Patrick Higgins, Jr.

Archive for March, 2009

Daily Diigo Links 04/01/2009

In Uncategorized on March 31, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Daily Diigo Links 03/31/2009

In Uncategorized on March 30, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Daily Diigo Links 03/30/2009

In Uncategorized on March 29, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Daily Diigo Links 03/29/2009

In Uncategorized on March 28, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Daily Diigo Links 03/28/2009

In Uncategorized on March 27, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

, , , , , , , ,

Stupid is an ugly word.

In research on March 27, 2009 at 3:07 pm

Tuesday marked the first meeting of a group of teachers that signed up for the “School.  Different.” sessions I am leading.  To prepare for the day, I asked them to examine the following list of materials:

Articles:
Minds on Fire
Reading v. Reading (see comments that follow it too)

Videos:
Sir Ken Robinson
Kaplan University
Learning to Change, Changing to Learn
Did You Know, 2.0

To course them through the discussion, I used this slidedeck.

One of the slides, the one I used to get them split into their first cooperative group, featured the question that so many have debated this year: Is Google Making Us Stupid.  What I noticed in gathering the material for this class is the vehemence with which people responded to Nicholas Carr’s July article.  Google, what people referred to lightly only a few years ago as a project by some college kids, has truly changed how we find things, and how we expect our information delivered.  In reading this post from Trent Batson, I dug down into the comments and found this gem from John Vieth from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville:

To say that Google and the Web make us stupid because we don’t have to work as hard to do research and find information is like saying books make us stupid because we no longer have to arrange an interview with an expert to gain some of their knowledge–we only need to read the information in a book. Nicholas Carr’s article is just more negative sensationalism a la John C. Dvorak. It’s noise. Ignore it. Come on people. Let’s put our critical thinking hats on. Google and the Web are equalizers. They give information access to people who never would have had it otherwise, and they free our time to focus on problem solving and thinking instead of information gathering.

The equalizing affect of something as simple as a search engine, coupled with increases in internet access via smaller and cheaper devices, is no small matter.  The unsettling fact for many is that information is no longer the property of a select few.  It’s like the Gutenberg effect on HGH.  Jon Becker dropped these three coincidences into the knowledge base the other day:

Newspapers fold as readers defect and economy sours

(CNN) — The Rocky Mountain News, gone. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, gone…At least 120 newspapers in the U.S. have shut down since January 2008, according to Paper Cuts, a Web site tracking the newspaper industry. More than 21,000 jobs at 67 newspapers have vaporized in that time, according to the site.

Farewell to the Printed Monograph

The University of Michigan Press is announcing today that it will shift its scholarly publishing from being primarily a traditional print operation to one that is primarily digital…Michigan officials say that their move reflects a belief that it’s time to stop trying to make the old economics of scholarly publishing work. “I have been increasingly convinced that the business model based on printed monograph was not merely failing but broken,” said Phil Pochoda, director of the Michigan press. “Why try to fight your way through this? Why try to remain in territory you know is doomed? Scholarly presses will be primarily digital in a decade. Why not seize the opportunity to do it now?”

MIT makes research available on the web

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faculty voted unanimously March 18 to make the school’s scholarly research available for free on the internet, joining other noted universities that hope to encourage more scholarship and expand researchers’ audiences…The open-access movement aims to put peer-reviewed research and literature on the internet for free and remove most copyright restrictions. Advocates believe this will invigorate more research across academia.

We are likely to see more of these types of shifts as the nature of how we read continues to change.  This point of Google being a double-edged sword was brought up in the Moodle discussion that has gone on since Tuesday morning’s class.  One teacher has likened the nature of Google and the internet at large to that of the rainforest.  While it contains secrets both known and unknown, it also hides potential dangers in its richness.  How we leverage its offerings is going to make all of the difference.  That’s true whether we are talking bits or bark.

Daily Diigo Links 03/27/2009

In Uncategorized on March 26, 2009 at 7:31 pm

  • http://www.cerritos.edu/reading/Mainide3.htm

    tags: mainidea, languagearts, practice, lessonstudy

    • (1)College and university sports teams have nicknames. (2)Most
      are common, such as the Bears, Lions, and Tigers. (3)However, some are unusual. (4)For
      instance, the University of California at Irvine is nicknamed “Anteaters.”
      (5)The University of Washburn’s sports teams are called the “Ichabods.”
      (6)Richland College sports teams are called “Thunderducks.” (7)And perhaps the
      strangest of all belongs to the University of California at Santa Cruz. (8)Their nickname
      is the “Banana Slugs.”

      Explanation

      What is the main idea of the paragraph? No one sentence expresses it. When this
      happens, you must consider the topic of the paragraph and then look at the details to try
      to piece together the “missing topic sentence.”

      This paragraph starts talking about college nicknames. But it does not focus on common
      nicknames. The signal word “however” at the beginning of Sentence 3 tells you
      that the paragraph is changing directions, and will focus on “Unusual college
      nicknames.” This is the topic of the paragraph.

      Sentences 4 – 8 are detail sentences that provide the following examples:

      1. The University of California at Irvine is nicknamed “Anteaters.”

      2. The University of Washburn’s sports teams are called the “Ichabods.”

      3. Richland College sports teams are called “Thunderducks.”

      4. The University of California at Santa Cruz team nickname is the “Banana
      Slugs.”

  • American History [ushistory.org]

    This is a great resource for differentiation of content. This online text reads very easily, yet doesn’t skimp on content. The links alongside the main reading passages offer students the ability to drill down into specific areas of interest.

    tags: ushistory, online, textbook, supplement, socialstudies, history

  • An ASCD Study Guide for Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques for Your Classroom

    study guide for Checking for Understanding. Some useful examples of how to quickly check for understanding in a classroom situation.

    tags: ascd, studygroups, lessonstudy, assessment, fisher, frey

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Daily Diigo Links 03/26/2009

In Uncategorized on March 25, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

, , , , , ,

In students on March 25, 2009 at 7:21 am

In the wake of our President’s latest address to the American people, I found this via an email from a friend.  It’s hard to forget how we all felt at that point in our lives at the moment when we were about to enter into what we felt was the real world: life after high school.  To be making that leap at this point in history is especially harrowing, and you can hear that in the voices of these bright young students from California.  Something tells me these kids have a good chance of making that leap.

Daily Diigo Links 03/25/2009

In Uncategorized on March 24, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Daily Diigo Links 03/24/2009

In Uncategorized on March 23, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Daily Diigo Links 03/21/2009

In Uncategorized on March 20, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Daily Diigo Links 03/20/2009

In Uncategorized on March 19, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

, , , , , ,

Great Pushback, From a Local Source

In ascd, pedagogy, teaching on March 18, 2009 at 10:24 pm

This comment appeared in my email inbox the other day, submitted by a teacher I work with in regards to my Attention, Engagement, Learning post from ASCD :

I really liked your “transfer of responsibility” model. But to a degree I disagree with the idea that students speaking/ interacting is a panacea for learning. I remember in my teaching classes we were drilled with the mantra “leanring is social”. But I think that’s just a new myth. I think instruction has to be differentiated. SOME kids are social learners and some are not. I frequently do partner assignments in Russian at the high school, and one of the consistent comments I got back on my survey was “less partner work”. My other class there ( I have two sections) seems to love it. I’ve also seen partner/ group work devolve into BS sessions or one person giving the answers to the other and the other kid not learning a thing.
So: not a panacea, just another tool to use appropriately.
I was blown away that anyone in my district actually reads this, but psyched to have some push-back from a local level where, to me, it matters most.  Here was my quick reply:
Thanks for checking it out; it was a great weekend where I was able to really get into excellent discussions about things that matter.  Here’s my take on your reaction.

Yes, some kids are social learners, some are not.  Some kids draw pictures, some are like me and cannot even begin to attempt that.  What the GRR model advocates is not “all social all the time,” but rather a mix of various types of collaborative and cooperative work.  Some of that will involve talking, some may not.

Plus, when you take a close look at what Kagan believes about the brain and what he believes about how we learn, the structures make a ton of sense.  In the model you gave me for your classes, how do you hold each student responsible for what goes on in the discussion?  If, as you say, it devolves into a BS session, what can be done to deter that?  The structures Kagan created all are built with a combination of group and individual accountability whereby, if done right, there is equal responsibility on the part of all cooperative partners.

From my perspective, we as teachers work very hard.  Can we begin to look at what we do not from the standpoint of teachers, but from the standpoint of learners?  If we did, I think we would agree that there is a lot of responsibility that can be transferred to the learner.  This is not just a tweak here or there I am talking about, but a whole paradigm shift in practice.

And, that was not all.  He came back today with another great insight:
My observations and criticism were directed more toward the PET scan and the concept that “the person doing the talking is the one doing the learning”. For me to buy into that model I would need to see more context for what specific events were occurring during the PET scan. For example, I”m sure that parts of the brain involved in registering the facial expressions and emotional reactions of the person one is speaking to are lighting up in that scan. But does that necessarily mean that that person is “learning” more of a particular content? What if we took two individuals and asked one to write a summary of  Romeo and Juliet and asked the other to retell it? Which brain would light up more? And what needs to be lighting up to demonstrate learning? To be mildly flip: I bet my brain would light up pretty brightly if I was about to be in a car accident. What am I learning (except that I”m screwed …:)
My point simply is this: I need more evidence to buy the notion that the “one doing the talking” is the one who is learning. This may be true for some social learners in some contexts but not necessarily in others (again, returning to what we both agree is the need for differentiating instruction).
I like and accept in principle the GRR model, especially in the broad principal/ thesis of moving the student from dependency to independence. I think that some of the failures I’ve seen of cooperative learning was that it kept students stuck in being dependent on other students for the answer/ learning, rather than using it as a means to wean them to a level where they can demonstrate/ perform a skill independently. So I think the concept if I do it-we do it-you (plural) do it-you (singular) do it is a good one. (Although not all kids will need to do the you plural one all the time in all situations…
These are the kinds of discussions that we should be having, and whether or not they are in person, at this point, I don’t care.  Eventually I would love that, but we have to start somewhere.
What do you think?

Daily Diigo Links 03/19/2009

In Uncategorized on March 18, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Daily Diigo Links 03/18/2009

In Uncategorized on March 17, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

, , , , ,

Radiohead, Mortenson, Illiteracy, and Visualizing

In ascd, writing on March 17, 2009 at 8:44 am

I’ve posted this before at some point, but in reference to my conversation with Greg Mortenson on Saturday at ASCD, it popped out in my mind as something I should revisit.  Mortenson points out that there are 110 million children in the world that are illiterate.  When you view this video, it begins to take shape mentally.  Much like Chris Jordan does with his work on visualizing waste, this truly pulls the illiteracy problem worldwide into focus.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day?

In change on March 17, 2009 at 4:11 am

Couldn’t resist this one from Jessica over at Indexed:

, , , , , , , , ,

Attention—->Engagement=Retention

In ascd on March 16, 2009 at 9:54 pm

When you get into school either today or tomorrow, whether it’s on your prep period, or during a walk through the halls, take note of who is doing the talking in your schools.  Is it the students?  The teachers?  Take this one into consideration as well:

Brains are more engaged when people are interacting with one another.

Are students interacting in your school?  Are they placed within situations that promote safe conversations and high-yield accountability?  What happens when these answers are “no?”

Kagan shared with us this image that clearly shows the activity within the brain when various learning tasks are going on.  What do you see?
kagainbrain2
Here’s what I see.

The person doing the talking is the person doing the learning.

Yes, I understand that I just wrote that on Saturday in reference to another session, but it is so much more telling when looking at these PET scans.

Try taking your next lesson plan, your next department meeting or faculty meeting (please do this there) and incorporate some cooperative learning structures into the process.  In looking back at this weekend, I am noticing a connection between two specific ideas: the Kagan structures and the Gradual Release of Responsibility model espoused by Fisher and Frey.  Here is that image once again:

grr2

Notice this: your direct instruction is not lost; you can hang onto your chalk and talk.  It just lives in a smaller space within your overall lesson or meeting structure.  That area where Fisher and Frey delineate at Guided Instruction and Collaborative Instruction is where the learning structures of Kagan reside.  So the flow goes “I-We-You(plural)-You(singular).”

Image Credits:

PET Scans: “Kagan Structures Enhance Brain Engagement!” images adapted from Rita Carter’s Mapping the Mind.

Gradual Release of Responsibility.  Image taken from this slidedeck.

Daily Diigo Links 03/17/2009

In Uncategorized on March 16, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

, , , , , , , ,

Kagan’s Structures

In ascd, teaching on March 16, 2009 at 7:23 am

Just a heads up: these next few posts are going to all deal with my time spent with Dr. Spencer Kagan.  His generosity in sitting down to answer my questions led to a bunch of information that would be irresponsible of me to put into one post.

For the second time in two days, I’ve been fortunate to sit down and have a truly transformative conversation.  Dr. Spencer Kagan, a psychologist and author of hundreds of books about using cooperative learning structures in schools, sat down with me after his session and we talked about the primitive needs of our brain and how they wreak havoc on modern learning, embedded curriculum and the lack of a separate curriculum for “21st Century Skills.”

Kagan’s session was based on this idea:

“unstructured interaction does not lead to equity in the classroom.”

and it forces you to think for a minute about what equity is, and what it means to decrease the gap in achievement in your classroom.  For me, when I begin thinking of that, or when I listen to a teacher talk about a class with children of widely varying abilities, I think of how difficult it becomes to make sure that beyond helping a child reach a year’s growth in a year’s time, but also making sure that the gap between the high-achievers and low-achievers is minimized.  In his session, Kagan showed us some examples of data he’s collected in which classrooms that had a huge achievement gap and were given direct instruction aimed at raising everyone’s test scores actually did work, only the gap between the high achievers and low achievers remained constant.  He then showed the same situation with an experimental group of a classroom that implemented true cooperative learning structures, and that gap nearly disappeared within a year’s time.

kaganstudy

Cooperative Learning is based on four principles, according to Kagan and others, that fit into the nice pneumonic PIES:

  • Positive Interdependence – occurs when gains of individuals or teams are positively correlated.
  • Individual Accountability – occurs when all students in a group are held accountable for doing a share of the work and for mastery of the material to be learned.
  • Equal Participation – occurs when each member of the group is afforded equal shares of responsibility and input.
  • Simultaneous Interaction – occurs when class time is designed to allow many student interactions during the period.

Again, and I apologize if this is becoming a trend in my writing, this session focused on a lot of doing, coupled with some amazing information on how the brain worked.  Doing, rather than just sitting hearing about the theory, makes all of the difference in learning.  This was Kagan’s message overall.  Throughout the hour and half, we interacted in several ways with both those we did not know and those we did.  We used touch, interview, and most of laughter, to get ourselves in a ready state for learning to occur.

Whether you are an advocate of this theory, which I am, or not, it was hard to deny that the activities we engaged in: Sage and Scribe, Celebrity Interview, Hagoo, Take-Off/Touchdown, and a quiet signal, did not focus our attention and put us in a position to be receptive to learning not only from Kagan, but from our new colleagues as well.

kaganstructures

Kagan, S (2007, February, 8). Simple Structures to Reduce the Achievement Gap. NCCREST, Retrieved March 16, 2009.

Daily Diigo Links 03/16/2009

In Uncategorized on March 15, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Assessment that Informs

In change on March 15, 2009 at 10:19 am

A couple of days before I came to ASCD, I gave some real thought to what I view as my weaknesses as an educator.  Not only those that I have now in administration, but also those I had in the classroom.  One glaring element that always makes me cringe to think about, in that I realize that I never did it well, is the use of assessment in the process of learning.  Too often, I fell into the category of solely using summative evaluations, and then not taking the information those summative tests, quizzes or papers and acting on them.  It wasn’t until the last few months I spent in the classroom that I really began to look at how I used formative assessment and misconception analysis to drive instruction.  Then, of course, I moved out of a full-time classroom.

That move, however, didn’t stop me from exploring formative assessment in my professional development classes.  Last year, in fact, I wrote about how we use some very quick assessment strategies with our new teachers when we meet with them in their induction program.  Those strategies I wrote about were embedded into the ideas we were trying to teach and reflect a philosophy I wish all presenters/teachers would follow:

If you are teaching them about using a strategy in the classroom, teach them by doing the strategy, and then have them do the strategy in front of you.

Today I sat in Robin Fogarty and Brian Pete’s session called Informative Assessments: When It’s Not About a Grade.  Much like last year’s session with Deborah Estes, this was a session in which the presenters walked the talk.  We were learning about three types of assessment:

  • Routine Assessments: used everyday
  • Reflective Assessments: many days, deliberate ways
  • Rigorous: some days, thought-provoking ways

From the start of the session, they had us engaged and interacting with one another using some cooperative learning strategies and some questions from Sidney Parnes.  We were given the task of viewing this video, a clip from The Simpsons called “How the Test was Won.  Then we stepped into a “Three Musketeers” activity where we got up and walked around with our hands up until two other people met our hands.  We then became a quick group.  The two questions were simple, but connective:

  • How can you connect this to something you already know?
  • How can you use this in the future?

Any chance I can get to push my thinking, I’ll take.  Their statement that followed listening to some of the answers from the groups crystallizes a lot of the buzz I’ve been hearing at this conference:

THE PERSON DOING THE TALKING IS THE PERSON DOING THE LEARNING.

If I can go back to my district and put that into my own practice more often, I can’t think of any better improvement I could make that would transfer the responsibility onto my learners, and give me a glimpse into what they are thinking and learning.

Another element they introduced today was the idea of using the “one-minute challenge” to push learners to write with purpose and meaning for only a minute, which was interesting because they preceded that minute by a full minute of complete and motionless silence.  What a settling event that was.  I didn’t look at twitter, didn’t write down any notes, I just sat.  When it was time to write for a minute, I was calm and ready to think.  From that minute’s writing we again shared with a partner and set goals about what we’d like to do in the next minute to improve our thinking.

Goal-setting in a micro way.  I liked that too.

While I didn’t walk away from this session an expert on assessment, I did begin to see how easily we can set up formative assessment systems that give us the information we need to see how our students are doing.  By breaking the classroom down into these three categories:

  • what do we want students to know?
  • how will we know that they know it?
  • what will we do if they don’t?

it gives me a plan of action when I work with teachers.  The question becomes how to model that for my teachers, because the goal is to get them thinking at this level about their instruction.

, ,

Some small matters.

In reflection on March 15, 2009 at 9:13 am

Some procedural items from Day 1 at ASCD.

Firstly, wifi.  What a shift from last year in New Orleans.  In much the same light that I’ve been talking about the shift in what type of student I am, attendance at this conference is no different.  Being able to broadcast out and pull in others to this conference is a huge upgrade.

Secondly, the conference center here in Orlando is enormous, almost too big for the amount of people that are here.  Coming from much smaller conferences this year to this one is a little daunting.  I’ve never been to NECC, but what I have read of those who did, it’s similar in scope.  This year’s attendance at ASCD is (including exhibitors): 8,132 and total registration (minus exhibitors): 6,955, and it’s very roomy.

Thirdly, there is a Poland Spring Water cooler in every room, so you don’t have to fork out the $3.25 for a bottle of water or lug around a bottle from outside.  I am big fan of being properly hydrated.

Lastly, the staff from ASCD are fantastic.  Whether it was opening up media credentials to bloggers, giving access to presenters, the quality of presenters, or the scheduling of the presenters so that each session time slot has something to offer for nearly every interest, they have done an outstanding job.

Looking forward to what Day 2 will bring.

Daily Diigo Links 03/15/2009

In Uncategorized on March 14, 2009 at 7:31 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

, , , , , , , , ,

The Girl Effect

In ascd, leadership on March 14, 2009 at 4:50 pm

This came across my reading/viewing list a while back, but it means more today after having listened and spoken with Greg Mortenson.

Mortenson, recently nominated by the U.S. Congress to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, was an one of those figures you just jump at the chance to meet and talk to. What strikes you immediately about him is his supreme lack of urgency about his time. Here he was, scheduled to catch a flight to take him to a flight to Afghanistan, yet he sat and gave pictures and autographs, a 30 minute interview with three educational bloggers, and then signed over 50 books for people at the conference. He joked to us that he is notorious for missing flights, and I can see why.

His chronicle of his life since 1992, the New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea, continues to change the mindsets of those who read it. It details his experiences after a failed attempt to summit Mt. Godwin-Austin, known more commonly as K2. Upon his descent and exodus from the region, he happened upon a village name Korphe. After resting and taking in the hospitality of the villagers, he discovered the schoolchildren there both lacked a school and a teacher. He described the moment in which an elder of the village had passed away and he was visiting his grave site. That elder had given him one piece of advice before dying: “Listen to the wind.” And so he did.

What he heard were the voices of the children in the village of Korphe, and that changed everything. He promised those villagers and those children that he would return and build them a school.

That same wind carried him back to build that school, and several others since then.

Individuals like Mortenson astound me. Meeting him and finding him so relaxed, calm, and giving was a revelation. I had fully expected him to be full of energy and movement–I would expect that from someone who affects as much change in the world as he has. Yet, he was placid and warm, truly concerned about what his message was.

He spoke of girls. He spoke about why education and empowerment were crucial to creating change in the world of our children. He spoke of the real importance of schools, and not once did he mention any of the words we often use when we talk about how we want school to change here in the United States. His message involved community empowerment and the need to be patient enough to wait for change in education, or anything for that matter, because the affect may not be visible for a generation or two. That is why, he says, education is a hard sell to politicians and community leaders.

If you haven’t heard of his program, the one that ultimately worked to raise the money needed to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it’s called Pennies for Peace. Please visit the site, or if you have already heard of it, donate your little Abraham Lincoln’s to help change the world.

It’s not lost on me that for the longest time I did not think deeply about geo-political issues in the Middle East and the effects of terrorism on the world at large. Now, twice within the last week, two very influential thinkers and doers have pointed at very similar solutions to combating terrorism in the world.

And they both begin and end with two words: Education and Empowerment.

, , , ,

Modeling Expert Thinking.

In change on March 14, 2009 at 1:41 pm

Doug Fisher had a profound affect on my outlook today, and I’ll likely spend the next few days putting together some more of my thoughts that came from his shared session.  At this moment, I’ve got this one stuck in my craw:

We need to model expert thinking for our students.

All too often, he states, we see too much “explaining and interrogating,” and not enough of modeling how we think through a text, how we go about finding information when we really need it.  My standard line when it comes to this has to do a lot with Penny Kittle’s book Write Beside Them and our work with the National Writing Project in that if we are teachers of writing, we must be writers ourselves.  We need to show that there are processes and skills that even we as educators, who have already done this thing called school, still work hard to figure things out.

He works in a high school with his colleague Nancy Frey, called Health Sciences High & Middle College and the shift to the Gradual Release of Responsibility has helped that school make incredible gains in learning and literacy.  What it took was a huge shift from investing in the “magic bullet” programs to an equal or greater investment in teacher ability.  For those of us who are in charge of providing professional development or making sure it is available to our teachers, that’s a huge shift. Amy Sandvold asked “why is it that teachers feel that the Professional Development expert have to be 50 miles away from your district in order for teachers to believe what they say?”

I’d like to see what we could do in our schools if we did invest in our own abilities rather than rely on some external force or program.

, , , , , , , , ,

It’s OK. You Can Let Go.

In 21st Century, ascd on March 14, 2009 at 1:17 pm

Last year, I used a book on assessment from Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey in a study group with teachers.  When I saw their name attached to this morning’s panel discussion on Literacy in the 21st Century, I was intrigued.  My thinking was that they would have some great foundational elements to add to the what I’ve been thinking lately.

What happened was much more than what I thought.  Amy Sandvold, a colleague of Angela Maiers, was also on the panel as well.  Here is what I pulled out.

Fisher, Frey and Sandvold advocated a Gradual Release of Responsibility in the relationship between teachers and students.

grrA few years back, when I really began this journey, I saw Alan November present about the need for teachers to outsource what they do to the students to prevent them from being the only voice in the classroom.  What they advocated and described here is exactly that.  Focused instruction, according to Fisher, is pointed modeling of expert thinking and behavior. It’s in this mode of instruction where we help students build the requisite background knowledge and vocabulary they need for success in higher level tasks.  This argument, which is raging throughout the educational world right now, about content v. skills, then becomes moot.  Is there direct instruction in this model?  Absolutely, but it is followed by gradually removing the emphasis on what you as a teacher do in front of your students.  Once you model and instruct, move into more collaborative and shared modes of teaching and learning, until the end result is full on student responsibility.

And this from Frey:

Students and teachers must know stuff in order to do stuff.
Teachers now stuff.
Students know stuff too
Teachers and students learn from one another by interacting and collaborating.

I truly believe that learning takes place in many forms and through many processes.  One that I will recommend to anyone is that of conversation and communal learning among students and teachers.  Even today, sitting there discussing our greatest learning experience we ever had (my partner had a great one where she remembers finally being able to move from snow-plow skiing to parallel skiing), I didn’t realize my own until we began talking to others in the room and listening to the stories of people learning.  Collaboration is a powerful tool for learning.

There is so much more to come out of this session, but I am finding that it’s hard to process, especially in light of what occurred directly after this session.  That’s coming too.

Daily Diigo Links 03/14/2009

In Uncategorized on March 13, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

, , , , , , , ,

ASCD: From Two Angles

In ascd, curriculum, school 2.0 on March 13, 2009 at 3:56 pm

ascd1

I just stopped into the Convention Center here to pick up my media kit, and I immediately noticed a big shift from last year’s conference in New Orleans: tech.  Flat screens, laptops, live streaming of sessions, and a dedicated Technology Corridor (that’s going to be a separate post).  All things that had they been here last year, I wouldn’t have stuck out so much sitting all by myself in session rooms because the only viable electrical outlets for people with laptops were on the fringes of sessions.

Seriously, there is a decided effort on the part of ASCD to be visible, to pull in “21st Century Skills,” a word that the world has claimed as its buzzword du jour, and if you look through the session descriptions, there is a huge focus on these topics:

  • Visual Literacy and infusion of Visual Art into the classroom
  • Using assessment wisely to allow students to show they understand
  • Web 2.0 and its use in the classroom
  • 21st Century Skills and their broad definition

Over the last few days, I’ve spent some time looking at the sessions that immediately call out to me as valuable in what I do on a daily basis.  If you’ve been following some of the thoughts here lately, especially the dialogue between Scott McLeod and on a recent links post, you’ll understand that there has to be a marriage between teaching “soft skills,” and making sure content knowledge is sufficiently understood.  There is a balance we need to strive for in our work over the next few years in curriculum writing.  Scott really hit it here in this reference:

In Built to Last, Collins & Porras describe how visionary organizations do not “oppress themselves with … the ‘Tyranny of the OR’” (i.e., citizenship preparation v. employment preparation) but instead “liberate themselves with the ‘Genius of the AND.’” As they note, yin and yang are “both at the same time, all of the time.” Why is this so hard for educators to do?

I’d like to find some examples here at ASCD that show me this is happening, or at least show ways in which I can move forward to help teachers create learning environments that are innovative for students and teachers alike, yet provide a solid academic foundation for the future.  As I have said before, it never was an Either/Or.

The second major focus I have this weekend is to leave here with more actionable content which I am taking to mean both teaching strategy and assessment strategy.  When I work with teachers, especially in light of all the buzz about the influx of creativity and innovation ideas into the NJCCCS, they often ask me how they are supposed to teach these skills.  The sessions I have chosen center around giving teachers strategies for stretching student minds within their content areas.  In my own personal practice, I always fall back on the Kagan Structures and other forms of cooperative learning (and it just so happens, Kagan is presenting on Sunday).  With that creativity in how we approach teaching, I’d like to explore some innovation in how we assess our students.

Be sure to pick up the twitter feed also, which you can find here and here.

, , , , , , , ,

I Have Become That Student.

In 21st Century, change, reflection on March 13, 2009 at 12:48 pm

I have not been a student in the traditional sense for some time.  I have not sat in a classroom, at a desk, and listened to a teacher or speaker discuss and run a class centered around a central topic.  Everything I have done over the last few years has been focused on my own learning and those elements that I deemed necessary for me to focus on: technology, school change, leadership, curriculum, educational theory, methodology, state mandates, assessment, differentiation, learning styles, visual literacy, Web 2.0, or any other of the most current buzzwords the field of education.  In the last seven years, that time that has passed since I have last entered a graduate school classroom where my primary role was that of “student,” a lot has changed in me.  Never was this as evident as a lecture series I sat in on Monday and Wednesday of this week.

Dr. Eric Davis, Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University, came to our district to engage any of us interested in a conversation about how to teach our students to better understand terrorism, its root causes, and a means to combat it in an enlightened way.

I was an anthropology major in college, and took enough history to obtain a dual degree (have to check on the status of that one).  It’s my bag, and I am lucky to work with a department that is rife with history junkies.  So when one of our teachers arranged for Dr. Davis to speak with us about his work in the Middle East, we were all excited to work up some intellectual sweat.

Dr. Davis ran his class like many of our classrooms are run: he used a slidedeck laced with his overarching objectives, followed by rationale, example, and explanation.  He also, at any moment, took questions or requests for further clarification from us.  No different than many of the history lectures I attended in either high school or college.

What was different was me.  In those previous situations, the only source for information I had was Dr. Davis, his syllabus, and the recommended books on that syllabus that I was to have read for that day’s class.  In Monday and Wednesday’s class, I had all of you, I had video, I had Flickr images, I had Amazon’s recommendations.

As Dr. Davis spoke about Fareed Zakaria’s work on how to win the war on terror, I popped out and linked my notes to his book on Amazon.  The same with obscure texts like those by Olivier Roy.  As he talked about and showed us startling images from the looting of the Iraqi National Museum and the treasures that were lost, I realized I wanted those images too, so I pulled them into my notes from Flickr.  He discussed the use of Iraqi student blogs with his undergraduates; I conducted a quick scan of my twitter network and of Davis’ own resources and and found several examples.

We all asked questions and contributed to the discussion.  I chronicled it in a way that I never would have.  My notes look vastly different and more robust than anything I could have done ten, even five years ago.  His lecture, his class, took on a whole new life in my notes.  I dropped in questions to myself that I’ll look back on and that will help me go in new directions later on.
The best part, for me at least, is that I shared them with everyone in the seminar via Google Docs, and I asked them to drop in their notes and thoughts as well, or to just use mine to springboard even further.

I am now that student–that student that wants more than just what is front of me, and knows how to get it.  We had all types of students in this seminar: those that listened, those that talked, those that hand-wrote notes, and me.  The best part about it is that it doesn’t matter at all if no one shares their notes with me in the collaborative document.  Their interactions in engaging Dr. Davis became part of my thinking and my documentation.  They contributed to my learning, and the least I can do is give back to them this document.

Daily Diigo Links 03/12/2009

In Uncategorized on March 11, 2009 at 7:31 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Daily Diigo Links 03/11/2009

In Uncategorized on March 10, 2009 at 7:31 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

, , , , ,

ASCD Bound

In ascd on March 9, 2009 at 10:34 pm

Later on this week, I will be leaving for the ASCD Conference in Orlando, and thanks to Scott McLeod and the generous group over at ASCD, I will be covering the conference through this medium.  With that responsibility comes some pretty cool benefits, one being that I can pop into ticketed sessions that I otherwise would not have been able to get into.

In that light, I thought I might throw it out there to the readership here (whatever that number might be) and ask if there were any topics that might be of specific interest to you.  I am sitting down to plan my conference over the next two days, so here are the main headings that ASCD gives out:

  • Creativity and 21st Century Skills
  • From Research to Practice
  • Networking Opportunities
  • Urban Education

Navigating the ASCD website is proving to be a little tricky, but the sessions are all available for browsing if you are so inclined.  On a personal level, my focus is going to be on visual literacy, critical thinking, assessment, and reading strategies.  Yes, I know, rather narrow. If there is a session you see that might fit that bill, or something you would like some firsthand knowledge of, drop a comment and I’ll do my best to gather some firsthand info for you.

Daily Diigo Links 03/10/2009

In Uncategorized on March 9, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

, , , , , , , , ,

Your Biggest Novel-in under a minute

In teaching on March 9, 2009 at 8:38 am

We are really pushing summarizing and paraphrasing in our schools this year.  The ability to take relevant information and boil it down to its essentials, and to represent that information in language and terms that have meaning to the individual is a skill that, regardless of century, people need to have.

Thanks to Alec Couros, I found this gem last night as I was trying to fall asleep.  It’s called Forrest Gump in One Minute, In One Take.

From this, all sorts of ideas begin to spring up.  If you read Tom Barrett’s collection of the 32 uses of the Flip Cam in your classroom, this project makes even more sense.  I think that taking a tome like Jane Eyre and asking students to do it in this format, with similar constraints, is a beautiful idea.  I’d love to hear of other examples where people did this, or something similar.

Now does it ensure that the students pulled everything out of the novel that they should have?  That’s up to you and how you assess it.  But for me, this project, coupled with some other more traditional assessments would be more than enough.

Daily Diigo Links 03/09/2009

In Uncategorized on March 8, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Daily Diigo Links 03/07/2009

In Uncategorized on March 6, 2009 at 7:30 pm

  • Cambodia and its War Tribunal – The Big Picture – Boston.com

    Collecting some pages for our upcoming class on the History of Genocide in the 20th and 21st Centuries.

    tags: currentevents, contemporaryissues, socialstudies, cambodia, pictures

  • Spanish Language & Culture | Home

    A teacher in my district uses this with his students to help them practice their basic grammar, but the study modules look promising.

    tags: Spanish, Grammar, spanish, gramatica

  • Eduflack: Beating Up on 21CS – Annotated

    tags: no_tag

    • The debate over 21CS skills should not be one between one set of curricular goals versus the other.  This isn’t core knowledge versus soft skills.  No, our focus should be on how we teach those core subjects that are necessary.  How do we teach math and science so that we better integrate technology and critical thinking skills?  How do we teach the social sciences in a manner that focuses on project-based learning and team-based activities?  How do we ensure that a 21st century student is not being forced to unplug when they enter the classroom, and instead uses the technologies and interests that drive the rest of their life to boost their interest and achievement in core academic subjects?  And most importantly, how do we ensure all students are graduating with the content knowledge and skills needed to truly achieve in the 21st century economy?
      • This one is the goods here. One does not go forward by jettisoning the skills with which we gathered. To me it’s not about introducing new content, but rather how we engage students in content using the “soft skills” that we need them to develop. The ability to have a lasting understanding is our goal here, and providing relevant context to what we do in the classroom is a great way to get there. – post by pjhiggins

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

, , , , , , , , , ,

It Never Was an Either/Or

In 21st Century, curriculum, teaching on March 6, 2009 at 9:26 am

This week I have spent a good portion of my time working with teachers in grades PK-2 talking about creativity and innovation.  Due to the changes that New Jersey is proposing in the new draft standards, which came about through their membership in the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (among other factors as well), the elements that are stressed in the P21 manifesto have populated themselves into the new standards.  Themes such as:

  • Global awareness
  • Financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy
  • Civic literacy
  • Health literacy

and skills like:

  • Creativity and Innovation
  • Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
  • Communication and Collaboration

are all now written into our standards from PK-12.

If you come from middle or high school teaching into an administration position in which you work with grades PK-5, you will understand how stressful it is to work with elementary teachers.  They are wonderful people; I should know, I am married to one.  But when you look at all they have to do in a day and the limited time they have to do it in, having them sit in an afterschool meeting to work with curriculum is daunting.  To introduce these ideas to our elementary teachers, we used our good friend Sir Ken Robinson.  We took a page from the P21 Framework that centered on creativity and innovation and had the teachers use it as a backbone for writing down ideas that struck them while watching Sir Ken’s TED talk from 2006.  From there, we had them answer two prompts in groups of 4-5:

  • Identify the structures in place in your classroom that promote creativity and innovation either in your students or yourself.
  • So what?  What Now?

The responses were phenomenal, especially in relation to the areas where Sir Ken spoke about finding creative capacities and working with them instead of educating them out of them.  However, one thing I have learned in administration in regards to any kind of meeting is that you have to be ready for the “don’t waste my time question of the day,” which is the part where you have to make it matter to them.  A teacher asked the question very bluntly:

“where is this going?  How are we to fit these ideas, which by the way we all believe in, into what we already do?”

My answer wasn’t great, I’ll admit, and it had a lot to do with explaining where the ideas behind the new standards revisions came from, but it stuck with me.

Last night, in my reader appeared an article from Patrick Riccards at Eduflack in which he debated the mode of delivery that the P21 people have chosen.  This gem was smack in the middle of it:

The debate over 21CS skills should not be one between one set of curricular goals versus the other.  This isn’t core knowledge versus soft skills.  No, our focus should be on how we teach those core subjects that are necessary.  How do we teach math and science so that we better integrate technology and critical thinking skills?  How do we teach the social sciences in a manner that focuses on project-based learning and team-based activities?  How do we ensure that a 21st century student is not being forced to unplug when they enter the classroom, and instead uses the technologies and interests that drive the rest of their life to boost their interest and achievement in core academic subjects?  And most importantly, how do we ensure all students are graduating with the content knowledge and skills needed to truly achieve in the 21st century economy

One does not go forward by jettisoning the skills with which we gathered. To me it’s not about introducing new content, but rather how we engage students in content using the “soft skills” that we need them to develop. The ability to have a lasting understanding is our goal here, and providing relevant context to what we do in the classroom is a great way to get there.  So my answer to that question is not to change the content of what you do, but to use the same skills you are trying to develop in the students in your own practice.  Be innovative, be creative, be prepared to fail often, collaborate, model the behaviors you want to see in your students.

Daily Diigo Links 03/05/2009

In Uncategorized on March 4, 2009 at 7:31 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Daily Diigo Links 03/04/2009

In Uncategorized on March 3, 2009 at 7:31 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

, , , , ,

Design, Sustainability, Change on Vimeo

In curriculum on March 3, 2009 at 10:58 am

I have thieved twice today.

Both from the same source, and both art related.  I don’t feel badly about it either.

more about “Design, Sustainability, Change on Vimeo“, posted with vodpod

The first has to do with my TED addiction.  Maria Popova has created a remix of some of the more passionate TED speakers in order to create a singular TED voice.  I love it’s simplicity and message.

The second is called Street Art Locator.  If you are anything like me, you stumble randomly into some amazing art on your travels.  I would, however, like to plan that out a little bit more so that I can be a little more prepared.  This may help.

streetart

Both were pilfered from Craig Roland over at the Art Teachers Guide to the Internet.  I will “sharing” from him on a more regular basis, I am sure.

Daily Diigo Links 03/03/2009

In Uncategorized on March 2, 2009 at 7:31 pm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.