What It's Like on the Inside

Making Peace with Cell Phones

2008-07-19T07:55:00.000-07:00

Cell phones and teens seem to go together like PB & J these days. It's hard to imagine one without the other...and yet cell phone technology is banned in most classrooms. Is it possible, however, that we might make peace with these tools---even use them for our benefit? Liz Kolb thinks so. Her blog, From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning, has me thinking about all sorts of new things. I admit

New Links for Learning

2008-07-18T07:20:00.000-07:00

Teachers are packrats. The saving grace of the digital age is that most resources don't have to take up real space, just occupy spots on a server. Thank goodness for that, because with new tools and ideas generated daily, there would never be room for them all. My del.icio.us account keeps growing (if you want to add me to your network, e me for details as I have things there under my real name).

Musings for a Summer's Day

2008-07-17T16:34:00.000-07:00

Some small thoughts generated from my wanderings through digital environs as of late... Hugh wrote about his decision to blog under his own name and how that may have influenced some self-censorship on his part. I applaud his decision, but it made me wonder about why so many men in the edusphere are "out" and why so many women use pseudonyms. Of the education related blogs on my sidebar, only

Hardcore Wednesday

2008-07-16T05:32:00.000-07:00

If you've ever hosted a Carnival of Education---and done it well---then you know it is a lot of work. It is good "community service" for the edusphere, to be sure; but, one must plan on several hours of reading, organizing, and writing. In spite of all of that (and having a life), Mamacita is hosting her second Carnival in a row! This week she has posted it over at Steve Spangler's blog. Go have

The Elephant in the Room

2008-07-14T09:05:00.000-07:00

I took a class once on Great Books. The premise of the course was really about who decides what makes a book "Great," how we know whether it belongs in the Canon of Literature, and what the inherent messages are that we as a culture are being fed through the selection of these books. I was reminded of this class because of a comment left here not too long ago. Roger said (in response to my post

My Space

2008-07-13T21:18:00.000-07:00

My house would be considered "old" by some. It was built in 1941 and is more or less what you'd expect for a space from that time. It's small (living space <1000 sq. ft + unfinished basement) with short board hardwood floors, coved ceilings, eat-in kitchen, a tiny bathroom, and two very small closets. It sits at the bottom of about a half-acre hill. Out of the nine houses I remember living in

Hide Your Young 'Uns

2008-07-12T05:28:00.000-07:00

I got my first set of scores back from my elementary endorsement tests that I took last month. Oddly enough, I received the one for my Texas test---which I took later than the one for Washington. The score report is "unofficial," but is good enough for me. I missed 8 out of 100 questions---half of them in the area of literacy, which I fully expected. My knowledge and experience with teaching

Mushrooms

2008-07-11T08:59:00.000-07:00

You know the old joke about being given The Mushroom Treatment, right: kept in the dark and fed a steady diet of shit? I sometimes wonder if kids aren't subjected to that more than we realize. While I understand that there are some topics that might not be considered age-appropriate or school-appropriate, there is also a regular assumption that kids can't be burdened (enlightened?) with things

It's All in Your Head

2008-07-10T07:21:00.000-07:00

I was reading an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times called How Lies Live in Your Head and it reminded me of one of my favourite demos to do with my students. This exercise comes from Marilee Sprenger's book How to Teach So Students Remember. Tell the group that you are going to say a list of terms. They should just listen to the words, not write them down.Slowly read the following list: nap, dream

Shall I Compare Thee to a Carnival's Day?

2008-07-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

Mamacita has done a glorious job with this week's Carnival of Education. Get on over to Scheiss Weekly (Just As It Says) and take a midsummer's day stroll along the midway.

Size Isn't Everything

2008-07-07T06:49:00.000-07:00

I'm still poking along on my grading workshop that I'm facilitating in three weeks. My problem is that now that I'm down to the nitty gritty of what to actually say and do with the group, the whole project keeps growing. I keep remembering little anecdotes to share...pieces of articles that are good for provoking thought...and quotes from the research that make powerful statements. So what I

Thought Experiment

2008-07-06T07:09:00.000-07:00

So, let's say that Congress agreed to rescind NCLB on one condition: Every teacher in every public school classroom has to use standards-based grading and reporting practices. What would schools say? That they prefer annual testing...or that they're willing to make a k-12 change in how we evaluate students at the classroom level? Keep in mind that colleges had a similar choice over a century ago

Something New Under the Sun

2008-07-05T08:48:00.000-07:00

Good teachers want their students to be more than sponges, absorbing information. They want students to think and use that information: remix things into something new. Great teachers find ways to facilitate that process and make kids bloom with creativity. But how should we support these behaviours in one another? Teaching---if done well---is an inherently creative process. A one-size-fits-all

Independence

2008-07-04T06:25:00.000-07:00

I want to spend my $.02 today talking about choice. It's Independence Day in the states, with an emphasis of freedom, but an underlying message that this gives one the ability to choose. It does not, however, provide the motivation to do so. And today, I specifically want to respond to Scott McLeod's call for leadership in technology because what I see all too often is a lack of leadership in

The Kindergarchy

2008-07-03T05:06:00.000-07:00

One of the things I like best about the internet is the diversity of readily available source material. I look at lots of information everyday from blogs to news items to Flickr pools. And while there is an author behind each piece who is trying to make some sense of a particular idea, from my "user" state, I get the fun part of seeing connections between the disparate pieces. And this week, it

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Numbers

2008-07-02T04:54:00.000-07:00

Last year, I worked with a school that was in the midst of re-centering itself. It's all too easy in the midst of the Death by 1000 Mandates governing us to remember why it is that we choose to be in the classroom---much less think about the future and what we want our schools to be. I asked the staff to consider three questions: What happens? What matters? What matters most? They wrote their

An Open and Shut Case

2008-07-01T05:35:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who was courted to become part of the Dark Side and be paid to work part-time in a supporting role for secondary science. He is a fantastic and passionate teacher who cares greatly about standards and good instruction. You'd be hard pressed to find a better role model for other science teachers. But he is also smart enough to realize that he can do more for kids by being in the

Bottle It and Sell It

2008-06-30T05:10:00.000-07:00

Two different blog posts caught my eye last week and got me thinking once again about the perfect storm of factors that leads to student achievement. First up is Jenny D., who---much to my delight---is blogging again now that her pesky PhD is out of the way. She points the way to some Good Research examining why some small school programs have led to better results than others. She notes from the

Raise Your Voice

2008-06-29T05:38:00.000-07:00

Many edubloggers are in San Antonio this week attending the NECC conference. Perhaps next year I'll make my way to the extravaganza in D.C., but this year, I'm going to content myself with watching the discussion on Twitter and participating in a fringe way. First up is Blocked Blogs Week. It begins today and runs through Saturday, July 5. If you're reading this, count yourself lucky. In many

Putting Paper in Its Place

2008-06-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

No matter how tech savvy I get, I don't believe that paper and pencil will ever be replaced. There is something about the experience of writing with those tools---the way the paper looks, the feel of the graphite sliding over it, the smell of the cedar in the pencil. Although typing allows me to convey my ideas (once formed) more quickly, I almost always need that concrete experience of writing

More Thoughts on Number Crunching

2008-06-27T07:40:00.000-07:00

Six months ago, I wrote about what I see as the grail of standards-based grading: how to convert rubric scores to standard A-F grades. The best solution, natch, is not to have to convert them at all. If you have the option of reporting your standards-based scores on the report card, then you're golden. The rest of us have to operate with two different ways of grading and reporting. We must number

The Good Word

2008-06-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

At the end of July, I'm doing a three-hour workshop on standards-based grading for the state. It's my first opportunity to spread the good word. I'm not quite as evangelical as Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, however I'm not so sure that wouldn't be such a bad thing. My passion is at a fairly feverish level, but I think telling people that I'm gonna get medieval on their asses in terms of

Carnival for a Travel Day

2008-06-25T16:02:00.001-07:00

I'm just in after making my way back from Texas. While I work on unpacking my mind and luggage, please do enjoy this week's Carnival of Education over at Where's the Sun? Back to regular posting tomorrow!

Can I Get A Ruling from the Judges?

2008-06-23T19:31:00.000-07:00

On my most recent certification test, there was a question that asked something akin to "Which planet has the longest year?" The answer choices were Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Pluto. As I see it, the "right" answer to this question comes down to two things: (1) When was this question added to the test bank? and (2) What is the definition of "planet" being used here? If the question is pre-2006

Two for Two

2008-06-22T08:37:00.000-07:00

I spent a chunk of yesterday afternoon taking my other elementary certification test---the backdoor test. Assuming that I passed this one (and I think I did well enough for that, although I certainly won't be garnering any accolades for high scoring), then the rest of the dominos can fall and I will be a genuine elementary teacher. Truth be told, this is little more than to be a line on my resume