Copy / Paste by Peter Pappas

Not Going To ISTE?

Feeling left out (like me) that you're not going to ISTE 2011?
Tell us how you will fill the void.

Tweet out your grief  at #isteless You are not alone ...

image flickr/mohammadali

Don't Teach Them Facts - Let Student Discover Patterns

Develop a classification system - analyze patterns, create a schema, evaluate where specific elements belong. Sounds like a very sophisticated exercise. Not really, young toddlers do it all the time - sorting out their toys and household stuff into groups of their own design. They may not be able to explain their thinking, but hand them another item and watch them purposely place it into one of their groups. They have designed a system.

Humans experience the world in patterns, continually trying to answer the question - what is this? Remembering where we've encountered things before and assessing new items for their similarities and differences. Someone once asked Picasso if it was difficult to draw a face. His reply, "it's difficult not to draw one." We see "faces" everywhere. 

It's unfortunate that student don't get to use their innate perceptual skills more often in the classroom. Instead of discovering patterns on their own, student are "taught" to memorize patterns developed by someone else. Rather than do the messy work of having to figure out what's going on and how to group what they see - students are saddled with graphic organizers which take all the thinking out of the exercise. Filling out a Venn diagram isn't analysis - it's information filing. Instead of being given a variety of math problems to solve that require different problem-solving strategies, students are taught a specific  process then given ten versions of the same problem to solve for homework. No pattern recognition required here - all they have to do is simply keep applying the same procedures to new data sets. Isn't that what spreadsheets are for?

A recent article in the NY Times "Brain Calisthenics Help Break Down Abstract Ideas, Researchers Say" (June 7, 2011) suggest that teachers could benefit from harnessing student pattern recognition powers to deepen their understanding of more abstract principles. 

For years school curriculums have emphasized top-down instruction, especially for topics like math and science. Learn the rules first — the theorems, the order of operations, Newton’s laws — then make a run at the problem list at the end of the chapter. Yet recent research has found that true experts have something at least as valuable as a mastery of the rules: gut instinct, an instantaneous grasp of the type of problem they’re up against. Like the ballplayer who can “read” pitches early, or the chess master who “sees” the best move, they’ve developed a great eye.

Now, a small group of cognitive scientists is arguing that schools and students could take far more advantage of this same bottom-up ability, called perceptual learning. The brain is a pattern-recognition machine, after all, and when focused properly, it can quickly deepen a person’s grasp of a principle, new studies suggest. Better yet, perceptual knowledge builds automatically: There’s no reason someone with a good eye for fashion or wordplay cannot develop an intuition for classifying rocks or mammals or algebraic equations, given a little interest or motivation.

Educators - it's time to stop all the modeling. Get rid of all the canned graphic organizers. Have the courage to be less helpful. Be patient and let students recognize their own patterns. It's messy work, but its where the learning will take place. 

Image  Flickr/ doug88888

SmartPhone - Dumb School

This week I attended a panel discussion sponsored by Mobile Portland entitled "The Myth of Mobile Context." I was treated to an all-star panel that tacked tough questions exploring challenges, opportunities, design considerations and the user experience in the mobile context. 

 Through the talk,  I kept thinking about a quote from my previous post - The Future of Schools - Three Design Scenarios

"With rare exceptions, schools currently treat the digital revolution as if it never happened. Computers, more often than not, still sit in dedicated rooms, accessible only with adult supervision.

... When students step out the door of the institution called school today, they step into a learning environment ... in which one is free to follow a line of inquiry wherever it takes one, without the direction and control of someone called a teacher... If you were a healthy, self-actualizing young person, in which of these environments would you choose to spend most of your time?

... The more accessible learning becomes through unmediated relationships and broad-based social networks, the less clear it is why schools, and the people who work in them, should have such a large claim on the lives of children and young adults..."

While I've seen some cutting edge schools / teachers that have effectively embraced mobile technology and social networking, too many educators see smartphones as a distraction from learning. Many schools block Facebook, Twitter and the rest of social web as if it was pornography. 

So where's this put our students? For many it means that they must leave their smartphone at the classroom door and surrender themselves to an information culture controlled by the adults. What's the mobile context in schools? Not much, it's banned as subversive to learning.  

Every day in school, students must "forget" about the information control and functionally their phone gives them to browse, research, monitor, network, shop and entertain. While they might view a photo just posted to Facebook from a friend's mobile as the catalyst to a conversation, their teacher considers it a distraction from learning. 

Mostly technology in school offers an "illusion of modernity" - automating routine tasks like word processing, or watching a teacher having fun at the smartboard. If students do get online in school - it often involves viewing "filtered" web content with limited functionality.  Of course students need lessons in "digital hygiene." But curating all their web content and interactions doesn't teach them responsible use, it just sequesters them behind a firewall. "Suspicion invites treachery" ~ Voltaire

When students do get on a school workstation (laptop or desktop) they quickly realize that it doesn't "know" them as well as their phone does. Their personal device carries a wealth of information that's important to them - contacts, photos, data, memories. To the school desktop, students are just a user on the network with a limited range of permissions. The biggest problem with the school computer is that it doesn't do "place" at all. That's a stark contrast to students' mobiles, which geo-browse via the growing number of locational apps and geo-tagged information stream. 

Mobile context in schools? Not much.

Maybe it was a bit harsh to entitle the post "Smart Phones - Dumb Schools." But try doing without your smartphone tomorrow and see if that doesn't feel like a pretty dumb idea.

For thoughful insights on the mobile web watch this great Slideshare by Yiibu.    

The Future of Schools - Three Design Scenarios

Richard Elmore and Elizabeth City of Harvard Graduate School of Education wrote a powerful piece in Education Week "Using Technology to Move Beyond Schools" (May, 16, 2011).

Since it's behind a subscription paywall, I thought I'd quote it broadly to help spread its powerful message. For my thoughts on the subject please see my post "What Happens in Schools When Life Has become an Open-book Test?"

“What proportion of the activity called ‘learning’ will be located in the institution called ‘school’?” The availability of relatively cheap technologies offering direct access to knowledge of all types creates opportunities for students to experience a dramatic increase in the choice of what they learn, with whom they choose to learn, and how they choose to learn. How will the institution called “school” survive in this environment, in what form will it survive, and what would schools look like if they chose not just to “survive” but to find a productive place in this new environment?

With rare exceptions, schools currently treat the digital revolution as if it never happened. Computers, more often than not, still sit in dedicated rooms, accessible only with adult supervision.

... When students step out the door of the institution called school today, they step into a learning environment ... in which one is free to follow a line of inquiry wherever it takes one, without the direction and control of someone called a teacher... If you were a healthy, self-actualizing young person, in which of these environments would you choose to spend most of your time?

... The more accessible learning becomes through unmediated relationships and broad-based social networks, the less clear it is why schools, and the people who work in them, should have such a large claim on the lives of children and young adults...

Consider three possible school scenarios for the next generation or so.

The first might be called “fighting for survival,” or “turtle gets a laptop.” Schools continue to be organized and run in much the same way as they are today. ...Teachers and schools continue to control access to content and learning. In this instance, schools will increasingly become custodial institutions, isolated from the lives of their students and the learning environment beyond their walls.

The second scenario might be called “controlled engagement,” or “frog gets a GPS device.” In this case, schools make some nonincremental leaps in the way they are organized and run. Schools set the learning destinations and map out the best pathways to those destinations. ... Teachers are less gatekeepers of knowledge, and more knowledge brokers. ... Schools become less places where students go to learn from adults, and more places where adults and students get together to enter a broader learning environment.

The third scenario might be called “open access to learning,” or “caterpillar learns to fly.” Here schools cease to play the determining role in what constitutes knowledge and learning.  ...Schools are on their own, competing with other types of service providers and learning modalities for the interest and loyalty of students and their parents. A family might combine services from two or three different organizations into a learning plan ...Schools, as we presently know them, would gradually cease to exist and be replaced by social networks organized around the learning goals of students and their families.

I imagine that many educators will dismiss this commentary as being too far-fetched. Perhaps schools need be reminded of the growing irrelevance of information gatekeepers (record companies, book publishers, newspapers) in the lives of their students.   

Image credit flickr

Google Chromebook: 1-to-1 Computing for $180 per Student?

This week Google launched the Chromebook - a cloud-based "laptop" priced at $20 per month. That's $180 per student for a nine-month school year. Not a bad price for 1 to 1.

It's built on the already popular Google Chrome and Google apps platform. (I'm using both with increasing regularity).  It will be a tempting offer for schools - instant on, always connected - plus no software installs, anti-virus, or upgrades to worry about. Run it at school on the district WiFi, then take it home and use 3G - Verizon is providing 100mb of data per month for free. 

The Chromebook will raise big questions about collection of personal student data, internet security and acceptable use policies. But Google claims to have features in place which offers granular controls on web access (1st graders can't get to sites that might be acceptable to high schoolers.) 

I wonder if schools will take the bait? If I were the school IT guy - I'd be nervous. If it turns out Chromebook works as advertised, I might be out of work.

On second thought - I should get one for my mother. That's an IT job I'd like to lose!

Save Our Schools March -You Can Make a Difference

The Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action is holding a one-day fundraiser.  Please consider making a tax-deductible gift today, as part of their day-long May 7th “Money Cascade” to support the March. They’ve set an initial goal of $2500.  

I just made a quick $10 donation - will you match me?

Click here to go to their donation page via Paypal

 

Here's more information from Save Our Schools March

"The march is being held in response to recent destructive 'reform' efforts which have undermined our public educational system, demoralized teachers, and reduced the education of too many of our children to nothing more than test preparation. Something must be done – and it must be done now!

Please join people from all across America as they gather to participate in the Save Our Schools March on Saturday, July 30 in Washington, D.C.

The Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action is calling on Americans everywhere to demand: 

• Equitable funding for all public school communities. 
• An end to high stakes testing for student, teacher, and school evaluation.
• Curriculum developed for and by local school communities.
• Teacher and community leadership in forming public education policies."

The Inconvenient Truth About Textbooks

I just went to the iTunes App Store, and in one impulsive click, downloaded Al Gore's companion app to his book "Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis."

It's an immersive learning environment that begs the question - $4.99 iPad app or $49 textbook? 

Watch this promo video and you decide if the eBook has made the traditional textbook a relic. If you need some more numbers to help you make the decision -a quick search on textbook costs turned up this data from a 2005 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. "The average estimated cost of books and supplies for a first-time, full-time student at a four-year public institution was $898, or 26 percent of the cost of tuition and fees. At community colleges, the estimated cost of books and supplies was a whopping 72 percent of the cost of tuition and fees." 

EBook or textbook - still trying to decide?  Don't forget that future updates of the app could add more content or features - how about social networking?

Update: A hat tip to my friend Martin Edic at 24PageBooks who pointed out that Push Top Press (the folks who did the Gore's book) plan to release a publishing platform for authors, publishers and artists to turn their books into interactive iPad or iPhone apps — no programming skills required. Imagine when students can make their own!

 

Abraham “Abe” Rothberg: Author, Professor, Friend

Two weeks ago, I lost a very important person in my life. For more than 25 years Abe Rothberg served as friend, mentor, surrogate father and personal curmudgeon. Over long lunches in diners or late afternoons in his study we'd discuss politics, history, literature, journalism and gossip about everyone we knew. 

By the time I met Abe in the early 1980’s he had many achievements - a distinguished career as a journalist, university professor and author of thirteen novels, two books of history, a collection of short stories, two children's books, and a volume of literary criticism. Abe was the most learned (and opinionated) person I ever knew. While I never saw Abe in the classroom, he was beloved or feared (or both) by legions of English literature students from his days teaching at Hofstra, Columbia and St. John Fisher.

For more on Abe's accomplishments see the New York Times obituary 
Abraham Rothberg, Who Wrote of Golem and Stalin, Dies at 89 

Following his retirement from teaching, I knew Abe hoped to devote more time to his writing. There were some successes - like an occasional journal piece,  but many of our lunches were punctuated by his growing disappointment that yet another book manuscript had been rejected. So beginning around 2000, I began to try to convince Abe that we could use new print-on-demand technology to by-pass the big publishing houses and do it ourselves. “I will never stoop to vanity press,” he’d bellow.

I pressed on and a few years later (did I say he was stubborn?)  I convinced him to let me publish The Holy Warriors a novel that had been rejected by a few publishers despite the fact that it had, in a way, anticipated 9/11. “OK Abe, let’s get this started - give me the Word doc of the book and I’ll get going on design.” Abe replied, “What’s a word doc?” (Did I mention that Abe refused to even LOOK into a computer screen?) So before beginning work on book design, step one was finding someone who was willing to scan / proof  his typewritten and heavily edited manuscript into OCR. 

Eventually the book was finished and sent off to Lulu for publication. I’ll never forget bringing the finished paperback to Abe. He took the book in his thick hands and kept turning it over  - like a baker patting down dough. His face beamed as he asked,  “So when do we get started on the second book?” 

Over the next six years we published another twelve books. (That's right - all 12 started as typewritten manuscripts.) The scope was a remarkable testimony to the breadth of Abe’s interest and expertise - collections of  short fiction On A Darkling Plain, essays and literary criticism What Time Is It Now? novels set in Japan The Torii Gate and the Soviet eastern block The Former People. Subject ranged from a children's story - Pinocchio’s Sister ~ A Feminist Fable  to an exploration of the justice system through the lens of a serial killer The Trials of Arthur John Shawcross.

In 2010, a group of his friends held a tribute to Abe  - the man and his writing - as part of a Jewish Book Festival. Here’s an excerpt of the reflection that Abe shared with us. (I learned he always liked the last word) 

... Serious fiction is a lie that tells the truth. Fiction can introduce you into the lies and truths of other people's minds and hearts, to your own country and time, or strange, foreign places and other eras, into the most public forums and the most private scenes of human intimacy; it can make you see, hear, feel, love, hate, forgive, judge, understand, and yet not be bound by the consequences of all those activities, though you are there as a participant-observer in the most personal and informed ways. ... And so, tonight, you will hear some of the lies I have written I take to be important truths, serious fictions about our lives and times. I thought my books might contribute to the cultural and political conversations and dilemmas of our epoch. If that has not taken place as I wished-- and I am sorry to say it has not--it was not for the want of my trying.

To read more about Abe, download or order his books click here.

iPad 2 - A Triumph of Capitalism Over Communism

Good morning students, your final exam in economics includes this document-based-question (DBQ)
Study these two images, and discuss how capitalism's capacity to supply consumer goods triumphed over the chronic shortages of communism.
Extra credit: Speculate on how Angry Birds might have impacted the "domino theory" of the Cold War.

Communism 1983: USSR
A queue at the footwear store to buy imported footwear. 
Note: Imports were considered to be bet­ter qual­ity and more fash­ionable ­than Soviet goods.

Source: The Real USSR

Capitalism 2011: USA 
iPad 2 line at Fifth Avenue retail store in Manhattan. (One Week After iPad 2 Launch)
Note: iPad 2 is way better than the HP TouchPad.

Source: MacRumors.com

 Want to know why these people are still waiting?
Read my post "Steve Jobs, You Evil Genius! I - Must - Have - iPad 2!" 

 

The National Writing Project Needs More Than Praise, It Needs Funding

On March 2, President Obama signed a bill eliminating direct federal funding for the National Writing Project (NWP), the nation's leading effort to improve writing and learning in the digital age.

Contact members of Congress and President Obama and tell them why the National Writing Project needs more than praise - it needs funding!

Image credit: The Seven Valleys Writing Project at SUNY Cortland 

Innovations in Teaching and Learning: Top Down or Bottom Up?

Head to the vendor area of an educational conference and you'll see a "top-down" vision of innovation in schools - expensive stuff that delivers information - lots of flashy equipment like display systems, interactive whiteboards, etc. They might give the illusion of modern, but in fact they're just a glitzy versions of the old standby - teaching as telling. Does anyone really think there's an instructional ROI in jazzing up test prep with a "Jeopardy-style game" delivered by "cutting-edge display technology?" 

In fact, the best innovation in instructional practice is coming from the "bottom up" - from teachers who find effective ways to harness the creative energy of their students. These teachers don't simply deliver information to kids, they craft lessons where students can research, collaborate, and reflect on what they're learning. They harness a flood of new platforms that enable students "see" information in new ways and support a more self-directed style of learning. Unlike the expensive wares being hawked by the convention vendors, most of these web tools are free. 

Want to find out more about instructional innovation in action? That won't cost you a thing either. Just jump on my Twitter feed and you find superb teachers willing to share their latest student projects. And that free flow of information contrasts with a second "top-down" approach to innovation in schools - the professional learning committee. Imagine being told that, "teachers will now attend PLC meetings.. and don't forget to fill out the PLC report form and turn it in to your administrator." No one at the top seems to notice that teachers who want to network have already created their own "bottom-up" support systems via the social web.

Most kids have a "bottom-up" expectation of curating their own information and creating something with it. The barriers to producing content (music, art, books, etc) have all but disappeared. Schools should be helping students develop better skills at critically evaluating information and using it in responsible ways. But many schools cloister students behind internet filters. And instead of finding innovative ways to take advantage of the student's personal smart phone, they ban them. "Susie put your iTouch away and please focus your attention on the output from our classroom's expensive new wireless document camera."

Corporate music, publishing and film were transformed from below. Do we expect education (another legacy information gatekeeper) to be spared the forces of the digital revolution? Unlike the vanishing local newspaper, schools won't disappear entirely. After all, someone has to watch the kids. While it may be difficult to replace the custodial function of schools, I suspect that education's "top-down" approach will eventually be breached. Or perhaps life will just become an "open book test" and we'll no longer notice how our information moves through it. 

As Matt Ridley noted in a piece about the evolution of the social web,  "The very notion that we once discussed the relative merits of text, email, social-network messaging and tweeting will seem quaint. In the future, my part of the cloud will get a message to a friend's part of the cloud by whichever method works best, and I will not even know which way it went. The distinction between a newspaper column and a blog will dissolve, as will the difference between a book and an e-book."  ~ Microchips Are Old Hat. Can Tweets Be Far Behind? Wall Street Journal  March 5, 2011

Image credit flickr/visualpanic  

Jobs, You Evil Genius! I - Must - Have - iPad 2!

Jobs - stop messing with my head. I've lived this long without an iPad. Why do I suddenly feel a growing obsession to get one? 

 

Use Storify To Tell Your Story and Document the Social Web

Storify is a new platform that allows users to quickly tell a story using material from the social web. Yesterday I received an invitation to try out their beta.

Just as I began exploring it, my Twitter feed alerted me to the tragic events in Japan. Without much planning, I began using Storify to collect material about the earthquake / tsunami from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr  and other news feeds.

While I kept my narrative to just a few sentences, users can add additional comments to each element. My finished story appeared on the Storify site and I used the embed code to also post it on my blog. 

As an advocate of document based instruction, I realized that Storify has great potential in the classroom. It's a easy tool for teachers and students to gather a variety of social media and web content. It would be especially useful way for students to critically evaluate web and social media content.  As a historian I also think if it as a first, rough draft of history - a social document for future generations.

~ I regret that my first use of Storify was to document such a tragic event. My prayers go out to all those impacted by the earthquake and tsunami. I hope to be able to tell happier stories in the future.  

Storify Overview from Storify on Vimeo.

 

Earthquake and Tsunami Devastate Northern Japan

This Storify essay is a first, rough draft of history - a social document for future historians. Text, image, video and tweets from the initial reaction to the event. (March 10, 2011 GMT-8)  ~ I regret that my first use of Storify was to document such a tragic event. My prayers go out to all those impacted by the earthquake and tsunami. I hope to be able to tell happier stories in the future.

Student Personal Tech Devices in the Classroom? A Cartoon Parable

"The Cameraman" - From Cartoonist Chris Ware, animator John Kuramoto and Ira Glass of This American Life. First grade teacher, Jeff Potter tells Ira about an art project and the impact of  personal "technology" in the classroom. 

"The camera really changed the way we behaved.... We lost our humanity."

Were the cameras really responsible for the student insensitively to the fight? Was banning the cameras the only alternative the teachers had? I don't know. I wasn't there. 

But it does strike me that the cameras were also a catalyst to creativity, collaboration, and powerful student engagement. Is this a parable about balancing the benefits and liabilities of cell phones and other student personal technology in the classroom?

Hat tip to David Kwasigroh