Practical TheoryPractical Theory21st Century Education, Science Leadership Academy and other educational issues Articles
Lessons Learned When We Come Together
2008-02-05 01:12:00 [Cross-posted at LeaderTalk.] A little over a week ago, 250 educators from all over North America came to Science Leadership Academy for EduCon 2.0. The name of the conference itself was a play on words, as we wanted the conference to be about the conversations that people could have, not the presentations we usually see at conventions. It was three incredible days where many folks who regularly read each other's words online came together face to face to talk about the future of schools, about how we could make our schools better, and about how we can marry the tools at our disposal to progressive pedagogy. The conference also featured a great deal of student voice. From the SLA students, to twitter-student Arthus to Meg Peters and Chris Jankowski who presented with their parents, students lent their voices to the conversations, making sure that as the adults talked about how schools needed to change, we had their perspectives in the conversation as well. And I don't know... ... More About: Lessons , Learned
Wes Fryer on NCLB: A Must Read
2008-02-03 04:00:00 If you have not yet read Wes Fryer's impassioned and well argued response to President Bush's comments about NCLB in the State of the Union, go and go now. It's a fantastic read. Here's a sample: Our “failing public schools” are not failing because they have not been threatened enough with harsh punishments and closure. They are not failing because they need a stronger emphasis on “accountability.” Our educational system DOES need reform and change, but the solution is not to privatize public education and set groups whose focus is profit and the bottom line loose amidst our public education dollars. The path we have followed under NCLB is the WRONG path, and I have not yet heard ANY of our current political leaders or aspiring presidential candidates articulate a vision for U.S. schools which breaks with the failed patterns of the past and charts the visionary course for the future which our learners and communities so desperately need.And it gets bette... More About: Read
When to Publish
2008-02-02 06:59:00 Blogs that influenced this post: Local Connections and Global Connections by Will Richardson The Global vs. Local Connections 2.0-Step by Christian Long So at EduCon this weekend, I talked about how I was noticing that, despite all the use of technologies -- and specifically Web 2.0 technologies -- at SLA, that we weren't using the traditional Web 2.0 technology of blogging much. Our kids weren't blogging to the world. In a few conversations thinking about why that was, I thought about how much social networking, how much sharing, how much presentation happens within our own community, and I talked a lot about how I thought that the community at SLA was enriching for kids to the point where they didn't really see as much need to go outside the school community for that moment. There's very little world that is merely a transaction between student and teacher at SLA... and if that "show the world" moment happens in positive ways in your own community, is it as necessary to go o... More About: Publish
The Two Schools
2007-11-01 05:13:00 This post owes a great debt to to Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. There's a long section in Part II where Phaedrus gives his "Two Universities" lecture, and I admit, that that notion has always stuck with me. What this is is an attempt to use that and both apply it to K-12 and hopefully frame some of what is going on in the larger school world today. Here is the crux of Pirsig's argument about the Two Universities: That night, for the next day's lecture, he wrote out his defense of what he was doing. This was the Church of Reason lecture, which, in contrast to his usual sketchy lecture notes, was very long and very carefully elaborated. It began with reference to a newspaper article about a country church building with an electric beer sign hanging right over the front entrance. The building had been sold and was being used as a bar. One can guess that some classroom laughter started at this point. The college was well known for drunken partying and ... More About: Schools
Fun With Dylan and Web 2.0
2007-10-30 04:02:00 (Found this first on Bionic Teaching... made my own. Fun.) More About: Dylan
Standardization, Accountability and the Ethic of Care
2007-10-29 05:01:00 Something I've never understood about those who would put accountability and high standards -- which usually translates to a standardized experience for kids -- as their first virtues in our schools is that there are, in every school, those students we love for whom the normal school or classroom experience does not work. For urban educators, this often manifests as the student who lives a life that most teachers can't imagine. I've taught those kids who couldn't understand how cosine and sine could help them dodge the streets... the kids who couldn't see how learning about the Reformation would help them figure out where they were sleeping... What was failing my class because they couldn't see how The Great Gatsby was relevant to their life going to do. (For the record, the Great Gatsby is relevant to their life. A few years ago, we wrote a modern version of it, with an upstart rapper trying to crack high society. We read a lot about Puffy as preparation, but I digress...) ... More About: Care , Accountability , Standardization
Reminder: Only One Week to Submit Proposals for EduCon 2.0
2007-10-25 13:10:00 Just a reminder... there's only one week left to submit proposals for EduCon 2.0. Given all the folks who have either signed up or told me their coming, I think we're going to have an amazing conference. But we still want more proposals for conversations... be sure to submit yours! [Update: Link to the conference -- Link to the Prop osal Entry] More About: Week , Submit , Reminder , Remi
Connection and Disconnection in the Digital Age
2007-10-18 09:02:00 [Things influencing this post: David Warlick's K12Online Keynote Tom Hoffman's -- On Modernism The words of the students of SLA] For a bunch of years at Beacon, I taught a senior English class called "Connection and Disconnection in the 20th Century." It was a semester-long, reading intensive class that really was a survey of some of what I thought the major literary themes of the modernist and post-modernist movement were and are. The class was reasonably analog, and despite that, some of my favorite moments of classroom teaching happened there. This is one of the intro letters from the class: To the students of Connection and Disconnection in 20th Century Literature: The desire for connection, to our fellow humans, to a community, to a country, to a God, could be considered a basic human need. In the 20th century, as many of the traditional bonds changed at a speed never seen before, that sense of connection changed or was lost. Much of the literature of the modernist and... More About: Digital , Digital Age
The Mindset of Project-Based Learning
2007-10-18 00:56:00 I've realized something. Project -based learning is the easiest thing in the world to talk about because it's almost a guarentee that no one will disagree with you. Everyone will nod their head and agree that it's a good thing... but -- and Wiggins and McTigue write about this as well, by the way -- true project-based learning is an inversion of our traditional classrooms in powerful ways. Here's why: Project-based learning is not what you do after you've given the test, as supplimental to the test, as anything other than the primary method of assessment of student learning. In a true project-based learning classroom or school, you may give quizzes to check-in or dipstick for comprehension, but when it comes time to assess what students really, deeply understand about a unit, they do an authentic, student-centered assessment -- a project. If authentic student work is not the highest-order assessment in a classroom, that classroom is not project-based. It is still relying on... More About: Learning , Mindset , The Mind , Earning
21st Century School Reform
2007-10-16 21:44:00 I'm in Nashville, at the Technology + Learning conference hosted by NSBA. I did a three hour workshop today on 21st Century School Reform . Here was the conference write-up. (And yes, I did use that much edu-speak... but I meant it!) What does the Department of Educations School 2.0 initiative really entail, and how do we create schools that can realize that vision? Can we really build a pedagogical framework that allows all stakeholders to use technology to change the way we think about schools and create a transformative experience for all involved? Examine the issues of technology infrastructure, staff development, curriculum design in a One-to-One environment, home and school interaction in School 2.0, and the pedagogical framework necessary to make School 2.0 a reality. (And yes, there is a level of both hubris and insanity to think that I could tackle that topic in three hours.) I'll do a longer write-up about what I thought of the session later... I will say this -- the ...
Learning From the Kids
2007-10-11 04:08:00 So, like many other folks these days, I've been getting excited about the possiblities of UStream, but I also have been wondering about how we might leverage this in the classroom in ways that really take advantage of this twin notions of audience and interaction. As a result, what you see is SLA's first foray into interactive broadcasting... I stopped by one of our tech electives to show them the tool (and we were joined by another class after a few minutes), and I sent out a Twitter message to my network, and suddenly an interactive broadcast was born. I did forget to start recording for the first ten minutes, so this stream joins the conversation mid-talk. There are some real flaws with the broadcast, mostly that the mic was next to me, and I'm talking in "teacher voice," so I'm rather overpowering on the video compared to the kids' voices, I need to turn off the Skype noises, because they are distracting, and I think we need a wireless mic so that the kids can be heard... More About: Kids , The Kids , Learning , Earning
What Is Left Behind
2007-10-08 10:18:00 Just read Jim Horn's transcript of a speech he gave against NCLB. Whether you agree or disagree, go read it. Here's a piece of his closing argument: Recently, a quote by Cal State professor, Art Costa showed up on one of internet discussion groups, a quote that is horribly relevant today: "What was once educationally significant, but difficult to measure, has been replaced by what is insignificant and easy to measure. So now we test how well we have taught what we do not value." Powerful read. More About: Left
EduCon 2.0 -- A Call for Conversations
2007-10-05 05:33:00 From January 25-27, we're going to attempt something really quite exciting at SLA. We're going to host EduCon 2.0. About EduCon 2.0 EduCon 2.0 is both a conversation and a conference. And it is not a technology conference. It is an education conference. It is a School 2.0 conference. It is, hopefully, an innovation conference where we want to come together, both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools. We are looking for people to present ideas, facilitate conversations, and share best practice. The Axioms / Guiding Principles of EduCon 2.0: 1) Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members. 2) Our schools must be about co-creating -- together with our students -- the 21st Century Citizen 3) Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around. 4) Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate 5) Learning can -- and must -- be networked. We are now making our call for conversations -- th... More About: Call
Combining Progressive Pedagogy and 21st Century Tools
2007-10-02 07:06:00 My NECC Proposal: School 2.0 -- Comb ining Progressive Pedagogy and 21st Century Tools In our hurry to learn "What's new," we can't lose sight of "What's best?" Examine using the new tools in a school-wide, constructivist manner. Every day brings new tools so that even the most tech-savvy among us can feel overwhelmed. Fortunately, we can use what we know as educators to ground ourselves in sound pedagogical practice so that we can make smart choices about what tools to use and when. Looking at the work of theorists as old as Dewey and as new as George Siemens and the success of schools such as High Tech High and Science Leadership Academy, we will examine how to make smart decisions about how, when and why to use 21st Century Tools. When we design curriculum that is build around inquiry-driven, project-based learning, where students and teachers work together to create new meaning and deep understandings, then we can use 21st Century tools to allow students to create meanin...
An Accident of Birth
2007-10-02 06:08:00 [Cross-posted at LeaderTalk] One of the things about being a principal is that all the major issues that affect our students have to, sooner or later, come across your desk. One of the things about being a principal with a lot of students who come from difficult situations (and really, that describes almost all schools these days) is that you see many, many situations that leave you with your head in your hands and frustrated by the limits of what we can do. But until we resurrect "Boys Town" with some modern equivalent, we have to know that sometimes, the best we can do is create a safe haven in our schools. Sometimes, the best we can do is teach kids that adults can care about them, can be true to their word, and can actually act like adults are supposed to act. Sometimes, we have to do the best we can by our kids by just hugging them every day and trying to give them the skills that will hep them survive their own situations. Those are the days when I come home and hug my kids... More About: Accident , Birth
When You Don't Know How to Dream
2007-09-28 05:51:00 I had a meeting today with a few other district principals, some higher-ed folks and district personnel. The purpose of the meeting was to examine the budget formulas to create an ideal high school budget for a Philadelphia school. We were told to dream big, to imagine having what we needed to really meet the state standards. What we were doing was to used as part of the conversations going on about school finance reform in PA. A decidedly worthy exercise for a few hours over an evening. I was the least experienced principal in the room. And -- and let me be perfectly and powerfully clear here -- the other principals in the room are colleagues I respect and admire. One of them is someone I've called on many times for counsel. But I've also been lucky enough, through my experiences in educational technology, to work with an incredibly diverse group of educators from public to private, urban to suburban and of a wide geographic range as well. That perspective is invaluable. Becau... More About: Dream
Some Possible Supplimentary Texts
2007-09-28 05:11:00 Some possible readings for SLA in the coming days (and hopefully weeks...) Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof For Love of the Game by Michael Shaara Bang the Drum Slowly by Michael Harris The Natural by Bernard Malamud Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer The Great American Novel by Philip Roth (perhaps a bit too risque) Wait 'Til Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin The Physics of Baseball by Robert Adair In other words... GOOOOOOO PHILLIES!!!! More About: Some
K12 Online Conference
2007-09-26 22:54:00 In case you haven't heard... the K12 Online Conference is about to start. If you haven't yet carved out a huge block of time to take part, do so.
Working Toward the Killer Web App
2007-09-24 07:25:00 (or Why I Wish I Knew the Moodle API...) I just finished recreating the Parent Portal on our web site that allows parents to enter in their child's ID and get their five most recent homework assignments in each class. It's a total hack because it reads the Moodle databases straight, rather than using the Moodle API. This, of course, meant that the program broke when we upgraded to Moodle 1.8. And this, like many other moments, is why we really need a full-time programmer to do what we really would love to be able to do. I can hack around from time to time, but realistically, I don't have the time to be able to learn the Moodle and Drupal APIs and then do the kind of coding we need to create the killer app that I know we could. That's not my job anymore, as much as I still enjoy programming. We're really quite close to what we want... this diagram speaks to the dream I have of an educational web app that really could do it all. We're going to pay VERY close attention to Dr... More About: Killer , Working , Workin
Don't Blame the Victim -- Creating Systems of Innovation
2007-09-18 05:41:00 Things Influencing this Post: Karl Fisch -- Is It O.k. To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher? David Warlick: Teachers and Technology - A Rant The Responsibility For Effective Staff Development A Whole Bunch of Other Posts Out There... "..someone told me they didnt want to learn one more new thing, they didnt like new things.." There's a lot of writing going on about how teachers don't have the right to be technologically illiterate today, that they can't, won't shaltn't... And, and I don't mean to be picking on David or Karl, two voices I deeply, deeply respect, there seems to be a sense that, if it weren't for those darned teachers who won't learn, we'd have the schools we need. I don't doubt that there are those teachers who refuse to learn. I powerfully, powerfully doubt that those teachers are our biggest problem. Our problem is that there is little about our current educational system that encourages innovation. (Here's where I admit my bias. I'm tal... More About: Innovation , Creating , Systems , Blame , Lame
Coaching
2007-09-05 08:24:00 As much as I love what I do as principal of SLA, there are big huge parts of my life as a classroom teacher that I miss every day. The biggest thing I miss is coaching. I love sports, and I love them for a lot of reasons. I love strategy, I love stats, I love the Xs and Os, but most importantly, I love sports as a metaphor for life. Show me a sports movie where the underdog comes back to win, I'm a mess. For example, if I find Rudy or Rocky on TV, I'm in. I've been lucky enough to stay in touch with a lot of the basketball players and Ultimate players who played on the teams I coached over the years. You have to understand the atmosphere we played in... Beacon didn't have a gym or field space. My girls basketball team practiced in another school's gym at 6:30 am every morning. The Ultimate team used to climb a fence (with scary spikes, I kid you not) to get onto the dirt-encrusted outfield of a baseball field on 55th and 12th Ave. at 6:30 in the morning. (Finally, after many ... More About: Coaching
Why Staff Meetings Matter
2007-09-04 06:50:00 ... a topic guaranteed to elicit groans from all over the edu-bloggersphere. One of my mentors told the story the other day of when he was a first year teacher in one of his first staff meetings, and a veteran teacher pulled him aside and said, "I hope I die in a faculty meeting so that I won't be able to tell the difference." And certainly, almost every teacher (and most administrators) can speak about the staff meeting That.Would.Not.End. They aren't fun. They aren't useful, and they often make us feel like we're losing time off of the end of our lives. But we're in the middle of two weeks of faculty workshops (our term for staff meetings... feels more like what we do,) and as much as anything else, we're finding that we're running out of time to discuss everything we want to. Some of that is because we're still building, but it's also an atmosphere that I hope we can foster over the long-haul. So what should a culture of "faculty workshops" do? Simply put -- it should... More About: Matter , Meetings , Staff
A Reminder of What's Important...
2007-08-31 04:30:00 Every now and then, in the teaching life, we get lucky and former students let us know that we mattered... I got an email today from a former student -- not one I'd kept in touch with, but one who was a great, fun student in class. She used to make my classes more fun because of her intelligence and energy and willingness to take risks. Here's a piece of the email. Coming to [college] has made me realize how very few good teachers there are in the world. Thank you for being one of them, although now you're a principal...hopefully helping to make more of them. I've been living in the life of the mind a lot this summer, thinking about a lot of the abstract parts of school design and teaching and learning, and as we start a new school year, and as we talk so much about reinventing school and curriculum design and 21st century learning, it's important to remember this -- The success of what we do is measured by the difference we make in the lives of the students in our charge. I... More About: Import , Reminder , Remi
My School Goals Journal -- Take Two
2007-08-31 04:03:00 This is just a reposting of the journal entry that I did the other day... I'm not going to rewrite the process we used as a staff to work with these... we all did school wide and personal goals... here's mine: Writing Prompt: 1) What would you see as our highest priority school-wide goals this year? What do you see as both the necessary steps and possible road-blocks for us this year? 2) What are your personal goals for your teaching this year? How do you see yourself achieving them? What supports do you think are necessary to help you achieve them? My answers: 1) School -wide goals --> a) Continued work on creating a language of teaching and learning with UbD as its core so that there is a common vocabulary that is meaningful to all members -- teachers and students. This involves a year long investigation into UbD -- as it translates to our community. This should be a frequent focus of faculty workshops. What keeps us from there? Crisis mode... getting reactive... also just ... More About: Journal , Goals
Why I Need Sleep...
2007-08-29 16:08:00 ... because last night, I meant to delete a spam comment and I deleted yesterday's entry instead. augh And school hasn't even started yet. More About: Sleep
Creating Shared Goals
2007-08-27 08:50:00 Tomorrow, we start our week of faculty workshops at SLA, and our day is full. In the morning, Wayne Ransom from The Franklin Institute is going to work with us as we examine inquiry. He started our workshop last year, and his thoughtful look at a word we throw around a lot but don't always examine was a great way to get us thinking. We'll close the morning with a recap of last week's Summer Institute, and we'll try to engender some interesting conversations in the afternoon. We'll start the afternoon with discussions around two of my favorite thought pieces -- Karl Fisch's Did You Know 2.0 and Sir Ken Robinson's TEDTalk Are Schools Killing Creativity. On a very basic level, my hope is that Did You Know sparks the conversation about how our world is changing and Sir Ken speaks powerfully about why our schools need to change -- and perhaps gives us an insight into how to change too. Those two pieces are -- I hope -- a great launching point into looking at our personal and s... More About: Goals , Creating
Building a Learning Culture -- PD at SLA
2007-08-24 05:33:00 One of my New School Year Resolutions is to do a better job at structuring a cohesive year-long plan for our professional learning. Last year, we had so many things on our plate that many of our faculty meetings were discussions of "O.k., that just happened... how do we want to deal with it?" Moreover, I learned a lot about myself, primarily, that when I feel overwhelmed, I'm not as good at delegating, and I'm not as good at planning collaborative workshops. So, given that we're on the edge of a two week stretch of professional development and workshopping, now would be a good time to think about how we want to look ahead in our own development as educators. I'd been struggling with our PD priorities, both for our workshop next week and for the year. I saw a bunch of "stuff" I knew we wanted to do, but it felt very disconnected, and trying to prioritize any of it, or even figure out how I would want to structure it, was frustrating me. Then, as I was prepping to do some introd... More About: Building , Culture , Learning , Earning
Charles Murray calls out the SAT
2007-08-22 06:01:00 Charles Murray -- yes, he of the Bell Curve -- has said the time has come to abolish the SAT. His recent article in The American is the focus of a NY Times Blog piece entitled "Death to the SAT." Murray writes: The evidence has become overwhelming that the SAT no longer serves a democratizing purpose. Worse, events have conspired to make the SAT a negative force in American life. And so I find myself arguing that the SAT should be ended. Not just deemphasized, but no longer administered. Nothing important would be lost by so doing. Much would be gained. The Times blog piece is a quick summary of the longer piece in The American. It's a fascinating read, arguing that while the SAT once leveled the playing field, it is now simply a measure of socio-economic status, not of aptitude. We are living in fascinating -- if disturbing educational times, but you have to think that when you have conservatives like Charles Murray and liberal / progressives like Monty Neill lining up on the sa... More About: Calls , Charles , Char
Happy New Year
2007-08-21 15:21:00 Whether it's on people's blog entries or in reading people's twitter updates, one thing is clear -- the new school year is just about upon us. So as we here at SLA gear up with our Summer Institute, and we remember that as much as this is about discussions of pedgagogy, technology, innovation and theory, what's it really about is spending our lives with these amazing young people and helping them navigate their way through childhood to a powerful, productive and meaningful life. To all the wonderful people in my learning network -- thank you in advance for another year of challenging and clarifying what I believe and think, and I wish you a wonderful start of school and a meaningful, transformative and fun year. And may we all remember this thought on the hard days: We're the lucky ones. We teach. More About: New Year , Happy , Happy New Year , Year
UbD Paradigm Shift: From Coverage to Uncoverage
More articles from this author:2007-08-16 06:09:00 [I'm re-reading Understanding by Design with a really slow, careful eye. I'm going to be writing about some of the ideas I find there. The book is really worth a read, as it's a fantastic, very detailed way to build a progressive, performance-based curriculum. We use it as a fundamental building-block for curriculum design, and while I think we did a lot welll with it last year, but a major focus of mine for this year is to go much deeper in our usage of it. I'm going to picking and choosing pieces that strike me to write about. Often they won't be the major ideas because I don't think I can do that as well as they do in the book. I'm going to take a sideways glance at some of the other ideas.] The fundamental idea at the heart of Understanding by Design is that we teach toward enduring understandings as our goal and therefore skills and content serve something deeper. In the chapter "The Six Facets of Understanding," Wiggins and McTigue write: What any curriculum designe... More About: Shift , Coverage 1, 2, 3, 4 |
 |
|
 |
