The first time I saw the term ‘B.G.’ referring to ‘Before Google’ was in Karl Fisch’s ‘Did You Know’ presentation. Tonight that term came to life for me.

Here is an eye-opening statistic I discovered about myself today:

Total Google searches: 3633 (Since April 30th, 2006, and only counting when I have been signed into Google.)

I did some quick number crunching: On average, I use Google about 450 times a month, which also averages to about 15 times a day. I really do have to ask, what did I do B.G. – Before Google?

If you have a Google account you can check out your own history here http://www.google.com/history/

Have a look at my Googling trends: (The secret is out… I am a night owl!)

Above and beyond this chart, there is actually quite a lot here that Google knows about me. Add to this the things I choose to RSS into Google Reader, the things I choose to Star and Share there, the sites I sign up with on Gmail, the people (and information) I e-mail, and basically Google could start to make decisions for me.

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A.G. – After Google

How far away are we from having Google prioritizing items in our e-mail and RSS feeds for us? Or providing us with personalized search results? I wonder how far this could go?

Will there be a truly semantic web? Although Stephen Downes says ‘no’, and makes a very knowledgeable and compelling argument, I wonder if he isn’t looking at it from a paradigm that will change?

Stephen states:

But the big problem is they believed everyone would work together:
- would agree on web standards (hah!)
- would adopt a common vocabulary (you don’t say)
- would reliably expose their APIs so anyone could use them (as if)

But I think of the sophistication of Language Translators today and wonder if standards and vocabulary will have to be stringent? Perhaps there will come a time when it will be enough to have a somewhat common vocabulary (congruent semantics within different languages)… and so ‘loose’ standards become beneficial since if you choose to follow along, you reap greater benefits. Or perhaps the same way Mashups scrape information from multiple sites a semantic web could be built by information scraping?

How many billions of dollars were spent on laying down fiber cables in the few years before wireless access mushroomed?

How many experts thought blogs would fail? Without RSS blogs would never have become so prolific. Blogs came first, but they might have drifted to the fringe without the ability to have feeds go to the reader.

Is a semantic web really doomed to fail or is it inevitable? Web4.0 – your webmodality.

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C.E. -Communal Era

I’m not changing my behavior because I have become aware that ‘Google is watching’ and tracking what I do.

And yet I’m not fully trusting either. How accurately can they pinpoint my interests and focus Google ads towards me? (With a last name of Truss this would be refreshing… Yahoo always shows me Roofing and Bra Support ads.) Furthermore, who else can see my information? Who decides this? How secure is my information? All these things concern me, yet I’m still using Google.

There is an option to ‘pause’ the history tracking and also to ‘remove’ an item in Google History, but do these things actually happen or just disappear from my view? (I recall some issues with Gmail not ‘deleting forever’ after such a request was made.) Yet I’m still using Google.

With OpenID and Corporate ID (Youtube is Google, Flickr is Yahoo) I am going to be sharing my information regardless of how much I chose to ‘pause’ or ‘block’ or ‘remove’ information from the web. My information is communal/shared to a very large extent!

What really concerns me is how this information about me will be used to “help” me? Will “smarter” searches force like-minded ideas on me? Will they stifle my creativity? Will I suffer the ‘Dumbness of Crowds‘?

Will a semantic web shield me from an onslaught of unnecessary information or will it insulate me from possibilities and learning opportunities?

Have you ever spent hours working on something and then looked at the final product only to wonder where the time and effort went? That’s how I feel about the rubric I have been working on for the Graduation Transitions Program (for which I am the coordinator at our school).

Last year, under the old program, the ‘Final Presentation’ was about showing evidence and meeting criteria. This year the ‘Exit Interview’ is more about the journey…

So how do you create a rubric to give feedback to students about their journey? I decided on a few things first:

1. Reflection is important and needs to be valued.
2. This is a big transition… some forward planning also needs to be valued.
3. This is NOT a grade! (The program is not graded, you just need to meet the requirements.)
4. It needs to be ‘different’ enough that the many different teachers doing the interview won’t fall into ‘grading’ mode.

Here is what I came up with… (Link to a larger view)

At this point I can’t decide if this achieves what I want it to, or if I wasted my time… feedback is really appreciated… I have to present this to students on Monday.

After my last post I went to hear Alan November speak at an afternoon Pro-D session. I then read Brian Kuhn’s blog post and added a comment, which I have edited slightly and included below. In the process of writing this comment I realized a valuable lesson, which I will discuss below the comment:

It was wonderful to hear Alan November again. His webcast for the district was one of the things that lit a fire under me and encouraged my to explore technology as a means for students to learn ‘new things in new ways’.
This weekend I was listening to some of his podcasts and I wrote a blog post about them : Looking back at it, my reflections were somewhat sarcastic and negative… A product of feeling like things just haven’t been moving fast enough.

Tuesday afternoon changed that for me. There are a lot of great teachers out there doing wonderful things, and there are many more teachers out there feeling overwhelmed by how much there is to learn, who are still willing to take the next step forward. On a more personal note, the world of web2.0 has given me wings , but I realized that I too have a long way to go before I am doing all the things that I can to give my students wings too!

Thanks to Jill Reid for the invitation, to all the leaders who helped make a day like today possible, and to Alan November… I am refueled and ready to continue my journey of learning along with my students.

Here are some notes about today e-mailed to me from Joni, a true leader in our school. She may not be tech savvy (yet), but teachers like her who offer their leadership, guidance and support are what will help ‘us’ move forward using technology ‘for learning’ rather than just using technology to teach!

Great tool: webcast site ‘Jingproject‘.

Suggestions: Kid jobs for the class

1) Answer questions from class. This kid needs to answer all questions, if he can’t, he needs to find the answer on the web, then post the answer.
2) Continuous researcher through class
3) Official scribe: takes notes for the class every day. Post them to the site.
4) Create a Wiki site. Allows children make a contribution to the world. wikipedia, or your own space like www.wikispaces.com [My attempt - ScienceAlive.]
5) Contributing any source that they find on he web to the class: use a social networking site. eg. www.diigo.com create a diigo account for the class or every student has their own account and then “share to group”. [I used delicious and am now moving to diigo]

Reflect and Learn

Here is the sentence from above that has hit home with me over the past few days, “the world of web2.0 has given me wings , but I realized that I too have a long way to go before I am doing all the things that I can to give my students wings too!”

I currently have a private Ning network for my students, but it is really driven by me! The blog posts, the groups, the forums… all initiated by me! Yesterday I read a post by Konrad Glogowski. The post, “Conversation with Pre-Service Teachers – The Set Curriculum“, was about just that, ‘the set curriculum’ (something I have written about a few times) but a specific section struck a chord with me:

“It seemed logical to me that my responsibility as an educator was to prepare a collection of texts, resources, diagnostic and assessment/evaluation tools in order to achieve specific learning outcomes. I saw myself as a subject expert whose primary responsibility in the classroom was to teach a very specific set of skills and competencies. I saw myself as someone who possessed knowledge and perceived my students as individuals who needed to acquire it.”

I am new to teaching planning 10, and I am trying to launch a specific program, YPI , that I am learning about with the students. So, I did what many teachers do when they are unfamiliar with the curriculum… I teach to it.

In the last little while my posts have been peppered with negative undertones about things not moving fast enough and technology limitations that I have found frustrating. Well, although those things are legitimate concerns, they are things that are for the most part beyond my control. What I can do is create an engaging classroom environment that actually gives my students wings.

Another thoughtful lesson inspired by Alan November , and realized through my blogging/web2.0 experience.

I started this post sitting in a waiting room at the auto shop waiting for my car: No WiFi, pay-for coffee and snacks available. It had an outlet if my laptop battery didn’t hold out, comfortable seats and, if I was interested, a tv to make the experience a little more comfortable. But I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I am a fan of Alan November and I just downloaded, to my iTunes, his November Learning Podcast Series. With ear plugs in and a word doc open, (I would have preferred Google docs), I began listening to Alan November interview Dan Pink.

A little history here…
My first classroom blogging experience was inspired by an Alan November webcast that launched me into my web2.0 experiences… (My teaching2.0? What do you call this transformation?
…And a question on the side…
What do you call a digital ‘immigrant’ that is fully immersed in a digital world? I am an immigrant to Canada, but truly consider myself a Canadian, though I will never be a ‘native’. Perhaps I am a Digital Citizen, or more aptly a Digital Denizen!

Interview 1: With Dan Pink

We have to be willing to measure these: (From Wikipedia on Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind )

1. Design – Moving beyond function to engage the sense.
2. Story – Narrative added to products and services – not just argument.
3. Symphony – Adding invention and big picture thinking (not just detail focus).
4. Empathy – Going beyond logic and engaging emotion and intuition.
5. Play – Bringing humor and light-heartedness to business and products.
6. Meaning – Immaterial feelings and values of products.

As long as we measure schools and measure students with tests that do not appreciate and include measuring a student’s ability to express these senses, we are measuring the wrong things.

I have an idea: First we will measure a poem with a word count… Then we will measure compassion with a ruler… And finally we will measure the making of a work of art with a stop watch. Then we will add the numbers together and tell you how well your child is doing in school.

From a previous post , “there is a dichotomy here: Our ‘educational language’ around standardization and accountability juxtaposed with differentiation and flexibility… we seem to have two mutually exclusive camps, yet there seems to be a move to embrace both. To embrace both is to accomplish neither.”

It doesn’t have to be more expensive, just smarter. If you built cabinets and shelving units for picture-tube tv’s or carrying cases for Sony Walkman’s and you didn’t adapt your designs, where would you be now?

‘This is important! We need to change… pass the chalk’.

I wonder how much schools pay attention to these two things? Even when we praise, we don’t inspire intrinsic motivation, and although in some ways we promote persistence, we also give students a grade of ‘C’ and move on.

Check out http://scratch.mit.edu/ (I’ve been here a few times, but need to explore the possibilities)

This reminds me of the Larry Lessig’s TED Video I recently watched on ‘(Re)-creativity’.

If you give credit, it isn’t ‘appropriates’ but rather ‘appropriate’!

The irony is not lost on me.

Well, I’ve been at school for just over 14 hours and my mind is officially mush. I’m creating the paperwork needed for the new Grad Transisions Program so that I can give the Grade 11’s and 12’s in my school all the new documents for this year. I plan to be paperless for the Grade 10’s but time and technology constraints won’t allow it right now. A quick post and I’m home to bed!

- – -

This is a pdf I am including in the package going out to the Grade 12’s: Employability Skills 2000+

“The skills you need to enter, stay in, and progress in the world of work—whether you work on your own or as a part of a team.”

Is it just me or is this a very Web1.0 / behind-the-times document? Where is the emphasis on Collaboration, or Synthesis, or even perhaps Re-mixing Information?

I noticed under Communicate:

• share information using a range of
information and communications technologies
(e.g., voice, e-mail, computers)

…and under Think & Solve Problems:

• readily use science, technology and
mathematics as ways to think, gain and
share knowledge, solve problems and
make decisions

But the document seems lacking… and now my tired eyes see why! In the brochure I just noticed that the print date was May of 2000. No document made for back then is going to hit on many of the Employability Skills for 2007+… which in turn will be outdated for Employability Skills for 2010+…

However, the document will have to do for next Tuesday. Please point me to an updated resource if you can find the time- Thanks.

- – -

Back to work

(A post in under 20 minutes- a record for a slow blogger like me!)

Amy Capelle has started a very interesting discussion in Ning’s Classroom2.0

She asks, “Are they really digital natives?”

The discussion there is great! Here is my response:

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“I come from the Batman era,
adding items to my utility belt while students today are the Borg from Star Trek,
assimilating technology into their lives.”

That’s a quote I use to differentiate digital immigrants from digital natives.

BUT I have realized that it is much more about comfort level & exposure than it is about age. While I am helping some frustrated students open a sign-up verification e-mail, other students have logged into the new site, added a photo, and changed the appearance of their personal page.

There are three digital divides here preventing me from effectively using technology in the classroom. (Two from my post, and the 3rd added from this Classroom2.0 discussion.) These divides are the gaps between:

1. What I know and what I need to know.

2. What the school has in the way of technology and what it needs to have.

3. What skills/abilities students enter my class with.

#1 I can change.
#2 will never change fast enough.
#3 is the shift in this conversation.

I have both immigrants and natives in my class, so the distinction is moot.

In another post I said,

“And then there is my class Science Alive! wiki… “I think that I am guilty of seeing the value of using technology in guiding learning, but not effectively guiding learning in my technology use.”

I have done a pretty good job of getting my students going… but now as momentum builds I have come to the realization that I don’t have a marking rubric to guide me, or my students, as we move towards a final product.

My class is assembling a lego model without the instructions, or even the image of the final product on the front of the box. This isn’t a problem for the creative/motivated students; they will assembly a better model in ways that I could never have ‘instructed’ them… but some students need structure, they have been fed it for years and expect it (even from yours truly – this isn’t finger pointing, it is observation).

I let technology supersede pedagogy.“

Digital immigrants or digital natives is nothing more than a discussion of digital competence… it is a spectrum, not a dichotomy!

Where does this leave us?
We want all of our students to be digitally competent.
We want all of our students to be articulate thinkers.
We need to make this happen in pedagogically sound ways.
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Let us go to the very beginning of the whole debate and none other Mark Prensky himself. In his article, Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom, Prensky says:

“…technology adoption… It’s typically a four-step process:

1. Dabbling.
2. Doing old things in old ways.
3. Doing old things in new ways.
4. Doing new things in new ways.”

I think we get excited when we see ‘new things in new ways’, but often we end up (re)creating old things in new ways. The real conversation needs to be around the constraints of curriculum and standardized testing.

“This is why the foundation of education systems today should not be the rails, but it should be the side trips. It should not be the central standard curriculum, but it should be those directions that students, that learners, both teachers and students, can navigate to on their own.” (David Warlick)

New things in new ways… creating articulate thinkers… and building digital competence as a by-product.

“How can the next president better help small business and entrepreneurs thrive?”

That was the question that US Senator and Presidential Candidate Barack Obama asked on LinkedIn. A day later I posted response #1421. Here it is:

The definition for ‘Entrepreneur’ came from Google using ‘define: entrepreneur’, but I did not link to it since the link does not work.(www.onlinewbc.gov/docs/starting/glossary.html).

What I did link to was a very gifted student’s blog post- (you’ve seen it here before), a Time Magazine Article found in this student’s del.icio.us links tagged ‘gifted’, and my Square Peg, Round Hole post.

I don’t think that the purpose of our educational system is to ‘produce entrepreneurs’ but it seems fairly evident to me that we should be fostering the kind of thinking that entrepreneurs possess in our flat world.

I also don’t think that we need to cater specifically to gifted students… on the contrary, what we do to fill their educational needs, to challenge them, and to catalyze their creativity, can (and will) help every student become more ingenious.

In his recent post, “Who are we really failing“, (which also links to the Time Magazine Article above), Christopher D. Sessums points to a year-old post about a debate, “Transforming Learning: Evolution or Revolution“. In this post, Christopher says:

“Is framing the debate of transformation as an evolutionary or revolutionary process the correct way to look at the current situation? Might there be a better set of metaphors? How might the notion of emergence fit this proposition? What might Paulo Freire think?”

I think the answer is in the question… it isn’t an evolutionary or revolutionary process… it is a transformation that has qualities of both evolution and revolution. There has been a metamorphosis in the way people connect, relate, communicate, and inquire. With regards to schools, education, and learning, you might say that we are in a cocoon right now. Some of us only know what it means to be a caterpillar, others see the potential of being a butterfly, and none of us know where our wings can take us.

- – - – -

Painting from ‘Aquatic Origins’ exhibit by Michelle McGauchie. (Used with permission from the artist.)

Well, I decided to go ahead anyway! I can’t use our useless communal teacher lab, but I got to spend the 2nd half of the first class in the library using the computers there, and the next 2 days in our Computer Teacher’s lab. Although I won’t be able to use any lab again until next Wednesday, my students (who all have computers at home) have all started blogging.

In fact, it is 12:15am and a peek at my Meebo chat box I put on the site tells me that there are at least 2 students on the site right now!

Christina K

Comments

1. They have similar noses, forehead, similar bone structure, similar smile or smirk and if you look closely they have similar eyes. I’m not sure if they are siblings, but they might be the same person.

   ChristinaL on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 02:22 BST # |

2. Wow, their facial features look almost identical! I researched about the painting on the left and found out that it’s called the “John Gesture” and is a portrait of John the Baptist. As for why he’s raising his index finger, many historians think that it’s because Jesus was always shown raising two fingers while he blessed people. Therefore, John wanted to show people that he was superior to Jesus as one comes before two. I don’t really see any connection between John and Mona Lisa but I guess Da Vinci must have had some reason for placing these two paintings within sight beside his deathbed before he died.Viola C on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 02:47 BST # |
3. But why would Da Vinci make John the Baptist look like Mona Lisa? Da Vinci couldn’t have actually seen John the Baptist…

   ChristinaL on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 03:19 BST # |

4. They really do look identical. So if one was John the Baptist, and the other the Mona Lisa…what’s the connection that could possibly relate to the two paintings being of the same person in a different form? Was John the Baptist in a different time than Da Vinci? If he was then that’s just crazy that these two people look identical. Again the two ideas were that they could be siblings or they could be the same person. I just don’t understand why they would be the same person..

   Christina K on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 04:52 BST # |

5. I can’t believe how John the Baptist and Mona Lisa, two people from totally different worlds, could look identical. I think it’s more than a coincidence that Da Vinci painted them so similar. I guess it’s just one more secret that Da Vinci didn’t want to share with the world.

   Viola C on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 05:29 BST # |

6. Well, this is what I think. As a humanist, he opposed the church in telling how other people should live their life. Could it be that he wanted to show his dislike for the church secretly through many little things he did. Could it be that by drawing John the Baptist with similar facial features as Mona Lisa, he is showing that he may have seen John, therefore completly going against what the church and the Bible says. But then again, my ideas are crazy….

   Jessica N on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 08:03 BST # |

7. Da Vinci was a very mysterious man, so it’s not very surprising that he made Mona Lisa and the John the Baptist look the same. No one would understand his geinus mind and like Viola said, this would be one more secret that Da Vinci wouldn’t share with us and the world.

   ChristinaL on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 21:17 BST # |

8. Take a look at Mona Lisa’s shoulders, compared to to other picture. They are practically the same in every way! Mona Lisa’s shoulders are large and manly (no offence Mona Lisa). Now look at the other picture. Can you spot a dramatic difference?

   Sara on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 21:18 BST # |

9. Woah thats pretty interesting Christina!The picture of the guy, is probably another painting byDaVinci. He probably didn’t want to show it to others, and hid it somewhere

   where he thought no one would find it.

   It also can be a painting of him when he was younger!

   Yeah thats all. Good Job!

   Tijana M on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 21:20 BST # |

10. also if you look in the picture of the last supper
    there is a man holding up one finger like
    the picture of John the Baptist 

    JessicaT on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 21:26 BST # |

11. I was just looking at the picture of Mona Lisa.http://www.artchive.com/artchive/ftptoc/leonardo_ext.htmlI observed her close up at 200% and I noticed a really weird line going across her forehead… the line seemed really out of place. From my discovery I looked a her hair on the left side and I noticed that there was a veil type thing, maybe she was getting married, or she was getting married to John the baptist Any other Ideas?

    Katie Z on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 21:32 BST # |

12. This is amazing. If I was to first see these pictures I’d think they were twins. There smile is identical. Also there noses look exactly the same. Only if there hair was the same I would think that it was the same person.

    Amrit C. on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 21:33 BST # |

Now here is the challenge for me… LET THE ‘CONVERSATION’ HAPPEN!

When I read, “…maybe she was getting married, or she was getting married to John the baptist…” I really wanted to post a little timeline. Earlier I actually started typing a comment suggesting that perhaps Da Vinci used the same model for both paintings, then erased it rather than posting it… I forced myself to ‘bite my tongue’.

The fact is that I am not used to letting students take ownership of their learning in this way. I want to ‘teach’ them… isn’t that my job?

But if I had put that “perhaps Da Vinci used the same model” post in after the 5th or 6th comment, would the other comments have followed?

If I chose now to comment on the century-and-a-half millennium-and-a-half chasm in time preventing John the Baptist from marrying Mona Lisa, then who will I be taking this away from? Whose voice will I be stealing? Who will I prevent from asking ‘Exactly who is John the Baptist?’ Who will I be stopping from researching and answering that question?

Would JessicaT have been inspired to write this post?

In Christina K’s blog is the picture of John the Baptist and how he
is pointing his finger, I did some research and in the picture of the
Last Supper, there is one of the 12 deciples on the right side to Jesus
is pointing one of his fingers out. Also in another picture by Da Vinci
two versions. One was rejected by nuns, and one wasn’t (the picture
above was the rejected one)

Comments

Interesting research you have done! Thanks for putting all these together to compare! Are you going to look into the meaning behind the ‘pointing finger’?

Mr. Truss on Friday, 18 May 2007, 04:54 BST #

I am hoping to promote inquiry.

It is the classic ‘guide on the side’ rather than ’sage on the stage’ issue. However, it isn’t easy to stand back and let all this learning happen without me. But, in a web2.0 world, where students are meaningfully engaging in Learning Conversations, we really must bite our [digital] tongues.

After an incident delayed getting feedback from my students until last Monday, things got extremely busy with preparation for the Renaissance Fair and my Grade 5 Transition Retreats [the subject of a future post]. All this included 3 afternoons out of my classroom at other functions… I blinked and it was Friday afternoon. And only now have I noticed that not everyone has given me feedback yet. What I do see there is very encouraging.

Before reading the feedback, my initial impression was given in my Some Assembly Required post. To expand on that,
I wrote this in a comment (over a month ago) on Kelly Christopherson’s blog.

Carolyn Foote, mentioned above also added this comment after mine:

This is brilliant feedback. It isn’t rocket science for a seasoned teacher that really should know this, but scaffolding that is student directed is something we should all be reminded of from time-to-time. I think that in my excitement to get things started, and my desire to have students choose their own topic, I let technology supersede pedagogy.

I intended to put some student feedback highlights here, but I won’t. If you are interested, READ THEIR WORDS.

Here is a very short summary:
• Students really liked this project. Some of them considered it the best ever!
• They loved that they got to choose their own topics.
• They felt challenged.
• They hated the issues we had dealing with crappy computers, and yet they were willing work through the frustration.
• They thought this was a valuable experience… so much so that many of them wanted to do another similar project and/or suggested that I should do this again next year.
• And finally, using their words: They enjoyed being able to share their ideas, “What I am most proud of the most from the page is when I was how I typed out information to let others read it and learn from what I learned,” and being able to see what others did, “I thought this was a great project because it was always fun, and when you needed inspiration, it was easy to just click on someone else’s page, and see all the neat stuff that they’ve done, and then it makes you want to make your page just as good (or, it did for me).” Also another student commented about how a different group’s project touched him, “I learned a lot of stuff over the period of time that was given. I especially enjoyed learning about the diabetes because my aunt has diabetes so it was interesting to see what she goes through and how she’s affected”.
I’m proud of my students and I am very happy with our first attempt at creating wikis. I believe that for many of my students we truly did bring Science Alive!

1. Scaffolding
Here are some comments: [Their words/spelling/grammar, no editing on my part. Students can't edit a Discussion topic like they can their wiki page.]

Since Carolyn made some great topic development suggestions above, I will look more at some other ideas.

I realize now that I didn’t really give them enough of an outline. This is a challenge for topics like this… especially in a middle school where the students are still young. So many times in my teaching career I have shown a creative exemplar to students and then had a dozen photocopy-like replicas handed in. Also, in all honesty, I didn’t really know what to expect from my students and so it was hard to tell them what it was I expecting! I think that if I spent more time getting them involved with their topic and exploring possibilities early on, some of this stress would have been alleviated.
I did a lot of conferencing with groups and discussing ideas, but often I didn’t relate this back to specific things I wanted to see on their page. [Notice the control-freak teacher in me said "specific things I wanted to see" rather than suggestions that would enhance their learning. This is a learning curve for me as well as them.]
One frustration for me was that I taught Science for just 40 min. classes (a first for me this year having taught 80 min. classes in previous years). Take away login and log out times and sometimes it seemed that I would have just 2 or 3 really good conversations about projects and the class would be over.

Here is a very interesting comment:

The specific thing that I didn’t like in this case was that the experiment that they wanted to do had way too much variability and opportunity for chance to influence their results… this group did the experiment they wanted to do it anyway. Although I don’t think it was a great decision, I am glad they realized that I really did give them a choice.

The task at hand is to offer support to those that need it, and challenge those that don’t – not much different than any other project. The difference from other projects is that criteria is very hard to offer when you open up a project and allow everyone to demonstrate their learning in different ways. (Note Gabriela Sellart’s and Claudia Ceraso’s comments on my Some Assembly Required post- found in the reflection section.)

More from my students:

Scaffolding not instructions and criteria lists.

I had no idea how long this project would take. It went longer than it should, but I wanted to give ample notice when I finally did choose a date. Looking back, I gave the students notice on a Monday that it was due the following week Friday, then gave them until the following Monday… a lot of time! Yet, the lack of a stated completion date really seemed to bother students. I would love to see students keep updating their projects even now- why can’t they continue to pursue their interests? However, in the future I will start with a specific due date. Will this light the fire under students’ seats and get many of them on task, and/or more focussed, sooner? I don’t really know?

I had students research who were experts in their fields and intended to have them contact some of these people. Reality sunk in when I realized that I didn’t know these adults and I would have Grade 8 students contacting strangers directly. In the future, I would want to create a specific contact page for field experts to use to contact us. Then I could route initial contact through me. I would also notify parents that this would be happening well in advance of doing it. I think that this could happen in a safe way if it is well thought out, not flying by the seat of my pants as I was doing in this first attempt.
I could also have used some experts of my own. I’ll point again to Brian Crosby’s Learning is Messy post, Working, Breathing, Reproducible, Intriguing Models and once again beg for a Web2.0 service like Fieldfindr. (I created this mock site in February and it has had over 1,200 visits since the middle of March… who can make this a reality?

Imagine giving a ‘C’ to a student who writes:

Is a ‘C’ meaningful feedback? What are you telling that student about lifelong learning? What does the mark accomplish?

…And a Happy Note
I can’t get myself to end this post on a sad note, so I will end with a very positive observation:
This year has been cathartic for me.
• I have fully embraced using this blog as a learning tool since about November.
• I have read more and thought more about education in the last 6 months than in any given 5 years of my life.
• I am embracing technology like never before.
• I am engaging students in their learning like never before.
• I believe that we will see some (very exciting) fundamental shifts in education over the next few years.

…And Back to the Science Alive Wiki
If you have any observations that I may have missed, then feel free to be my teacher. Thanks!

What happens when you:

Allow students to determine what they need to learn, and then enable students to manage their own learning activities?

I recently started a wiki space for my Grade 8 Science classes called Science Alive!

The concept is to let students choose their own topic to explore, and then demonstrate learning on all the levels of Blooms Revised Taxonomy.

It has been exciting starting this project… and scary too!

I have been developing a rather critical blog post, looking at my own attempt at creating and using this wiki in my class. I have told myself time and again that I have bitten off more than I can chew, and that I am expecting too much from my Grade 8’s.

I asked my students to ’start’ looking into their chosen subjects this weekend. Before dinner tonight (Sunday Night) I checked the ‘Recent History’ of Science Alive and saw no changes for the weekend other than one on Friday afternoon. I have to admit to being disappointed.

Well I just came back (at 9pm) and I got to meet Joyce.

So, what happens when you:

Allow students to determine what they need to learn, and then enable students to manage their own learning activities?**

Have a look at what Katie and Sara did this weekend: Meet Joyce.