- The damage that homework does to family, child, and learning
- Lecture as primary mode of teaching
- "Classroom management"--Sit quietly in your seat and pay attention: Do not talk
- Standardized testing = principle assessment tool
- Missed steps in learning snowballing into failure
- The bad rap that making mistakes has been saddled with
- Games = the enemy
Monday, March 14, 2011
Salman Khan TED Talks Khan Academy Online
Every educator owes it to him/herself, his/her students, and the future of education to watch this video. While Khan's approach is but one of myriad possible ways to improve Education (with a capital E), it potentially addresses several root manifestations of the fine fix we've worked ourselves into:
Saturday, March 12, 2011
ISTE SIGVE Meetup and Speaker Session Tuesday-- MISSION US!
SIGVE- Speaker Series
Special Guest: Joanne Henning and Kimmer Jameson
MISSION US- A New Way of Learning History
| WHEN: Tuesday, March 15th, 2011 WHERE: ISTE Island Auditorium, Second Life TIME: 5pm SL time Remember when History class was dull? Well, no more. Mission US is part role-play, gaming system, and virtual environment. This web based or downloaded program combines powerful content with an engaging format for middle school age (grades 5-8) students. Please join us as we meet MISSION US AZ Teacher of the Year - Joanne Hennin along with PBS Ei8ht’s Kimmer Jamison. They will share Joanne’s award winning project -- and why it was such a successful implementation model for students, as well as share the resources for MISSION US. |
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
The Value of Peer to Peer Interaction is Often Ignored in Online Course Design
I came across this just yesterday and shared it out via my Facebook network, but I'm thinking it belongs here. Doing some writing today and I'm hoping to add a bit of meat to this blog's bones soon. Meanwhile, if you are at all interested in designing courses for online learning and teaching, you absolutely must be familiar with this tidy little interview with Richard Culatta:
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
School Visits--Essential Therapy
Back in the virtual saddle in the office today, after 1) a staggering personal loss and its related funeral activities down in Florida and 2) two days of school visits to our School Counselors, Assistant Principals, and virtual students in 13 schools spread out over MNPS. An indication of the scope of travel is that I posted a total of 179 miles of automobile mileage in those two days. I'm glad that Michael Terry, our Virtual Learning Assistant, and I took my Smart Car, Huey!
Above and beyond the opportunity to put a lot of faces with a lot of names, this was a rich experience for me. The schools I visited were:
Nashville School of the Arts, Hume-Fogg Magnet, Glencliff, Big Picture Nashville, Hunters Lane, Martin Luther King Magnet, Antioch, Cane Ridge, Hillwood, East Literature Magnet, Overton, Pearl Cohn, and Maplewood.
We met with a raft of outstanding educators, and I want to thank each and every one of them for their support and encouragement for our Virtual Learning Program. They are:
My apologies if I left anyone out of this list, and I must add that I am 100% convinced that at each and every MNPS school there are stellar, engaged, caring School Counselors working to do the next right thing for their students. I simply want to thank these for their support of our new Virtual Learning Program and everything they do for their students every day.
Above and beyond the opportunity to put a lot of faces with a lot of names, this was a rich experience for me. The schools I visited were:
Nashville School of the Arts, Hume-Fogg Magnet, Glencliff, Big Picture Nashville, Hunters Lane, Martin Luther King Magnet, Antioch, Cane Ridge, Hillwood, East Literature Magnet, Overton, Pearl Cohn, and Maplewood.
We met with a raft of outstanding educators, and I want to thank each and every one of them for their support and encouragement for our Virtual Learning Program. They are:
Amy Flajnik
Katherine Sanford
Barbara Mullins
Susan Murphy
Rita LaRue-Lucas
Tandra Freeman
Caroline Banta
Sandra Hull
Lauren Rickey
Carla Robinson
Donna Matthews
Carolyn Haynes
and Kristie Hutchinson
My apologies if I left anyone out of this list, and I must add that I am 100% convinced that at each and every MNPS school there are stellar, engaged, caring School Counselors working to do the next right thing for their students. I simply want to thank these for their support of our new Virtual Learning Program and everything they do for their students every day.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
Chris Lehman and Robert N. Lee in a Dialog about Teachers
In a dialog that in and of itself is an argument for school unblocking Facebook to allow teachers to participate in this kind of thoughtful discourse, Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy Principal Chris Lehmann posted to Facebook this morning a link to his "Practical Theory" blog post, "What We Should Remember."
Very worth reading, too, is the thoughtful and soul-searching response Facebook (not on the blog, so teachers in workplaces where Facebook is blocked will of course miss it) comment from Robert N. Lee. My heart goes out to him, especially since some of my own experiences as the parent of school-age children mirror some of his, with the qualification that they have not all been public school experiences. His depiction of some teachers as can't-do civil service hangers-on will rile many of my readers, but I'd defy them to prove that those teachers don't exist. On the other hand, I add my own belief that they are in the small minority. It's just that when one of those teacher's detrimental practices impact your own child, it doesn't matter how small that minority actually is, does it?
I surfed on over to read his post, and since Chris is a cherished member of my PLN and since I highly value the information he shares (information is the new currency of the new economy, of course), I read it carefully. He's a good writer, and his thoughts approximate some of my own musings over the past year. They're well-intentioned, personal, and almost confessional expressions of his belief that teachers' most important role is caregiver. I did take exception to his suggestion that distance learning cannot provide that "hand on their [students'] shoulder." Indeed, in the kind of Virtual Learning program, perhaps even Virtual "School" that I am helping to envision, design, and implement, that is an essential component. It's just how that will look that's still up in the air. If anyone knows of a program that "gets that right," I'm all ears. I suspect that Florida Virtual School does to a large degree, but I also suspect that other programs off my radar are making the effort to form strong caring relationships with their students. Comment here if you have one to suggest.
All that is to say that my travels today, part of our program's effort to establish and maintain relationships and support, took me to three public high schools to talk with four students and four counselors today. I'm actually in the waiting room at my last stop right now, waiting for the School Counselor to come from a "Student Exhibition" of his or her work over the last 9 weeks. That's a feature of the Nashville Big Picture High School, and another example of the innovative work going on in MNPS. At my first stop the overworked counselor dialed up the student, a 17 year old senior at home who should have graduated last year but is missing two credits, one of which he's taking via the district's A+ credit recovery program, online, and one of which he signed on to take from our program. I have no way to check his progress on the former, but I can say that he's not put in more than 6 minutes on the latter, despite repeated outreach efforts. He's given up. It's tragic. So close to that diploma, and so far away, as evidenced by his falling asleep while we were talking. I gave him a pep talk, made him repeat after me "I can do it," and we disconnected. Again.
At my 2nd stop, the first meeting was with a counselor and a student and the student's parent. It was truly inspirational. This student came into public high school in the ninth grade from homeschooling, has worked hard, and as a junior still just doesn't like school. She wants to graduate early and is willing to work at a superhuman level to do it. For her, that means taking not only a full course load at high school but also taking not one, not two, but four courses full time throughout the remainder of her school year. This could be problematic in that the student fell seriously off pace in the past couple weeks, so much so that we were alarmed. But guess what? She dug back in to her Econ and Government classwork and has all but completed it. Not only that, her parent is willing to pay for the extra courses next semester--she has that much confidence in her child's ability. We're going to weigh this one carefully, because we don't want to set the student up for failure, but we are also going to do everything we can to do what we do: "the next right thing for the student."
The next counselor and student were a breeze. This child has plowed successfully through her Economics course on pace, has just a couple more tasks to complete in it, and we scheduled her proctored final exam for Monday. That's the way it should work.
My final stop is to talk with a student who's taking Spanish and is seriously behind. His counselor emailed for instructions last week for proctoring his final exam, but I'm here to remind him personally that unless he finishes basically the final half of his coursework over this weekend he will have no final exam to take, since its unlocking is tied to completed coursework. Is it possible? Possibly. If not, there's an F in his future.
My point here is that we are working to support our students, we are refining our course offering introductions to make expectations clearer: We're actually looking at ways to pre-test for disposition to online learning, ways to build in support on the front-end. Sometime support means denying acceptance, doesn't it?
Just another reflection from a struggling learner.
Very worth reading, too, is the thoughtful and soul-searching response Facebook (not on the blog, so teachers in workplaces where Facebook is blocked will of course miss it) comment from Robert N. Lee. My heart goes out to him, especially since some of my own experiences as the parent of school-age children mirror some of his, with the qualification that they have not all been public school experiences. His depiction of some teachers as can't-do civil service hangers-on will rile many of my readers, but I'd defy them to prove that those teachers don't exist. On the other hand, I add my own belief that they are in the small minority. It's just that when one of those teacher's detrimental practices impact your own child, it doesn't matter how small that minority actually is, does it?
I surfed on over to read his post, and since Chris is a cherished member of my PLN and since I highly value the information he shares (information is the new currency of the new economy, of course), I read it carefully. He's a good writer, and his thoughts approximate some of my own musings over the past year. They're well-intentioned, personal, and almost confessional expressions of his belief that teachers' most important role is caregiver. I did take exception to his suggestion that distance learning cannot provide that "hand on their [students'] shoulder." Indeed, in the kind of Virtual Learning program, perhaps even Virtual "School" that I am helping to envision, design, and implement, that is an essential component. It's just how that will look that's still up in the air. If anyone knows of a program that "gets that right," I'm all ears. I suspect that Florida Virtual School does to a large degree, but I also suspect that other programs off my radar are making the effort to form strong caring relationships with their students. Comment here if you have one to suggest.
All that is to say that my travels today, part of our program's effort to establish and maintain relationships and support, took me to three public high schools to talk with four students and four counselors today. I'm actually in the waiting room at my last stop right now, waiting for the School Counselor to come from a "Student Exhibition" of his or her work over the last 9 weeks. That's a feature of the Nashville Big Picture High School, and another example of the innovative work going on in MNPS. At my first stop the overworked counselor dialed up the student, a 17 year old senior at home who should have graduated last year but is missing two credits, one of which he's taking via the district's A+ credit recovery program, online, and one of which he signed on to take from our program. I have no way to check his progress on the former, but I can say that he's not put in more than 6 minutes on the latter, despite repeated outreach efforts. He's given up. It's tragic. So close to that diploma, and so far away, as evidenced by his falling asleep while we were talking. I gave him a pep talk, made him repeat after me "I can do it," and we disconnected. Again.
At my 2nd stop, the first meeting was with a counselor and a student and the student's parent. It was truly inspirational. This student came into public high school in the ninth grade from homeschooling, has worked hard, and as a junior still just doesn't like school. She wants to graduate early and is willing to work at a superhuman level to do it. For her, that means taking not only a full course load at high school but also taking not one, not two, but four courses full time throughout the remainder of her school year. This could be problematic in that the student fell seriously off pace in the past couple weeks, so much so that we were alarmed. But guess what? She dug back in to her Econ and Government classwork and has all but completed it. Not only that, her parent is willing to pay for the extra courses next semester--she has that much confidence in her child's ability. We're going to weigh this one carefully, because we don't want to set the student up for failure, but we are also going to do everything we can to do what we do: "the next right thing for the student."
The next counselor and student were a breeze. This child has plowed successfully through her Economics course on pace, has just a couple more tasks to complete in it, and we scheduled her proctored final exam for Monday. That's the way it should work.
My final stop is to talk with a student who's taking Spanish and is seriously behind. His counselor emailed for instructions last week for proctoring his final exam, but I'm here to remind him personally that unless he finishes basically the final half of his coursework over this weekend he will have no final exam to take, since its unlocking is tied to completed coursework. Is it possible? Possibly. If not, there's an F in his future.
My point here is that we are working to support our students, we are refining our course offering introductions to make expectations clearer: We're actually looking at ways to pre-test for disposition to online learning, ways to build in support on the front-end. Sometime support means denying acceptance, doesn't it?
Just another reflection from a struggling learner.
Monday, November 29, 2010
November Reflections
Organizing my punchlist today I find myself musing about our first three months of work, its successes and its less-than-successes, and I'm promising myself that I'll do some reflective journaling right here, and soon. Watch for it. Meanwhile I am thankful for our growing team, our full schedules, and our dedication to do "the next right thing" for our students no matter what.
Watch for Kecia Ray and Barbra Thoeming at the Tennessee Educational Technology Conference this week. I may make an appearance there on Friday, I'm hoping...
Watch for Kecia Ray and Barbra Thoeming at the Tennessee Educational Technology Conference this week. I may make an appearance there on Friday, I'm hoping...
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