It is one of my strongest tenants that we should emphasize more creativity in schools. Well, let's change that a little bit. We should stop killing creativity so rampantly in schools (especially middle and high schools).
If high school teachers could spend all of their inservice and professional development time in a first grade classroom, we would learn far more than we do in our usual conferences.
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The end of an ear. In the UK, the last typewriter ever to be produced there just shipped out. I'm sure it's not the last typewriter that will ever be made. (In fact, Kevin Kelley has an interesting theory that happens to be true about technology: it never goes away. He offers this challenge: choose any tool or implement or item. And you will find it still being produced somewhere in the world today. He actually had a Sears catalog from 1900 and a skeptic took it and had a series of students scour it for items that were no longer being produced. And they couldn't find one single item not still being produced!) But it's an interesting point.
The end of an era indeed. Now, if we could just also, somehow, usher out the old style of teaching (lectures and worksheets and no student thinking) too.
Speaking of that, yesterday in College Comp 2 we discovered an interesting idea: what if students were allowed to act like actual consumers?
What if teachers had to keep their students interested and engaged (gasp . . . entertained?) instead of having the luxury of a captive audience?
No one - God forbid - walks into Wal-Mart and thinks, Okay, I'm going to shop here for 45 minutes and then head for the checkout.
No! If you don't like what's there or if you don't like what they have to offer, you get the hell out!
What if all classes were like that?
What if a teacher who does the old (tired) lecture and drill and kill method of teaching and after 15 minutes, students had the option to get the hell out?
How many teachers would be left?
Would any still want to teach in such an environment?
Wouldn't that be interesting. Even if we had one day like that. Think of the wake up call that we'd have delivered to us!
Now, I know I'm going to an extreme here and I have many colleagues who would totally disagree with that. And I'm fine with that. What I'm really interested in is how that would change our view of teaching, just knowing the kids could get up and walk out.
Well, then I wouldn't be teaching, you argue. Maybe you shouldn't be.
Call me naive or just plain nuts, but I believe that kids want to be challenged. Yes, you say. That's easy for you, when all you do is teach College Comp courses to our best students.
True, I have to admit. But even my Lit and Lang 9R kids will read thoroughly and work hard when I engage them (such as when I had them create blogs and free read for their Sticky-Note book report).
So don't tell me it can't happen. Would it be a struggle and a hell of a lot of work? Of course. And we'd lose them some days no matter what. But it'd be a wake up call.
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Here is an interesting article on how MOOCs (massive open online courses) are changing higher education.
What I like about this opening paragraph --
"Once you see this pattern—a new story rearranging people’s sense of the possible, with the incumbents the last to know—you see it everywhere. First, the people running the old system don’t notice the change. When they do, they assume it’s minor. Then that it’s a niche. Then a fad. And by the time they understand that the world has actually changed, they’ve squandered most of the time they had to adapt. It’s been interesting watching this unfold in music, books, newspapers, TV, but nothing has ever been as interesting to me as watching it happen in my own backyard. Higher education is now being disrupted; our MP3 is the massive open online course (or MOOC), and our Napster is Udacity, the education startup.
Is that it's perfectly applicable to high school teaching as well. How many of the older generation look damn at the students and think, these damn kids. Or think that their practices, which have worked well for 25 years, are just fine for this generation too (even though there's a ton of evidence that shows how the millennials do not learn the same way as any generation before them).
We all have to be prepared for upgrades.
Just think what this could mean for us at the secondary level?
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Six ways for Teachers to Effectively Use Social Media
I've tried to use the first way (hold virtual office hours) today as I'm home with Kenzie.
The second way (live-tweet lectures) sure could have come in handy yesterday. We had a graded discussion based on this video from Seth Godin
So many students wanted to chime in - yet so little time for them all to add their thoughts - that I literally had students saying things like this when I finally called on them, "First, I think Isaac is on the right track . . . But Kylie also has a good point . . . and finally, Leandra misses a key point when she says . . ."
I wish that students could have live tweeted their comments to allow all students to express their thoughts without having to wait.
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What is the Best Education Related Book You Read This Year?
My vote goes to Don Tapscott's "Grown Up Digital." But there are many others: Seth Godin's "Linchpin." Penny Kittle's "Write Beside Them." Tom Brokaw's "That Used to be Us."
There's a game I like to play. I ask myself if I were to ever teach other to-be-teachers, what books would I have them read. This is what I've come up with --
Neil Postman "The End of Education."
Diane Ravitch "The Death and Life of the Great American School System."
Ken Robinson "The Element."
Seth Godin "Linchpin."
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I want to experiment with this in College Comp 2: All Discussions Happen via Twitter. Now, I don't know if all discussions should happen that way. I still maintain a good old face to face debate is a great experience, but when others don't get to hop into the fray, using Twitter is a great option. Plus, I have to admit that I've been involved in some seriously interesting discussions and debates via Twitter. Best of all, perhaps it would teach our students the proper way to have an online discussion - as opposed to just ranting or being offensive (just check out some of the comments on Youtube some time for true stupidity).
***** The Role of Pinterest in Education. How I love info graphs! This one even has a works cited at the bottom.
Courtesy of: WorldWideLearn.com
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Ten Steps to Building Employee Engagement.
What I like about these steps is that they can be applied directly to students.
Here are the steps:
1. Make engagement your mantra
2. Get social
3. Listen & listen more
4. Go for the gold
5. Care first
6. Fail forward faster and better
7. Take every opportunity to reinforce the foundation of your house
8. Learn and play forward
9. Generate enthusiasm
10. Feed hearts
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A most interesting youtube video on the history of education (with Sal Kahn)
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Finally,
Fifteen Ways to be a Smarter Teacher. Part 1
Fifteen Ways to be a Smarter Teacher. Part 2
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