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A New Blog Project -- LeaderTalk
2007-03-06 02:19:01
A few weeks ago, Scott McLeod of Dangerously Irrelevant asked me to be a part of a new collaborative blog where all the bloggers were edu-administrators of one kind or another. Then he asked me if I'd write the inaugural posting. So tonight, the Lead erTalk blog launches, and interestingly, even before the latest discussion around care, I was drafting a post all about The Ethic of Care and 21st Century Schools. I am just honored and thrilled to be taking part in a project with such amazing educational leaders. Thank you to Scott for inviting me to take part! My understanding of the project is that all the contributors will be writing one entry a month. I'll be writing the entry for the first of every month, and I cannot wait to see how this new project evolves.
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The Politics of Education Funding
2007-02-26 08:16:05
The latest news about the School District of Philadelphia's finances isn't good. Our bond rating, as a district, is now one step above junk bond. Given the $73 million deficit this year and the projected deficit for next year, this does scare me, as SLA -- and every other school in Philly -- needs the district to be on sound financial footing if we are to reach the promise of our best ideas.But there's a larger issue at work here, and I'm thrilled to see our CEO Paul Vallas bring it up: "After five years of reform, we've gone about as far as we can go with our existing revenue base. In order to go to the next level, we're going to need more. It's as simple as that," said Paul Vallas, district chief executive officer.He's right. Sooner or later, this is an economic justice issue. The district made $70 million in cuts this year. They cut 180 jobs -- and in conversations I've had with people at the central and regional offices, many of these cuts have hurt us. If we really are...
More About: Politics , Fun , Education , Cat , Funding

Net Neutrality Open Source Documentary
2007-02-25 20:15:05
When Larry Lessig is blown away by a documentary, you know it's worth watching.He's right.Go watch. (Although, I admit, a few of the grammar mistakes bugged the English teacher in me.)Save the Internet | Rock the VoteTechnorati Tags: net neutrality
More About: Open Source , Documentary , Men , Open , Source

Bloggers Who Make Me Think
2007-02-25 14:14:03
Turns out that Nani and Alsoomse nominated me as a Think ing Blog ger ... always a lovely award to win. Here's the icon: So now, I'll nominate five folks from my blog-list... and let's just admit up-front that there are far more than five bloggers who make me think. Kim Moritz over at G-town is a powerfully thoughtful admin-blogger who always makes me think deeply about my own practice. Will Richardson is someone whose blog makes me think every time -- and he's even better live. Whenever I am really grappling with an edu-tech issue, Will is one of the people I call on to be a sounding board. And more often than not, Christian Long is the other person I call. He's one of the best voices out there for bringing different perspectives to education. Eric over at Sicheii Yazhi is quickly becoming a must read for me, as he really has an amazing, thoughtful and spiritual look at teaching. And then I remembered that I read more than just edu-blogs... and so I'll just say that Larry Le...
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SLA Teacher-Blogs and Questions about Teacher-Blogging
2007-02-25 02:13:05
As SLA continues to take our steps into a more transparent form of schooling, two more SLA teachers have begun blogging. So be sure to check out the blog entries from Biochemistry teacher Gamal Sherif and Learning Specialist Anissa Weinraub. A few weeks ago, Will Richardson asked us, "Can a school reasonably expect its students to blog if the teachers are not willing to join them in the effort?" And I think it's a good, hard question. The easy way out is to say that the kind of blogging we're asking students to do right now, answers to prompts, posting of work, etc... is not the same as the kind of blogging we talk about when we talk about the edublogosphere where teachers are reflecting on practice, thinking about big ideas, etc... But that's only the easy answer. After all, we are asking students to reflect publicly about the way they learn. So is there an expectation that teachers would do the same?I think the answer is yes, but a qualified yes. In a perfect world, all SLA tea...
More About: Question , Questions , Blogging , Blogs , Blog

The Dark Side of Web 2.0 and Kids
2007-02-25 02:13:05
I admit it... I don't know what to do about the article in today's New York Times about teenagers misbehaving and publishing it online. I do wonder if what we are seeing is just a very public display of typical teenage behavior or if this is new. From the article:"Teens have been doing inappropriate things for a long time, but now they think they can become celebrities by doing it,"� said Dr. Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Schneider Children's Hospital at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. "In the past, you'd brag to your friends in the locker room about doing something stupid or crazy or daring,"� Dr. Adesman said. "Now the Internet provides additional motivation. But these things can just as easily lead to criminal prosecution as broad celebrity."In the classroom, in the cafeteria, in their bedrooms or on the street, teenagers are quick on the draw with the camera phone. They flip, click and post, then hope Web users will watch them.I worry...
More About: Kids , Web 2 , Dark , The Dark , Side

Definitions of Sanity and NCLB
2007-02-25 02:13:05
Doug Noon over at Borderland just wrote a really powerful, thought-provoking, interesting piece on NCLB . It's just an amazing lens... agree, disagree, there's space for both, I'm sure. But I'd argue that, no matter what you initially think, be sure to (to quote Mr. Kay, one of our amazing English teachers at SLA) "let it marinate for a while" first. [Update: It was Doug Noon who wrote it, not Doug Johnson. My apologies!]
More About: Definitions , Definition

The Joys of the Teaching Life
2007-02-25 02:13:05
As we think about School 2.0, NCLB and everything else facing education today, sometimes it's important to remember the joy that comes with this job too.I flew out to Ohio last night to go to Oberlin College to see the Senior Day game, the last home game of Jessie Oram's college career. Jessie played for me at Beacon for four years, and we spent four years catching a cab to practice every morning at 6:15. She made sure I was met at the airport by two other former students of mine who are also at Oberlin, so I got to catch up with their lives as well. The game was amazing, and I just had an incredible time watching Jessie play. (And hey, getting to go out on the court with her at the beginning was pretty damned cool.) But it was just amazing to get to interact with her out on her turf and really see the way everyone around her just clearly loves being with her. All of which is to speak to one of the wonderful benefits of the teaching life. After a while, the kids we teach become ad...
More About: Life , Teaching , Teac

Open Inquiry Project: TED Talks
2007-02-25 02:13:05
I've been slowly making my way through the TEDTalk s videos. It tends to take forever because each video sends me off googling and wikipedia-ing, looking for more information about the topic of the speech. It's been rather incredible, and I've learned more about multi-touch computing, global poverty, religion, innovation... I just feel like I've been learning a ton. And that was the light-bulb. One of the things I always wonder about with the notion of open inquiry is... how do we expose students to enough ideas, enough content, enough inspiration such that they had great questions to launch them forward and then enough gumption to keep them going. I'm going to think about this in terms of a wonderful class we have at SLA -- Advisory. It's wonderful for any number of reasons, but for this idea, it's wonderful because it's curriculum is utterly flexible. It's primary purpose is to be a space for a community of students and a teacher to come together over four years and le...
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Call for New SLA Faculty
2007-02-25 02:13:05
[To the other bloggers out here who read this and who have been following SLA's progress, I'd ask that you consider a link to this post, as we very much want to reach as wide an audience as possible for our search for our new faculty.] Call for Teachers: "How do we learn?" "What can we create?" "What does it mean to lead?" These three essential questions form the basis of instruction at the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) a new Philadelphia high school opened in September 2006. SLA is built on the notion that inquiry is the very first step in the process of learning. Developed in partnership with The Franklin Institute – a nationally recognized science and technology museum – and its commitment to inquiry-based science, SLA provides a rigorous, college-preparatory curriculum with a focus on science, technology, mathematics and entrepreneurship. Students at SLA will learn in a project-based environment where the core values of inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation ...
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Getting YouTube in the Classroom
2007-02-25 02:13:05
For all those folks who work in districts that block YouTube or GoogleVideo and therefore have been frustrated when they haven't been able bring that amazing video into the classroom, here's a post from Hackszine.com on how to download GoogleVideo and YouTube to your computer.I'm excited about this in the short-term because it'll allow me to show the Web 2.0 video to students... but in the long term, I'm wondering about this.On the one hand, this is good because it allows teachers and administrators to bring the content they view appropriate into the classroom. Now, anyone in charge of filtering can say, "Just download the video and bring it in... we trust your judgment to bring content into the classroom, but now we don't have to worry that the kids can view any of the inappropriate stuff on YouTube." That seems like a good thing, prima facie. It's exactly the kind of hack that a lot of policy-makers would probably love. But I'm not sure it's a good thing because it sidest...
More About: Youtube , Class , Room

Educational social note-taking tool?
2007-02-25 02:13:05
What would a social networking notetaking tool look like? If my "social network" are my classmates, what would happen if, every class, the notes I took as a student... the notes I made as a teacher... were published and shareable? Useful? Shared meaning? Information overload? What would that tool look like? Does it exist? Is it useful? Useless? Something in between?
More About: Social , Education , Cat , Educational , Note

The Machine is Us/ing Us
2007-02-25 02:13:05
If you are an SLA community member reading this at school, read it at home or on a network where YouTube isn't blocked. It's a really interesting, provocative piece about Web 2.0 technology and some of the changes it may cause in our society. I'd love to see a discussion start around this video and the questions it raises. (And if you are a blogger who has seen this linked to four hundred other blog sites already, I apologize...)
More About: Mac , Machine , Chine , Mach

School Web Portals -- The Killer App
2007-02-25 02:13:05
While my brain still hammers around some of the other societal / culture issues around School 2.0, I thought I'd make an attempt at tackling a more concrete piece of the puzzle -- the Web Port al. I am convinced that one of the keys to building School 2.0 is a robust web portal that creates the virtual center of the community online. As much as Google is creating incredible apps, and as much as we can have a few dozen external tools that power our kids' learning, I think that they / we need a home-based around which we can build and strengthen a community. As one of our students said to Steve Hargadon, "If we had gotten the laptops, but not had the web-site and Moodle, it wouldn't have changed that much about the way we learn." At Beacon, the school forums and teacher/student we created gave everyone a reason to check back to the site often. But with the advent of all the Web 2.0 tools, there's no way I'm going to write the next generation tool we need. I'm not that good a ...
More About: Killer , The Kill , Kill

Amazing Blog on Teaching and Thinking
2007-02-25 02:13:05
Are you reading Throughlines by Bruce Schauble? He's a teacher out in Hawaii, and yes, he's embarking on some blogging and podcasting and 21st century teaching, but even beyond that, he's got some of the most interesting, thoughtful and thought-provoking writing on the teaching of English out there. Go read.
More About: Teaching , Blog , Amazing , Think , King

Too Many Ideas... and One Overwhelming Question
2007-02-25 02:13:05
I'm curious if other bloggers have ever felt this way... We had a wonderful Web 2.0 conference led by Will Richardson on Friday and Saturday. Christian Long was there and stayed with my family for a few days. And even above that, I've been a part of even more really rich, interesting conversations than usual lately. As a result, I've got a few dozen blog posts floating around in my head about some really big ideas that I've been lucky enough to be talking about these past few days. And I'm just overloaded. I feel very much in "receiver" mode, as if I'm just taking in a ton of idea and sifting and filtering them, but nothing seems quite coherent enough to even attempt to blog about. I will say this... whether it's edubloggers or the MIT Media Lab using the term, I am really loving the idea that, in the end, we seem to be asking one really powerful question behind all of the other questions: What does the future of learning look like?
More About: Ideas , Question , Idea , Over , Quest

Leadership Meme
2007-02-25 02:13:05
Kim Moritz has passed the latest meme to me. This one is about leadership, and the question is: “What are seven qualities we don’t know about you that help you be a leader?” Seven??? Yee gods, I'd settle for two... and I think these are qualities I aspire to, but here it goes: 1) I try to argue to learn, not argue to win. I love debate. I love discourse. I love the world of ideas. I love talking about the 37 ways you could set up a schedule or the fifteen different questions that could form the basis of instruction at SLA in the 10th grade. And I love listening to the ideas that other people bring to the table because those ideas make my ideas better. Truth be told, often, they are better than my ideas. 2) I hate the idea that the people who put their trust and faith in me could ever be let down because I didn't know enough, didn't work hard enough, didn't care enough. When I was a girls basketball coach, I saw girls willing to wake up at get to practice at 6:30 and work e...
More About: Meme , Leadership , Ship , Lead , Leader

Art, Passion and the Job of Teaching...
2007-02-25 02:13:05
I debated leaving this as just a comment response to Dan from my entry, but I think there are enough ideas in here to stand as its own entry... Dan wrote in his comment: I agree that right now we need less cynicism. But I disagree that inspiration and uplift are the answer. We need to advocate realism. Specifically, we need to get teachers to talk more realistically about teaching. Even more specifically, no matter how plainly teachers feel these things, we need to stop calling our job "a calling." (You've called teaching "a calling" in one of your comments on my blog, so I am cognizant of where we stand on this one.) We need to avoid terminology like "passion" in describing the prerequisites of our job. We need to eschew terms like "artist" in describing our vocations and completely strip martyrdom from the discussion. Gals like Gruwell (not that I've seen the movie) have done more for students in a year than I have in three, but she, and movies like Freedom Writers, do t...
More About: Teaching , Passion , Pass , Sion , Teac

Nominate Outstanding Teachers for the 2007 Presidential Awards for Excellen
2007-02-25 02:13:05
(Got an email today from Jo Scott at PAEMST asking if I could post this, and it looks decidedly worth posting, so consider the word passed along -- Chris) Show your support for outstanding mathematics and science teachers in your community by nominating them for the 2007 President ial Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. Each year, on behalf of The White House, the National Science Foundation selects highly qualified teachers based on their deep mathematics or science content knowledge and their ability to show evidence of student progress in these areas. The call for nominations for the 2007 awards is open! The nomination and application period for the nation’s highest honor for mathematics and science teachers will close May 1, 2007. Nominate 7th-12th grade teachers today by visiting www.paemst.org . K-6th grade teachers may be nominated in 2008. As presidential winners, award recipients receive the following: A citation signed by the President of t...
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