Tinkerings

Being sick is absolutely  no fun.  Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is itching for a fight.  Yesterday I came down with what I can only describe as a severe head cold.  I couldn’t breathe.  My eyes were watery.  My nose alternated between clogged and runny.  And my fever came and went throughout the day.  On the advice of my principal, I got hold of a substitute teacher who had been at our school in the morning and offered her an afternoon of work so I could go lay down.

After about an hour’s nap, I felt a little better, and my nose had completely stopped running.  Instead, it felt like a concrete truck had poured a full load of high impact concrete into my sinus cavities.  It was awful.  I tried to drink liquids, but nearly died from suffocation while drinking water simply because there was no way for air to get into my nasal passages.  It was awful.

This morning, after an Allegra D and a squirt of Afrin nose spray, I am better.  I can breathe.  My fever is gone.  My eyes are still a bit hazy from it all, but overall I’m probably an 8 out of 10 on a wellness scale.

It did, however, make me think (what doesn’t, right?).

How many times are kids in our classes that should be at home.  Maybe they want to go home, but their parents can’t come get them.  Or perhaps they are over achievers and want to stay at school no matter what.  If they felt half as bad as I did, it wouldn’t be any wonder if they were not able to concentrate or do the work I set out for them.

Sometimes I forget that these are children in  my care.  I’m more than just a teacher to some of them.  I’m a role model.  A friend.  A big brother.  And sometimes I’m a parent.

Being sick yesterday and today has reminded me just how vulnerable some of my students are in this world.  I hope I can take better care of them as a result.

Even before reading Nicholas Carr’s poignant article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” in the Atlantic, I have been struck with the gnawing realization that we are slowly but surely degrading critical thinking skills through technology.  This is not the fault of schools or parents or even kids.  It is a naturally occurring phenomenon that is both insipid and insidious.

When I was a child in the 60s (born in 1958), technology was pretty limited.  We had 3 channels on the TV (sometimes 4 if you count the local UHF channel), a radio, and a record player.  Yes, those were the days when kids played outside with one another and the ear bud, if thought of at all, was a gnat that flew into your ear canal.

Kids had imaginations.  They thought.  They figured things out.

Think about it in terms of music alone.

When I was young, music was something we heard.  We had to use our minds to imagine what the band looked like.  We made up mini-movies in our heads that went with the lyrics.  Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds had a different video for each mind that hummed it.

Then came the Midnight Special and MTV.  Suddenly, we weren’t forced to make this stuff up any longer.  The band was in our living room in all their sweaty, long-haired, torn-clothes glory.  Video Killed the Radio Star didn’t just kill a star.  It killed our need to imagine a story.  And our brains got stupid.

Today, we have no need to commit facts to our brains.  Let Me Google That For You is not only a modern catch phrase, but a fantastic site to use for those too lazy to even look stuff up for themselves.  6th graders arrive at middle school with few, if any, multiplication facts committed to memory.  Why would they?  They have calculators (or WolframAlpha).  There is no need to remember important dates or historical facts.  Wikipedia stands at the ready.

Henri Nouwen, my 2nd favorite author behind Kurt Vonnegut, Jr (what a combination), wrote that all decisions are laden with life and death.  The key to successful living is to make decisions that contain more life than death.

Technology comes with life and death.  We must integrate technology into the classroom.  It is the future, and the future is now.  We cannot ignore it.  But we must also realize the death that comes with it and be prepared to combat that with every sinew of our educational beings.

We have to find a way to allow the technology to spawn creativity again (see Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk on how education is killing creativity).  It is through creativity that critical thinking is born, enhanced, and maintained.

Is Google making us stupid?  Is technology destroying critical thinking?  What do you think?  Leave me a comment.

I like to listen to NPR in the mornings and afternoons.  I sometimes find the news to be refreshing, but always interesting.  Today’s feature was on the way Nielsen is falling behind in the way it calculates viewership for television shows.  The move to watching TV on Tivo, Hulu, and other media outlets might just be making Nielsen’s ratings obsolete.  Currently, Nielsen is not doing much, if anything, to calculate the eyeballs viewing a show in these formats.

But Tivo and Hulu can.

They can tell viewership based on time watched, commercials watched and fast-forwarded, and more.  To do this, they have to look at a show over time. People don’t watch these shows on the nights they air.  Viewers have found a way to watch when they want to, as long as they want to, in as many snippets as they want to, and they fast-forward through parts that are boring.  What we often forget is that everything we do on Tivo and Hulu is being watched by someone.  Every log-in is tracked by our IP address, and that tells them (if nothing else) where we live.

We shouldn’t be surprised that we are watched so closely over time.  Groceries stores and big box stores have done this for years.  Did you really think they gave you that discount card to save you money?  Think again.  With a discount card they have your demographic data and track every purchase your make whether you have a credit card or not.  Using these cards stores determine what products are selling.  They determine which aisles are working.  They determine which shelf is going gangbusters.  And, like advertisers, they charge their suppliers to get their products in those aisles and on those shelves.

So, in education, we do the same right?  We track student scores over time.  We look at how they behave in a certain class.  We look at interactions between students and teachers.  We calculate time on task every period.  We assess how one student relates to another.  We look closely at whether they are late or early to class or school.  If they are absent, we tabulate the reasons.  We factor in how many minutes or days they spend in In-School Suspension.  We look at whether they completed all of their homework, half, or none.  We’ve even looked at whether their parents are involved in their schooling or not.  And once we’ve looked at all these data points throughout the school year, we determine whether the student is working or not, learning or not, behaving or not.

What’s that you say?  We don’t do this?  Well, pray tell, what do we do?

We look at one test on one day for an entire year.

Let’s flip that around for a minute.

Let’s say that Nielsen decided to measure a show’s impact on one night only rather than an entire season.  Let’s hypothesize that Tivo and Hulu will do the same.  Or that grocery stores will determine the impact of their store layout by calculating customer purchases on one day out of the entire year.

Kind of silly isn’t it?

Don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not saying to throw away standardized tests.  They tell us a lot.  They can help us determine what we should teach or reteach.  They can show us if a student “gets it.”  We are doing this in the classroom with tests, quizzes, warm-ups, and more.  We are collecting many, many data points and using them to fine tune our classroom instructions.  We need these tests, but we need more as well.

If we truly want authentic assessment that measures not only the learning of children but the effectiveness of teachers, we are going to need a lot more information than what a standardized test can give us.

What is your opinion?  What data points would you gather to assess student learning?  Teacher effectiveness?  Leave me a comment.

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.

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.

I recently joined a group on Facebook called “I went to Lee in the 70s.”  I joined, and then I forgot about it for a few days.  Today I went back to look at the thread of conversations.  Most of the people there I simply don’t remember.  Many went and left before me (I started in 1976).  But it did bring back a lot of memories.

People were talking about going to chapel in the “old” auditorium, eating in the cafeteria, cruising the Village Mall (Yes, it was a living mall then), and more.  It made me rather nostalgic for a lot of things “Lee.”

I had a brand new 1976 Cutlass Supreme then, but I was jealous of a friend’s ‘69 convertible Cougar.  Nice!  I lived in Walker Hall (now Medlin) on the 2nd floor.  Practical jokes abounded.  Skipping classes was a norm.  Going up the mountain to Chilhouee was a necessity.

There are a lot of “bad” things I remember about Lee.  Girls were not allowed to wear slacks on campus.  We weren’t supposed to go see movies.  Chapel was required 4 times a week.  I’ve never liked community bathrooms.  You know, the normal stuff.

Then there are the things I really liked.  I loved Dr. Boone’s class on Psalms.  I believe we had our first year there together: me as a student and he as faculty.  I adored both Drs. French and was privileged to have the Mrs. Dr. French for The Bible as Literature.  I still talk about some of those lectures to this day.  I liked the fact that my Christian Ethics professor gave me an A- on a paper I wrote where I specifically chose a totally inappropriate topic on purpose.  He didn’t stay long as I recall.

I loved the fact that the friends I made in the dorm turned me on to Peter Frampton, Boston, Michael Omartian, 2nd Chapter of Acts, Fleetwood Mac and more.  Some of the best music I’ve ever heard, even to this day.

On balance, I have a lot more good memories than bad ones.  But it makes me wonder….

Ten or twenty years from now, what memories will my students today have about my class?  Our school?  Their experience?

Last Sunday I visited my oldest daughter and her family near Nashville.  I drove up to take part in my newest grandbaby’s…er…grandSON’s dedication service at their church.  They have always gone to a progressive, somewhat charismatic church, so I was not surprised when her email giving directions also included a disclaimer that earplugs were available at the information counter in the lobby (they were not needed, by the way).

You couldn’t have planned a better juxtaposition if you tried.  When we turned onto the road for the church, to our right sat a very formal chuch-looking Methodist church with its stained glass and tall, skyward steeple.  Grace Center sat opposite in an old school building.  Both churches seemed to have rather full parking lots, so it was obvious one wasn’t really in competition with the other.

We walked into Brittany’s church and found a very warm, friendly atmosphere.  People were genuinely wanting to help us find our way around.  Rooms were decorated beautifully, and the Christian Education closet was stocked plentifully.  There was a small reception planned for all the families who were taking part in the dedication.  Again, everyone smiled and talked and generally seemed pleased to be there.

I immediately knew I liked the place.

It wasn’t until I walked into the sanctuary that I really knew the place had something for everyone.  There were old and young mingling together.  Blacks and whites and Hispanics and more were seated together.  Teens gathered around the front stage in their torn jeans and hip-hop hats.  Starbucks cups were everywhere.  The band looked like they might have been playing down on Broadway the night before (how could you do anything in Nashville and NOT have great music?).  People walked around in high heels, cowboy boots, sneakers, bare feet, sandals, and more.

The pastor began the service by asking people to NOT gather around the stage in a great mosh-pit of worship (OK, my words, not his) in order to leave room for the families who’s babies were being dedicated.  After that part of the service concluded, young and old alike came down in front of the stage to dance and sing as the band played melodious worship songs that built layer upon layer as the sounds of instruments and voices built to a great crescendo of worship and then backed away again to leave people room to meditate on the experience of it all.

A man got up to make announcements and spoke with a beautiful Irish brogue and maneuvered through the slides of announcements on his iPhone.  The pastor was in jeans with his shirt untucked sipping water from a plastic water bottle until time to speak.  His message was clean, clear, concise, and entirely personal.  And his call to action at the end resulted in people simply not wanting to leave the place as they searched for ways to fill a hunger for God he had so eloquently placed before them.

This, to me, was church.  Ecclessia, the called out ones.  The community of faith that springs from all walks of life.  There were no socio-economic boundaries.  No racial divides.  No mutterings about not getting to sing a particular style of song (yes, we even sang a hymn somewhere in there).  I had never been before, but I immediately felt at home.  It was that same feeling of acceptance I have felt at every church Brittany and Dave have chosen to attend.

I came away wondering how to translate that acceptance and tolerance to my classroom.  How could I get kids to just accept one another without all the drama that comes with middle school years?  How could I plan my lessons so that I truly have something for everyone?  And, most important, how could I get that band to play in my classroom everyday?

Let me begin this post with a disclaimer: I did not have a successful Black Friday.  I ventured out at 4 AM to drive an hour to a store in order to purchase one item that was not available in my state.  So, Black Friday was more like Bleak Friday to me.  However, I tried to pay attention during my travails, and here is something I noticed.

I stood outside Office Max in Knoxville for an hour and a half with a handful of people waiting to see what wonderful electronic deals they had.  The deal I was looking for wasn’t in their sale paper, but I had seen it online.  That was my mistake.  Anyway, we stood there in the windy cold and chatted while we watched the employees readying the store for our grand entrance.

About 30 minutes before the store opened, the manager came out and informed us that she and a couple of other employees would be coming through the crowd handing out pull tickets for whatever sale items they came to purchase.  She thought that would be fair and stop the crowd from pushing and shoving to be first in line.  She was right.

Three employees started mingling through the crowd making small talk, asking what they wanted, and giving out bright red pull tickets.  People were smiling and chatting back.  Suddenly, the atmosphere changed.  Everyone calmed down.  We enjoyed the wait.

Later, after I had exhausted several other stops to no avail, I wandered through the West Town Mall for a bit.  As I entered Dillard’s through the ladies’ fragrance section, one of the associates yelled loudly to the others, “You get double sales credit on all __________ fragrances today, so sell, sell, sell!”  Yes, she yelled that in front of all the customers walking through her section.  I could not get out of Dillard’s fast enough.

Two customer service experiences.  The Office Max / Dillard’s experience spoke to me about my classroom.  You wouldn’t have expected anything different would you?

I can hear some teachers yelling out in their heads, “We’ve got these SPIs to get through today so teach, teach, teach!”  I can almost feel the cringe that comes across the minds of kids who need something different than that.  How would it transform my teaching to offer individual pull tickets for kids each day?

I wondered how much I could cater to each student’s individual needs.  Not desires.  Not likes or dislikes.  Needs.  What pull tickets could I put in their expectant hands each day that ensure they would get that for which they came?  Maybe they don’t even know they need it.  Some need me teach.  Some just need me to smile, or make small talk, or just pay attention.

What is the customer service experience in your classroom?  Have you settled for teaching?  Or are you meeting the needs of kids?

On Saturday I made the plunge into the wonderfully wacky world of Macs.  It had been a long time coming.  I pretty much had my ducks in a row thanks to the help of a great PLN devoted to all things Mac.  I knew going in that I wanted the Pro, but wasn’t sure what screen size I wanted.  I knew I wanted to up the memory.  I knew what hard drive size I could live with (pardon ending that sentence in a preposition…did adding these parentheses fix that officially?).  I took a deep breath, tried to hide the fear of the unknown, and stepped into the store.

Wow, it was busy.  There were people everywhere.  As my eyes adjusted to the ambient lights of dozens of LCD screens, I noticed people standing around in red t-shirts.  A lot of people.  Immediately I knew I wasn’t going to have a problem being served.

I was right.  In less than one minute I had a sales associate asking me if he could help me in any way.  I told him up front what I was there for, and that I needed a few things explained to me.  I asked about the differences between the 13″ and 15″ Pro (the 15″ has 2 video cards if you’re interested), what software comes pre-loaded, why Apple never seemed to have a sale that amounted to anything (oh yes I did), what One on One was, why I needed Apple Care, and a host of other questions.

The sales associate looked me right in the eye while answering all my questions.  He didn’t go beyond what I was asking.  In other words, he didn’t try to over sell me.  He paid attention.  He was focused.  He was committed to his product.  He didn’t try to knock PCs or Microsoft.  Why did he need to do that?

He did make one point that stuck with me.  He said that PCs were basically designed around functions.  It was a good tool to write documents, crunch numbers, and the like.  Macs, on the other hand, were designed for the experience.  Everything was designed with the user experience in mind.  I had to agree.  Just touching the keyboard of a Mac, or looking at the sleek lines of its aluminum case, or watching the list of programs in the dock rise and fall in magnified glory as you run the mouse over them is an experience.

He said one other thing that I picked up on immediately (and made fun of as soon as I could).  He said that Apple users identified themselves as a sort of “family.”  I immediately made a remark about being more of a cult.  He didn’t take the bait.  He said something like, “If by cult you mean that we are all focused on the needs of one another and reach out to help each other at a moment’s notice, then yes, maybe cult is a good word.”  I immediately thought of the DEN Family of which I am a part.  Some see us as sort of cultish too I suppose.  Given this definition they wouldn’t be wrong.

I thought about both of those things on the hour-long drive home.  Experience and Family.  Questions swirled in my head.  What experience do the kids in my classes have?  What does “family” mean to them?  Is family a good thing?  Is the experience positive?  How can I make sure both are positive things in the minds of the middle schoolers I touch every day?  Do I give as much attention to an individual student in my class as this sales associate did for me in the Apple store?  Isn’t that kid’s education experience more important than the way I feel using a laptop?

Only the kids in my classes can tell me about their experience.  Before they get gone at Christmas break, I think I’ll ask them.

I’m a PC.  At least, that’s what I’ve been all my life.  I learned how to use a computer on a PC running Windows 3.1 and another running DOS.  Oh what fun those days were!  I’ve been through Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, and (ugh) Vista.  And now, just when Microsoft might have it closest to right with Windows 7 (doesn’t that number seem like a giant step backwards from all the others?), I am about to embark on a new life path.  I’m about to be a Mac.

i’ve been spending some time looking at laptops and considering options.   I’ve checked in with my PLN to get some ideas about what I should buy (probably the 15″ Macbook Pro if I can afford it).  I’ve tried to see where I can get the best deal (not an easy task with Apple).  I think I’ve done my homework pretty well.  I feel prepared to go out and make this purchase.  I know that whatever I do in the next few days will impact me for the next several years.  It has to be “right.”

Education operates a lot like that.  Kids in are given opportunities to explore who they are.  I’m not talking about whether they are smart or dumb, cute or ugly, fat or skinny (take the worst of all those and you have how I felt in junior high and high school).  I’m talking about whether they are an artist, an engineer, an accountant, a doctor, a lawyer, and more.  The curricula should not only instruct them on reading, writing, math, science, and social studies.  It should be experimental.

My youngest went through high school determined to be a lawyer.  After taking classes, talking to teachers, exploring options, and discovering herself, she changed her mind and wants to be a nurse.  I thought she would be successful at either endeavor.  But she took the time to discover who she is, and that led to what she wants.

Benchmark tests didn’t tell her that.  The TCAP Writing Assessment didn’t tell her.  Essays didn’t.  Algebra, geometry, and trig didn’t.  Biology helped, but it didn’t do it either.  So what made her decide to change the course of her life in mid-stream?

Relationships.

She had a fantastic guidance counselor.  A wonderful band director and his wife.  A caring principal.  Awesome teachers who watched out for her. (Yes, that’s a shout out to all the faculty and staff at Walker Valley High School).  They didn’t “tell” her what she should do.  Rather, they listened.  They chatted.  They discussed.  They let her explore.  Eventually she knew.

I have a great Personal Learning Network.  All this time I thought I was a PC.  I hate PCs.  I hate the blue screen of death.  I hate viruses and trojans.  I hate browser crashes.  I think my PLN knew all along I was never meant to be a PC.  I think they knew there was a Mac inside just waiting for the right time to surface.  I love Macs.  I love how easy they are to use.  I love the creativity that went into designing them.

I have a great PLN that helped me come to a conclusion about who I am and what I need to do.

My daughter had great teachers and administrators to help her do the same.

Who do the students at your school have?