An 8th grade student has been accessing a social studies website created by a teacher from another school in another state. On this site, the teacher has been posting the exact teacher resources provided by the textbook company: PDF versions of the tests, quizzes, study guides and textbook pages in their original forms. Today the teacher discovered the student with the day’s quiz (this school uses the same textbook) in hand and referred it to the principal’s attention.

The student, in subsequent conversation with the principal, confirmed that he had been accessing the website over time and has been using the resources to prepare for the teacher’s assessments. While the teacher does utilize a variety of assessments in the classroom, she does utilize the stock quizzes included as part of the teacher resources.

Now, we all agree that the teacher posting the textbook material in this way, on her site is breaking copyright. We might also argue that these stock assessments don’t carry much value. But the ethical dilemma for us is: What, if anything, did the student do wrong? Was the student wrong to continually go back to this site to get this material knowing it was the exact material his teacher was regularly using?

On May 2nd, educators, experts, parents, teachers and students from a variety of backgrounds and points of view will come together in Los Angeles to flex their creative muscles on teaching and learning solutions. The IdeaJam, moderated by Alan November, sponsored by Intel and Google/YouTube and produced by Katalyst, will ask participants to problem-solve and create new ideas for classroom design that integrate technology and help boost creativity. Many of the ideas that will be discussed directly relate to Alan’s article, The Digital Learning Farm.

The IdeaJam program is a truly interactive experience. Technology will help elevate the discussion to a higher level, creating a conversation around creativity and education, and will allow for a robust dialogue that happens both in the room and live, online. You can join in the conversation on Twitter @IntelEdge or check out the livestream on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9YULZJwJuI. The stream will begin at 9:30am PT on May 2nd.

Learn more about the background of this event here.

We hope you will join the fun!

And don’t forget, to continue these important discussions, come join us and our friends from around the world at BLC11 this summer in Boston. Click here to learn more and to register.

I am a 3/4 Multi-Age teacher, and Google has yet to be invented. I can’t remember exactly what I was teaching to the students at the time, but I believe it must have been science related, because we were talking about blood. Somehow the conversation turned to the color of blood, and before I knew it, my entire class —100%— was suddenly trying to convince me that:

“Your blood is blue when it’s inside your body and it turns red when it comes out and hits oxygen.”

I had never in my life heard such a thing.

I immediately disputed the fact, but like I said, there was no Google or even a reliable Internet connection in my room, so I was unable to quickly find proof for them. They held strong to their belief, and I to mine, and we left that day with no resolution of who was correct or not.

However —lucky for me— I was scheduled to have my blood drawn (for some yearly checkup thing) several days later. I’m able to do this in the morning before school starts at a facility conveniently located near the school. So, as the blood technician (is that the correct title?) stuck my arm, I asked her to help settle the argument. I told her my students’ claim that it is the oxygen that makes blood red and my own position of “No way.”

In short, she laughed at me and said, “Look at this tube that your blood is going in to. That’s a vacuum! There is no oxygen in there. What color is your blood?!”

Indeed it was red. I couldn’t wait to tell my students when I got to school that morning.

When I did, they still refused to believe me, even after a blood expert told me what’s what.

I’m not a scientist. I teach science at the elementary level, and I’ve still got plenty of science to learn. Did I doubt my own conviction when the entire class argued against me? You bet I did (even if momentarily), and I think all scientists constantly question and doubt their convictions as well until indisputable proof is delivered. Not being a blood expert, it was my duty to find the correct answer to bring back to my students. Finding a blood expert (a blood technician at a doctor’s office) seemed a sufficient resource for me to acquire the correct answer.

Fast forward to present:

I now teach in a computer lab with a curriculum that is mostly made up of ISTE standards, preparing students for the world they live in. One of the main skills taught is:

Students will use technology to locate, evaluate, and collect information from a variety of sources.

I do this at each grade level I teach (K-4) in varying degrees and have just recently completed a unit with my 3rd graders on how to evaluate web resources, how to identify if the author(s) is an expert, and whether or not the information can be trusted.

To illustrate just how hard this can be, I asked my students a question at the beginning of the unit:

“How many of you think your blood is blue when it’s inside your body and turns red when it comes out and mixes with oxygen?”

Informally, I would say around 90-95% of the students said they believed this. They were shocked when I told them the story of asking an expert years ago whether or not this is true, and the revelation that this belief is a myth. This lead into the discussion of “what makes an expert?” and from there, we dove into how to find and evaluate information on websites.

So… the other day —St. Patrick’s Day to be specific— I needed to get a blood test again. Per usual, I went to the same facility close to the school. This time, however, out of all the times I’ve been there to have blood taken, I was put into a different room, one I was unaware even existed. It was right next to the room that I usually go in —a closet size space, large enough to accommodate the tools needed to get the job done. I’ll call this “Room A.” “Room B” (the room I was put in the other day), looks just like “Room A,” except everything is “backwards.” In other words, it has the exact same equipment, but its setup is a “mirrored image” of Room A.

So, I’m sitting there, noticing how the room is a mirrored image of the room I’ve always gone in, thinking about the fact that I never knew the existence of the room, daydreaming about parallel universes (hey, what can I say, my brain does these things) and listening to the blood technician as she wishes me a “Happy St. Paddy’s Day” and tells me how the entire office has been celebrating the day. They’ve all worn their green “scrubs,” Irish music is playing in the background, Leprechaun cut-outs have been hung up around the building… they’re really going for the Irish theme “big time” this year. I think of making a “green blood” joke, somehow connecting it to the tradition of “green beer,” but I realize it’s not going to come off right so I decide against it. When she gets ready to stick the needle in, however, I feel it’s my turn to continue some type of banter, if only to assure her that needles don’t bother me, and that I can make small talk while having blood drawn so she’ll have no concerns that I might be someone who faints or grows ill during such a procedure (I try my best to be an “upbeat” patient whenever encountering folks in the health field; I realize how difficult their jobs are).

I say to the technician —just to make small talk, mind you— “Do you know how many people think their blood is blue when it’s in their body and only turns red once it hits oxygen?”

I was approaching this topic not as someone who’s “in the know” (wink, wink) and is having a laugh at those who don’t know, but more as an educator, sharing common knowledge in order to next ask how many times she has encountered people who believe in blue blood, and how she goes about educating these patients.

Instead of the response I expected, she turned to me and said:

“Well… isn’t it?”

Okay… suddenly I was dizzy. It could have been the blood being drawn, the effect that the “mirrored room” was having on me (the parallel-universe-Matrix-movie effect), the Irish music whirling around on the sound system, or all of these combined. But suddenly, my entire reality took a hit and I felt the bottom drop out from below me.

“But… but… but…” I stammered, “I was here… a couple of years… ago… and the other technician… told me… that that’s a myth… vacuum… this tube… is a vacuum… proof…” I tried my best to tell about my previous encounter with one of her colleagues (an expert in blood), trying very hard not to offend her in any way.

It was clear the scene became slightly awkward for both of us because we were simultaneously doubting our realities. We both murmured on, mostly to ourselves:

Blood Technician: “I… heard this, but I can’t remember who told me…”

Me: “But… who’s seen the blue blood? How could one eliminate oxygen in order to actually… see it?”

Blood Technician: “Well… now I’m not sure… maybe I should ask the lab technician…”

Me: “Well, now I’m not sure… maybe the other person had it wrong…”

Meanwhile the red stuff flowed out of my arm into the little capsule and I realized I had accidentally, severely messed with this poor woman’s reality… or maybe my own. Or maybe I was trying to block out the voice in the back of my head that was screaming, “This woman is taking your blood! Shouldn’t she be an expert?! Shouldn’t her answer be as emphatic and indisputable as the last technician’s was? And shouldn’t both answers agree?!”

I made light of it by saying something like, “Heh, heh, heh! I can see what you’ll be talking about at dinner tonight. This jerk came in and started this whole crazy conversation with me about the color of blood! Heh, heh, heh!”

This didn’t help. She was clearly unnerved, and the moment she put the band-aid on my arm (“Please apply pressure”), she went to ask the “Lab Technician” the answer.

This was “off stage” so I never got to see the “Lab Technician.” I thought that my “Blood Technician” was the “Lab Technician,” but clearly there are different levels of technicians.

My “Blood Technician” came back a moment later and told me the “Lab Technician’s” answer:

“He said he wasn’t sure and to Google it.”

Okay… I have to admit, at this point I just wanted to get out of there. I had done enough damage.

The “Blood Technician” did go on to say that the “Lab Technician” also said that some blood is red and some is darker because of the lack of oxygen, and that some people would say that it resembled a purplish color, maybe not actually blue.

I finally leave, feeling really badly that I ever brought this up, but now am filled from head to toe with an intense desire: I must find the truth.

Okay. It is at this point in the post, that I’m sure some of you are voting for “RED” and some of you are voting for “BLUE.” Please, don’t hesitate to take a pause from reading here to go do your own Google search (I’ll wait here). Before I reveal my own findings, I again want to admit that I was unsure of the final answer. I decided to put a typical search into Google in a syntax that I see many students use: in other words, ask it a question directly. Feel free to use the one I used:

“Is blood blue in your body?”

This is a great activity for students, by the way: “Prove whether blood is blue or red when it’s inside your body.” Using the Google search I gave as an example above, you’re going to see that there will be plenty of results (I got “About 17,100,000 results” on the day I ran the query). The next job for your students is to be able to separate the answers found from those that are made up of anecdotal evidence, and perhaps supplied by amateurs (such as you might find on a “Yahoo Answers” page) from those which are indisputable and come from experts in the field. This is where you get to teach students how to harness advance search options (such as limiting results to sites with the domain “.edu”) or any of the other great lessons that you would find in Alan November’s book: “Web Literacy for Educators”.

For instance, as your students start to understand how to limit searches to just academic sites (by using “.edu” I came up with a smaller search result: “About 774,000″), they might come up with one of results I found:

https://www.msu.edu/~kalinkat/professionalpages/TechMatrixMaterials/documentarybloodmisconceptions.htm

Once they use this academic source to “prove/disprove” their assumption, you can then “mess with their minds” by teaching them that the “tilde” (this symbol: ~) used before the professor’s name (~kalinkat) means that while this site is related to an academic site (from Michigan State University, to be exact), the “tilde” shows that the “site is not an official academic page… but actually a personal posting” (p.32, November). What does this mean? Personal postings could show “bias,” and more research is required.

Ah! Now we’re getting somewhere! We’ve just opened up a lovely “can of worms!” Isn’t the search for truth fun?

You see, I must come clean: I’m sure you can tell that this whole “blue blood” thing has gotten me a bit fired up. The thing is, though, I’m not bothered by the fact that I doubted myself several times throughout this long research journey. I’m not even bothered by the fact that every adult (except one) I’ve asked since my “St. Paddy’s Day” blood test has answered “Blue” when I asked them what color blood is inside your body. (By the way, that one person who said “Red” is our school’s nurse, and she came and actually talked to one of my classes with charts in hand. Incidentally, she went home that day and asked her own husband what color he thought it was, and he refuses to believe in any answer other than “Blue”).

What bothers me is that the idea that blood is blue in our bodies until it comes into contact with oxygen is truly a “magical idea.” It is on the level of something that would be possible in the movie Avatar, or as magical as actual Leprechauns coming to visit on St. Patrick’s Day. In other words, because this seems so over the top, how could such a misconception (or myth) exist so long and so large in our culture and why did it take so much effort to prove to myself and to others I’ve been arguing with for weeks what the correct answer is?

When served green beer on St. Patrick’s Day, everyone knows it’s not magic and can follow the logical trail back to how such a thing as the beer turning green occurred (eventually landing at food coloring or some other scientific answer). We’ve all had experience with blood. Red blood. No one has ever seen blue blood come out of a human, and yet so many of us are walking around satisfied with the notion that someone somewhere once told us it is actually blue.

When I asked people to prove to me their answer when they said “Blue,” no one could, of course, but most were content to hang on to their belief rather than be motivated to find cold, hard evidence.

So, I end this post with two questions:

1. The first one (probably expected) is: Are we teaching enough science in our curriculum?
2. But the second question seems more urgent to me: Are we teaching enough research and critical thinking skills in our curriculum?

Here are some of my favorite findings that might help you with your own “Blue/Red” debates:

• http://www.binghamton.edu/news/the-newsroom/ask-a-scientist/index.html?date=2011-03-07
• courses.washington.edu/edtep586/nelly%20practicum.pdf (check out p.2 of the practicum and how the teacher “was able to address alternative conceptions students had.”)
• http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcbst.ucdavis.edu%2Feducation%2Fcourses%2Fwinter-2010-ist8a%2Fist8a_2010_03_08oxymetry.pdf&ei=v8mYTb6VCuWa0QH9j5n8Cw&usg=AFQjCNHlJCmHFrj2cN9BlRfx3KNetFdxGQ&sig2=xZee1kItyE5jRalugx6zhg (see slide 12)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood#Color

—————
Works Cited:

“Binghamton University – News and Events: The Newsroom: Ask a Scientist: Scientist: Archive.” Binghamton University – Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Apr. 2011. <http://www.binghamton.edu/news/the-newsroom/ask-a-scientist/index.html?date=2011-03-07>.

“Blood – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Apr. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood#Color>.

Molinaro, M. . “Biophotonics Tools – Oxymetry IST 8A Lecture.” Biophotonics Tools – Oxymetry IST 8A Lecture. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Apr. 2011. <www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcbst.ucdavis.edu%2Feducation%2Fcourses%2Fwinter-2010-ist8a%2Fist8a_2010_03_08oxymetry.pdf&ei=v8mYTb6VCuWa0QH9j5n8Cw&usg=AFQjCNHlJCmHFrj2cN9BlRfx3KNetFdxGQ&sig2=xZee1kItyE5jRalugx6zhg>.

November, Alan C.. Web Literacy for Educators . Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2008. Print.

Tsai, Nelly. “Circulatory System.” nelly practicum.pdf. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Apr. 2011. <courses.washington.edu/edtep586/nelly%20practicum.pdf>.

I am very interested in what others have to say. Please respond to any of my questions and add your own.

• What are the opportunities for authentic work for students within the current structure of school?
• Can we really expect all students to make a contribution to the learning community?
• How do we help teachers manage the shift of control to the students making much more of a contribution to their own learning and to the community?

For most readers, I realize that I only have to add one detail for you to see what played out that evening (and I guess every year for this event): the project had been assigned for homework.

In other words, completely at home; not at school.

Let me interrupt here to say that I am not focusing on homework for this post (that is a much longer post, and I think Alfie Kohn has already taken care of that for us). So let us leave the issues and pros and cons of homework to the side for now, and just zoom in on those completed projects (were they poster boards…?).

Can you see them?

Some of those projects (whatever they were) are pure expressions of genius. They’re masterpieces. Works of art. Feats of engineering not yet realized. Color schemes compliment the themes. Just the right amount of glitter; not too much, not too little. If glue was used, all evidence has been camouflaged. Lines are straight as a ruler and circles seem to have sprung from lathes run by magical elves. The structures are sturdy enough to have survived the car rides over to the school and will last for generations to come, perhaps transforming from their original purpose into Thanksgiving centerpieces or by taking their rightful places on trophy shelves. Throughout the evening of presentation, there will be large crowds gathered around these projects. One will have to wait in long queues to get to see them. No one will be allowed to touch.

Further down the line, past the crowds, there will be another breed of product completely. These projects are the complete opposite of those described above. Gone are the realistic astro-grass lawns, the miniature people procured from a real Hobby Shop. Shellacked and interlocking dowels will be replaced by Popsicle sticks and toothpicks. Glue-gobs will not only be visible, they will still be in the process of drying. It will be obvious that Magic Markers replaced paint and you will be able to spot exactly where they began drying up during their application. Perhaps the projects have survived the car rides here, but their fate for the trips home are in critical mode, and some will barely make it past the parking lot dumpster. Whereas the other products were life-like, these projects will sorely stand out among their more professional counterparts as representations of ideas rather than something familiar to the physical universe. In fact, the most generous compliment bestowed upon them is that they look as though a “fourth grader” made them.

Which is, by the way, exactly who made them.

This grade level, after all, is fourth grade.

So let’s identify the “elephant in the room.” Some of these projects were created entirely by 4th grade students (as they were supposed to be) and some of them were created (at least in part) by… parents. There’s no real secret about this either: most of the murmurings in the gym that night were of the flavor of, “no kid made that!” or “this was obviously made by a parent!” Of course, these assessments were heard from those families that let the 4th grade student do all the work independently. There are probably infinite reasons for why this was allowed: could be that parents really believe in their students’ right to create on their own, or they don’t believe in “cheating” (not my words, by the way; this is what students who had done their own work called it), or, on the a less optimistic side of possibilities, parents had no interest in finding out about their students’ assignment and no desire to get involved.

Again, without getting into the issue of homework, as well as not examining the obvious “equalizer” of requiring all projects to be created entirely at school with access to uniform supplies and support, we must take pause and examine what it is we are celebrating on an evening like this.

It clearly is PRODUCT. As we move around the gymnasium, we see only the final “image,” if you will, of a journey untold. The learning involved, the struggles and successes, and even the purpose of the finished creations usually remain a mystery. At times, journals accompany the work, or a write-up by the teacher is posted at the front of the exhibit, but it is the PRODUCTS that win the attention, hands-down.

Which is… of course why some parents feel compelled to “chip in.” If PRODUCT is “king,” then that becomes what counts, and will always overshadow the PROCESS, or the learning.

Imagine, if you would, the same evening of celebration for students, however, this time, parents watch from the sidelines as students actually create the products, or if the products on display were accompanied by audio/video/journals of what the students learned. The evening could be extended to give the students time to share their learning, but also to teach their families what they learned. Parents could be given short quizzes (created by the students) to give the students feedback on how well they taught the information. Or… after the students teach their parents the information, then the students and parents could build the final product together, all the time consulting reference material, the student’s notes, and discussing the curriculum standards being acquired. These final products could then be shared by publishing pictures of them to the Internet… or not. For the question is: what is the purpose of publication?

There are numerous answers to this question: making work purposeful, providing an authentic audience, making learning a conversation (on a blog, for instance), but I think we too often forget another important aspect when we ask our students to publish: to show the journey of learning, in other words, how did the student get to this final point?

Whenever I give a workshop on blogging, invariably, a teacher will ask what I think about leaving students’ original misspellings (or invented spelling), incorrect grammar, lack of punctuation in the entries. I believe, without a doubt, we want our students to arrive at publication that is polished… students should be asked to go back and fix mistakes, and if they aren’t able to find the mistakes, then it’s a perfect opportunity for mini-lessons on the skills.

HOWEVER… why aren’t we showing all steps to the final product? What is so wrong in publishing each draft along with the final polished draft? This transparency would show the student’s steps of learning, showing both growth as well as struggles. And, if a student is not yet able to attain a certain skill (even after additional mini lessons on the desired skill), then what is the point of the teacher fixing the errors? Doesn’t that just “cloud” the “snapshot” or continuum stage that the student is at? Everything looks perfect on the blog, for instance, but then the student’s report card says otherwise?

And what is so wrong in showing our sloppy mistakes and struggles? Isn’t that what school is all about? Aren’t we there to perfect our skills and get to the level where our work is truly “polished?”

Why are we reticent to show the struggles students experience, the “bumpy” journey of learning, the truth that students will attain skills at different stages and pacing from their peers, and present only the final PRODUCT, which can never encapsulate the story of where the student started and how he/she got to this end.

Recently, my after school Tech Group presented their work-in-progress to parents. This group of students have completed all work as a collective group, with very little input from me. All decisions have been made by the students. The entire presentation was put together by the students… in fact, I barely knew what they were going to present until I heard it for the first time, along with the parents.

At first, you could see the parents were a bit uncomfortable with this method. They kept asking the students about what had already been accomplished, or what will be accomplished, or, what PRODUCT they had to show. Since the students are really at the beginning of their work (i.e., are closer to the beginning of the journey and still making decisions on what their goals are), they presented their ideas, how the ideas were created, what plans they might have, what decisions they had already made, and what the next steps were going to be.

Parents were seeing the process of them actually building their work. In fact, during the presentation, there were several times when the students began generating new ideas and broke into discussion between themselves, with the parents suddenly relegated to the role of witnesses. The last part of the students’ presentation was taking questions and comments from the parents. The students have used some of the parents’ feedback in their subsequent meetings as they continue their work.

It took a while, but I think the parents finally understood that they were not there to hear a “finished” work being presented. The students never promised such an event, and in fact, it was the parents who had originally asked the students to present what they had accomplished so far.

From where I stood, it was a marvelous experience: parents got to see the very rare building of the work (something usually shrouded and mysterious) and the students were able to get great feedback and accolades during the process of the work they’ve been doing.

There were no “projects” to take home that evening. Instead, everyone left energized and there was a feeling of excitement for not only of what was yet to come, but what was being created right before our very eyes.

I don’t know if I have one.

Maybe my thinking about passion is too grandiose. Does having passion about something mean that it keeps me up at night and drives my decision making? Does having passion mean that I rather be doing this one thing than anything else in the world? Does it mean that I tell people about this passion until they are tired of listening to me?

I just don’t know.

I often hear educators (myself included) say how great it would be to let kids follow their passions. So, I’ve been thinking about my son. He’s in 6th grade right now, and I don’t think he has a passion. Sure, he could play video games all day if I let him. I hope that’s not passion. He’s been playing soccer since he was about four, but I rarely see him go out in the yard and really work on his game outside of a structured team practice. He likes soccer, but I would think he would work on it on his own if he was passionate about it.

So, I pulled out the dictionary (really I went to an online one) and found this definition for passion: a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept

Wikipedia also adds to this by saying that the term passion is,“…often applied to a lively or eager interest in or admiration for a proposal, cause, or activity or love – to a feeling of unusual excitement, enthusiasm or compelling emotion, a positive affinity or love, towards a subject, idea, person, or object.”

Looking at this, I might have something to work with.

• I really love my family and always make time for them. I would say I try to work my schedule around theirs to make the best use of my time while being involved in everything they do.
• I have a devotion to the field of education. I take great pride in working with teachers and students. Helping them navigate the rapidly changing world around them is great fun for me.
• Lately, I’ve had a great deal of enthusiasm about taking better care of myself. I’m exercising more and I’m eating better. I would say that overall I feel much better on the inside.
• I really have fun playing tennis with friends. I’m not the greatest at it, but it’s a good release for me.

Are these my passions? These don’t keep me up at night.

I’ve tried several times to pick up new hobbies. Some of them stick, and others don’t. About eight or nine years ago I was on a big kick about building things. That lasted me through building one piece of furniture. I loved researching how to do it, I had a great time playing with new tools and I was very proud of the finished product. However, dealing with the mess and clutter of it all kind of turned off the neat freak in me, and those tools are gathering dust. I could give many other examples of random attempts like this.

Maybe my passion is trying out new things? Nah. That can’t be it.

Well, maybe it is.

Angela wrote a post a few days ago about Seth Godin’s Domino Project and the book Poke the Box. I haven’t read the book yet, but I see a few headlines in these posts that I kind of like.

• What would our world look like if more people started projects, made a ruckus and took risks?
• All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

Seth even says about his project that, “We’ve never done this before, and though we certainly might fail, we’ll definitely create impact.”

That’s really a lot of pressure to take off one’s back. Basically, he’s saying to go out and live, take risks and see what happens. You know, have fun with things.

Dan Pink seems to say the same in a recent blog post. He talks about how when someone asks him about his passion, “[His] innards tighten. [His] vocabulary becomes a palette of ahhs and ums. [His] chest wells with the urge to flee.”

Instead of passion, he thinks the real question is, “What do you do?”

You know, when the work’s all done and your time is yours, where do you go, and what activities do you do? What would you go out there and do for free?

That takes even more pressure off of me.

So, I know this post has been unbelievingly long already, and maybe nobody will make it this far, so I’ll close things out. I still don’t know if I have a passion, but what I do know is that I don’t want to sit still and let life pass me by.

I want to be active in the world.
I want to try things out and always keep learning.
I want to be open to risk or loss.

I think if I can put all of these things together while being good to myself, my family, my friends and the world around me, I’ll do alright.

That’s something I can be passionate about.

Alan and Brad discuss the uniqueness of this school, the real work students are doing as they build curriculum and resources along with their teachers as well as the lessons they have learned that can impact any school.

Brad will be a presenter at the BLC11 conference being held this July in Boston. Click here for more information.

I had intended to post this week on a new idea we have for assessment of writing. I will post that next week. Events have overshadowed and overtaken that plan.

On Jan. 17 a 16-year-old sophomore in Brattleboro, VT, took her own life. Few knew outside the immediate community because it was a holiday and she had died at home. News organizations rarely report about a private suicide.

On Jan. 18, 200 miles away, a 15-year-old boy shot himself in a bathroom of his high school in northern Vermont. His death was more visible; since it occurred in the public school, it was widely reported in the news. And then, as word trickled out, the girl’s death was also reported.

Both were good students. Both were good athletes. Both were, by all accounts, well-liked and outgoing. They were energetic achievers. Their deaths were shocking, and since Vermont is such a small state, they were shocking to everyone.

Young Writers Project runs a student-led site for teens: youngwritersproject.org, and we kept the students updated about the tragedies and encouraged students to share their memories, their feelings, their grief, their confusion. Sadly, we had done the same thing in 2009 when another 15-year-old boy, a top student, athlete and musician, shot himself on school grounds.

We were overwhelmed then and now by the earnestness and openness of the students, by their respect for each other and by the complexity of their thoughts. Some were straightforward in their sorrow – either because the girl or the boy were friends. Some grieved for people they did not know. Some tried to make sense of it. Some wondered about some of their own friends’ states of mind.

Other teens expressed anger – at adults for arguing about what should have been done to prevent them or about what the schools should have done in response. They expressed irritation at their peers for being overwrought, for, almost, rushing to immerse themselves in the sorrow.

A few even wrote pieces imagining themselves actually doing what these two fine people had done. Hauntingly, YWP  had even published one of the girl’s poems in 2009 as part of our Newspaper Series; reading it now, it is eerie and heart-breaking.

It is a widespread belief by professional counselors that talking, sharing, opening up helps students – and adults for that matter – cope with sudden, tragic events. They also counsel kids to not assume that you are OK, but to reach out and talk with anyone.

YWP feels it provides a small service to these kids. We are honored to do it. But what should schools do in situations like this?

I spoke to a lot of teachers that week. Some were directly involved – in the same school systems, same schools or, even, at schools where the students had previously been. At the schools directly involved, counselors were brought in for students – and for adults. In related schools, teachers were alerted early; many told their students about the deaths – not the method, just the fact that they were gone. They directed the kids to information about counseling if they needed it.

One school talked to the kids about the girl – who many knew – and about the fact she’d taken her own life. All else stopped; for several days, whenever the kids wanted, they would talk about it. “We didn’t want them just talking in the halls,” the teacher said.

It appears that none of the schools that I know of got their students to write about it. I talked it over with practicing teachers in my two Master’s classes and while most agreed it was a good idea, they felt the incidents were too far away – not directly on the kids’ minds – and didn’t seem appropriate. A couple remarked that their school systems would never allow it. All of the teachers, though, thought it would be a good idea.

In no way am I criticizing the fine, well-meaning professionals who had to cope with the teens’ deaths – directly or indirectly. But I do think it’s time schools begin to think about bringing these topics more front and center and to think about using writing as a salve. Face it: the Internet connects student communities outside of school like never before. And writing is a great clarifier; it helps students figure out what they are thinking; it develops their own critical thinking.

And when this writing is done in digital classrooms, it is open. A very valuable exercise in my mind.

I agree with the teacher who said she didn’t want to have the discussion confined to hallway whispering: As educators we have an obligation to help kids face things head on.

If you wish to look at what kids wrote outside of school about these two tragedies, go to http://youngwritersproject.org/connor.leah.

Geoffrey Gevalt is founder of Young Writers Project, a small nonprofit in Vermont that works with hundreds of teachers and thousands of students in an effort to improve students’ writing skills and digital literacy. To see the project’s work, visit youngwritersproject.org, digitalteachers.net or ywpschools.net He can be reached at ggevalt (at) youngwritersproject.org or 802-324-9537

• Take small steps.
• Find a couple of tech-savvy kids in each of your classes to help.
• Explore the digital world on your own.
• Seek out people in the school or in professional development spheres to mentor you.
• Don’t be afraid to fail.
• Don’t be afraid if you don’t have all the answers – your kids will help.

Teacher Knowledge — Exploring, a few links

• Making Teaching Public Website. A digital exhibition of teaching experiences and tips from elementary school teachers around the country.
• BECTA’s  Research Indicating Benefits of Web 2.0 in the Classroom
• BECTA’s study on impact of Web 2.0 on students’ skills in writing
• Clarence Fisher’s Top Ten Tools for the Classroom.  List created by a very thoughtful and innovative teacher who uses digital technology to teach all subjects – from social studies to math – in a rural school in Canada.
• Teachers teaching teachers. Pretty self-explanatory. Not the smoothest looking resource in the world, but filled with good stuff.
• Bud Hunt is a teacher who has been blogging and focusing on digital education for years.
• Ewan McIntosh is also a formidable expert in digital education.
• An interesting middle school teacher’s blog.
• Edutopia, this is a wonderful resource of information, best practices and ideas.

As a side note, there are ways you can speed up your learning with an hour a day, or, even, a few hours a week by subscribing to digital educator’s blogs (use Google Reader — click here for 5-minute video)or by, gulp, breaking into twitter.com. I use twitter to link folks to cool posts by students at our site, youngwritersproject.org, but I also use twitter to follow folks who know a lot about digital education. As a start, you can follow me , twitter.com/ggevalt, but not to see my posts, but to start following some of the folks I’m following – many are leading experts. Their links and posts will help you explore what’s out there. (For a really basic video on what twitter.com is, go here.

Student Blogging – Taking a small step

Lucy Gray has a great post here on November Learning which offers some simple guideposts, apps and links. I encourage you to read it. Rather than duplicate it here, I’ll just say what our experience has been and remember our first focus is writing and our second focus is digital civility and literacy:

• Commenting has been key to the success youngwritersproject.org and the YWP Schools Project digital classrooms. As I discuss in an earlier blog, getting kids to claim ownership of this digital space will yield great results and the secret to that is to get them commenting on each other’s work and sharing work outside of school.
• Some software makes it difficult to easily comment on each other’s work or to see other’s comments or it puts the kids’ work out in the blogosphere where it is unlikely to get any feedback at all. Develop strategies to combat that.
• Here are some links about commenting.
• A how-to guide on commenting.

A forgotten aspect of getting kids to blog, is ensuring they have:

• keyboarding skills; a site that recommends good tutorial software for keyboarding.
• Adequate computers and/or Internet connection at home; many students do not, and offering these kids opportunity to access school equipment is a viable solution. (One teacher up here is actually organizing a project to refurbish corporate computer discards and give them to kids.)

So with commenting as a key aspect of blogging, here are a few recommendations:

• ywpschools.net  This is not shameless promotion; we are a small nonprofit and we do not yet have the capability of setting up classrooms outside of VT and NH, but will be doing a few national pilots in the coming school year. These sites are best thought of as “containers” that allow teachers to assign, critique and track all student work – even that done on outside Web apps; and allow students to respond to assignments, give and receive feedback and incorporate any multimedia they want. (For the techies among you, we use Drupal.) FYI, one 7^th grade class using our sites this year has 48 students and, in 3 months has produce 669 posts and 1,449 comments to each other!

• wordpress.org This software is relatively easy to use and set up. It’s free. But it does take some time and effort to do right; can a school tech person help? ALSO, there is wordpress-multi-user that may be an option for your school; it is also free.
• kidblog.org Also a free service for student blogs; good functionality in being able to encourage commenting and see what others are doing.
• blogger.com While you can’t beat the price and it’s a great way to get started, it is hard to administer and track student work; it is also hard for students to build community or offer a flurry of feedback.
• edu2.0.com This seems more oriented to classroom management, but it’s free and people are using it for class blogging.

Modest cost alternatives

• edublogs.com This has a limited free offering — storage is low and some advertising. But worth looking at. This service was great and free, but they changed the financing model.
• ning.com This was also headed in a very nice direction — intuitive, free — but recently started charging. Check it out though; has many fine features.
• 21classes.com The free version really is not that useful — little storage, to name one drawback — but paid is relatively inexpensive and offers some good features.

In upcoming posts, I’ll offer you thoughts on podcasting, using images, video commenting, slideshows and other experiences from our digital classroom experiences.

Geoffrey Gevalt is founder of Young Writers Project, a small nonprofit in Vermont that works with hundreds of teachers and thousands of students in an effort to improve students’ writing skills and digital literacy. To see the project’s work, visityoungwritersproject.org, digitalteachers.net or ywpschools.net He can be reached at ggevalt (at) youngwritersproject.org or 802-324-9537

As a former teacher and current learning consultant and parent of two school-aged children, my experiences tell me that clear and regular communication with families is really important. This may seem like a no-brainer, but in this day and age, it’s even more essential. Busy families rely on technology, particularly cell phones, for communication, and papers tend to get lost in the household shuffle.

At my house, we appreciate frequent electronic communication because my sixth grader has a mild executive functioning learning disability, meaning that she has difficulty with organization. As Julia begins junior high, I need quick access to her assignments and grades to make sure everything is running smoothly for her. While I hope I am not “a helicopter parent”, I do know that I have to be in tune with her school life. As a typical pre-adolescent, she’s not always forthcoming about such details!

Given that she’s my kid, it’s not particularly surprising that Julia thrives in a digital environment, too. I decided a few weeks ago that I would help Julia get organized electronically as she received an iPhone as a birthday gift. Experimenting with a web-based tool called LiveBinders, I wanted to organize her teachers’ web sites in one place so that she could quickly access course material on her new device. Much to my surprise, only a couple of her teachers had currently updated web sites. One was published, but contained the original Latin placeholder text that comes standard with Apple’s iWeb software. The teacher had yet to fill in sections of her web site with her own content, and Julia thought her teacher’s web site was in Spanish when she saw this!

I’m uncomfortable publicly criticizing schools where my children attend, and I have to say that in all other ways, we are really happy and impressed with Julia’s school. Her teachers are energetic, love teaching, and care about our daughter. I do wonder why more of her teachers aren’t utilizing the web more efficiently to help kids and their families, though. At her previous school, Julia regularly accessed the web site of her world language teacher who posted assignments, handouts, and audio files to support student learning and it made a huge difference in helping Julia learn to help herself.

It’s always been a struggle to get teachers to see the value in communicating with students and families via the web. People don’t have time, don’t see the point, and don’t readily see the benefits for publishing a web page. Some teachers I’ve known believe that posting assignments enables students to not accurately keep their traditional assignment notebooks.

When this issue came up with my daughter’s school, I felt that it was not my place to dictate what teachers should do, and thought perhaps I was missing something about this debate. Thus, I posted the following question to my Facebook page, and trusted friends and acquaintances from all walks of my life responded:

Do you think teachers should keep an updated web page to communicate with parents? Is it really that difficult to post a minimum of information to keep parents (and kids) updated?

The responses varied, but all agreed some sort of communication was essential. One teacher noted that she had less parent phone calls and email because everything was clearly posted on her class website. Another said she kept a blog, and the parents loved it, while a third indicated, “My parents, over the years, have come to depend on updated information available 24/7 as well as a way to connect with other parents.” And another teacher friend wrote, “When my son was in middle school, the teachers posted all the homework assignments to their district web pages each day. It made a HUGE difference to us! My son has ADD and having that information available 24/7 helped keep him on track. Now that he is in HS, there is nothing like that available and I really miss that.” Even a university professor shared how she’s utilizing the web in her courses, “I regularly use email, wikispaces, university course management software, and so on in my classes. I even use blogs to ‘channel’ student questions and discussion. I’m not the world’s most creative person, but even I can take advantage of these tools to make my teaching better.”

On the negative side, another friend who’s involved in the PTA at her daughter’s school wrote, “I can’t even get my 3rd grader’s teacher to answer an e-mail….The teachers in our district were all given websites a few years ago, and were expected to use them. I have yet to see one who does it…..I do the website and e-mail for our PTA, and have been able to track how well we are actually staying in touch. Very few parents check our website; site visits are virtually nonexistent between e-mail messages. In other words, they only go if I remind them, AND usually only for something they really want or need to know. In middle school, parents are expected to get online daily to check on their children. However, there seems to be no expectation that the teachers will update in a timely and accurate way–I am very disappointed in the fact that we’ve invested so much in technology, and this is the best we can do.” This opens up another can of worms in terms of expected norms and accountability in the use of technology in schools.

Finally, another educator added to our Facebook thread with a creative spin around the student role in communication, “What I do instead is frequently write lengthy newsletters and updates; I’m a familiar name in the parents’ email inboxes. I try to give the overall perspective on what’s going on, but not details about assignment due dates, etc. (unless it’s a really big assignment and parental involvement would be helpful). Every other week or so, I assign my students the task of taking their parents on tours of our class online network. There the parents will see descriptive student essays (blogs) on recent activities, photos, reviews of books, and the like. They’ll be able to look at recent conversations the kids and I have been having.” How about this approach for promoting student autonomy!

At any rate, to answer my original question, there really is no right or wrong way to communicate with parents, just as long as teachers do it on a regular and consistent basis. Giving parents a window into the life of your clasroom is beneficial for so many reasons and it doesn’t have to be difficult.

In a follow up post sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll suggest some ways for getting started if you want to go the electronic route. In the meantime, I hope that teachers who are already leveraging blogs, wikis, and other kinds of web spaces will share their sites in the comments in order to inspire others.

“The only problem with school, for the kids who aren’t achieving, is that there isn’t enough of it.”

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

I’ve recently finished reading the outstanding book by Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success. I highly recommend it, so much so, that I don’t want to give away too much of what makes it an essential book for educators. I do want to “zoom in” on one of the final chapters that discusses what could be one of the most glaring and obvious ways to “fix” the current problems that “ails” the US school system.

There’s a lot of great discussion going around thanks to the documentary, Waiting for Superman, MSNBC’s Education Nation, as well as rhetoric in recent elections. I haven’t had the chance to see Superman yet, and admittedly, I saw little of Education Nation, but I’ve read plenty about both. My informal assessment is that both avenues shine positive and negative light on the systems we have in place at present. There’s some bashing going on, but there’s also praise. It seems universal, however, that most people agree that they want things to get better. Fair or accurate representations from the media are important, but even if they get it wrong, this is an excellent opportunity for national conversation.

The chapter I’m referring to in Gladwell’s book Outliers, seems to me to be one of the most obvious places to start the conversation. As Gladwell states,

“Summer vacation is a topic seldom mentioned in American educational debates. It is considered a permanent and inviolate feature of school life, like high school football or the senior prom.”

He goes on to smash this untouchable tradition by citing the work of Johns Hopkins University Sociologist Karl Alexander (his research into “Summertime Learning Loss”), and then hits us smack in the head with numbers that are indisputable: Number of school days for the South Korean school year is 220 days. Japan: 243 days.

United States: 180 days.

The whole point of Gladwell’s book is that more time to practice skills is what leads to the “outliers” —those that reach high levels of success. He provides anecdotes and evidence that those with the opportunity for more time, will undoubtedly rise to the top. Gladwell refutes the idea that talent is what makes great basketball players, musicians, mathematicians, writers, fill-in-the-blank, etc. It is time that makes greatness. Time to really learn and practice a skill, as well as not having an unjustifiable and extended break (such as summer vacation) to unlearn or become rusty at skills attained, is the difference between good and great.

243 days – 180 days = 63 days of advantage.

There used to be a reason for summer furlough (and Gladwell explains the difference between Western agricultural needs vs Asian agricultural needs), but students are clearly no longer needed to be home to help get the crops in during the summer months. Again, I refer you to the research Gladwell cites from Karl Alexander to illustrate the damage that this time off has on students —most notably, on lower income populations who suffer a larger loss, as evidenced in the data. In short, students of lower income lack the opportunities for “continued learning opportunities” that more affluent students have access to during the summer months.

Perhaps “No Child Left Behind” would have been better served with the title: “Leave no Month Behind.”

As Gladwell points out, “Summer vacation is a topic seldom mentioned in American educational debates.” Counter-arguments or conversation-stoppers on the subject most likely come in the form of “We’ve always done it like this,” or “High School students need summers off to make income for college tuition,” or “This would have a severe impact on the economy as dollars are no longer put into summer vacation circulation,” or even, “Give me Summers Off, or Give Me Death!”

These and other arguments are not to be treated lightly. There are some very important decisions that would have to be made, and perhaps even hardships incurred that changing to a year-long school curriculum would require.

I surely don’t have the answers to the infinite conundrums that could be caused by giving up summer (read Gladwell; he makes a better argument than I can make, and he’s not alone), but the numbers don’t lie: the data from Alexander’s research are impressive, and, I think we can all agree that a 63 days difference between American school days and Japanese school days is by no means insignificant. There’s got to be some “out of the box” thinking for restructuring our school year to either include more days, or perhaps distribute more evenly the large gap of nearly 3 months that depletes learning across the year, rather than keeping that time lumped together in its current summer vacation embodiment.

Here’s my biggest worry, however. Let’s say a “magic wand” is waved and somehow we expand our school days to a number closer to Japan’s. What I fear is that rather than finally having time to master (even “conquer”) the curriculum we already have in place (that is already given short shrift), even more will be added on. This won’t help at all, will it? We’ll be in a worse situation: still not enough time to accomplish the curriculum, and now even more curriculum to not have enough time to accomplish.

Gladwell gives an excellent example towards the end of the book from the KIPP Academy where students are given extended time to solve math problems. He demonstrates that the extended time allows for the teacher and students to make “mathematics meaningful.” After all, what’s the rush? Is it more important to make sure we cover the required content, or make sure that the students are given all the time necessary to acquire the content?

————

Bob Sprankle is a Technology Integrator in Maine, writer, blogger, podcaster, iphoneographer enthusiast, and father. He is humbled and honored to be asked to be a guest blogger for November Learning. To learn more about Bob, head on over to www.bobsprankle.com.

I love this class. The teachers come from schools that are 220 miles apart. We have teachers from grades 3 through 12; some are brand new some have been teaching for 20+ years. We have two librarians, two science teachers and an art teacher. Apart from their different styles, experience, knowledge of technology and personalities, they have enormous differences between their schools — in terms of leadership, policies AND students. For instance, recently we spent quite a bit of time in one group talking about the startling difference between three teachers’ requirements for assessing student work. One teacher has to post data responses on rubrics for each kid once a week;  another has to devote 8 classes during the year for on-demand portfolio writing that is sent out for external assessment; and a third said, “I’d die if I had to do that; I grade them. And I write up my observations about their progress at the end of the year.” And knowing the latter teacher, I bet those are  detailed, useful, observant assessments. But more on that at another time.

What is great is to see the very different approaches the teachers are taking in their digital classrooms.

Two teachers in the class are a team — she language arts, he science. I’ve known these guys for nearly 7 years and this story should tell you what kind of teachers they are: Three years ago YWP held a kid-organized writing workshop on a day that had the most miserable weather of the year. And for those of you who’ve never been to Vermont, well, it ain’t no Arizona. Thirty-two kids came to the session (we had no power for the first hour) and the language arts teacher drove almost two hours to bring two of her students. (Her science partner was flattened with illness so couldn’t make it.) Oh, I forgot to mention, it was a Saturday. Why did she make the trip? “Because I knew how much this meant to the kids.”

So flash forward. The two teachers love the digital classroom. They’ve never used one before, but they are finding all sorts of uses for it as they go.  And their involving the kids in how it gets used. The other day, on a whim, the language arts teacher decided to create a tag on the site called “extra.” Then she told the  7th and 8th graders that they were free to use the “extra” tag anytime they wanted to post something they’d done on their own or anything they wanted to share; but she also said there’d be no additional credit, no assessment and she and her partner probably wouldn’t have time to read them all. That was 10 days ago.

So here’s what the 46 seventh graders have done: They’ve posted 52 “extras.”  Just for the heck of it.  (Some important context: This school has only one computer lab that’s in constant use and you have to sign up a week in advance. So these guys haven’t had that many class visits to the site. Additional detail: Last Sunday at 7:30 a.m. eight kids were logged onto the site.)  In 6 weeks, with only a few visits to the site in class, the 7th graders have posted 245 pieces of writing and 810 comments to each other. Er, make that 811, a kid just posted something.

Here’s an excerpt of what one of the teachers posted on her own blog in the Master’s class space:

Every so often, we have them work on a piece that is graded. Because we talk about the requirements for the graded pieces, and because we give feedback for pieces to be submitted to be published with Young Writers Project, students are beginning to understand the value of good comments.

So what does all this tell me? That these 7th graders are beginning to own this space; never mind that it’s part of school; never mind that it’s a place where they also do homework. And it tells me that this pair of teachers is allowing these kids to set their own course, take control of what’s going on and engage. On their own.

So this is further evidence that when you use digital classrooms, and I’m not talking about individual student blogs that are oprhaned somewhere by their lonesome out there in the ethernet, but when you have your students post on digital spaces where they can easily see each other’s work and freely comment, help the students feel like it’s their space. Here’s how:

• Let the students post freely with no moderation.
• Don’t give them the power to delete; they’ll figure out that in a nano second and will know that if they post something inappropriate everyone will see.
• Lead them in an exercise where they set the rules for commenting.
• Gently nudge them about the quality of their commenting (and model with your own commenting) until they begin to realize its true value.
• From time to time, show them some of the comments and ask them whether they’re following their own rules.
• Let go a bit; give them control on what’s going on and be comfortable with the fact you are NOT going to be able to read everything.
• Create an “extra” tag.

So I appreciate these teachers and what they are doing. Their names, by the way, are Cindy Faughnan and Rick Schluntz and they teach at Hartford Memorial Middle School in White River Junction, VT.

Geoffrey Gevalt is founder of Young Writers Project, a small nonprofit in Vermont dedicated to helping students become better writers. To see the project’s work, visit youngwritersproject.org, digitalteachers.net or ywpschools.net He can be reached at ggevalt (at) youngwritersproject.org

My name is Geoffrey Gevalt and I am a new NL guest blogger. For 33 years I was a journalist; I believed it a calling, a profession, really, that was affirmed by the First Amendment and that necessitated long hours, low pay, dogged and sometimes unsuccessful journeys and greasy food consumed late at night and washed down with beer. I was lucky enough to work with superb editors and writers and along the way I picked up a few  awards as both a writer and editor. For two years I had the privilege of choosing the finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Beat Reporting and, if pressed, could give you details from many of the entries I read. I am proud to say that three people I selected, candidates that I fought for, eventually won and if we ever meet and you’ve gotten your head around the math problem there, I’ll tell you the story.

As you can tell, I was born in the Early Jurassic Period, which fell just before the Late Great Newspaper Demise Period. And, if ever we meet, I will get into my rap about how the retraction of the American news business has been the primary cause of the decrease in our nation’s collective civic knowledge and the increase in our lack of civility in public discourse. But I will spare you that discussion here.

Because I am now a digital educator. And my life has a different mission. And I have different concerns: I believe that if we can get kids to write well they will gain confidence, learn more, succeed more and become better citizens. But we are woefully neglecting writing in our schools and in this new digital world, where writing is needed more than ever, we are doing a tremendous disservice to our kids — particularly disadvantaged kids — by not teaching them how write their way out of a paper bag.

Thankfully, many students, teachers and principals agree with me.

So let me speed up a bit. In 2003, I started the Young Writers Project as first a monthly and then a weekly feature of best student work in the newspaper where I was managing editor. Our thinking was to get student voices into the paper in some section other than Sports or Police Blotter and raise awareness of the importance of writing.  The feature, assisted by teachers and professional writers who had accompanying content on writing instruction, was wildly successful and by its third year we received 750 student submissions.

In 2006 I was presented with an idea: the Vermont Business Roundtable, a collection of business and higher education leaders, wanted to give me a two-year grant to get me to jump off a cliff, form an independent nonprofit and see what I could make of this idea. So I did.

And I can tell you that each brilliant thing that I’ve done since then has been an accident that occurred because I didn’t know any better. And if I ever lose that inclination — blind exploration, experimentation, followed by cold-sweat panic What have I gotten myself into? — I probably will no longer be listening and no longer trying new things.

For instance, I began my new career, after one day off, by building an interactive Web site, youngwritersproject.org, and doing three things in the process that were, by accident, brilliant:

• I let kids blog and comment at will. Message to kids? We trust you. Resulting behavior? Civility, community building and individual growth — and oh yes, a hell of a lot of writing.
• I did not allow them to delete anything. Message to kids? I really do trust you, but I also know your bad habits and I’m protecting you from them. Resulting behavior? In four years, we’ve had only a handful of posts and comments that had to be “unpublished” and even those were “learning moments.”
• We expanded our Newspaper Series to first five and now nine newspapers. Message to kids? Your writing has a purpose. Resulting behavior? We have published work of nearly 3,500 kids and are now receiving 325+ submissions a week in the tiny state of Vermont (60,000 grade 4-12 students in total).

The next big accident came in early 2007 when I suggested to two teachers running an after school writing program for fifth graders that I’d build them a Web site and, um, mentor them in using it. (They barely knew how to use a mouse.)  Resulting behavior? The kids wrote more, revised more, got to know each other better. More importantly, the teachers noted, they became a community  even though the kids went to five different schools and didn’t know each other. The program was a success. (Side note: The program ended due to lack of funding. Note to self: So you left the newspaper industry to work with the education industry? )

But the success led to pilots and more pilots, surveys and interviews with teachers, testing and modifications that led to our rolling out, in 2009/10, a comprehensive digital classroom program that includes individual school Web sites for digital classrooms, training and ongoing mentoring for teachers, materials and ideas and an optional Master’s Practicum accredited by a local college. In our first year, we worked with upwards of 150 teachers and 6,500 students.

This year the demand was greater and many of last year’s schools wanted me to go deeper, to go school- or district-wide. Note to self: Build capacity. Do fewer schools. So this year, we’re doing, gulp, more. And the Master’s course now has 31 teachers with the North Section meeting where I work (northern Vermont) and the South Section meeting  in mid-Vermont (we call everything south).

So the message to teachers has been this:

• Use digital technology to create civil online spaces for school and “extra” work;
• Get the kids to own that space;
• Let them post and comment at will (but don’t let them delete); and
• You will know if it’s successful if it’s out of control.

So now for your second question: What is this guy going to be writing about? ( And please tell me he’s not going to be writing about his life!)

Glad you asked. And no, I will not be writing about my life.

What I will be sharing in this space are ideas, things kids do — writing, art, podcasts, etc — and things teachers do — class exercises, discussions, break throughs. From time to time I’ll talk about how teachers find solutions to things like budget issues, equipment shortages and assessment requirements. Or I’ll talk about what kids would rather be doing than going to today’s schools. I’ll also share with you a lot of links so that hopefully you can try some things out. For instance, check this out: youngwritersproject.org/node/48724 which a kid wrote in her spare time and then slammed, in her spare time. (Question: Can we get kids doing this IN class?)

But a few words of caution: I’m incredibly busy. I am sitting here with a gnawing sense of failure because I need to finish a grant application and prepare for a workshop and, oh yes, do some site work. So my posts will not be regular like the sun and moon. And I really get cranky and lost and borderline neurotic if I feel no one is reading me. I am like any writer. I am like any young writer, too. So please comment. Please react in some way that tells  me you are reading.

Because that’s the secret of digital writing: Commenting. Very simple. Forget about the slideshows and podcasts and digital storytelling and all that. If you can focus on the one thing that digital technology offers you and your students — an incredibly efficient way for students (and you) to read each other’s work and provide feedback — you will be stunned. It is so easy. And it does so much for a student. For a class. Great, magical things result.

I look forward to telling you about some of them.

Geoffrey Gevalt is founder of Young Writers Project, a small nonprofit in Vermont dedicated to helping students become better writers. To see the project’s work, visit youngwritersproject.org, digitalteachers.net or ywpschools.net He can be reached at ggevalt (at) youngwritersproject.org

If we are talking about the emergence of a learning society, rather than just an education system, then we need to insure that schools are at the heart of that learning society.

Richard discusses four essential steps that need to be taken:

1. Collaborating with new partners
2. Formalizing informal learning
3. Reform assessment to measure 21st century skills
4. Drive innovation and dissemination of new practices

For the white paper and to join Cisco’s Learning Society for Educators visit http://ciscolearningsociety.org/ and http://getideas.org.

Special thanks to Richard Halkett and Cisco Systems for their help in making this podcast series possible.

Special thanks to Richard Halkett and Cisco Systems for their help in making this podcast series possible.

Special thanks to Richard Halkett and Cisco Systems for their help in making this podcast series possible.

As Erin and Devin were quick to explain, this was not an overnight decision. The two worked with district administrators to develop guidelines, strategies and communication policies for how this tool could be used in her classroom. They obviously did their homework, and I applaud the district for thinking about how to best co-op this tool in the classroom.

Obviously, being on the bleeding edge comes with a great deal of praise and a great deal of pause. Does Facebook have any place in our classrooms? Is exposing students to a social networking tool like this appropriate when they are in first grade? What are the privacy concerns? These are all appropriate questions and ones we should be asking with anything we do.

Recently, Jeff Utecht shared a blog post also commending the two on their successes with this program, and the post brought up a lot of discussion – good discussion. Also, he shared the following Prezi.

It’s my hope that all educators take the time to look for ways to innovate, involve administration in this innovation and continue to ask questions about whether or not the tools so many feel are important are really important enough, safe enough and are in alignment with good pedagogy. Some will be, and others won’t. But through the education of all parties, we can make the best decision together and not respond out of what we think we know.

Darren has been a presenter at our Building Learning Communities conference.

Alan and Darren also discuss the issues around professional development and personal development that need to be addressed to achieve building a classroom experience like the one he describes.

Darren has been a presenter at our Building Learning Communities conference.

Darren has been a presenter at our Building Learning Communities conference.

• Do public schools have time to change or is it too late?
• A researched based look at 21st century skills
• Schools who have begun the change process
• Informal Learning
• Technology and Crisis
• The next steps

Richard Halkett brings a new perspective to current educational issues. We hope you enjoy this series.

A beautiful metaphor gently reminding us to stretch every day as learners.

May refreshing and stimulating winds consistently guide your learning!

I would like to share a video that was developed by Pat Kyle, a teacher in the Washington D.C. Public School System who worked with a group of students on the early stages of a project called Stories from Shaw. These students, with the help of Pat, a local public librarian and others within the community, are working to build up a written history of places in their community for inclusion within Wikipedia. Their first piece, still in progress, was written about Shiloh Baptist Church.

What makes this type of assignment motivating? What pitfalls, if any, do you see? What other skills are students learning during this process? Have you tried this with a group of your own students? If you have thoughts on any of these questions, please share your story.

Building Legacy with Wikipedia from Brian Mull on Vimeo.