks this coming year?

Any other thoughts?

We don’t see our friends or colleagues as only people in our immediate physical environment anymore because of social networks and PLNs.  Can’t we start to be more cognizant of the realities of family life outside the nuclear in the same ways?

Image via flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/venessamiemis/4087645206/ from http://www.flickr.com/photos/venessamiemis/

Open Letter to Open Networks

I sent this out a few days ago, hoping people would find it useful.  Feel free to use, adapt, talk about, trash, whatever.  It'd be nice to get something like this together and send it en mass, with the collective power of all our PLN's behind us.  That would be pretty hard to ignore.  Please comment if you find necessary.

17 July 2010
Open Letter to Network Policy Power Brokers,

Congratulations!  You have the opportunity to be a change agent.  You have the chance to be at the forefront of all that is new and path-breaking in education.  What is this chance you ask?  You have the chance to link our students to people and knowledge from around the globe.

We believe strongly that filtering is indeed an important aspect to responsible technology leadership.  We recognize the risks open networks pose to schools.  We want our kids to have constructive experiences.  We want our kids to be safe. However we do believe that this safety must be balanced with the wealth of learning that can be fostered through social networks.

We write you this letter as a member of a network, 348 people strong and growing (My own network as of July 17, 2010).  People we connect with have followers too.  We are large and focused on revolutionizing the learning opportunities of our kids.  This network has not only made us better teachers, but it has galvanized a society of other change agents around the globe.  We learn and act in real time, from anywhere.  We learn from people we’ve never met.  We share our own thoughts with a confidence and polish unprecedented in our academic careers.  Anyone can join, usually for free.  The platforms?  Twitter.  Wordpress.  Wikispaces.  Animoto.  Youtube.  Skype.  Facebook.  The list goes on and on.

The problem?  I can’t access these services, and a multitude of other social networking applications, from my school.  More importantly?  Neither can my students.  Most of my students don’t have access to the Internet at home.  They cannot enjoy the same learning network I have built over the past year.  Those that do do not have the support from people they do trust, teachers, to help them understand how to use these tools responsibly.  Imagine if they could utilize these devices and receive the guidance and care we all provide them in other arenas!

We write you to begin a thoughtful conversation about changing filtering policies in our schools.  This is something we can change if we put our minds together.  It will cost us nothing, but the benefits will pay off in droves.

Please consider participating with us on this crucial matter.  We can’t do it without you!

Best wishes from us all,

A society of committed and networked and concerned educators.

Crowd Sourced Tech Plan

Image via http://www.flickr.com/photos/coffeemick/3393399278/in/

With all this talk about collaboration, I've wondered what if we had a chance to create our own school? What would it look like?

I've been thinking through a learning vision with some friends at a new school. Here were my initial thoughts. I would love comments and suggestions. I haven't seen much actual "crowd sourcing" of these ideas, and I think it would be of constructive use for our edtech society.

******************

The technology vision demonstrates an innovative approach to learning, and serves as a catalyst for a world class education for all students who attend.

We will recognize diversity of learning, and use universal design principles to ensure maximum fulfillment of individual capacity and beyond.

We commit to equitable use and training, all students should have just opportunities.

We consider 1:1, because it makes sense in a student centered international school.

We use Open Source because it saves cost.

We commit to an Open Network, so our students can connect through social networks (filtering out the really bad, but teaching teachers how to teach their kids to be responsible). Teacher on/off switch admin privs.

We use technology because it helps learning be socially relevant, and that impact be shared globally.

We commit to a secure network, but we don't confuse security with paranoia.

We ensure a robust network because our students deserve media rich applications and the ability to upload their creations.

We use global networks to support IB, because we believe the missions of IB can only be supported if our students actually interact with the world authentically. A network can lead them to inquire, care, be compassionate and to act.

We use Web 2.0 and social networking tools to support our PYP curriculum. Our students construct knowledge and act while acquiring concepts, knowledge, skills, and attitudes by constructing meaning of their world.

We use networks to foster the education of adults, connecting adults to the classes we offer as well as services offered from the St. Louis community that help them reach their own potential.

We believe in students and families having ubiquitous access to the internet. We consider making the network available in the home.

We have a tech use policy that’s appropriate to conditions in school community.

We have a low student-tech ratio (not just computers) because we believe students will do more profound things if they are able to customize their own learning or produce things that demonstrate their learning.

We have a sophisticated funding vision because we believe learning is too important to be impacted by fluctuations in the economy.

Funding vision for technology also includes humans...(one IT in each building, and a tech director/instructional design coordinator)

We do not use the words "TECH INTEGRATION", but rather learning design to reflect our innovative style of facilitating understanding, knowledge and action.

We believe that access should be seamless and ubiquitious. We want an ecosystem of deep thought, creation and sharing to permeate the building.

Professional learning community, not tech led pd. Teachers need to have the resources to take ownership over their own learning.

We believe in assessment for learning as much as assessment of learning.

Lease to buy with insurance. This will keep costs low while not locking us into older machines.

We could create a Classroom endowment fund that would generate the money necessary for yearly innovation purchases. We seek innovative sources of funding.

We could seek the support of tech angel investors from the social entrepreneurial realm that would upfront cost for innovative programs.

We believe expectations and procedures should be taught up front, Tech bootcamp (for teachers and students), but also recognize a lot of learning happens from mistakes.

Balance between creation and observation/analysis.

Research based decisions, action research for teachers.

We believe our kids should have access to workshops (green screens, video editing, digital photography, storytelling, etc.)

We recognize that good tech compliments and deepens real life and real relationships with people and knowledge.

Wifi is possible.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/07/13/texas-district-to-extend-wireless-into-low-income-neighborhood.aspx

And wifi must also exist to meet parent goals.

Unlocked network. Teachers have the right to unlock specific websites if necessary, or at least have accounts that have finer access privileges than kids.

Technology planning committee should also be global, and should include non tech folks.

Mini grants spur on teacher innovation, and are a layer on top of an already empowered teacher community.

We think a 1:1 student to passionate expert ratio is as important as a 1:1 student to computer ratio.

Thanks for reading, I would appreciate any comments/improvements.

Can we bring Ed-Grad into the 20th century please?

Things are worse than they seem when you are frustrated

Things are worse than they seem when you are frustrated

Things are worse than they seem when you are frustrated

Things are worse than they seem when you are frustrated

Things are worse than they seem when you are frustrated

Yes.  I did type that sentence five times (no copy and paste for me).  That catharsis helps me remind myself that it's probably not as bad as it seems.  I need to remind myself that there is always something that can be squeezed from the worse of experiences.  I also need to remind myself that I genuinely respect my teachers, for their hard work, for their insightful feedback, and for having much more expertise than I may ever have.

But grad school isn't doing it for me.  Sometimes I feel like it is 100 years old...

Of course I've learned some invaluable things; things that I wouldn't have learned if I was not enrolled in a grad program.  But I've learned some nasty habits this semester.  First, I've become a worse student than I ever was in High School (and I was a bad student in High School).  I don't turn work in on time, and although I spend a lot of time to make something of quality when I do (10 hours on a lesson plan wooo!), I tend to procrastinate in ways I never did before.  I'm just not too motivated to do things.

I don't blame my teachers, I blame the entire blasphemy of an institution we call higher ed.  I'm sure there are some programs that offer the same kind of real time learning, project based thinking, impactive discussion and challenge that I yearn for.

Although I'm not motivated by graduate school, I can say that I've been driven by learning online.  I can say that I feel more challenged by y'all (My PLN and fellow ISTE goers) than I do by my classes.  I can say I have more of a drive to learn through twitter, diigo, pixton, jing, skype, etc. than I do on blackboard or by typing papers.  I can also say that I've used more of both the theory and practical knowledge I've gleaned from PLN than I have from my classes.

Lastly, and most importantly, I've written 57 pages on my blog in the almost one year since I started (double spaced, 12 pt font, 1" margins as outlined by APA guidelines).   My master's thesis is less than 40 pages, and there are a whole bunch of tables and graphs scattered throughout.  I've tweeted 616 times, connecting with people most of whom I've never met around the globe.

That disparity is amazing.  Things need to change for the better, or there is no way we are going to meet the need of 21st century learners.  I wonder what it would be like if I could encourage my professors to join my PLN?  Imagine what our relationship would be if we had the kind of access to each other I have with members of my PLN?  How might both are learning be different?

Are there any other folks with different/inspiring experiences?  Are there folks out there who are creating sort of "open universities" for new teachers who need help becoming both better teachers in the traditional sense and in the revolutionary sense?

Image courtesy of James Delaney via flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimdelaney/387951541/

We’re a Society, not an EdTech Community

I have been reading Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus this week.  I haven't read a book that has occupied my mind as much as this one has since reading Dan Pinker's Drive earlier this year.  I recommend the book for anyone interested in using the social web to connect learners globally.

I'll post more in coming days about the book, but I want to focus on a shift I support within the edtech community.

We stop thinking of it as a community.

Don't get me wrong, communities are important, but they can be easily ignored by people outside the community.  This is usually because the focus of a community is the participants or their environment, not anything outside of its collectively defined boundaries.  As Shirky states in the book (and in the Ted Talk below), communities are self-supporting entities where all members involved work to contribute back to the community.  Sometimes, this is clearly effective and appropriate.  However, I don't think anyone in Edtech is looking to only affect change within the Edtech community.  What we are doing is not a hobby.  From what I heard from everyone at ISTE our goals are much more ambitious than just being a support group.

So I purpose we shift our thinking a little bit.

Instead of focusing on the communal value (illustrated by LOLcats at time 10:45 in the TED video below) of our PLNs, we admit that we have civic responsibility (represented by ushahidi at 11:25) within society as a whole.  We don't just want to transform our own lives, we seek to revolutionize the entire social system, making it better for everyone involved.

It's harder to ignore a movement that has that sort of scope, and it behooves us to begin recognizing that our own little edtech community is pretty small in the grander scheme of things.  Each of us at ISTE represented a small percentage of the entire faculty of our schools or districts (me and my colleague were a whopping 3%).  Many conference attendees look at the majority of non-techies with disdain for their reluctance to "integrate".  This isn't very civically responsible of us, and I believe it to be an impediment to what we're trying to do in schools.

That's ok when we have a community focus, but I believe we hunger for a broader purview.  In Shirky's words, we don't have communal responsibility anymore, we have civic responsibility.  And when we think of ourselves as a society that includes all involved in learning, not just as a community of members who use tech, we can capitalize on the strength of our colleagues, not focus on what we perceive to be weaknesses.

When we start moving beyond just seeing tech as the use of something with an on/off switch, and start seeing it as a focus on innovative techniques to improve, deepen, or make learning more socially impactive, we're thinking of ourselves as a society.

And when we start giving back to society as a whole, society as a whole will find that what we've done is pretty darn hard to ignore.

Check out the video:

Fight the dollar and centaur with linux!

Here is a quick graphic response to Mario's weapons of choice from Sunday's opening at ISTE.  I used free and open source graphic editing application The Gimp to create this image.  I was concerned that the "weapons" used to fight the obstacles edtech faces were all proprietary tools or closed knowledge.

We tell our students to collaborate with others, yet we miss the opportunity to model such collaboration by using tools that were created by groups of people whose main interest is equity, collaboration, and openness.  Instead, we have them use products of companies who try to squash such collaboration.  I think we can do better by using tools that are freely available and community built.

Please distribute widely.  And please feel free to edit, remix, mashup, print, share, etc.!

I couldn't find any good creative commons images to fit the bill of the dollar and centaur.  Anyone with drawing skills like to create one and collaborate on a better finished product?  Let me know @mrsenorhill on twitter.