When Our Students Go Public

I've been following the conversation going on at Wes Fryer's blog, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, for a few days now, ever since his daughter's video response to President Obama's education speech was posted on YouTube. It has created quite a stir, and as it approaches 100,000 views, it makes me think that as I keep encouraging my students to publicize their work, one day soon we'll be facing the same kinds of issues and questions.


One of the most important is managing comments. Many of us understand that inviting comments is a necessary part of the writing process -- that simply publishing work is not the end of the process, but only a step. And, most of us understand that it is important to moderate those comments is necessary to filter out the spam, the vulgarity, and those that seek to vandalize. However, as Wes is finding out, that when a video or a blog post goes "viral," moderating the comments and protecting the younger students from obscenity and disparaging remarks can easily become a full time job.

I'm suddenly thinking about my students and their Edublog accounts that we'll be setting up in the next few days. As the class administrator, I'll take on the responsibility of moderating the comments for everyone -- one, to help teach them all how to comment effectively, and two, to protect them from things that maybe they aren't ready to deal with yet. At four full classes of students, it's a lot of comment moderating, and I'm not sure how I'll even begin to manage.

However, the point is that I'm going to try. Like Wes and Sarah have done, we need to put the work out there and learn from what comes next. Sitting back and wondering "what if" will not help us or our students. If things don't work out, I'll go back and rethink my goals. But, if things go well, then...I don't know. It'll be great, I'm sure.

Summer as Prewriting

This week President Barack Obama is starting his family vacation in Martha's Vineyard, just a week after we finished our own little family vacation on the Cape. And, while it was pretty impressive to see the Secret Service helicopters cruising down Route 28, it made me imagine that just like us teachers, the President is never really "on vacation." If you're the one of the most powerful leaders in the world, can you seriously take a break and tune out? I know that when I'm away from my classroom, I never really stop thinking about it. I can only imagine what it's like for the President.

As always, this summer for me has been about thinking, planning, and brainstorming -- even though some would say that I've just been on vacation. Just like we tell our students to make time to activate their thinking before a project or a writing, we teachers need to set aside time to assess the previous year and contemplate how to adjust for the upcoming year. It's an ongoing process, but one that is necessary to improve our instruction.

Aside from reading a whole bunch of YA novels, attending a training or two, keeping up with my PLN, reading a lot of professional articles and blogs, and crunching some student data, here are five things I've been thinking about this summer:

Using Student Blogging as a Regular Activity -- One theme that will be guiding much of the work in our building this year is to help students reach an audience greater than themselves. Blogging seems like a natural path to this end. Allowing students to write for each other and for people outside of their classroom community seems much more important and authentic than just writing for me or for themselves. My concern is how to manage and provide guidance and feedback for 100 student blogs. I'd like to think it's no different from a stack of papers, but I know differently.

Getting Students to Read More -- It's been a long time coming, but I'm finally getting around to losing the idea that I have to direct everything that students read in class. Giving students choices and helping them make informed decisions about what they read seems a lot more appealing lately. Ultimately, this is about differentiating instruction to meet each student's individual needs, but the reality is that I need to read a whole lot more in order to be a more effective guide to learning.

Helping Other Content Area Teachers Incorporate More Writing Activities and Projects -- It drives me crazy when a student's writing in my class looks vastly different than in someone else's class. We should all be on the same page -- teachers and students included. A student shouldn't expect to write differently in a science class, and a science teacher shouldn't accept lower standards. "This isn't English" and "I'm not a writing teacher" aren't excuses.

Working With Half the Time -- This year will be the first time in eight years that I won't be teaching a double block. I admit it will be quite a challenge to work in just 50 minutes, and I'm a little worried that I'll lose a lot of that one-to-one time that I have with individual students and groups during an activity. And, what about that buffer time to troubleshoot when technology goes awry...

Empowering Students -- I've never been one for doling out classroom "jobs," but I'm thinking that this year will be different. I've read a lot about using social media to open up the classroom to the outside world this summer, and I think that there is a lot of great learning potential there. So, my "baby step" into this is to develop at least two classroom jobs. One student will be the classroom blogger, who will summarize the day's lesson and post it to the classroom blog. The other job will be a classroom microblogger, who will be responsible for posting live updates of the class to Twitter. With hope, these will take off and provide students, parents, and other teachers, additional resources to their learning.

Of course, these are only a few of the things that are swirling around in my head right now. Still, they are the ones that are rising to prominence. And, like any good prewriting session, I know that the next step, the first draft, means to jump in and get messy. Throughout the year I'll continue to revise and edit, and in June I'm sure I'll have a more perfect draft.

Taking Off the Training Wheels

We live on an amazing cul-de-sac in a quiet neighborhood teeming with elementary school aged children. On most days there are about a half dozen kids out riding bikes, playing pick-up hockey, or just doing goofy kid stuff. But last October when my then four-year-old son had his feelings hurt by another boy from down the street, I went into protective daddy mode.

You see five months earlier I bought him his first training-wheeled bike. It was a little big, though, and he had trouble putting both feet on the ground while sitting on it. Still, I thought, it would be ok because he'd have the whole summer to get used to riding with training wheels, and by next spring, when he'd grown a little, I'd take them off.

Well, he "went to town" on his bike. The first day alone he rode for nearly four hours straight - without a break for lunch or the potty, and he continued to ride it every day, faster and better each time. He learned how to pedal standing up, how to make a long skid, and by the end of summer, how to go over a small jump - all on his training wheels. Neighborhood parents kept asking me, "He's doing real well. When are those training wheels coming off?" Each time I stuck to my rationalization about safety, and his feet touching the ground, and not wanting to rush him.

That all changed in those weeks leading up to Halloween when another little boy (also four and NOT on training wheels) blocked the ramp and declared, as only preschoolers can, that boys who were on training wheels were not allowed to go over jumps. My son cried for an hour.

The next day I took off the training wheels.

Much to my surprise, he just started riding. He didn't fall. He hardly even wobbled. It took exactly three minutes for him to learn to ride a real two-wheeled bike. Within thirty minutes, he was racing another girl, standing up on the pedals and skidding to a stop across the imaginary finish line.

Clearly he was ready to ride on two wheels, and apparently had been ready for quite some time. I was the one who was nervous and had been holding him back.

I called my wife and told her to hurry home to bear witness to the new milestone that had been reached. Of course he crashed into her car as soon as she pulled into the driveway. But, he got right back up, and with a slight nudge in the right direction, he was back to riding, and he hasn't stopped since.

For me, and my guess is probably for a lot of you, this past year has also been about taking off those training wheels - exploring the world with a new sense of freedom and opportunity, and providing students with new and exciting ways for them grow and learn. And, as my son proved to me, we've been ready for quite a while.

Video Killed the Middle School Star

I've known that feeling. The same kind of feeling I have when I press "publish post," or when I have to present in front of a large group of teachers, or when my wife drags me out to an empty dance floor, or when I had poison ivy on my face on the first day of middle school...

I hadn't considered that sensation would be something the students would have felt, too. Nothing like a Skype video conference to stir the pot.

For the past few weeks, my classes have been reading Red Scarf Girl, a memoir of the Cultural Revolution in China that began in 1966. During that time I set up many different activities to help them comprehend the novel and make meaning from it. Students read and discussed in small groups -- both student led and teacher directed. They used reflective writing exercises to ask questions and explore themes, and they connected the story's events and ideas to experiences in their own lives and to other novels.

Along the way we hooked up with another 6th grade teacher (thank you Twitter) and her classes from Cary, NC for a project in which we uploaded new content to the book's page on Wikipedia. For the most part our classes worked indpendently from each other and never really interacted. Certainly, the students were aware they were writing for a larger, more public audience, but the activity didn't seem much different than anything else we had done throughout the year. Probably the greatest amount of collaboration and interaction between the schools was between us teachers who were setting it up.

Skype changed all that.

As a culminating activity we set up a video class discussion via Skype. That morning things started our as planned. At 8:15am we popped up the feeds, and instantly our classes, one in Massachusetts and one in North Carolina, were staring face to face.

Without warning, my kids froze.

One of the most talkative students couldn't say the name of our school or where we are located. Another student, one of the most boisterous, reverted to speech so babyish, it would have made my toddler blush. The best adjective that another student could come up with to describe our community was "ghetto." Not what I would have ever dreamed would come out of the mouth of the one student in class who's done missionary work overseas. There was nervous chatter and laughter from some, while others simply became silent. It was as if my entire class had been reborn from giant alien space pods straight out of a 1950s B movie.



Now, of course looking back at the video, I'll admit that in general things went really well. Several of my students stepped up with some very thoughtful and interesting points, carrying our side of the discussion, and making it more than a worthwhile endeavor. And, I guess in the bigger picture, I'd go so far as to say it was wildly successful. We were able to do many of those things we always talk about -- use the web to remove classroom walls, engage in meaningful discussion across great distances, participate in authentic learning experiences. Still though, I had much higher expectations for my students' participation, and I couldn't help but wonder why such academic stars failed to shine as I know they can.

It was that nervousness. They didn't want to look silly. They thought that the other class used "big words" and was really smart. They didn't want to be perceived as not knowing what they were talking about, and so they clung tightly to old adage, "better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." Really? Is that all it takes to shake a student's confidence? A video feed?

It makes me believe that these kinds of authentic interactions are even more important than ever. Students need opportunities to practice communicating not only with their peers, not only in publishable writing activities, but in ways that foster discussion, collaboration, and communication that stretches students into unfamiliar territory to places where their status quo might be disrupted. They need to become comfortable with the consquenses of publishing their posts, to speak their minds in face to face conversations, and to be the first ones out on the dance floor.

Rewriting the Plan

Today was one of those days when technology threatened to undermine a whole lot of thinking and planning.

"What are we going to do now, Mr. Olivo?" one student whined predictably.

"Everyone back to the classroom. We'll rearrange the room and set up our conversations in groups," I responded while quickly rewriting my lesson plans in my head.

"You mean like the old way?"

Exactly.

I've been thinking and reading a lot lately about teaching and learning - well, more than usual, that is, and with everything I've come across, there is one common thread. We are in the middle of a shift from an old way of doing things to a new way of delivering instruction and providing access to the curriculum for students. And, clearly technology is an important component.

I think many teachers and principals, and schools and districts are more than aware of the need to start including more current technology in their schools. However, many seem to be caught up in a frenzy to upgrade our classrooms and schools by latching on to the latest technological trends without really understanding exactly how things will be different or better.

Think about this statement from Will Richardson in his blog post "So What is the Future of Schools?".

"We have to first change our understanding of what it means to teach in this moment. That doesn’t mean than we throw out all of the good pedagogy that we’ve developed over the years and make everything about technology. But it does mean, I think, that technology has to be a part of the way we do our learning business these days."

Read Evan Abby's post about common pitfalls with technology professional development, the 21st century schools report from the Ontario Public Schools, or the many comments from a host of blog posts out there -- "Open Letter to a 21st Century School" and Scott McLeod's "Help Wanted - Building a New Secondary School" to name a few. There is a common theme to all of them.

It's about changing the way that we teach rather than adding technology to what we do.

Schools not only believe that they need the latest and greatest instructional technology, but they also believe that it must be distributed equitably among the classrooms. This is another trap. Wes Fryer writes:

As educational leaders, we often want and strive for systemic, scalable change across entire organizations. Educational technology innovation generally tends to take place in isolated pockets, however...
ISTEConnects.org "Focusing on Classrooms Rather Than Schools"

His article also cites a post from Clarence Fisher about the dangers of spending thousands of dollars on technology to create uniform classrooms where teachers are forced to adapt to the new technology that is available to them rather than allow teachers to individualize their own presentation styles and methods. The majority of comments in a Ben Grey post support this idea, as well.

Again, it's about changing the way that we teach rather than adding technology to what we do.

It's a Really Expensive Piece of Equipment, Fred

Since the end of the election season last fall, I've been missing the SNL political sketches. In a word -- hysterical. Amy Poehler shooting a moose dead in front of the real Sarah Palin? Fred Armisen as Barack Obama engaging a miniature, imaginary Joe the Plumber during one of the debates? Tina Fey? Are you kidding me? As the kids say, "lol!"

One particular episode highlighted a segment that made fun of the growing trend of using Smartboards as part of network and cable news coverage. It pointed out how mesmerized everyone has become by the technology, and how we seem to have forgotten that it's the content that matters. It made me think about how we use technology here in schools.



Lately, just like the news networks, we've also been installing Smartboards to enhance our deliveries, but I have to say, I'm not a big fan. It's not because I don't think they're a great tool - they are. It's just that in a school setting, they're often not really used to their potential. In fact, I'd bet in most cases, teachers are using their Smartboards as fancy $3000 screens to project a PowerPoint, show a video clip, or surf through a few web sites. That's not Smartboard technology - that's projector technology. What are people doing with their Smartboards that they can't already do with a notebook computer and a projector?

In my classroom, I opted to go with an Avervision 280 document camera and an NEC projector. Pointed down at my teaching table, the document camera shows whatever I put underneath - text from a handout or a book, notes that I write, student work that I want to share, or demonstrations that students make. In that sense it works like a combination of an overhead and an opaque projector. It also has VGA inputs so I can plug in my laptop and show what's on my screen - the Internet, Word documents, pictures, video - what have you. I have a VCR and a DVD connected to the projector so that I can show film clips, instructional videos, live television, and video feeds from the library. I can easily move between all of these with the press of a button, and I can do it at roughly one quarter of the cost of a Smartboard. Tell me I can't do anything with this setup that someone can do with a Smartboard - except maybe draw a green cat on the screen with my finger.

Fun With Ustream.tv

I'm finding it harder and harder to make time for the day-to-day activities of school with all these cool tools and gadgets out there. Honestly, it's the end of the day, and it's sunny and warm out. Why would I want to grade when I can play around with my latest distraction -- Ustream.

Ustream is a great site that lets you stream live video over the internet. More than that, though, it also provides a chat feature so that you can facilitate a discussion about what is being filmed. There are a host of other great features to it as well, but for now, I think it's just great to be able to open up the classroom to a worldwide audience.

So, after a few practice runs, I finally tried it out with my students for real. Each year during our Greek mythology and Ulysses unit, my classes put together plays as a culminating activity. Sometimes, if there is enough time, they are able to write their own missing chapter to The Adventures of Ulysses. However, other times, like this year, they work in small groups of five and six to prepare short one-act myths from a book I have. The students prepare costumes and props, memorize their lines, and do just about everything short of selling tickets to their performances. At show time, on the day before vacation, we invite the entire team to watch the productions, and each year it goes really well.

However, this year, I decided to use Ustream to broadcast the performances live so that parents could also enjoy the plays. And, I have to say that aside from a few sound issues, it went really well -- especially considering that I was filming with a $40 webcam instead of a proper video camera. Here they are below:



So, the next day was even more fun. Our district hosted a Blue Ribbon Conference for teaching and learning, and many of us participated in Ustream backchannels. This one in particular was a question and answer session hosted by Will Richardson. The feed allowed people from all over the world to tune in and join the conversation. Another feed allowed me to sit in one session and watch and participate in another simultaneously.

If harnessed appropriately, this type of technology set up in a classroom environment can open up a tremendous amount of possibilities. Students could learn from the conversations in the room and they could learn from each other with the chat feature. Parents and other classrooms could watch and join in on the conversations to extend the discussion beyond the classroom walls making for a wider perspective and richer discussion.

If any of you out there have experimented with Ustream or are regularly using it as a classroom tool, let me know how it's working.