Headed Down East

Well, the second semester has started - in some ways, it seems, without me.  But I’m getting caught up.  My students have created i-google accounts and learnerblogs accounts, so I’m officially back on board with learnerblogs for this semester.  My hope is that using i-google as an aggregator for news articles as well as for one another’s blogs, that there will be a true nexus between current events, student writing, and student collaboration.

Right now the challenge is ensuring that everyone’s edublog account is set up properly.  I think with another session in the lab this will be feasible.

Thanks to those at edublogs who work to make this possible.  I’m confident this can all come together.

For the first time in just over a year I’ve had the urge to write on my edublogs site.  I guess that means it’s a truly organic experience, but why the apathy?  It was partly due to my frustration with how the realities of my last experiences with edublogs did not match the original vision.  I started edublogs with the intent of having each student online writing a blog.  More importantly, they were going to find some intrinsic value in writing blogs.  Even more so, they were going to read and respond passionately to one another’s blogs.  In some ways the writing was great.  It was more informal and reflected the students’ voices in a way that is often lost in formal writing assignments.  In some cases the dialogue was great.  There were a few sincerely passionate back and forth commentaries between students.  But mostly it turned into 25 students writing in 25 separate places with little interaction between authors.  The icing on the cake was when I went to set up edublogs for the spring semester of 2007 and the site was so broken in turned into a chaotic lab session where no-one could get logged on.

At that point I abandoned edublogs and went to wikispaces (http://newsthatmatters.wikispaces.com/) for students to post current event articles.  This was better in that everyone posted in the same space.  It was worse in that it did not facilitate the more informal and conversational writing that is encouraged by blogs.

How any one of us uses the available technology is increasingly a reflection of how we as individuals work and think.  Assigning blogs or wikis or aggregators or other online tools is often self-defeating in the classroom because while the teacher may think in the way he or she chooses to structure the online environment, only a portion of his or her students will also think that way.  Certainly it will be a minority; it may well be none of them.  And yet, as teachers we need some sort of relatively uniform system that enables us to assess and respond to the work of our students in a way that is meaningful and also realistic to accomplish in the limited hours we have to dedicate to students.

Is there an online tool that will capture students’ intrinsic interests while also producing something that can be manageably read and assessed by the teacher?  Should teachers allow students to use a variety of online tools?  Could the work online be primarily unregulated in the formal sense of “assessment?”

These are questions I will try to answer in the next few days as I embark on a new Civics course with renewed hope for classroom and online interaction between my students.

Here’s Julia’s post on NCLB.  She is a junior in my Civics class who commented on the law.

If you want to know about water, then why is the fish the last one asked?

By the time students reach high school they have maintained the same “career” for longer than most adults ever will.  Students graduate high school with thirteen or more years of analyzing and critiquing teachers and their practices.  So why do we teachers (and I fault myself, too) rarely ask the experts what they think about schools?  Fortunately, when my students were asked to write about what they felt were important domestic issues in America today a few of them wrote about education.

Andrew examined the logic behind Connecticut’s standardized test that is one part of the national No Child Left Behind program.  He writes:

Everyone today has their opinions, yet most agree there are inherent problems with both public and private education in America today. When “No child left behind” was passed many were outraged. Basically the problem in No child left behind is that when each school district is required to issue CAPT tests, the schools with good scores recieve more funding, while the worse scoring schools recieve less funding. This whole system is completely STUPID, it takes funding away from where it is really needed and distributes it unevenly where it will not be used as well.  New ideas to reform the education system include completely revamping the way we teach, and redistributing funding to states rather than local district funding. (Andrew’s Blog, 12/15/2006)

Andrew’s summary of NCLB is brief, but cuts to the core of one of the main criticisms of the act in that it does not properly or accurately redistribute funds for education.  Education reform is typically conservative and ill directed.  Rarely does real reform occur.  Andrew states that “New ideas to reform the education system include completely revamping the way we teach.”  This couldn’t be more true, and especially in a time when there are so many technological tools at our disposal to truly revolutionize education.  It’s time for significant change, not politically correct change.

Another student of mine, Jesse, took a more reflective look at what education does versus what it should do:

Education is still an issue - uneducated poor, uneducated you, uneducated youth. This is my stance: most of us are not educated enough. Those who want to learn have to teach themselves. Most are caught in a life they didn’t create, told what to want, where to go, why they shouldn’t stray.

I want to learn how to love, how to live, how to be a man, how to dance, how to play music and make art - I want to learn things that change how I look at the world, things that give me power over myself, knowlege of myself, acceptance of myself. It seems like i’m taught to not accept my life, but to always be looking for something more - money so that one day i’ll have a safe and soft place to be. But i’m not taught to be, i’m taught to become. 

The world today does not know enough about what matters. We don’t know how to live without watse. We don’t know that we don’t rule the world. Mankind was not meant to be king, we put that on ourselves. And that has brought us problems. We live like the earth is ours to use, like the earth was made for us to live on it, like we know now how to live, as if we know what is best for us. “There is no higher power than man” we say, and so we guide ourselves, as if we know the way to go.

We don’t, but we can learn. (a big log, 1/21/2006)

These responses may not be loaded with evidence, but they contain a raw honesty that adults by and large have difficulty tapping into.  Students are professional learners with a keen awareness for good teaching practices and are individuals with nothing to lose by speaking the truth.  They do indeed have something to offer that we cannot.  Listening to that source and incorporating it into the larger discussion about education reform will be invaluable to the future of America’s schools.

Blogs are just one aspect of a larger trend of increased available technology, and hopefully not something that the educational world allows to pass by without examining its power in schools.  Globalization and technology have dramatically changed business practices around the world, and yet education has changed very little.  This is because education has always been largely hypothetical and rarely practical.  Communicative technology like the Web, Blogs, and Wiki spaces offer a chance to revolutionize that notion.  Today students have the opportunity to genuinely participate in building valuable and worthwhile spaces that can be designed for historians, scientists, political analysts, or whoever the target audience may be.  As educators in today’s global community, we have a responsibility to teach and to model, as well as to coach and to guide.  Let’s not forget the excellent teaching practices that have been developed, but let’s also not ignore the monumental opportunities that technology presents.

Traditional teaching practices such as lecturing, when done well, are proven methods for delivering quality content in an efficient and engaging way.  They also model good communicative practices.  Group activities, when properly planned and structured, are engaging and encourage students to learn from one another.  Up until recently, however, it has been virtually impossible for students to construct something that has value outside of the immediate classroom.  Great lessons and projects usually end with a grade; rarely do they progress beyond the school setting.  For this reason, one of the single biggest complaints that students have about school is its lack of relevance to their own lives or the world outside the school house gates.  Online communication has the potential to change that.

Using blogs this semester was not a bad start.  I liked that blogs gave students the opportunity to write for a broader audience than just me.  Blogs allowed students to read and interact with one another far more than a typical homework or writing assignment that is passed from student to teacher to student to recycle bin.  On the blog, students wrote with more sincerity because it was published.  At the very least, a few of their friends would read their blog.  At most, who knows?  Additionally, because of the blogs inherently informal feel, a lot of the student writing contained a genuine voice that is typically not present in essays.

For me, the next step is to go beyond blogs.  While studying the Civil War I should prepare and present quality lectures to convey the “big picture” and model good communicative practices.  Many teachers are masters of their craft and have engaged students for years.  But let’s not stop there.  Provide students the access to a web space, a wiki space, and/or a blog that allows them to construct something of value for the larger community of historians.  Teachers are also coaches.  Help students establish an attainable objective such as to create an online space of primary source materials on abolition before the Civil War.  Guide students as they construct their website of materials.  Ensure that the project is focused enough so that a quality result can be achieved in the amount of time available.  Most importantly, ensure that the final product is accessible to the larger world of historians, or artists, or whoever the audience may be.

This example illustrates my goals as a history teacher, but the concept can be applied to any discipline.  Teach quality content, model good communication, and guide students as they create their own valuable addition to the discipline at hand.  In this way education may become a place where students are a part of the real world, rather than waiting to enter it.  As educators, we need to recognize this opportunity and use it to change the face of education.  The classroom up until now has been a hypothetical space – let’s make it real.

Education has changed.  In the past finding information required a great deal of time and extensive resources.  To find a book in the library twenty years ago you had to use a card catelog.  Computer databases were pretty rare.  The internet was non-existent.  As a result, one of the central roles of teachers was to make information accessible to the students.  Professionals alone controlled information - teachers, editors, publicists.  The average civilian could do little more than write an editorial to a newspaper.

Today information is abundant.  Furthermore, everyone has the ability to publish and share their own knowledge and ideas.  Wikipedia is a great example.  Anyone out there can create and add to this online encyclopedia.  Some people express great concern that the information on wikipedia does not go through professional editors.  However, who is to say that those professional editors will include the most relevant information and exclude the least relevant?  Who is to say that those editors will interpret facts accurately - or in a way that presents multiple perspectives?

Wikipedia allows average people - you and me - to add our knowledge and experiences to a database accessible by everyone.  As wikipedia has grown it has become clear that there are relatively few vandals out there who seek to illegitimize the database.  Typically, a group of people knowledgeable on a specific subject work to maintain and update their favorite wikipedia page.  In this way the content of wikipedia is more accurate than a database generated by a small group of editors.

Blogs do the same thing.  I’ve put my thoughts out here for the world to see.  Some of you will agree and some will disagree.  But most importantly the discussion is public.  Anyone with access to an internet connection can add and respond.  John Dewey viewed education as the great equalizer.  However, Dewey failed to acknowledge that the information was largely controlled by the upper and middle class.  Today technology seems to be the real great equalizer.  That’s because our knowledge base will be generated by all members of society and each perspective will be present.