Exhausted

The first day of school is over. I'm holding on to optimism for at least a couple more days. I am tired.

I don't know how anyone can teach without having the students active and involved. Today was a day of me standing in front of the class, telling them things they need to know. I think I need to find a different way to do it next year. I know that there is no way I could stand in front and tell the students what they need to know all semester long. I need them to take an active part in their learning. I need them to bear a little of the burden. Tomorrow I'll start giving them the opportunity.

Project Based Learning

The staff at Evanston High School has spent the last two days (and much of the last year) studying project based learning (PBL) with the Buck Institute for Education. I'm sure that you've all heard of PBL, so I won't waste time explaining what it is. I do, however, want to take a second to note a couple of my likes and concerns.

First, I like the authenticity in learning that PBL provides for. Students are able to learn and produce in the same way that professionals in the field do. They are able to encounter problems and dilemmas not found in traditional curriculum and be forced to work through those problems. Their final audience is someone other than the teacher. I really think that these things will help get students engaged in what they are doing and away from "playing school."

I also really like that PBL encourages failure. Not failure in the way that we think about it in traditional education. There is no lack of learning. No lack of ability of effort. There is only a product that turned out differently than the student expected it to, and as long as the student understands why the failure happened, then the failure becomes one of the most teachable moments for students and they are not punished for it. If you haven't seen Honda's video "Failure: The Secret to Success," take a minute and check it out here. I love encouraging my students to fail!



I do have some concerns about PBL. They're not necessarily concerns with the approach itself, but rather the execution of that approach. What I see as I look over many of the projects being proposed is that the project does more to take the student away from the intended content, rather that reinforcing and adding to that content.

As a literature teacher, I'm especially wary of how PBL is being used to teach novels. Many of the projects seem to focus on the theme of a novel and strive to develop that theme further. Personally, my goal is not to teach the theme of a novel, because I want students to understand that theme. I don't teach "To Kill a Mockingbird," because I think students need to understand racial equality or traits of character (however, if I were teaching racial equality or character, I think "Mockingbird" would be a great tool to help teach that). I teach the methods, devices, and style by which Harper Lee came to create a novel that effectively illustrates her intended theme and I teach how to recognize what that theme is.

I may approach the teaching of literature differently than others and they may disagree greatly with the last statement that I just made. There is a good chance that I am wrong.

Overall, I'm excited for the PBL approach to education. Now, to incorporate the 30 other things that they're stressing in our district right now...

My cute little family

Could we be any cuter? I love these guys more than anything.

Motivation, motivation, motivation, sir.

Get some, got some, good, huah!
          -something we said back in my Air Force days-

Ten days ago I completed a 111 mile bike race. I didn't win. I didn't even go very fast. But, I did finish. Nobody paid me to do the race and I don't think anyone judged me or scored my performance (at least I hope not). I had no reason at all to do the race, other than I wanted to do the race.

This, I think, is what we call intrinsic motivation: doing something because you like doing that thing. I see it occassionally in my photography classes. There are students who love to take pictures and the will go out and take pictures regardless of what I assign. I see it in my English classes. Students with their noses buried in books. Occasional poets in the making writing from cover to cover in their spiral notebooks. Performers entertaining the class at the wrong time. Artists doodling when I'm lecturing. Etc.

One of my biggest goals this year is to somehow influence students to want to do what I want them to do. Not for the grade. Not for the experience. Not to prepare for college. Just to do it.

I'm just trying to remember the last time someone made me want to do something that I didn't want to do, and how they did it.

Twitter

I'm starting to feel like I might be coming off a little bit negative here. I blame a double dose of Malcolm Gladwell for that. I'll try to be more positive from now on...starting tomorrow.

I think that using Twitter in the classroom is awesome and I've read many accounts of teachers effectively using it. I've heard of history teachers using it to create twitter accounts for people that they are studying to check student's understanding of the people through the tweets that they make. I've read (and plan to do this) of English teachers having students follow the tweets of authors of books that they are reading to gain a greater understanding of the writing process and of the author as a person. Twitter can be a useful tool in the classroom.

BUT, in the real world? This is another one of those things that I don't understand. I really don't care to know what your doing each moment of your day, no matter how exciting those moments might be. The few people that I do care to know what they're doing are the same few people that I care enough about to call and ask myself. To this day I've never heard of a single use of Twitter outside of education that I thought, "hey, now there's a useful addition to my life." However, every time I hear someone talk about Twitter, I think, "well now, there's another big waste of time."

Someone disagree (or even agree) with me, please!

More Malcolm Gladwell: "Outliers: The Story of Success"

I have to give Gladwell some credit. Anyone who is making as much money as he is must be doing something right. What that something is, I haven't figured out (even after reading his "story of success"). I will admit that this book did get me thinking, but I don't think that's what Gladwell intended.

Let me sum it up for you. Bill Gates became the increadibly-uber-rich-window-washing stud that he is because of the time and place of his birth and the resources that he had available to him. Nothing more.

Oh wait, Gladwell did have one more point and it's this: In order to be an expert at anything you must have 10,000 hours of practice at that thing. I'm kinda wondering at this point how many hours Gladwell put in to studying success.

There's so much more that I could say. Some of it might even be positive. But, I'm not going to. I've had enough of Gladwell. Up next: Stephen King's "Cell." It's my quick intellectual break (should Gladwell count as that?) before school starts up again.

Anyone else out there read Gladwell? I'd love to hear from someone who likes what he has to say. Surely there's another side of the argument and it's bound to be better than my side, because the guy is rich and published after all.

When I close my eyes, I see weeds.

When I close my eyes, I see weeds. Not metaphorical weeds. Not biblically allusioned weeds. Actual freakin weeds.

Despite our sworn promises never to do so again, my wife and I recently purchased a new home, sans yard. So, with apparently nothing better to do, I woke up this morning at 7:00 and headed straight out into the yard. For six long hours (remember, I'm a school teacher and have soft hands) I fought a valiant battle against the weeds in the yard. I'm proud to say that some of them were quite a bit taller than me and I still took them down! Six hours was enough. There's still some weeds in the yard, but six hours did me in.

Now, when I close my eyes, I still see weeds. When my wife said the blessing over lunch, all I saw was weeds. Tonight, when I finally close my eyes to go to sleep, I imagine that I'll probably still see weeds.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, for the last few weeks I've been thinking an aweful lot about educational technology. I've been reading books, reading blogs, playing with computers, and making plans for the coming school. And lately, when I close my eyes, when I lay down for bed, I think a lot about educational technology.

Hopefully all these thoughts, both conscious and unconscious are doing some good.

Smart: The Car for Idiots

In the following paragraphs, I'd like to take a minute to deviate from normal logic and enjoy a rant that's been bouncing around in my head for months:

I went for a bike ride yesterday (I've recently been forced into training for an 100 mile race, but that's another story) and in the course of 30 miles I ran past 3 Smart cars with "For Sale" signs in their windows. Let me just mention at this point that I hate those cars.

Smart cars are rediculous. They seat two people. They look completely retarded. They have no power, no speed, and questionable handling. And (brace yourself for this one) they get decent gas mileage. It just kills me. These are supposed to be amazing, gas-sipping machines. I had a Ford Festiva 10 years ago that cost half as much, got better gas mileage, and had a back seat. Sure, you might die in an accident, but at least you wouldn't look like a pompous ass doing it.

But then, that was 10 years ago (and it was already 7 years old when I bought it). So lets talk more recent. More realistic. I haven't looked into this, but I think I can wing it on this one. Currently I drive a Corolla. I get almost 40 mpg. I don't look stupid. I have decent power, comfort, and room for 4 real adults plus their luggage. Prior to the Corolla, I had a Mazda3. Again, nearly 40 mpg, lots of comfort, room for people, and cool looks to boot.

Why then buy a Smart? Because you're a pompous ass.

What does this have to do with anything? Strangely enough it reminds me exactly of our schools technology. We have a lot of it. It's really pretty awesome. But, I think that we've bought a couple of Smart cars along the way.

That's enough for now. Thanks for listening to me rant. I'll be back to talking logic tomorrow.

Book Review: "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell

Let me first explain my motivation for reading this book. At NECC this year there was a book store. In this book store there were maybe 100 different books. Each of these books was stacked about three of four high. It was a happy, humble little conference book store. Except for one corner. In one corner of the book store there was a large display of one book--probably more than 500 copies of this one book. This one book was "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. Hmmm, off to the library I go to find out why this book is so important.

Surely you didn't expect a book with importance of this magnitude would be immediately available at the library. It wasn't. I dutifully placed myself on the waiting list, and in the meantime decided to check out one of Gladwell's previous books, "Blink." Oops.

I read the book. The most important thing that I hope that you take away from this brief review is this: Malcolm Gladwell is full of crap. "Blink" is a book (supposedly) about the power of immediate thought. It can be summarized like this: You should trust your very first instinct of thought, except when you shouldn't, unless you are a mind reader, then you always should.

I'd like to interject two bits of irony at this point. One, I knew within the first few moments of reading this book that it was BS. Sadly I did not trust that instinct and carried on with reading. Second, if anything can be understood within the first instant, then Malcolm Gladwell will repeat it at least twenty times. A talented writer could have written this same book in twenty pages or less.

Already I am tiring of talking about this book, so let me end by sharing one of the amazing inconsistencies in the book. In one chapter, Gladwell talks about a musician named Kenna who was recognized by industry professionals as a sure thing and an amazing talent, but unless people were able to see him and make a personal connection, they were mislead by their first thoughts and unable to recognize him as the musical genius that he was. A few chapters later, Gladwell discusses classical music and the process of screened auditions. Aparently current practices in auditioning for orchestras involves playing behind a screen so that the audience's first impression will not be swayed by their visual connections. Does it seem to anyone else that Gladwell is using exactly opposite examples to illustrate his point (a point that was already well understood a few pages).

No wait, let me end on a third irony. The book is subtitled "The Power of Thinking Without Thinking." Next time I'd like to see a lot more thinking and a lot less without thinking."

So, am I going to read "Outliers" now? Of course! It's just like watching the really bad auditions from American Idol. We just can't turn our eyes away.

What is technology? Part III

A good 48 hours later and I'm still very comfortable with my definition for technology. But, I want to make sure that I'm clear on one particular part. In my ramblings I mentioned quite a few things that might not qualify as technology for our students. I did not mean in any way that we didn't need to teach those things to our students.

Again with the pencil analogy: no one will argue about whether or not a pencil is technology (and by that I mean that of course some one will argue about whether or not a pencil is technology, but that someone is an idiot), but one of the first things that students learn in school is how to correctly use a pencil. Who knows how many hours students spend with lined paper diligently tracing, crafting, and creating lines and letters with this new tool.

We need to be just as careful and diligent with the teaching of every tool that we use. I'm sick of hearing that students already know how to use the internet, that they know more about computers than their teachers do, they they grew up with this stuff. The fact of the matter is that they do not know how to use the internet, they do not know how to use search engines, they barely even know how to use their cell phones. We still need to set them down with whatever lined paper is appropriate and teach them to use the tools necessary to utilize the technology that will make them the learners of today and the leaders of tomorrow.

...and if you are one of those teachers that claims that students know more about your computer than you do, I seriously hope that you are either being humble, or are prepared to work as hard and fast as possible to get back to the level where you can be a teacher for the students of today.

What is technology--My answer

I wish I could find the reference that got me onto this line of thinking, but I really tried to decide for myself what technology was without asking my friend Google for help and by the time I came up with a definition that I was comfortable with, and then decided that I stole it from someone else, I couldn't figure out who I stole it from. So, here it is:

Technology is anything that was invented after you were.

This means many things, but possibly the most important is that things that you probably consider advances in technology, your students consider everyday and mundane. Think about it, I have incoming 9th graders who have no conscious memory of life before the internet. To me the internet is absolutely amazing, to my new students, the internet is pencil and paper.

I myself am a pretty young dude and I have a serious chuckle every time I see one of my talented coworkers mumbling over the copy machine and reminiscing about the smell of mimeograph paper (or is it ink? that's the point, I really don't know). A copy machine is no where near technology to me. It's a pencil and paper. I never knew life without it.

I'm starting to worry myself the more I think about this. CD's are not technology, computers are not technology, search engines, email, chat rooms, video games...nope. Pencils? Still nope.

So what does qualify? That's a question for another day.

What is technology?

The other day I had a little discussion with our school's technology integration specialist. We were trying to decide what actually constitutes technology. I think that I've come up with a definition that I can live with, but what do you think? What is technology for you? Stay away from wikipedia or dictionary.com and think this one through for a minute. I'll tell you what I think in a day or so!

NECC: My First Time

One of the great things about being an amateur teacher such as myself is that you get to experience a lot of things for the first time. Have you ever been to a big education technology conference? Well, now I have--and it was just a little weird!

From ISTE's email press release: A record 18,500+ educators and exhibit personnel attended the 30th anniversary NECC 2009 held in Washington, DC.

Picture this: over 18,000 educators...wait a second, let's look closer at that statistic provided by ISTE over 18,000 educators and exhibit personel. Still sounds like a pretty impressive number, but I was on the exhibit floor, and I might have a bit of insight. My press release would read something like this: "Over 9,000 educators and 9,000 salesmen attended the 30th anniversary NECC 2009 held in Washington, DC." I'm not kidding when I say that it was a 1:1 ratio, which might sound like a good thing, but the problem is that every single one of them knew exactly what they were talking about and they all had a t-shirt/squishy ball/pen/coffee cup/yo-yo to back it up.

There's a lot of technology for education out there. Throw out your chalk board, paper, pencils--heck, throw out your desk, chairs, even classrooms while your at it. We're moving forward people and technology is the way. If there's not electronics involved, then your 21st century students won't be able to learn.

I'm not sure I buy it. Why do we teach using technology? Why did my school throw out my chalk board? Is an internet based calculator more effective than an abacus (my dad explained to me what an abacus was). What do you think?

I'm Back!!!

Well, I guess if you're going to be technical (and perhaps we should, since much of this blog will have to do with technology in education) I just got here. Welcome to Shellablogger, a blog that I hope will serve as a place for meaningful conversation on topics of current importance in education.

There's a lot of crap out there that I don't understand and a lot of crap that I don't agree with. I hope that there's also a lot of people who can (and will) straighten me out.

There's a ton of stuff that I have on my mind lately, but I'll try and space it all out a little bit (as I wait for summer to draw closer to its end, recruit followers, bribe friends to participate, drink to much Mountain Dew, etc.). Hopefully we'll get a chance to look at 21st century skills, project based learning, web 2.0, software, hardware, books, technology management, and more. First on the agenda: NECC '09. See you soon!