This was sent to me by a good friend and mentor, (and a leader in his district). It refers to news about my school moving to a BYO Laptop program. The humour in it is that he lives in Canada and I’m in China… beyond that it speaks volumes about how important school level leadership is in creating a current, meaningful, learning environment in a school.

Dear Mr. Truss,
I was pleased to see your inclusion of a laptop project for the school. This is in direct contrast to my children’s current school where the principal has announced “that there will be no technology between 8:30 and 3:30 without the direct supervision of a teacher.”

May I ask what I need to do to have my 3 lovely children attend your School?

I’ve talked about this kind of ‘miss-management’ before and it has certainly made the news recently. If we want our children to grow up prepared to live in the current media scape, we need to start with school level leadership living and breathing in that same media scape.

I’m confident that my friend will be asking his children’s principal about this decision. He is a leader that recognizes that ‘we’ need to deconstruct old notions and construct schools that foster learning in the digital age for the sake of ‘our’ students.

An honest look at my blog.

The Good: • This site, elgg.net, is not going to be called EduFilter (seems my e-mail wasn’t the only complaint). Elgg is now EduSpaces, a name a number of us recommended – though I bear no claim to my voice being listened to since I also offered a dozen other alternatives.

The Bad: • All my links to the site need changing, this isn’t necessary since elgg rather than eduspaces in the address still works, but I would rather that my Flickr, Curriki, LinkedIn, & other blogs etc. all had my updated links.

The (I wish I was) Indifferent: • My Technorati URL needs to change. THE BIG QUESTION: Why did this bother me?

There are two reasons that I can think of: TIMING and EGO.

Timing:
My blog is getting more attention than it ever has. Some noted bloggers: Stephen Downes, Scott McLeod, Wesley Freyer, Miguel Guhlin, and Vicki Davis (on EdTech Talk ) have all given my Web2.0 Prophecy: an Adventure a plug and linked to it with my old elgg address. This attention has doubled traffic to my site and I thank them for this! Yet I sit here pretending it didn’t bother me that they are linked to my old Technorati address rather than the new one. This leads to the main reason the URL change bothered me…

Ego:
I while back I e-mailed Scott McLeod in response to his top edublogs? post and wrote this:

Here comes the honest part: I like to go to my sitemeter and see where people visit me from. I like seeing the dots grow, in number and in size, on my clustrmap… and I like when I see new links in Technorati. Why?

The fact is, that I want to be well read, and I want my blog to be recognized. Scott McLeod says it best at the end of his ‘top edublogs?’ post:

1. Square Peg, Round Hole – a collection of other people’s ideas around schools not fitting kids that I have been adding to until recently, now a second post is in the works.

2. Portal Needed to Connect Classrooms to the World: Global Citizens can Share Talents and Skills with Students and the accompanying wiki fieldfindr, (yesterday fieldfindr had more hits than my blog… almost a month after I created it as a mock-up to go along with the post). When will someone make this a reality?

3. The digital native, the digital naive, and the digital divide – among other things, the idea that maybe students of this generation aren’t fully at the digital native stage… yet.

4. Leadership Lesson Plans – found in my files rather than my blog. Thanks mostly to Curriki, these get visited and downloaded a number of times daily. I am glad I can offer these resourses that I have found useful in teaching Leadership.

And in my opinion, the most under-rated post: School 2.0 Participant’s Manifesto – Manifesto’s are big in education and schools2.0 but they mostly focus on the changes needed to the system. Here, I look at the responsibilities of the learner- remember them?… the people we are ‘doing this stuff to‘. (ok, that was a bit cheeky!)

To anyone reading my blog for the first time, Learning Conversations is a post that quotes a lot of my other posts and gives a sense for what this blog is about, and what it means to me.

The Good:
•Quality. I take pride in my posts and although I still do them primarily for myself, I am keenly aware that I have an audience. This has made me a much better writer… (and it can do the same for students!)
•Recognition. My site is slowly growing in readership. Fear not ‘A list’ bloggers your position is safe, I’m not tilting the blogosphere on its’ head here, but I do consider myself an agent of change, and I will make my world a better place!
•Meaningful dialogue. I have enjoyed the learning conversations that I have had online. I have not been this excited about learning- ever! Was it like this in school for anyone? Not me.

The Bad:
•In-click/Out-click. I am amazed at how ridiculous some of the Google Searches are that lead to my site. For example I have the phrase ‘Webkinz-dot-com’ in a post that happens to touch an image of a (totally unrelated) bridge. 2-5 times a week I get hits from Webkinz (stuffed animal) image searches – Hardly what I would call a meaningful hit.
•Time. I spend too much time on the computer. I can’t keep up with my feedreader. Both reading and writing are slow processes for me. I started highlighting ‘New Voices’ but have stopped recently because I haven’t read any recently. I resolve this by sleeping less, but I can’t keep this up much longer. Who is doing all this well? And what is your secret???
•Comments. I spend a bit of time each week commenting on blogs… continuing the conversation. But I seem to generate very few commenters on my blog. This might be a result of my next point.
•Post length. I am long-winded. Most of my posts are lengthy. Are readers even getting to the end of them? I think it was Vicki Davis who wrote ‘write it, then cut it in half.’ I have to learn to do this… it won’t be easy for me. Even this post is probably too long!
The Indifferent:
•Technorati. It took a few days but I’m over it. I really don’t mind that I am starting over. I will enjoy watching the links grow again. I have never gone to Technorati to see someone else’s ranking and judged their site as a result. In fact, in a comment on Christian Long’s post Stop Blogging Because You’re An Educator I state: “…Warlick and Richardson seem to be more about post-cards than edu-posts.” I’ve noticed that many of the really meaningful posts that I have read recently have not come from the ‘big boys’ but rather the boys and girls- like me – that are in the trenches, trying to make sense of where schools are now, and where they need to be.

Images: Foster City Reflections and Under The Bridge 2 are both by Peter Kaminski on Flickr.

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Wesley Fryer is scaring people with Karl Fisch’s presentation “Did You Know” remixed by Scott Mcleod

Will Richardson is ‘Stuck’.

“There’s nothing new here, really. I know. What’s new for me at least is that if feels like my lens for all of this is changing. And that’s why I’m stuck as to what to write about here. My learning and classroom learning look very different. I will never enter another physical classroom as a “student” again, and that’s by choice. That physical space just doesn’t cut it. And schools are all about physical space. And control. And content.”

Kelly Christopherson feels stuck too.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach sees schools with more walls than windows. (Read this!)

Tangled in the web I find Stephanie Sandifer, who thinks Action Plans are Overdue. She points me back to Sheryl and Will (whom I had already read), as well as Miguel Guhlin, who in turn writes about Sheryl’s post.

Miguel’s post (overall) is more upbeat… yet this paragraph sticks with me,

Miguel’s optimism comes later when he says, “…let their voices, that of the learners, ring throughout our schools, voices that speak of relevance, authenticity, and human connections…in ways that cannot be denied.”

This sounds like my friend Dave Sands who says ‘it is students who will change education’. But it isn’t coming fast enough, there are too many ‘walls’ denying our students, too many flame snuffers.

This isn’t new. I’ve been here before.
From my first post:

To my first collection of other posts, where I found so many people writing and talking about how schools don’t fit kids: Square Peg, Round Hole… Time and again I am finding myself in these lulls of impatience, frustration and dissatisfaction.

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What spurred this comparison on? My thinking can jump around quite a bit, it went something like this:
We are reaching a group consciousness around ‘where we are’ compared to ‘where we should be’ with the use of technology and schools… ‘reaching a group consciousness’ reminds me of the 100th Monkey Effect… actually, this is like a web version of the Age of Aquarius… which reminds me… what were the ’9 Ideas’ or ‘Agreements’ I read about in The Celestine Prophecy about 10-12 years ago?… No wait, they weren’t Ideas or Agreements, they were… (Google search the book)… ‘Insights’! …(reading) …Wow, I can really see some parallels here!

So, here is my comparison. I will box in the text about the Celestine Prophecy Insights from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Celestine_Prophecy, Monday Dec. 12, 2007 – I’m just realizing that a date is essential when quoting a changeable text). I will then put my slant on how ‘”WE” are progressing through the insights in relation to the ‘WEb’

The Web2.0 Prophecy

A New Web Awakening

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Time’s Person/People of the Year.

Professor Michael Wesch shows US that WE are the power of the web.

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The Struggle for Power: Elitist -vs- Ubiquitous

On the one hand we have Four Eyed Monsters’ video

“Humanity Lobotomy”: Net Neutrality Open Source Documentary

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Web Mavens rather than Mystics

We have the pioneers: Vicki A. Davis has soared, so has Darren Kuropatwa.

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We are Connected

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THIS IS WHERE WE ARE STUCK!

On the bright side:

We have the Creative Commons;

We used to only dream of flying,

and;

We see the potential for providing wisdom to others.

But we seem to have impediments to our dreams; challenges and limitations that stall our dreams.

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THIS IS WHERE WE NEED TO BE NOW!

We need our ‘guiding coincidences’ to be ones that are nurturing and powerful.

We need to collaborate, empower one another, and see potential rather than roadblocks. This is important for our children/our students, but it is equally important for us. Our ‘synchronistic message’ can’t be “impatience, frustration and dissatisfaction” as I mentioned earlier.

We need financial support, visionary leaders, moral compasses, inspiring role models, enriching professional development, and meaningful collaboration. We also need minimally restricted content and unlimited access… these are all building blocks that ‘increase the frequency of guiding coincidences’… these are the things that inspire us, fuel us, connect us, and allow us to see the potential in ourselves and each other. We truly can ‘Be the change we want to see in the world.’

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Web3.0 or Web3D

Gary Hayes has some ideas about where are we going next.

My question to you is this: When we are stuck, when things aren’t coming together, when our universe is not unfolding as it should, how do we make things FLOW?

I ask this since we are heading map-less into new, and uncharted territory.

As we start to look at different skills, 21st Century Skills, and get kids thinking beyond what is on the test, it gets harder to mark what really counts. Report cards will have to change as our assessment does. How valuable is it to measure a student’s ability to solve a Numeracy Task? How do you weight this evaluation next to quiz and test marks that are based on a student’s ability to follow the steps in adding fractions, or their ability to follow the algorithm for solving an algebra equation? What about their ability to Synthesize and Add Meaning to what they know?

These are questions I am grappling with on a number of levels… but while I think about these things, the reality of having to write report cards is still there. After just completing my second term report cards, I have been thinking of the changes that I have helped to make on our district’s middle school report cards. They don’t directly address my concerns above, but the changes have created an opportunity to look at learning skills as much as we do marks… I think this is a step in the right direction

It wasn’t perfect but it was a chance to say a bit more about a student than a simple work habit evaluation of G, S,or N (Good, Satisfactory, or Needs Improvement).

With hindsight being 20/20, I now wonder how we could have included some 21^st Century Skills into these learning skills? Of course then we would need to ensure that all students were given the opportunity to develop those skills.

The idea behind these Learning Skills was a driving force of what we as not only teachers, but also as parents, wanted to see on a report card. A theme that kept coming up was that we wanted to know that the teacher knew or understood who our kid is! We also wanted to know what areas of learning we, as parents, could help with at home.

We changed the evaluative language from G, S, and N to M-Mastering, D- Developing and E- Emerging. This has subsequently been changed back. I like the more positive description of M, E, and D, but that’s also partially because it signaled a difference in approach from the umbrella term of Work Habits we used to have on our report cards, and also because I think that the old scale carried a bit too much baggage with it. “How does it look when I give a grade of an ‘A’ with an ‘S’ for work habits?” (My response is that what it looks like doesn’t matter! Add an anecdotal comment to explain this.) However, it seemed to me that students who get an ‘A’ and who are still ‘Emerging’ in certain learning skills would have very appropriate feedback if his report card mentioned this. I’ll stab at a more humourous aspect of this after looking at where we are now.

Our district rolled this report out for our first term this year.

It was to be… “The last format we are going to work with”… but it wasn’t. Three key flaws to our design: 1. Teachers hated the Learning Skills; 2. Teachers of individual courses did not have a say regarding behavior and/or work habits in their individual classes;and, 3. Students portray these skills, or lack thereof, quite differently from class to class/teacher to teacher.

What I really hated was the drop-down menu for Social Responsibility, now mandatory for us to report on. Here are the options from the drop-down menu from which we were (and still are) to choose from:

On our current Report Card cover page it states,

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Social Responsibility is reported on in one or more of the following areas: contributing to the classroom and school community, solving problems in peaceful ways, valuing diversity and defending human rights, and exercising democratic rights and responsibilities.”

Even with student input, I found these difficult to use for all but the most inclusive/cooperative students. The menu is based on the BC (Provincial) Performance Standards for Social Responsibility (find the rubric here). Although I like the rubric and use it for students to reflect on, I think the drop-down menu needs to be revised to make the comments more meaningful to students, teachers, and parents. (I couldn’t imagine putting, “tends to be egocentric, apathetic, feel powerless” on a student’s report card!) There is a 65 character space also provided for further explanation by the teacher.

Also from our report card cover we have an explanation of the Learning Skills. For the Term 1 report above the 5 skill areas were simply identified as learning skills, (including social responsibility) whereas there is greater detail in this term’s new cover page, (with Social Responsibility being separated out, as described above). Notice the combining of the learning skills from the Term 1 report:

Older report cards simply had ‘work habits’ to encompass all of these. Before I say that ‘I really like this new format’, let me say that after our school learning team ended last year and I have had nothing to do with these new changes, so this isn’t a case of me tooting my own horn.

I really like this new format! Work Habits & Effort fit well together, as do Behavior & Attitude. Yes a student could have poor work habits and still put in a great effort, or have a great attitude and still be a behavior issue, but these difference can easily be touched on in the anecdotal section of the report card. The separation of work habits from behavior is the most noticeable change for me. As a parent I think this information is much more meaningful, and as a teacher I feel that I can better inform parents as to where I see areas of need and, hopefully as the year progresses, areas of growth.
Also, now the kid with an ‘A’ in a class but with both Satisfactory Work Habits & Effort as well as a Satisfactory Behavior & Attitude can be referred to as an “A with a double S”

Here is this term’s report card. Due to the unexpected change we were told that we did not have to go back and re-fill in the grades/skills for Term 1. This would have been a little challenging and time consuming since we’d have to combine the learning skills that we originally looked at separately.