Probably blocked by BESS, our beloved filter.  Incredibly well worth watching – at home if you have to.

My favorite part:

“This is what we need….  If you want to see what kids have learned – give them a project.  Dare them to show you what they can do with the work of their own “head, heart and hands”. That’s when you’ll get kids engaged.  That’s when you’ll get kids learning, and that’s when you’ll get kids who can change the world.

…and Technology needs to be like oxygen – ubiquitous, necessary & invisible.  We need to not think about it – it just needs to be there.”

The Schools We Need – Video

The Schools We Need – Slide Show

• iMovie is a great alternative…they could compose music with garage band (MACS) and add it to the movie.  Audacity is a program for PCs – similar to garage band .
• A Periodic Table of Visualization methods
• Create a website on thier topic
• Digital Storytelling and Reformning PowerPoint
• VoiceThread
• Animoto
• Flowgram
• PicLits
• GoAnimate
• Glogster

By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: May 27, 2008
The New York Times

Smith College, a women’s college in Northampton, Mass., and Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., will no longer require prospective students to submit SAT or ACT scores as part of their applications.

The number of colleges and universities where such tests are now optional — mostly small liberal-arts colleges — has been growing steadily as more institutions have become concerned about the validity of standardized tests in predicting academic success, and the degree to which test performance correlates with household income, parental education and race.

Some schools that have made standardized tests optional have found that they have attracted a more diverse student body, with no decline in academic ability.

It would be nice to think that colleges might start looking beyond what can be measured with a paper & pencil test. How much time would free up for projects you’ve always wanted to do if there were no college entrance exams? No NCLB? No Regents?

I do know that I feel sorry for both the teachers AND the students in the videos. I also wonder about the context of the videos. What IS actually going on? I feel particularly sad about the 2nd video. Is that teacher still working full time? She appears to be well past retirement age. Is she working because she can’t afford not to? Perhaps there is no health insurance for retirees in her district. Or is she a substitute who must work to supplement her social security, pay for medical bills etc.? I am always shocked when I hear our kids talking and realize that many of them regard old people as objects of derision. When did that happen? Don’t they have grandparents that they love?

Teachers need help and support. There needs to be a culture of respect built in the school, and that respect must go both ways – student to teacher AND teacher to student. Something is wrong in these schools. I know administrators are not 100% to blame. The whole school community (parents, students, teachers and administrators) needs to come together to make schools comfortable and safe places for students to learn and teachers to teach.

I did read one of the comments in Leader Talk which said “I think probably all of these classes would be just ecstatic about project based anything”. Our school has always been involved to a point in project based learning – but the projects don’t always have strong real-world relevance. It is that relevance, plus the elements of competition and collaboration, and the infusion of the digital tools kids love, that resonate and spur kids on to think creatively and really learn.

Our kids are good kids. Our teachers are good teachers. Our kids and teachers like and respect each other. But we need more relevant projects to get students to step out of their comfort zone and really THINK. That is why our 21st Century Learning committee is planning another REAL WORLD PROJECT. The challenge will be for students to design the way they want to learn. We are hoping to get 48 kids more engaged than ever. Those 48 kids will be a mix of abilities and grade levels. Teachers will act as coaches. I will be a neutral facilitator, there to act as a resource for all 4 teams of students. We hope that it will be as exciting as last year’s project. More so – since it is a subject near and dear to their hearts, AND they will have the opportunity to present their ideas to the Board of Education with hope of implementation of at least some of their ideas.

Most of all, I hope that we can eventually move this type of thinking beyond a once-a-year project, and infuse it throughout the school. The 1-teacher, 1-class, door-shut model should come to an end. It is not how people learn best – and it is certainly not how most people work in the real world.

And dare I say it? If some of those teachers had stepped away from their classrooms and collaborated with their librarian on a project – perhaps the kids would not act like prisoners? Teachers don’t have to do it alone. There is not just safety in numbers – there are exciting learning activities that can happen by collaborating with your librarian and your other colleagues.

Don’t shut the door. Let the world in.

Chris has a great blog going. I am enjoying his posts. And right now – he has saved me a ton of writing time. Ditto to everything he says.

“You’d better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone, For the times they are a changin’” by Joyce Valenza

Although this blog post is directed to school librarians – there is a lot that can be applied to the classroom. And definitely a lot for our “flat world” /school reform committee to consider. Pay close attention to the sections on “Options for student projects, learning”; “What we know about how learners learn”; and “Typical assessment”.

We are preparing kids for a different world of work. Most workplaces today would not be recognizable by time-travelers from the late 19th-early 20th centuries. And yet – with the exception of the computer on the teacher’s desk and the computer labs down the hall – the classrooms of today are similar enough to the classrooms of yore to allow a time-travelling teacher to appear in a classroom one moment, and start teaching the next.

Case in point…. You probably will not be able to read this post in school. For some inane reason, the school filter blocks anything from Edublogs. It is a site run for educators and only educators, allowing them total control of the content. It has no ads for porn, online diplomas, nor does it promise to enlarge any body parts. And yet – the filter blocks it. Anyway – rant over. It is worth reading this post at home if you can’t get there from school.

tags: school libraries, flat world, school reform

Our 10th grade English Teacher is on the committee and she is very interested in all the “Flat World” concepts. So much so that she wants to change her traditional research unit from the current author study to an exploration of “flat world” & globalization concepts. She wants the students to study the concepts, and also make predictions on what their work world will be like and what they should do to prepare for this new world. She is willing to be quite inclusive with the topics. For instance – She would love for student to explore how the web is expanding outlets for aspiring authors/artists/musicians. She is very open to ideas – as long as they are “futurist” in nature – even if the idea is why a particular idea might not work – or might not be a good thing for society.

So – I am here to tap the collective brain.

Can any of you help me with any of the following things? I plan to gather ideas from this blog and from LM_NET into a future blog post. Thanks as alway for your help. Here are the things to consider:

BOOKS: Can you suggest books that I should order? We already own “The World Is Flat” by Thomas Friedman and “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel Pink. I know about Richard Florida’s books “The Rise of the Creative Class” and the “Flight of the Creative Class”. Do you know of any others? I would be particularly interested in books on globalization and other related topics that are written for middle and high school students.

WEB & DATABASE ARTICLES: Do you know of any articles that would be especially useful? I have several by Doug Johnson on my list right now. We want the students to do some general readings first before they get into their individual research.

SEARCH STRATEGIES/TOPICS: What search words or phrases would be especially useful for locating this kind of information?

PRESENTATION IDEAS: The teacher wants to expand this research project beyond the traditional research paper that she has done for several years. The changes she is thinking of mean the project will take nearly all year. The first part will be a “traditional” research paper – because we have to teach those skills. But – she wants to include a presentation component. This will address the speaking and listening components of the ELA curriculum standards. So – ultimately the teacher wants her students to use their research as the basis of some sort of creative presentation to the class. A video comes to mind immediately. What we don’t want is a ton of boring power-points. We want the kids to create something really engaging. We are open to students working together to create a group presentation. Do you have any ideas for us?

Wouldn’t it be great if students could be given the following class project:

• Students form “tech training teams”
• Each Team “adopts” a department.
• Teams meet with the teachers in that department to find out what tech skills the teachers already have.
• They talk with the teachers about what tech skills they need and/or would like to use in their classrooms.
• Student team then meets with each other to brainstorm all kinds of skills they as students would like to see used in their classes.
• Students research the skills/websites etc. for that department.
• Students create a dynamic presentation to show the teachers the possibilities.
• Teachers ask questions and talk with the team about the possibilities
• Teachers create a list of training they would like to have in priority order.
• Students design, prepare and present training sessions to the teachers in their adopted department. They could do a group training session – or they could do the training individually during the teacher’s free time.

BENEFITS:

• Students have an authentic project and a grade
• Students learn a lot themselve because what you teach you know.
• Teachers get training from student experts, and they have student “mentors” that can help them practice the skills.