Tinkerings

Yesterday, Steve Jobs announced the newest product in the burgeoning Apple line up: the iPad.  News of this announcement has been leaking to the press for some time, and people like me have been expecting to see the Apple version of a Tablet PC.  What we got was something totally different.  And for education, it is the next level of student engagement.

I have been watching the announcement on Apple’s website a day later to “see” what I could only hear during the live event.  The iPad is not necessarily a computer in the way we think of one.  But it is a great interactive tool.  Jobs seemed a little unsure of himself at times, and the crowd wasn’t as spontaneously exuberant as they have been over the iPod or the iPhone.  Maybe that’s because everytime Jobs said “amazing” or “beautiful” or “fantastic” we all can now hear his brain going “Cha-Ching!”  After all, for Apple every tool they make is about adding money to the bottom line.  But as an educator, I was watching for particular classroom applications, and it did not disappoint.

Around the 50 to 52 minute mark in the presentation, Jobs demonstrated their newest collection called iBooks.  Apple is going to try to do with books what they’ve already done with music: turn the world upside down.  While Google is trying to digitize every book in the world into flat, readable PDF files, and Amazon is trying to sell a hardware device that only reads books called the Kindle, Apple has unleashed the power of totally interactivity.  And that’s what people want.

I’ve already blogged about this previously, but thought it was more a “pie-in-the-sky” wish list based on current hardware available to schools.  Online textbooks will eventually revolutionize education and student engagement.  No, not the kind that takes the current text and simply digitizes it for easy of use.  No, I’m talking about an iBook.  Textbooks that embed in them videos, podcasts, pictures, websites, field trips, interviews, music, and more.

And what if these textbooks enabled kids to create their own blogs? Allowed them to write to an authentic audience?  Allowed them to take pictures and create videos of their own?

And what if schools could use textbooks like Wikipedia and add their own content?  Their own videos?  Their own local flavor?

Enter the iPad.

The basic, stripped down version of the iPad starts at $499.  Imagine slipping one of those into the backpacks of every 3rd grader in the nation at the beginning of next year.  And then, every year after that, a new generation of 3rd graders gets one while the others get to keep theirs.  Upgrade them in 6th grade and 9th grade.  Suddenly, kids have a tool they want to use in the classroom.  They have a tool that is theirs.

And that, my friends, makes this education thing a whole new ballgame.

We are less than one week away from the TCAP Writing Assessment for our 8th grade students.  The Language Arts teachers have been working tirelessly all year to have nearly 350 kids ready to show everything they know about expository writing in 35 short minutes.

Our students have practiced writing essays throughout the year, both in Language Arts classes and our computer labs.  We have tag teamed with those teachers since the beginning of this semester to double up on the training, tips, and tries that kids get before February 2nd.

I think the work is paying off.

This year we’ve done two things differently in our labs.  First, we purchased a trial number of log-ins for Write to Learn, an essay grading program from Pearson.  While we’ve found a few flaws along the way (nothing can take the place of a pair of eyes scanning a page), for the most part this program has done a fairly decent job of demonstrating the skills of our students.  Some score a little higher than we would expect.  Some score a little lower.  Over all, however, it seems to do the job.  And the immediate feedback the kids get cannot be replaced.  It has been fun to watch their eyes light up when they see how their score increases when they make just a few improvements here and there.

Second, we produced a short number of videos for kids to watch based on the theme of “Cheat Codes.”  Kids that play games online are looking for websites that offer cheat codes, a series of tutorials on how to get from one level to another.  We decided to do the same thing. We’ve harped on adding similes and metaphors, anecdotes, quotes, vivid verbs, and more.  It has been fun to see their reaction when we tell them we are going to teach them how to “cheat” the test (in reality, there is no way to do this).  Through a little slight-of-hand teaching, kids have started to do better on first drafts, spend more time editing and revising during testing time, and seem to have more of a desire to do better up front.

Only time will tell how well we’ve done.  What about your school?  What are you doing to help kids improve writing skills?

This morning, as many mornings go, I was looking at YouTube videos recommended to me by the unseen forces of video sharing.  One of them was a 5 minute clip of Seth Godin speaking on the power of Tribes.  If you have read many of my blogs, or seen status updates on my Facebook account, you will know I am a fan of Seth Godin.  Seth is a marketing expert, motivational speaker, and author.

Today, the video was looking at the history of advertising.  My focus was drawn in when he got to television advertising.  Companies who sell products spend a lot of money each year to do one thing: interrupt you.  For years the major method of advertising a product or brand was through a continual interruption of other things you would rather be doing.  In this case, the network creates something you want to see, even see passionately, and marketers create something with which to interrupt you.

And for years it worked.

Now, however, the social power of the Internet, and the humongous failure of the Jay Leno Show, has diminished the power of interruption.  Tribes have taken over.  Marketers find a small cadre of passionate followers and help them spread the word to their friends and friends of friends.  We are no longer interested in being interrupted. We now seek out the advice of our friends.  These friends are our Tribe.  We find them on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Diigo, and more.

Take Facebook as an example.  Marketers are piling ads up down the right column of our pages one after another.  They’re even using the power of Google Ad Words to place just the write captions in those ads.  In the time I’ve had a Facebook account, I think I’ve clicked on two of them just to see what the scam is really all about.  I don’t want them to interrupt me.

BUT…

Let a friend post a link to a website or video.  Let a friend post new pictures.  Let a friend write a new Note.  I will gladly stop what I am doing to take a look.

In fact, one of the main reasons I use Twitter is for the Twibe (in education we call this Personal Learning Networks).  I go to find the links provided by my friends.  I go there to add my own.

Marketing has changed forever.  And if TV networks and newspapers and magazines don’t figure that out, they will go the way of all dinosaurs.

But what about teaching?

Many are still stuck in the interrupting paradigm of teaching.  Stop using your cell phone and pay attention.  Stop passing notes and look up here.  Stop talking and listen to me.  I’m guilty.  We interrupt kids from doing what they want to do and try to get them to do what we want them to do.  It is easy.  It is the “sage on the stage” syndrome, and many days I have it.  And it is ineffective.

BUT…

What if teachers found the right mix of students to form a tribe?  I’m not talking about the kids making straight A’s.  They are going to learn the material if the teacher never came to class in the first place.  They are self-starters.  Self-motivators.  Think lower.  Think about the disinterested kids.  The ones who struggle.  Not to learn, but to pay attention long enough to learn.  What if we captured just 3 or 4 of those in each class?  What if we developed a passion in them about learning and living and leading?

What if we form a Tribe?

What do you think?

Recently I applied for a new level of recognition within the Discovery Educator Network (DEN) community: The DEN Guru.  The application process was very competitive, and after I sent in my materials I waited to see which five educators from around the country would be announced.

I can hear your question already.  Tim, exactly what is a DEN Guru?  I’m glad you asked.  From the National DEN Blog, there is this:

“DEN Gurus are STAR Discovery Educators who possess expertise of one or more pedagogical topics (e.g., Differentiated Instruction, Project Based Learning, etc.), have demonstrated their expertise through a variety of professional experiences, and advocate for the meaningful integration of Discovery Education digital content across their area(s) of expertise.

DEN Gurus will be promoted throughout the community as thought leaders in the educational field and have the opportunity to share their expertise in a variety of ways.”

So you can imagine my surprise when I opened my email on my Blackberry in our school’s administration offices and saw my name on the list of five.  I can’t really print here the words that escaped my mouth, so let me just say that I was not just surprised, I was totally floored.  Here is the list of five and the categories for which we were recognized:

• Traci Blazosky
  Creative Construction with Multimedia
  Clarion Area School District, PA

• Tim Childers
  Project Based Learning
  Bradley County Schools, TN

• Patricia Duncan
  Science
  Wallenpaupack School District, PA

• Lee Kolbert
  Personal Learning Networks
  Palm Beach County, FL

• Nancy Sharoff
  Visual Literacy
  Ellenville Central Schools, NY

I know these people.  They are fantastic educators.  They are top level DEN members.  And I am very thankful to be listed alongside them.

I am not comfortable with this kind of recognition at times.  It is a heavy mantle.  The position is important not only because teachers may want to look to me for direction regarding Project Based Learning, but because this is the inaugural year for the position.  I trust I will be able to live up to the expectations.

It is always nice to be recognized by a group of your peers.  So to the DEN leaders who poured through dozens and dozens and dozens of applications, I say thank you.  Or, to quote one of my favorite actresses, “You like me! You really like me!”

Today I spent about 15 minutes of each class period teaching a mini-lesson on essay writing live over the Internet on our TN DEN Leadership Council’s Livestream page.  I have to admit, it was sort of fun.  One of our regular teachers was out, so the idea was to help teach her class for the day and then let kids work on editing their essays.  As it turned out, I had several visitors from around the country, and the other two lab classes also tuned in at least one period on their own.

The technology worked great.  Livestream is a great site to do this sort of work.  I was using my Macbook Pro, but added a Logitech Pro 9000 webcam to the mix to get a little better video stream.  The audio was clear, and the other classes could still see the pages I was using in my Promethean flip chart.

The difficulties came in being online a couple of minutes before the lesson actually started.  In the embedded video below, the actual lesson starts 2 minutes into the video, so just go ahead and fast forward there if you choose to watch it.  We also had a small problem when the office came over the intercom and asked for a student by name.  The announcement was to tell that student to be a car rider.  Obviously, I didn’t really want that information going out over the Internet.  I wasn’t able to stop it on the live feed, but did delete that clip from the library.  Finally, we had the wonderful experience of having a fire drill in the middle of one lesson.  Oh yeah.  It was fun.

You can see the lesson below.  As I mentioned earlier, fast forward to 2 minutes in and you’ll see where we are starting.  And if you dropped by today….thanks!

OK, the tag line is a little hokey.  For those too young to remember, it is a throw back to the greatest years of the Tonight Show when Ed McMahon would announce the entrance of Johnny Carson.  And why am I harking back to the bygone days of really great television?  Well…..

Tomorrow (Friday), I will be teaching live on Livestream.com each class period for about 15 minutes.  We are trying an experiment that I hope works as well in reality as it has in my head.

One of our teachers has to be gone tomorrow and we are in the middle of crunch time with our 8th graders getting ready for the TCAP Writing Assessment coming up February 2nd.  We can’t lose a single day.  As a result, while I am teaching my class I will also be teaching her class each period.  We will do a 15 minute mini lesson on a writing skill, and then the students will edit their already-written essays using that one skill.

Tomorrow we will discuss the concept of sentence trains.  Sentences are like freight trains.  They can carry a lot of weight.  They can be much longer than a few words and more complex than simple.  We will talk about ways to add “freight” to their sentences and then have them go in and edit much of their essay by adding adjectives, adverbs, better verbs, specific nouns, and more.

If you want to join me during the day, you can pick up the broadcast online at this link.

I will be online (approximately) at 9:50, 10:45, 1:05, 2:00, and 2:55 (all times EST).  Each lesson will be about 15 minutes, and each time I will be going over the same lesson, so if you drop in, you just have to drop in once.

This is an experiment, and tomorrow I’ll post a little something about how it went. If you join me tomorrow, be sure and check back to this blog to add a comment about what you liked and what you didn’t, what can be improved, and what needs to stay.

I am one of those people who just refused to watch the  new Jay Leno show at 10 PM on NBC.  It isn’t that I don’t like Leno.  But old paradigms are really hard to break.  The Leno show was supposed to come on after the news, and not before.  His monologue is just funnier up against Letterman than it is standing out there by itself.

So it was with great interest that I began to read and hear about Leno’s possible move back to late night.  You see, here is the thing.  Not only are the dwindling numbers for Leno taking viewers away from local affiliates and their 11 PM newscasts, but Conan O’Brien’s failing numbers after the late news is causing people to go to bed with their television sets tuned to another channel.  As a result, even the morning news shows are taking a hit.

The bigger question is this: if the take Leno away from the 10 PM slot, what is NBC going to do with five hours of prime time broadcasting space that is now empty.

This got me thinking about school (what doesn’t, right?).

I teach in a middle school.  Nearly every class of kids that come to me are different.  Not just individuals, but each class is a distinct group with distinct behaviors.  So now I’m wondering how those behaviors are impacted by the “lead-in show.”  What is it about the teacher they have before me that could impact good or bad behavior?  On the flip side, I am somebody’s “lead-in show,” too.  How are these kids acting in the class that follows me?

All this leads me to think about the importance of culture on our campuses and making the right choices when it is time to tenure teachers.  Principals should think about the long term consequences of tenure decisions.  What happens if, as in the case of NBC, the gamble doesn’t pay off?  Where do you move that teacher?  How do you fill that time slot?  What does that do to other teachers who are already struggling?

Don’t get me wrong here.  Leno didn’t suddenly become a bad comedian or talk show host at 10 o’clock.  He’s doing what he always did.  It just isn’t working in his present location.  Teachers are the same.  Just because a teacher isn’t doing a bang up job in one school, or one class, or one time slot doesn’t mean he or she is a bad teacher.  Maybe the principal just made a bad programming decision.

At any rate, it has me thinking.  Share your thoughts in the comments section.

The other day I got this in an email from Education Week.  A digital, online magazine sent me a digital subscription request but offered me two small printed maps as a “thank you.”  You would think they would be savvy enough to do something digital to use in the classroom.  Wall maps are so last semester.  I mean, come on.  Get real.

Hello again! I am writing this post because I am looking for some help from my family and friends. For some years now I have contemplated putting together a cookbook of favorite recipes from people I know. I am contacting you asking for your consideration in offering a favorite recipe. Here are a few things I’m doing with this:

1. In the form provided you will be asked to tell me why this recipe is important to you. Please be as thorough as you can. I will try to get as much of that information in the book as possible (if your recipe is chosen).

2. I will be cooking all of the recipes provided, so the instructions you give need to be really, really clear and thorough.

3. Part of this project is a photography challenge for me as well. I will take pictures of the food preparation and serving to be included in the book.

4. There is also a place in the form asking if you would like to participate in a food party where several dishes are prepared and tried. Again, lots of pictures to be taken with the hopes of having a few good ones for the book. Maybe even a YouTube video of the event.

When I am done, I will use www.blurb.com (or a comparable website) to create the book and print hard cover copies. They will be available to those who participate at cost. I am not trying to make a profit here. I’m just having some fun.  I’ll be giving some away as Christmas presents this year (oops, there was a spoiler!)

I am looking for recipes from family, friends, DEN members, Facebook and Twitter followers, readers of this blog and more. I would ask that you NOT provide more than 3, but feel free to give me 1, 2 or 3, or even none. I won’t be offended. LOL

Here is the link for the form:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dDJYbGZaaXgxUWhOTUN4ZVp4OFFNUlE6MA

Simply go there and fill it out. Items with a red asterisk are required fields.

Please don’t feel rushed. This project will take several months. I may post this note again later, even if you have participated already.

I will be posting progress on this blog. I am also sending this invitation out to my Twitter and Facebook friends and through some emails, so some of you will see this request several times.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at any time.

Thanks in advance!

Tim

(NOTE: No, the food picture above is not mine.  Here is some info about it:

The new semester at school has started, and so far things are looking good.  Of course, kids have only been here for 2 days.  And there’s a chance we’ll miss this Friday (or maybe even part of Thursday) due to inclement weather.  But I digress….

My schedule is much different than last semester.  In the Fall I had six back to back classes (3 7th grade classes and 3 6th grade classes) with a planning period at the very end of the day.  Those kinds of days can get really tiring in a hurry.  This semester I have 1 7th grade classes and 4 8th grade classes.  I have three classes, then lunch duty, then lunch, then planning, then 2 more classes.  So, I get a pretty long break in the middle of the day to regroup, refresh, and rethink what is happening in my room.

I would never have believed it, but this year my 8th graders are much better behaved than my 6th graders were.  I mean, I know we are only 2 days into the semester, but you can size up kids pretty quick at times.  I’m thinking my blood pressure will stay somewhere near normal most of the semester.

Of course, anytime I get to teach the Career Ed part of my classes (8th graders only), things go pretty good.  Kids are engaged.  It is always changing.  Lots of good discussions.  And I feel like I’m truly accomplishing something for nearly everyone’s education by assisting with their 4-year plans for high school.  There are few things in life more satisfying than feeling like you’ve really helped someone (whether they know you have or not).

I will keep you updated throughout the semester and let you know if this honestly is my best semester yet!