Over these summer months, we all need to reflect on our teaching in order to prepare for the next year of teaching. This video from Richard Bryne's Free Tech for Teachers should get your mind moving!
Wesley Fryer is one of my favorite bloggers to read.
I remember when his daughter posted a video on UTube about her comments on the inaugural speech made by President Obama. Wesley mentioned the reaction and the “fame” created by that posting.
His blog post is quite a good piece of writing and shows his concern for young Greyson. He gives a “lesson” to Greyson and his family about the internet and the pros and cons of notoriety. All students should learn this.
This is an excellent opportunity for those in education, and especially those in technology and education, to step up to the plate and teach the students we have influence over about these situations.
Learning at this moment when the “fame” is there is VERY IMPORTANT!
From a church talent show to the Ellen DeGeneres Show: YouTube fame for an Edmond 6th grader: Watch it and enjoy.
Here is his interview and performance on the Ellen DeGeneres show:
This is the world our students live in on a daily basis. Technology is out there everywhere.
I noticed that in the interview Greyson said he got a text from his mom that said to call her. He was able to accept that text and then excuse himself from the classroom, as he says, and call his mom from school, in the hallway outside his classroom. Obviously his school does not have a problem with cell phones and their use during the school day.
I would like to learn more about what school he attends and what their technology experiences are for all the students in the school.
Then, add to the technological experience that Gaga is on the phone talking with Ellen and Greyson on live TV. The only thing that could have been better is that there would have been video of her side of the conversation. Doesn’t she have Skype?
Teachers, technology experts, and interested learners, what lessons can you make from this opportune moment?
Leave a comment… What will you do or how will you use this as a learning experience for your students?
The quote below is from Jen W’s blog post. You should read her entire post.
“Chris Lehmann’s quote of “Technology must be like oxygen: ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible.”
But it seems, for many years, that we created a separate distinction, a specialness, a uniqueness towards Tech that might have been what is causing the separation now of acceptance, use, and comfortableness.”
Do you use Tech in your classroom? Why do you use it?
Do you use it for Tech’s sake or because it is the best way to present the material and the best way to engage the class?
How are you using TECHNOLOGY…AND WHY?
One of my Diigo groups posted this bookmark and I decided to try it out!
Glogster is a poster making application. I only made one (see below) but it was a lot of fun. I know you can import photos, probably drawings too, add text to them, save them, and also you can publish them to the web if you want or keep them private. I could embed the code for this one into my blog as well.
I didn’t quite like the way my text laid out on the speech bubble, but perhaps I could have played around with it a little more. I am not sure if there were alignment adjustments available. I know there were font size and color adjustments. I think the number of fonts is limited.
Overall, for a free tool, I think it is worth a project or two. Besides if the kids like it, they can use it also on their own time and perfect their technology skills!
I always love it when a student takes something we use/do in class and then goes home or in study hall extends the lesson further by using it for their own purposes! Authentic learning!
What fun, yet educational tools do you introduce to your students?
With your strong interest in Technology, I recommend you take a look at Wiziq's virtual classroom and authorstream's power point presentation platform. Both are web based platforms, have a bunch of features and free basic service.I have not yet had a chance to try the other product he mentions. Another day, more fun!
Jeremy Biddle, jbiddle, over at Lutheran Educators wrote a post about PLNs - Personal Learning Networks. He created a VoiceThread video to explain it.
http://voicethread.com/share/603588/
Everyone should have one. Most of us have started ours already, but may not have realized it. Now we just have to constantly improve it, add to it, and learn from it.
Who is in your PLN?
How do you increase your PLN?
Happy Learning!
Wesley Fryer, of Moving @ the Speed of Creativity, is one of my favorite blogsters to read. He always has interesting information, ideas, and insights. I like how he also involves his children and their technology activities, sometimes, in his blogs. He seems like such a kind, generous, mild mannered person and then suddenly…
He makes some VERY CHALLENGING (but true!) STATEMENTS:
Wesley says, “To ask an educator used to lecturing every day to give it up for vodcasting, and instead to both craft and lead highly-interactive, engaging face-to-face discussions with students is tantamount to challenging their professional identity and raison d’être.”
Read the whole blog here. He started the whole story with talk about the “Teaching Naked” controversial comment/title in an article about Dr. José A. Bowen of Southern Methodist University.
Because so many teachers of today are the BABY BOOMERS, who are getting ready to retire, as soon as their teacher pensions will allow them to retire (in this economy), there is little (if none) desire to “re-work” lectures and lesson plans by MANY teachers, but this is not everyone in the profession.
Now I have to qualify myself here. I, too, am a BABY BOOMER, who currently is out of the classroom. (I thought I’d retire and then along came the recession and all of its negative impact on my financial security!)
But I am trying to get back into teaching in the classroom because… I WANT to do this type of teaching. I personally am a lifelong learner plus technology and collaborative learning are exciting prospects for me.
True, I am at the elementary level, not high school and college, but the statement above by Wesley Fryer is still pertinent in the elementary education classroom as well.
I also have another question that may or may not be related to this whole topic. You decide.
Are we teaching the future teachers how to teach in this “new” manner or are they just learning the “same old ways” we BABY BOOMERS were taught in the late 60’s and 70s?
Tell me what you think. And if you think we are not teaching them in the “new” manner, what needs to be done? What can we do as leaders?
[As always, in my author quotes, the underlines, color changes, and bold type is mine, not the author’s. I do this so often, I should probably put a disclaimer to this effect at the bottom of every blog!]
I have been wondering this same thing for many days, weeks, months.
In a FREE digital society, how does one earn money?
I heard about the figure and description (below) in a blog written by Kevin Kelly. He has an uberblog combining all of his blogs together, but this is from his blog called Cool Tools.
The figure and quote below is from a book written by Chris Anderson, Free- The Future of a Radical Price.
[As always, the underlines, color changes, and bold type is mine, not the author’s. I do this so often, I should probably put a disclaimer to this effect at the bottom of every blog!]
Chris Anderson says in Free- The Future of a Radical Price, “In Denmark, a gym offers a membership program where you pay nothing as long as you show up at least once a week. But miss a week and you have to pay full price for the month. The psychology is brilliant. When you go every week, you feel great about yourself and the gym. But eventually you'll get busy and miss a week. You'll pay, but you'll blame yourself alone. Unlike the usual situation where you pay for a gym you're not going to, your instinct is not to cancel your membership; instead it's to redouble your commitment.”
Kevin Kelly of Cool Tools blog says, “Free is tricky. Free is great for consumers but difficult for business and creators. It is becoming a serious economic force (thanks to digital technologies and automation) but no one is really sure how to use free to, well, make money.”
This reminds me of a situation I recently found myself in.
I read many blogs. I enjoy reading them. I read from a variety of blogs, although most of them have an education/technology bias. One blog that is not in that category is about Marriage. It is a good blog with lots of ideas and helpful comments, stimulating ideas!
Recently I read this Marriage blog and just about deleted it from my Reader. I was furious!
I even wrote a comment! I hardly ever, almost never, make a comment. I might write about what I read in other people’s blogs in my blog, as a way to take the thoughts through my mind for processing. I might occasionally say, “Hey, good blog!” but rarely do I make a negative comment. Actually, I think this was the first!
This blog asked for readers to make a donation if they felt the blog was helpful. Say $25. Say only this year while I am trying to make my change from earning a living elsewhere to earning it with this blog. Say maybe only once every year!
So far, in the comments of others, only 1 other person agreed with me.
Everyone else said,
“Good Luck with the change.”
“Hope this leap of faith works out for you!”
“When I can, I will send you money, but just can’t now, not today!”
I would like to know what others feel about this.
Do you expect to be solicited by the author of the blogs you read?
I am not talking about a blog author who wrote a book and promotes it on his blog, or who provides seminars or presentations and promotes them on his blog, or offers to consult with you privately about what he can do for you personally on his blog. All of these are legitimate to me. If you want that extra special piece of attention/help, PAY FOR IT! That is fine. It is OK to advertise for that. Those interested will click on your link! Those not interested, will just continue reading.
If you don’t want your blog to be free and open, then don’t put it on the open internet. Make it by registration only after a fee has been paid!
Am I too upset by this?
Recently, I even looked at the tab on Blogger where it says monetize. I didn’t go very far, but wondered if this was the “way” to earn my living on the web!
I know several of the blogs I read do place ads on their blogs, and earn some small amount of money when readers click on these advertisements.
I don’t criticize those who do this. (I am not sure, but I don’t think they earn very much by doing this; maybe only enough to pay for the yearly cost of the site maintenance if their blog is posted on a paying site.)
So far, I decided it was not for me. I didn’t feel that my blog had a big enough readership (if any readership) and I didn’t feel that my thoughts were earth shattering. Most of what I post is a re-thinking of what I have read in other places - a directing of others to a good read.
In spite of all this, I do have a desire to make a living in a way that feeds my passions – education, technology, helping others, working with students, education, learning.
I had also thought that somehow I could make this living with my passions on the internet, but in education nearly everything is open source, free.
I’m still reading, thinking, learning, and imagining. Maybe someday, I will figure it all out. In the meantime, I am enjoying the journey! (But not making any money!)
TED asked for questions for Sir Ken Robinson and then shared his answers. It is a marvelous dialogue and very typical Ken Robinson.
Don’t you just love listening to him? Don’t you wish he had been your teacher in grade school? OR at least Ken Robinson had taught your teacher before she became your teacher in grade school, high school, or college?
Everyone really needs to read the entire dialogue, but I will share a few things (It turned into more than a few) I gleaned from it.
(Please note that the underlines (or color emphasis) are all mine, not Sir Ken Robinson’s.)
While you read my summary and highlights below, think about Bloom’s Taxonomy…
1) HOW can we OVERHAUL public education and nurture creativity?
“creativity isn't a specific activity;”
“There are skills of creative thinking that can be taught.”
He says, in education, in relation to the lack of creativity, there are 3 areas that need to be considered: 1) curriculum, 2) pedagogy (teaching), and 3) assessment.
2) Today there is overspecialization and compartmentalization of subjects in school; there needs to be more balance and inter-relatedness for creativity to thrive. We should not lose sight of the larger picture.
“So this capacity for imagination, to me, is absolutely at the heart of this whole argument…Creativity is putting your imagination to work and it's produced the most extraordinary results in human culture...it is really the foundation of human culture…it's generated multiple ways of looking at the world, multiple ways of seeing it, multiple ways of thinking about it.”
3) What is a good method of assessment?
“I think it's seeing connections rather than differences which is the heart, I believe, of human progress.”
“…an assessment is always two things. It has a description implied and a comparison.”
“I think the problem with most standardized tests or graded tests or lettered sort of assessments is that they're often very heavy on comparison and very light on description.”
“…And it's really what people can do, and what they're interested in, and what they're capable of that is of most importance in education.”
“So, if assessment is textured and finely-grained, and is supportive and diagnostic, I'm all for it. If it's coarse and simplistic and judgmental and uninformative, then it seems to me always to be negative and have the wrong sort of effects in education.”
4) Where is the place for technology in education?
Technology is important in its own place.
“…I really do think that we have not yet properly begun to exploit the real benefits and potential of information technology in education. My big interest is in how you personalize education and how you customize it, rather than how you standardize it and make it irrelevant to local needs. And one of the ways we do it, I'm sure, is by making much more imaginative and creative use of information technology.
But technology alone will not educate the whole person.
“There are things that you can only really learn by being in the room with people. There are things you can only really learn by getting up and doing them. Not simulating them, but by being outdoors and doing it. By being in your body. By exercising your feelings and recognizing you are not just intellectual and chemalogical* animals. We are sentient, feeling beings who need social contact.”
5) There are “so many individual teachers and librarians out there who GET IT, who want to help their students stop "playing school" and start having authentic learning experiences. How do they build critical mass to change our bureaucratic, cookie-cutter approach to educating children?” & 6) How do I personally help make the change?
Ken Robinson answers: “The real place to focus, initially, is on the work you do yourself. I'm always keen to say this: Education doesn't happen in the committee rooms of Washington, or London, or Paris or Berlin. It doesn't happen in government buildings. It happens in the minds of students and learners. It happens in the classroom.”
“looking at what you can do in your sphere.”
7) What do you think about online/distance learning?
“there's a massive potential that we haven't yet fully tapped into. …we now have the ability to put the best thinking, materials, pedagogy, resources in front of everybody. … a massive opportunity to -- not to replace what they do, not to replace their own teachers and curriculum, but to enrich and enhance it.
8) What do you think of the Summerhill School in the UK?
This school sound to me like it is based on the Montessori philosophy of education, but in an older age group of children.
“They're based on the principle that students, if they're given freedom and responsibility, will rise to it. It won't dissolve into anarchy. It will resolve into something much more productive than people think. The kids have much more moral judgment, much more self-determination, much more responsibility than people would believe, when they're given the opportunity to exercise them.”
“the only way you get schools to improve is by personalizing to these children, these parents, this community, this place.”
9) Another question was from a teacher about what can I concretely do right now? Of the 3 components to education mentioned above, Sir Ken Robinson says Pedagogy is the most important.
“If you want to promote creativity, you need, firstly, to stimulate kids minds with puzzles and questions which will intrigue them.”
"teaching creatively": teachers finding interesting ways into material. Presenting unusual points of entry or interesting angles or perspectives, and enjoying the process of finding them.
"teaching for creativity": creating conditions in classrooms where kids are encouraged to think creatively and imaginatively. Giving them stimulating things to work on. Ideas that will open their mind up. Information they've never encountered. Puzzles that will intrigue them. So you might think of that as stimulating the imagination, setting problems.
- asking open questions
“One task [of} being creative is to hypothesize and think of possibilities and look at alternatives ideas -- to speculate. To be imaginative. But an equally important part for every creative process is to act critically on the ideas you're coming up with. To evaluate them. That's why I define creativity, in the TEDTalk, as the process of having original ideas that have value. You have to figure out which ideas are good and bad. Which work and which don't. Which are worthwhile and which ones are not. Then, of course, it raises the old question of whose criteria you're using and whose values you're operating, and that's a part of the conversation. Being creative isn't just about blowing off new ideas. It's about critical judgment, as well....”
“…group work. An awful lot of creative work doesn't happen individually. It happens with people interacting with other people. The most powerful engines of creative thinking are groups. And the reason that's true is because a great group models the human mind: it's diverse, it's dynamic, it's distinctive. So, knowing how to form groups, how to get groups to work, how long to leave them doing it, is a core skill of good teachers.”
“So I think its three things: it's stimulating imagination, it's telling them problems with open questions, and knowing how to organize groups. And I think in there are the answers to things we can all start doing tomorrow.“
10) How do I get into my “element”, referring to Ken Robinson’s new book The Element?
Ken Robinson says, “…look outwardly… try things …Expose yourself to possibilities. See what begins to chime with you. My point about being in the element is some people make a living doing it, ... it's about finding your own personal element. And the more people are able to do that, the more enriched their lives become, and the more enriched the lives are of those people who are in contact with them.
It's something that we all should do, and something that we all can do.”
If any of you are still here reading after this VERY LONG POST, What do you think?
How does Sir Ken Robinson energize you and your classroom teaching?
AND, are you in your ELEMENT?
I think great teachers are in their ELEMENT.
What do you think?
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