On Finding Flow, Flotsam and Jetsam

Last year, due to the fact that my technology classroom was shared by five different teachers, I had to change my 7th and 8th grade curriculum from MYP Design Technology to MYP Computer Technology.  Part of me was very happy with the shift–all my students’ work was online and hence, on my lap when I was home evaluating their work, in class there was no mess, no debris, no tools to put away, no materials to manage. At first, I was happy and wondering why I hadn’t made that shift a long time ago. As the year wore on, I was feeling something was missing, and it was. Hands-on projects that were materials-based, projects that developed skills in handling tools and materials that inner-city kids rarely have experience using.  So, here I sit, re-configuring my curriculum to get back to hands-on but be containable in a room that is shared my many different disciplines when the NY Times runs an article about Adobe corporation bringing hands-on experience to it’s software developers.

Part of corporate resistance to experimenting with hands-on activities comes from the difficulty of measuring the value of paying employees to, say, build a go-cart or a radio set while in the office. Yet educators say the benefits, even if intangible, are clear. “All your intelligence isn’t in your brain,” Mr. Burnett says. “You learn through your hands.”

At Stanford, the rediscovery of human hands arose partly from the frustration of engineering, architecture and design professors who realized that their best students had never taken apart a bicycle or built a model airplane. For much the same reason, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers a class, “How to Make (Almost) Anything,” which emphasizes learning to use physical tools effectively.

“Students are desperate for hands-on experience,” says Neil Gershenfeld, who teaches the course.

–G. Pascal Zachary, in “Digital Designers Rediscover Their Hands“  NY Times August 17, 2008

At the end of my 7th grade course last year, students asked if they would be building things next year. I sensed that they were yearing for the physical pleasure of working with their hands, and I am too. This year we will get back to Design Tech, for sure. I feel better already.

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The issues I have with Wikipedia are not the usual rants one hears from classroom teachers. No, I do not forbid my students use of Wikipedia. In fact, we work in wikis of our own in order to gain an appreciation of how wikis work. The issue I have stems from what I just read in the NY Review of Books article “The Charms of Wikipedia” By Nicholson Baker. Baker writes more of an essay about how the Wikipedia community works than a review of the Pogue Press/O’Reilly book Wikipedia: The Missing Manual by John Broughton, but that aside. Baker brings out that there seems to be a trend these days whereby the community of editors is favoring exclusionary practices over inclusion that seems to be the benefit of an electronic text that is not constrained by the physical limitations economic demands of print media. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of practicing judicious editing and careful fact-checking, but why exclude items because a small group of editors deem the listing nonnotable? Jimmy Wales himself, asserted in September 2007 that he believes that “if people want an article about every Pokemon character, then hey, let it happen.” Baker too is in inclusionist when it comes to Wikipedia, and clearly positions himself as such by recounting his own participation in the community of editors.

“Still, a lot of good work—verifiable, informative, brain-leapingly strange—is being cast out of this paperless, infinitely expandable accordion folder by people who have a narrow, almost grade-schoolish notion of what sort of curiosity an on-line encyclopedia will be able to satisfy in the years to come”

I’m surprised that Baker did not develop the argument further. I want to know if the trend towards exclusionary practices and the speed with which articles are labeled “nonnotable” and earmarked for removal are really the result of schoolish provincialism as he proposes, or if it is something else. Certainly there is a tension between the preponderance of data being added to Wikipedia and the ability of editors to reasonably keep up with their self-described job of shepherding that data and shaping it into reliable information. Is the urge to purge coming out of the fact that the current active editors have little understanding of and/or patience for developing expertise in vastly divergent areas of knowledge that is needed to keep Wikipedia reliable? Baker reports:

In the fall of 2006, groups of editors went around getting rid of articles on webcomic artists—some of the most original and articulate people on the Net. They would tag an article as nonnotable and then crowd in to vote it down. One openly called it the “web-comic articles purge of 2006.

Where, if not in Wikipedia, will such valuable information be aggregated? I’m thinking of attending the NY Wikipedia Meet-Up on March 6th 16th in NYC. See link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC. Any other NYC folks interested in attending?

Here I sit searching the “deep web” in order to help a couple of students who have emailed me with problems finding statistics to illuminate their research. One case in point is Katie. She is researching the IT background and potential solutions to cyberbullying. The case that caught her attention was the article “When Bullies Turned Faceless” in the 12/16/07 NYT that concerned a young girl who committed suicie as a result of being bullied on MySpace by the mother of a classmate who fraudulently represented herself as a young man. The users of MySpace agree to terms of use. The question my student asks is: How many users of social networking sites click the “Terms of Service” without reading it and actually entering into a mindful agreement with the provider? I have come up with nothing, but that’s not my actual point here. In my meanderings from site to site, from search tool to tool, I have read and become interested in a great deal of peripheral information that is relevant to my course in Information Technology in a Global Society (ITGS). I do not think my students would be so inclined to “see” what I see when I surf the web. But it is in these meanderings that I have found considerable valuable information. The only way I can see to help my students understand what I do (and I do think it is valuable) is to model it–over and over again with personal narrative about how I’m making sense of what I find and why I click where I click. I don’t think there is that much class time to devote to this. In retrospect, I could have used a carefully annotated Trailfire today, but instead, I included some of the useful links in their appropriate categories on a class wiki. Maybe I could plan a few ScreenCasts. I wonder if that will help.

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How will our students develop the habit of research? Not the work behind the dreaded research paper that sends them to the library in droves every six weeks for an assigned term paper, but research that is spontaneous, ongoing and comes out of an authentic desire to know. Research that is timely and relevant to the learner.

When I am curious about something that has caught my attention, I usually know where to go and I love the journey. I thumb through books, magazines, and newspapers and search the Net. Wikipedia is usually my first stop when seeking information on a concept I don’t get.

How does social networking fit into this scheme? Sometimes I bring up my ideas to my husband, who is a scholar and avid news wonk. Sometimes I share my questions with professional colleagues I know and distant fellow travelers on the Net. Lately I turn to Twitter. Tweets that crawl along the side of my browser often arouse my curiosity to follow up and research more. A few times I have tweeted a query and received guidance from the kindness of strangers and those I know in the face-to-face world.

When do students have the luxury of following their own curiosities? They are shoved from assignment to assignment. My students are in a program of study that requires a portfolio of three “research” papers based on ethical and social issues that arise from IT news. I love reading IT news. Well, it scared me that after two months of teaching the class few had a habit of reading the news. What to do?

I set up a blog and asked them, in their first post to write about what IT issues were bugging them. Their topics ranged from “RFID: Scary Advancements” to “Spoofing” to “Swiping our Info Away” and to questions around encryption security. Next they were asked to go back to their RSS feed readers that they had set up as instructed. It was time to start building the habit of reading the IT news and making connections to it. I told them to find IT news that caught their attention and share their point of view about it in the blog. They did that, and added snippits from the article along with a link back to the original. Blogging the news is a standing weekly assignment that is not formally assessed. There is no grade assigned for the blogs, no mark on their report card. It’s simply a habit that I would like to see them develop. It is sort of taking root. There are hundreds of posts on a myriad of topics.

My next challenge is to twofold: turning them on to how to follow through on further research around their passion in IT developments and how to craft their writing for the readership they desire to attract. You see, like their teacher, they are quite new to the blogisphere. They have not yet fully participated in regularly commenting on other’s blogs. They have not yet developed a following of active readers who participate in their ideas. That’s the next step. But it starts with personal research. I listened to a podcast on Teachers Teaching Teachers, “A Few Sides of the Research Elephant“. Paul Allison of the NYCWP hosts the show and has long been an inspiration to my teaching. He has the luxury of allowing his students to follow their passions through their freewrites. That leads to a course of personal research and rewrites that end up posted in student blogs. It’s a wonderful model. I guess my goal is to spark the place inside my students that allows them to find their passion within the constraints of the content I am obliged to guide them through this year and next. Then, to share with them how to start that journey through books, magazines, newspapers, the Web and making contact with humans who are in the worlds of their research. The Internet has brought all of that to my lap wherever I am–as long as there’s broadband to hook up to. What a wonderful world!

Tags: NYCWP,research,education,writing,k12,ITGS,

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When I heard Linda Christensen will be the keynote address speaker at the upcoming NYCWP Teacher-to-Teacher conference, I ordered her book Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching About Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word on Amazon (http://tinyurl.com/yo7xmt). Hoping I’ll get some ideas on how to get my 7th Graders involved in taking a position on a cause. Since I teach technology, I want them to understand the collateral effects of all our new technologies on the environment. Ideally, they will be in communication with their peers around the world (perhaps through iEARN forums) and collaborate on gathering data about what is happening. Together, the students can organize and start to do something about raising awareness of the issues and taking steps towards solving the problems .

Tags: NYCWP, reading, education, writing, k12, iEARN

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As one semester comes to a close and I prepare to meet a new group of students I am filled with anticipation of how to improve my teaching methods and allow the students to develop their own personal learning networks vis a vis the Internet. I’ve been paying much more attention to teachers in Twitter and edubloggers lately–especially (Chris Lehman, Clay Burell, Jo McLeay, and David Jakes). I even revisited Facebook to see what all the buzz was about and friended a number of folks well worth following. I’ve participated in a spontaneous Quick-in, Quick-out international podcast while grabbing a bite to eat in the teachers room this week, made numerous Trailfire marks, been meeting face-to-face and tweeting with my fellow NYC Writing Project colleagues (follow NYCWP on Twitter), and intant messaging with Thalysia Knoppel, a teacher at our twin school in The Netherlands to get up to date on our twinning project, The Richness Within. What will it all add up to? How will my teaching change this term? What are realistic goals? I could go on and on. What’s the short list?

• My 11th grade bloggers (Information Technology in a Global Society) will learn to write compelling posts that attract commentaries rather than hit-and-run traffic.
• My 8th graders will adopt blogging and commenting in the elgg as a preferred mode of expression over MySpace banter.
• My 7th graders (have yet to meet them) will engage in an authentic collaboration with their age-mates in Australia (Students of Jo McLeay).
• My mixed-grade after-school YouthCaN group’s wiki will transform into an international collaboration.

As I learn to use the tools to their best advantage, my students will follow. First I need to bring shape to my PLN. Any advice on aggregating everything I read into one easy to reach place?

MP3 players are ubiquitous in the high school environment, but believe me, the kids in my school are not tuning in to podcasts. Are they anywhere? I’d love to hear some stories. Anyway, even though the NYCDOE forbids students to carry cellphones and music players, at class change kids are quick on the draw to pop their tell-tale white ear buds in at the drop of a hat to catch a tune while passing classes. There has been press about the educational uses of iPods.  Librarians throughout the NYC school system discuss on their listserv the uses of iPods in their school libraries.  But what does it take to get students to actually listen to podcasts?

I have a 30G video iPod with absolutely no music on it. Not sure what that says about me, but I am fond of listening to  select podcasts when I’m on the go.  I regularly listen to a number of IT podcasts. Cranky Geeks and Security Now are two of them that come to mind that I would like to share with my ITGS students. I hesitate because as listen to Security Now this morning I find myself pausing the podcast to Google the key terms discussed. It occurs to me, that’s what I want my students to do. I want them to be active participants in their own education. Oh how they love to ask questions during a mini-lesson. While listening to a podcast they can multi-task as they ask and answer their own questions while listening.

I can tell by classroom demeanor that my ITGS students are keenly interested in IT security. I think they would love the episode of Security Now that I listened to this morning. But would they? How long can someone sustain a interest in listening when there is so much that is new and unfamiliar? Each time Steve Gibson and Leo Leporte introduced a new product or concept in the show I was too often asking myself, “What’s that?”  What keeps me listening is that I Google the terms as I listen, and pause the pundits while I catch up enough to follow the thread of their conversations. Would my students take the time to do that? Would they enjoy it? I’m not sure. So today I made a Trailfire of my searching to be a companion to the podcast. (Trailfire is a mashup tool that allows the web surfer to leave virtual notes in the margins of the webpages she visits and store the trail of notes for later access or to share with others. It even allows a wiki feature to invite others to interject their notes into the “mother” trail.) I will ask my students to listen to the podcast  and follow along with Trailfire. Maybe then they will get hooked on this mode of learning.

Please share your experiences of using podcasts in the classroom.

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Tags: trailfire, security, podcast, Security Now, Leo Leporte, Steve Gibson, education, high school, ITGS,

For the longest time, the part of my job I liked the least has been assessing student work–formative and summative assessments. The course is over. Students have left for summer vacation. Who benefits from these summative assessments? At my school, teachers labor over writing anecdotal comments for each student–reflecting on what the student is consistently doing well and identifying one concrete action the student can take to improve. Who benefits from these comments? At the end of June when vacation starts, is the student focused on what he/she can do to improve? I don’t think so. But still, we labor over these comments. They are misplaced. These comments are best used at the start of the next school year.

Students are assessed in various ways all through school. Who benefits from those assessments? For five years I have been teaching in the MYP (Middle Years Program) at BSGE, an IB school in NYC. Our method of assessment is criterion referenced. In the MYP there are no external assessments at the end of the course. This year, all that will change for me because starting in September I will be teaching a course in the DP (Diploma Program) called ITGS (Information Technology in a Global Society). ITGS is offered at the IB level (11th and 12th grades) and students will be tested on their understanding at the end of the 2-year cycle. In preparation, I am reviewing the materials from the training session I attended last month. IB provides a report at the end of each testing cycle. An analysis of how students fared on each examination area is provided. By reviewing the lengthy report that digests the results of student performance worldwide, I can get a good idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the previous year’s curriculum–worldwide. This information will guide my planning. If I use this information in planning my course, my students will benefit from last year’s assessments. That is a wonderful thing!

What is lacking in most schools is an analysis of the assessment results. Just as we want our students to take stock of what they are doing well and what they need to do to improve, teachers need to do the same. In New York State, high school students sit for NYS Regents Exams. The score on that exam indicates if a student got enough points to pass or fail. Who benefits from this assessment? Where is the analysis? What are teachers to make of the results?

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technorati tags:education, k12, assessment, regents, tests, edtech, IT, IB, MYP, BSGE

Teaching 7th graders is a treat. Really. (Stop laughing, it’s true.)
They are bright eyed and bushy tailed creatures open to new ideas. It’s
the “Gee wiz, Mrs. Brownstone, that’s cool.” state they are in that
makes them such a joy. How is it then, that when they get down into the academic work, there are some among that
group who are at risk of failing? I’ve become interested in a psychology professor Carol Dweck. (I’ve ordered her book on Amazon–Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.) In a recent article about her work Marina Krakovsky wrote:

Students for whom performance is paramount want to look smart even if it means not learning a thing in the process. For them, each task is a challenge to their self-image, and each setback becomes a personal threat. So they pursue only activities at which they’re sure to shine—and avoid the sorts of experiences necessary to grow and flourish in any endeavor. Students with learning goals, on the other hand, take necessary risks and don’t worry about failure because each mistake becomes a chance to learn. Dweck’s insight launched a new field of educational psychology—achievement goal theory. STANFORD Magazine: March/April 2007 > Features > Mind-set Research

What does it take to change their mindset to be goal oriented? And to be able to try to reach that goal? I have been having a frustrating time with one of my 7th grade classes. It seems that there are around half who are able to engage in inquiry learning and sustain their interest in learning when they leave the classroom and work unassisted at home. The other half are not working well in the classroom in small groups and rarely do much quality work at home. Friday I asked the students if they thought that there were some students in the school who were just plain “smart” that they were born with a gift and everything comes easy to them. Many hands went up.

Dweck explains. People with performance goals, she reasoned, think
intelligence is fixed from birth. People with learning goals have a
growth mind-set about intelligence, believing it can be developed.
(Among themselves, psychologists call the growth mind-set an
“incremental theory,” and use the term “entity
theory” for the fixed mind-set.) STANFORD Magazine: March/April 2007 > Features > Mind-set Research

It’s their mind-set that I must change. I must teach them to think differently about their And here I thought I was teaching design technology.

Culture can play a large role in shaping our beliefs, Dweck says. A
college physics teacher recently wrote to Dweck that in India, where
she was educated, there was no notion that you had to be a genius or
even particularly smart to learn physics. “The assumption was
that everyone could do it, and, for the most part, they did.” But
what if you’re raised with a fixed mind-set about
physics—or foreign languages or music? Not to worry: Dweck has
shown that you can change the mind-set itself. STANFORD Magazine: March/April 2007 > Features > Mind-set Research

I have begun giving cues that are about putting in more effort, and trying harder. It sounds so strange to say that because I have unlearned that lingo. In my school (BSGE) we try to make our comments to the students grounded in the specifics of their work. We make a positive statement about what is working, what is going well, with reference to something specific they did. Then, we make one statement that starts something like this: “To reach a higher level of achievement you need to do X.” “X” is never “try harder”; it is always a very specific action they need to take on their next project.

The most dramatic proof comes from a recent study by Dweck and Lisa
Sorich Blackwell of low-achieving seventh graders. All students
participated in sessions on study skills, the brain and the like; in
addition, one group attended a neutral session on memory while the
other learned that intelligence, like a muscle, grows stronger through
exercise. Training students to adopt a growth mind-set about
intelligence had a catalytic effect on motivation and math grades;
students in the control group showed no improvement despite all the
other interventions.

“Study skills and
learning skills are inert until they’re powered by an active
ingredient,” Dweck explains. Students may know how to study, but
won’t want to if they believe their efforts are futile. “If
you target that belief, you can see more benefit than you have any
reason to hope for.” STANFORD Magazine: March/April 2007 > Features > Mind-set Research

Looking forward to reading Dweck’s book. I want to help these children. I’m growing weary from my futile efforts thus far.

technorati tags:education, k12, failure, goals, culture, learning, Dweck, psychology, effort, teched, IB, MYP, BSGE

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 Max Talks: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (205)

Max Matt December 25th 1910-March 23, 2007
A celebration of his life.

In this podcast Max talks to the piano player about his army days at Camp Shelby, Mississippi in February 1941 and his favorite tune, “Blue Moon”. After a brief cut of the tune, Max continues to talk about learning Yiddish at ninety-six and muses about answering an ad in the Yiddish Forward for a mohel in Uganda. This was recorded at a family gathering for Eli Debs’ 70th birthday in 2006. (It is a bit difficult to hear Max over all the sounds of dinner and music, but if you turn up the volume on your computer, you will be fine.)

Max touched many lives in his long journey from the Ukraine to Romania to Montreal to Conneticut. Family and friends are urged to leave comments, memories, and stories in the comment section below.

Max, we’ll miss you.

Listen to podcast by clicking the icon below. (N.B. it is not necessary to have an iPod for listening to podcasts.)

technorati tags:Matt, montreal, Camp Shelby, Yiddish, circumcision, mohel, Jewish, Yiddish Forward, Mississippi