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National School Reform Faculty
Discussion protocols for faculty and students.
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Check the facts as they are espoused by candidates.
Archive for October, 2008
Daily Diigo Links 11/01/2008
In Uncategorized on October 31, 2008 at 7:31 pmDaily Diigo Links 10/31/2008
In Uncategorized on October 30, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
Official Google Docs Blog: Interesting ways to use Docs in the Classroom
Barrett’s Google Blog post
Daily Diigo Links 10/30/2008
In Uncategorized on October 29, 2008 at 7:32 pm-
NOVA | Hunting the Hidden Dimension | PBS
Some cool fractal stuff.
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Cool Infographics: Classic infographic from 1823!
Very cool graphic from 1823.
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Internet4Classrooms – Helping Teachers Use the Internet Effectively
Everything you may ever need for providing teachers and students with online resources.
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The Media Equation – Mourning Old Media’s Decline – NYTimes.com
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Multiple Intelligences — Assessment
Help your students find out what their learning style is.
Filed under: “How Cool is This?”
In 21st Century, curriculum, teaching on October 29, 2008 at 12:47 pmThis image, passed to me via Coolinfographics, is exactly the type of divergent thinking I envision our schools fostering now and in the future. Oh. It was created in 1823. What are we missing?
Our Connections class is predicated on this idea. We process and recreate information in ways that are meaningful to us and others.
Daily Diigo Links 10/29/2008
In Uncategorized on October 28, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
Twitter Vote Report Wiki / iPhone App
iPhone App that will challenge voters to report their polling progress.
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Rosetta Stone: Secondary (6-12)
Rosetta Stone software for K-12
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Ryan’s rubric for blog assessment.
My Reflections on Tech Forum Northeast-Bretag’s Push
In curriculum, teaching on October 28, 2008 at 5:44 amIn several of the informal conversations I had with Ryan and David last Friday, they laid out their plan for a learning space whereby all of student work from moment they enter the high school will travel with them through the four years of high school. Let me clarify a little from what I gleaned from them.
A problem, as Ryan pointed out in our panel discussion, occurred at several points in their experience with student blogging:
- What happened if you were blogging in science class, in English class, and in social studies? Did you as a student have the responsibility for maintaining three distinct blogs?
- What happened when you finished the year with that teacher? Did your blog die? Were you able to take it with you and continue to write on your own?
These points came up as we were trying to get at what lies beyond the tools. Having students keep isolated, individual blogs goes against most of what we strive for: transfer of understanding from seemingly unrelated areas to others. We want students relating semi-permeable cell membranes to porous and non-defined border policies. Having isolated learning spaces goes a long way toward furthering that view of education that our learning is isolated into small, un-meshed parts, when in actuality we learn through our connections to already processed material.
What this calls for is a systemic change within a school whereby students are asked to create their own learning space and tie it into the appropriate places within their subject areas. For example, if a student sat down to write a piece for social studies on their blog, but found connections within the topic to a novel or short story they read in English, they could tag it with both socialstudies and english and the learning space would feed it to both of those courses’ Moodle site. The teachers could then review the writing and help the student make deeper connections between the two.
Having some platform for blogging that is external, but able to be configured to be private is key here. Google Apps may work, and I am sure you could configure WPMU to do this as well (both of which are beyond my realm). This way, the students, as they graduate in four years, are able to take a body of writing over time with them to the college level, thus it becomes their portfolio.
I am truly just beginning to think beyond the glitz and glam of this tool or that one and delve into the deep possibilities we now have. It’s empowering to know that we are capable of giving students this ability and that it really is very close to happening in certain places. However, the biggest hurdle is getting more of my staff on board with the architecture of it. Not every teacher understands blogging, tagging, or even what RSS is, nevertheless the connective and transformative nature of the tools.
That, however, was my second takeaway from last Friday.
Daily Diigo Links 10/28/2008
In Uncategorized on October 27, 2008 at 7:33 pm-
Identifying Similarities and Differences
Similarities and Differences
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A Modest Curriculum Proposal: Project Learning vs. the Textbook | Edutopia
What would happen if we taught athletics primarily through the use of textbooks? What would happen if we taught academics primarily through hands-on experience?
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The 25 Funniest Analogies (Collected by High School English Teachers) « Writing English
Worth the read. These metaphors and analogies are hysterical.
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Graphic Organizers @Web English Teacher
Web English Teacher’s list of resources for graphic organizers.
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Identifying Similarities and Differences
Basic templates
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Graphic organizers by type.
Effective School Leadership in the Digital Age on Vimeo
In change, school 2.0 on October 26, 2008 at 9:25 pm
more about “Effective School Leadership in the Di…“, posted with vodpod
In the rush to get caught up with everything that is swirling around me here, I’ve been trying to get both Slideshare and Google Docs to play nice with my slide deck from Friday’s Tech Forum Northeast Presentation I did. The presentation, called Effective School Leadership in the Digital Age, was a blast, and I hope all who attended enjoyed it. I ended up just exporting the keynote file to quicktime and then uploading it to Vimeo. I hope to do some audio work on it shortly, but here is the rough-ready version.
Daily Diigo Links 10/27/2008
In Uncategorized on October 26, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
theitclassroom: Magical Moments
Please read this. I love this stuff.
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Blog dealing with all things Antebellum and, well, bellum.
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for my history department.
Daily Diigo Links 10/26/2008
In Uncategorized on October 25, 2008 at 7:32 pm-
Beyond the Web 2.0 Hype: Focusing on What Really Matters
Our panel discussion from Friday.
Beyond the Web 2.0 Hype: Focusing on What Really Matters
In leadership, school 2.0 on October 25, 2008 at 1:37 pmA few months back, I got an email from the organizers of Tech Forum Northeast asking me if I wanted to participate in a panel discussion at their upcoming conference. The panel, they said, would include Ryan Bretag, David Jakes, and David Warlick. I emailed back a quick “are you sure this is the right email you wanted to send that too?” message, and found out it was me indeed they wanted on that panel.
Whoa. What a great opportunity for some serious thinking and dialogue. And again, whoa. Who am I? So before they could reconsider, I accepted. Our panel called Beyond the Web 2.0 Hype: Focusing on What Really Matters, went on at 9:30 and I wanted to thank Lisa Thumann for recording it.
I wanted to thank Judy Salpeter for inviting me and making the arrangements, and to the other panelists, David, David, and Ryan, for pushing my thinking. It was a blast, and I was thankful that David gave us some of the questions beforehand. The audience asked some great questions and made some salient points, but I think it was Ryan’s point about asking us what we really define an educated person as that will drive my thinking for a while.
What do we expect our students to be when they leave us? What is our goal as educators? I heard Zac Chase in my afternoon session on School Leadership state it in a way that I immediately gravitate towards: ethical, responsible, citizens. The elements that define those three descriptors still need to be determined, but I think it’s an excellent place to start building backwards from.
The video is below.
more about “Beyond the Web 2.0 Hype: Focusing on …“, posted with vodpod
Daily Diigo Links 10/24/2008
In Uncategorized on October 23, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
Caveat Viewer: A Consumer’s Guide to Drug Ads | Edutopia
Can you use drug ads to enhance critical reading analysis.
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William Cole’s rationale on why laptops are not allowed in his law classes.
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Gmail – Google Reader Seamless Integration – Userscripts.org
Put Google Calendar and Google Reader in your Gmail account.
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GOOD Sheet – It’s the Economy, Stupid!
An interesting graphic to aid in providing some historical perspective to the current economic crisis.
Daily Diigo Links 10/22/2008
In Uncategorized on October 21, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
Interesting list of question types. I particularly like the “Columbo” style.
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Bloom’s Critical Thinking Questioning Strategies
basic bloom’s
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This one from Erica Hartman’s students. Very good stuff available for helping students “read” images.
Daily Diigo Links 10/21/2008
In Uncategorized on October 20, 2008 at 7:32 pm-
The Smart Set: The Term Paper Artist – October 10, 2008
Notes from the “dark” side. A writer confesses to having written term papers for a money. It’s a nice perspective from someone paid to beat the system.
Daily Diigo Links 10/18/2008
In Uncategorized on October 17, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
Top News – Rethinking research in the Google era
To read at some point.
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Worldmapper: The world as you’ve never seen it before
This is some fantastic visualization. Allows you to reshape the world map according to certain data sets.
The Thesis is Dead. Long Live the Thesis.
In education, leadership, pedagogy on October 17, 2008 at 5:48 amI have learned a great deal from my monthly meetings with the English department: how to lead, how not to lead, how to completely miss the mark on what teachers need, and how to recover beautifully from missing said mark. However, one of the simplest things, I have found, you can do for teachers to aid them in their professional development, is to listen carefully and then deliver on what you hear.
On Wednesday, all of the above situations played out. We have often discussed having an expert voice come speak to us to help us drill deeper into an element of our craft. A while back, I came across an article by a Duke University professor, Dr. Bradley Hammer (who is how at UNC), that dealt with the shifts that were taking place in student writing in the “academy.” The title of the article spoke volumes: “A New Type of University Writing.” Now, my English department already thinks I have a massive case of technophilia, and inviting this professor who believed that college writing, long believed to be the epitome of thesis driven argumentative writing, was now transforming into another piece of the digital landscape, was a risky move. But, after talking to him on the phone in September, I knew he would make some waves of the good kind. 
And did he ever.
The teachers were very interested in hearing about trends he saw in student writing, in essence asking for feedback on what he thought of Freshman entering the program. Dr. Hammer didn’t disappoint in his response. Most of his work, he stated, is deconstructing what the students come in with. For example, he stated that 15 years ago, it was common for students to arrive at the college campus with very poor argumentative skills: weak ability to write strong theses, very little support for arguments in their writing. Now, they all arrive knowing how to “do the essay.” Formulaic, straightforward positions, support at all the appropriate turns, and of course, an adherence to the five-paragraph format. His work is to get them away from “doing the essay,” to caring about the essay.
His work is about teaching students to deconstruct their own biases in their writing so that when confronted with a traditional topic (he used abortion in our our conversation as an example) the students would begin to generate questions about the factors that define the topic rather than automatically deciding which side of the argument to sit on. For the students in his writing class, it’s not about whether or not you can convince someone of something, but rather that you get an understanding of yourself through an issue presented to you. His greatest line, by far for me, was this:
High schools train students how to argue–they need to learn how to ask questions and interrogate ideas first.
As soon as he said it, I immediately began running thumbing through my mental Rolodex to try to remember how many times I have heard that in my reading over the last two years. It just rings. Whether it’s been caused by federal mandates or by our poorly thought out responses to them, we’ve underestimated our students ability to be meta-cognitive about the writing process. It’s more about the process rather than the product, when we truly break it down to it’s smaller parts. Is it really imperative that little Suzy write her essay in five standard paragraphs with a neat little thesis hook at the end of her first paragraph? Or would we rather see her wrestle something down to it’s bits in the pre-writing and research stages and produce something in three paragraphs? I’ll take the scrapping any day.
What was great for me, aside from the fact that it was a meeting where I did very little direct talking, was the dialog that sprung up after our call ended. Some of those in the room were in agreement with Hammer; we should be focusing more on the meta-cognitive processes of writing. Others asked if the reasons Hammer and his colleagues are able to do the deconstruction with students and push them in the direction they do is because of the argumentative underpinnings that high school English teachers provided them with? Can they get to B without having gone through A? Others asked if there was a way we could see products of the freshman Hammer worked with; we wanted to see what inquiry-driven writing looked like in the end.
The most challenging element about working with the four departments I do is trying to find something for each of them to sink their teeth into, and this did it for the English teachers. My own personal belief about what compositional writing should like look at any level is very simple: writing should demonstrate your ability to think, and your ability to convey those thoughts succinctly. My answer to the departmental question about whether or not we should be doing the things that Dr. Hammer does in our classrooms is undeniably yes. But, like anything, let’s allow the students to determine the level to which they can successfully do it. Just because they are 16 doesn’t necessary preclude them from inquiry, and the same can be said in reverse for some students. Push where needed, pull back when necessary.
All in all, a great meeting.
Image Credit: “Me & teh thesis” from doryexmachina’s Photostream
Daily Diigo Links 10/17/2008
In Uncategorized on October 16, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
New Jersey Secondary Education Redesign
New Jersey’s high schoo redesign
Daily Diigo Links 10/16/2008
In Uncategorized on October 15, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
Oooh. Look at these new tablet toys!
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Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom | Edutopia – Annotated
Utecht referenced this in an earlier post.
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Standing on the shoulders of giants – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“One who develops future intellectual pursuits by understanding the research and works created by notable thinkers of the past”
Daily Diigo Links 10/15/2008
In Uncategorized on October 14, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
Archives | American Experience | PBS
Home site for American Experience.
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American Experience | Watch Online | PBS
The American Experience site for online viewing.
You Say del.icio.us, I Say Diigo…
In 21st Century, school 2.0 on October 13, 2008 at 10:44 pmOne of my favorite little miracles about social technology is the aspect of tagging. How unbelievably beneficial it is to have a folksonomy to fall back on in times where I need resources to pull from. I tag resources constantly, often many more than I will ever use–I have this vision of these tags in my Diigo account becoming the equivalent of space junk, just orbiting mindlessly waiting to bumped into by a future idea of mine, or someone else’s.
Tonight, that scenario played out perfectly as I pulled together the presentation I am giving at Tech Forum Northeast on October 24th, in Palisades, NY. I had tagged the resources I needed for this presentation with the tag techforumny08, and thought nothing of them. Today when I began to pull things together, I used the search feature in the Diigo toolbar, but forgot exactly what I had tagged them with. In my search for the right tag (I tried techlearning08, techforum, techform08) I came across some gems that had been locked away from as long ago as last year. Posts from Ben Wilkoff about the Ripe Environment, some rants from David Jakes, and even the sites I was actually looking for.
This modern folksonomical system a great number of people are using would have saved my hide in high school and college. I had enough skills to pull assignments off with shoddy effort and sometimes fudged resources, but it wasn’t for lack of getting the resources. I had them. I just had no idea where I put them. Tagging and social bookmarking are a perfect match for those of us who remember the odd parts of what we read, the idiosyncratic elements that make us tag them with a moniker that only we would recognize, or others like us. The beauty of this system is that it also works for the type A personalities of the world who tag with the most likely tag for an article. It’s those people I rely on when I set up del.icio.us tag searches and monitor them by RSS. They are much smarter than I. The number of resources I receive in my Reader that come from those searches is staggering, and 100% worth it.
Our history and English Departments at the high school held a joint meeting today regarding research and writing. For the first time the idea of tagging was brought up by someone other than me. Little tears of joy welled up in me when I was told of this. Now the larger question is whether or not that type of information is being passed on to the students. That’s tomorrow’s question.
Daily Diigo Links 10/13/2008
In Uncategorized on October 12, 2008 at 7:31 pmDaily Diigo Links 10/11/2008
In Uncategorized on October 10, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
How great is this? Techmeme for politics! Plus, if you install the Greasemonkey script, it highlights conservative v. liberal articles.
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Primary Sources | Social Studies Central
Primary source material hub.
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dizzying repository of primary source documents.
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Resources for students, teachers, and parents on how to handle, create, and understand the DBQ.
Daily Diigo Links 10/10/2008
In Uncategorized on October 9, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
Modern Foreign Languages Plenary Quizzes from teachers-direct
Quizzes for world language teachers.
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The Night I Wept for Humanity | Metanoia
Ryan’s plea for action on the homeless front.
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Shift happens, but in economics.
Daily Diigo Links 10/09/2008
In Uncategorized on October 8, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
Thirst: A Student Research Challenge | innovation3
Collaborative project opportunity.
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Great resource for picture prompt writing.
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148Apps – iPhone and iPod Touch Application Reviews and News
iPhone app reviews
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Discovery Education streaming – Atlas Interactive Map
great resource for global awareness and map skills from DE.
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All Things Marked » HOWTO: Send free text messages through email
how to send text messages via email.
Daily Diigo Links 10/08/2008
In Uncategorized on October 7, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
YouTube – 10 year old intellect, Dalton Sherman’s keynote speech
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ClassTools.net: Games for Education
Great interactive site for your classroom.
Daily Diigo Links 10/07/2008
In Uncategorized on October 6, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
Top News – Wall Street crisis hits higher education
For 8th grade Connections unit
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Think before you jump! « Effective Digital Classrooms – Annotated
I like the thinking behind this one, as I tend to like these type of guides. The one that is most poignant is this: “1. Don’t expect anyone in your staffroom to empathise with your new found vision. Where you previously sourced information (your primary sources : collegues, professional publications and Google) – you will now start getting them from your network – this is alien to most teachers.” Classic.
- Classic. – post by pjhiggins
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1. Don’t expect anyone in your staffroom to empathise with your new found vision. Where you previously sourced information (your primary sources : collegues, professional publications and Google) – you will now start getting them from your network – this is alien to most teachers.
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This has potential for all of those that are wondering about how to help students decipher media.
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Diana Laufenberg’s Benchmark lesson. Really fun stuff here.
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Cognitive Research and Design » Blog Archive » Ikea directions and nonverbal instructions
Can we take something like this and make it a writing assignment, only sans words?
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Top 5 Spelling Resources | ICT in my Classroom
Some excellent spelling resources for students.
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create geographical spellings
Daily Diigo Links 10/05/2008
In Uncategorized on October 4, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
K12onlineconference schedule
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Our spellling program, done online.
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Best University Podcast Directory
Podcast directory for a few universities.
Embedded Reporting
In change, education, leadership, teaching on October 3, 2008 at 9:26 pmI am banking on one very important thing this year: that the use of publicity will continue to raise the tide of change and lift more boats.
For the last two years, I have managed a district technology blog called Tech Dossier. This year, I have reconstituted it thanks to a few posts by Miguel, but changed it slightly. First, the name: from Tech Dossier, to The Dossier. I truly want to move away from the inclusion of the word technology in any of the titles I use. Through several conversations with people like Barry Bachenheimer and Patrick Chodkiewicz, I’ve come to realize that semantics matter, especially to teachers. It’s not about how to use technology when you teach, but rather it’s about how you can teach, period. Second, to match the semantic shift in the title, the focus of the articles has now broadened to include topics that are not solely technologically based, but rather a highlight of some of the innovative practices our teachers are using. We have teachers in all of our buildings who constantly push their thinking and their students thinking. I’d like to get there and find them; the rest of the district, and the world at large should be seeing what they are doing.
I’ve enlisted several people to write over the two years, and this year we’ve added a second-grade teacher from one of the elementary schools to the list of authors. We’ve got three administrators, two high school teachers, a middle school teacher, a tech coordinator, and now an elementary teacher writing and looking out in their buildings for ingenious ideas. Also, being no stranger to shameless promotion, I send out a bi-weekly email highlighting all of the posts that have appeared. I am trying to get a feed service to send it to our global address book, but somehow I think that may either get flagged as spam, or individual teachers would not recognize it as an important message and just delete it.
The idea of doing some reporting, let’s even call it micro-reporting due to the short nature of the posts, on what is going on instructionally within you building is a gold mine. While our commenting has been limited so far, our stats are through the roof, so I know people are going to the page. At this point that’s all I want: people to know that others are out there looking for them, trying to catch them being competent and taking risks.
Head on over to The Dossier, and check out what our teachers have been up to.
Image Credit: “Reporter’s Notebook, U.S. Version,” from niclas’ photostream
Daily Diigo Links 10/04/2008
In Uncategorized on October 3, 2008 at 7:31 pmDaily Diigo Links 10/03/2008
In Uncategorized on October 2, 2008 at 7:31 pm-
DonorsChoose.org: Student “Directed” Learning – Steven Spielberg Watch Out!
This is a resource you can use to match your needs with those of a donor.
Daily Diigo Links 10/02/2008
In Uncategorized on October 1, 2008 at 7:33 pm-
Can’t get enough of GapMinder.
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iCharts | create, share, and embed interactive charts online
Charts for everything. Haven’t tried to upload any data yet, but the available data is nice to look at. Try searching for something that interests you.
