Pockets of Change

Last night we held an overview session for parents of next year’s grade 8, 9 and 10 students, all of whom will be receiving tablets on Day One of the 2009 – 2010 school year. That means all students in grades 8 – 12, around 300 students, and over 100 staff toting around instant access to information and the chance to transform teaching and learning.

As part of the presentation, our MSHS Principal showed the clip “Learning to Change – Changing to Learn” from the Consortium for School Networking. I hadn’t seen the clip since we showed it to our first group of parents last year. After a year of teaching in 1:1 classrooms, it was amazing to realize the reflective nature of the internal monologue inside my head as I watched this clip. Some quotes that were particularly noteworthy:

• The student is at the center and school is just one of the places where they learn. (1:53)
• We’ve got a classroom system when we could have a community system. (2:23)
• Start with teachers. If I want my students to be making global connections, then I’m going to start with my teachers first. (2:48)
• The coin of the realm will be: do you know how to find information, do you know how to validate it, do you know how to synthesize it, do you know how to leverage it, do you know how to communicate it, do you know how to collaborate with it, do you know how to problem solve with it? (4:11)
• It’s the death of education, but the dawn of learning. (4:55)

It’s not really new, per se, but it certainly fits into the theme of things here at Pockets of Change: an ultra-lite blogging platform. What could be simpler than click-and-post? Yep, I am definitely talking about a small amount of change that can make a big difference.

I’m referring to a new blogging sharing platform called Posterous. Yes, I realize I called it “blogging” in the title of the post, but on 2nd thought, I’m not sure that it’s “true” blogging. It’s really just a place to post and share things, without all the bells and whistles. If you are an educator who has been thinking about blogging but not sure where to start, or maybe you’re intimidated by all the “techie” stuff associated with blogging, Posterous is for you. Heck, even if you’re not an educator and you just want a quick-and-dirty way to share stuff with friends or family, it’s worth checking out.

If I were new to all this Web2.0 tech stuff for learning (which I’m clearly not, but play along, now), I think that Posterous would be the hands-down simplest place to start. I mean, seriously — you don’t even need an ACCOUNT. All you need to do is send stuff to them from your email address and suddenly you’ve created a page.  I don’t think it gets any easier than this! They say on their site it’s dead simple, and they’re not kidding.

Here’s what I did to try it out:

1. Went to their website.
2. Clicked the link where it says Step 2: email anything to post@posterous.com.
3. My GMail account opened, from which I sent a very simple message to post@posterous.com.
4. Within seconds, I received an email telling me that my post had been created.
5. Clicking on the links brought me to my new post in my new and ultra-sleek blog.

The lovely and simple email message from Posterous:

And here is the actual new post:

Now if that ain’t a pocket o’change, I dunno what is. Seriously — try it. You have nothing to lose but 30 seconds. It really couldn’t be easier.

Nobody will argue that Barack Obama is the first Internet President of the United States, much like JFK was the first television president. But now that the donations have been collected and the election has been won, how will he and his administration continue to harness the power of the Internet?

www.change.gov

Not long after McCain conceded the race, this site was up and running. The Administration-Elect has a blog. The Presiden-Elect is asking me, you, anybody, everybody to

“share your vision for what America can be, where President-Elect Obama should lead this country. Where should we start together?”

Talk about democracy in action! The Obama Administration is actively seeking input¹ directly from concerned citizens: no Senatorial filters or Congressional messengers. And it’s seeking it in a way that is most likely to appeal to the change-agents of the future: our students. In 8 years, students who are currently in Grade 6 will be given the right to vote. But they no longer have to wait for their voices to be heard. Long before they are granted the power of the ballot, our students have been given the power of the Internet.

Of course, it remains to be seen how this information will be acted upon. I, for one, am grateful for the opportunity to participate.

¹ – People talk debate about technology being transformative. In the ‘old days’ (i.e. before November 4, 2008) students used to send letters (I sent mine to Reagan when I was in 4th grade!) or emails to the White House uninvited, with little hope of them being read and even less hope of a response.

Powered by ScribeFire.

If you teach literature or language at any grade level, you probably already know about the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), an American-based organization under the International Reading Association umbrella.   Perhaps you already know about the ReadWriteThink partnership between these two organizations.  Or perhaps you don’t, in which case you might want to read further.

ReadWriteThink aims to “provide educators and students with access to the highest quality practices and resources in reading and language arts instruction through free, Internet-based content.”  They have several resources for teachers which are outstanding, but the one I feel most relevant to our use of technology in the classroom are the Student Materials.

• Need your students to map out or plan their story before they start writing?  Try the interactive plot diagram as a graphic organizer.

• Analyzing characters?  Perhaps they might like to make Character Trading cards — particularly fun for Elementary or Middle School students. 
• For High School students, the Webbing Tool might be a useful way to hyper-link ideas and make connections for any kind of project. 

There are oodles of others.  Lucky for you, the good people at ReadWriteThink have made many of them adjustable for different grade levels.  Clicking on any of the links above or in the general Student Materials page will bring you first to a place that lists all the lessons available to use with the tool, and of course the tool itself.   I personally prefer to browse through the list of tools to find an appropriate tool for what I’m using in my classroom, but you might prefer ReadWriteThink’s lesson structure.

NOTE: a version of this post first appeared on an internal blog at our school as was inspired by a post by Jeff Utecht.

With all due respect to Gil Scot-Heron… 

True revolutions are not created or planned. They are organic: they arise when the needs of the masses (students, teachers, and even administrators) outstrip what the dominant establishment (the monolithic entity of ‘Education’) is able to supply.

We are on the precipice of a revolution.  There is a growing number of teachers who realize there is a better way.  There is a change in the demographics of both teachers and administrators as innovators and early adopters of these new technologies take up positions of responsibility within schools. There are groups of students who are becoming more aware of the vast educational possibilities that collaborative technologies allow.

There are two ways for this revolution to be truly initiated: either a watershed event a la the Boston Tea Party, or through a methodical plan of actively searching out the agents of change, slowly proselytizing by example and converting whoever we can whenever we can.  In either case, the goal is to create the critical mass necessary to evoke true reform and revolution in the sphere of education.

Once 50% +1 of a school or even a department are using collaborative technologies in a meaningful and productive way, can the remaining population afford not to? Once the teachers in these trailblazing departments or schools move on to their next destination, as is always the case in international schools, will they willingly go back to the way things were?  These teachers then become the messengers of change as they enter their new schools, bringing with them their expertise and the power of their personal network.

This revolution will be a grass-roots, bottom-up shift from teachers who understand the power of Web 2.0. There should not, can not, and will not be shift in educational philosophy decreed by the powers. That’s not the way revolution works.

Photo Credit: localsurfer