Bill C-61 is a copyright law that is truly scary to anyone that shares what they teach online.
The following is an e-mail I received from Kris at http://wanderingink.net She is 16 years old. Bold font is mine, for those that only want to skim…
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Fair Copyright Montreal (a branch of the same group I participate in) posted a full analysis of Bill C-61, the proposed Canadian DMCA. But don’t click on the link yet, I want to highlight something first. Read the link afterwards and shake your head at how much these people are stuck in the 20th century.
The bill has a special section for “Lessons”, new copyright laws that apply to the classroom. Are they exemptions? Special permissions? NO. I personally read the text of the bill that applies (section 30) and decided that Fair Copy Montreal had the best summary, which I’ve posted below.
Here they are, the new copyright laws for education in Canada. Read all of it. Emphasis is mine. Note: when they mention students, it’s impossible to claim “everyone is a student” as a loophole. In fact, they supplied their own greviously outdated definition in the text of the bill: “a student who is enrolled in a course of which the lesson forms a part is deemed to be a person on the premises of the educational institution when the student participates in or receives the lesson by means of communication by telecommunication.”
Read the following new laws with that exclusive definition of “student” in your mind:
What educational institutions are allowed to do:
Broadcast lessons if the broadcast recipients are exclusively students (Clause 18, section 30.01, subsection 3)
What educational institutions are not allowed to do:
Print more than one copy of any digital reproduction communicated in a lesson (Clause 18, section 30.02, subsection 2)
Use a work from the Internet if the website or the work has any form of technical restriction (Clause 18, section 30.04, subsection 3)
What educational institutions must do:
Destroy lessons 30 days after the final course evaluations have been given out (Clause 18, section 30.01, subsection 5, paragraph a)
Take measures to ensure that students exclusively may receive lessons (Clause 18, section 30.01, subsection 5, paragraph b)
Take measures to ensure that students may not copy lessons (Clause 18, section 30.01, subsection 5, paragraph c)
Take measures to ensure that any digital reproduction cannot be communicated to anyone else outside the institution (Clause 18, section 30.02, subsection 3, paragraph b)
Take measures to ensure that any digital reproduction cannot be printed more than once per person that has received the lesson (Clause 18, section 30.02, subsection 3, paragraph c)
Take any measure prescribed by regulations for any copied digital reproduction (Clause 18, section 30.02, subsection 3, paragraph d)
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Can you see what a huge STEP BACKWARDS this is for 21st century education in Canada? It makes everything that you do illegal. Confining “copyrighted” learning to people who are on the physical premises… what a 20th century idea! I don’t think they’ll be able to get away with this unless they at least make an exception for distance education, but even then, this bill is so counter-productive!
Think about those universities like MIT and Berkeley that broadcast their lessons for free over iTunes or their own websites to whoever just wants to learn. That is exactly what is going to become illegal, at least in Canada. How are Canadian universities going to be able to compete for students in a global market if they can’t let anyone on the outside take a look in? Canada is going to lag behind if our government can’t adapt its laws for the 21st century.
They’re going to be voting on the bill THIS September when Parliament is back in session. The NDP is on our side, but the Liberals are so far uncertain. The Conservatives are a lost cause – they’re all going to be voting YES on this as a party (because it’s a bill introduced by the Government). The Bloc Quebecois will probably be voting with the Conservatives. The bill could go either way depending on how much pressure there is from the public.
Anyway, I just wanted to share with you a portion of my concern over this new copyright bill. Read the rest of the analysis if you like and find the other reasons to be concerned, but I thought I would bring this one to your attention because it strikes so close to home.
If you think this is appropriate reason to be concerned and if it’s not too much to ask, do you think you could forward this email to other web 2.0 educators or anyone else in Canada that would be interested? I want to raise as much awareness as possible about this new bill among the people it would effect. If you’d like more information then let me know and I can give you some more links or explain it to you myself.
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Thanks for sharing Kris! Please share this information with anyone you think might care, or contribute to preventing this Bill from stiffling education in Canada!
This blog has a subtitle: Reflections on Education, Technology and Learning
My other less-frequently used blog, ‘Practic-All’, is subtitled, Pragmatic tools and ideas for the classroom. Recently I started using this other blog to provide a digital addition to my Principal’s weekly e-mail update. I did 9 of these to end the year off. I called them Dave’s Digital Magic, (or school teams are the Magicians). Recently I’ve done some thinking about education, technology and learning on my Practic-All blog and so I thought I’d share it here too.
I tried to provide within each ‘digital magic’ a few links including some that promoted web2.0 tools, some that were fun, some that were for different curricular areas… and some that made you think. I put these ‘thinking links’ into a category called, THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMMMM… and I ended each post with one of these.
This was a rather passive way to attempt some influence on my staff. I know some of them ignored the link to my Digital Magic, at least a couple of the staff were very regular visitors, and others waited to hear about something useful before venturing to a link or two. We are talking about tiny ripples rather than tidal waves… but, in keeping with the water theme, even the greatest waterfall begins with a single drop.
So now I put a challenge out to you!
Create your own ripples. Pick one of the nine THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMMMM… and share it with your staff. Or create your own (and please share it with me as well as others).
1. THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMMMM…
Actually here are two links for you!
a) Feel like reading? 15 year old Kris gives her eloquent view about what’s wrong with schools:
What do these two links have in common? They both make me ask myself questions.
Do we do what we do because we are used to it? Or, do we do what we do because it has always been done that way? Are we doing what’s best for our students? What do we do well? And, what can we do better?
A Feature in the The New York Times, By Po Bronson. I will let the article speak for itself:
Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York fifth-grade classrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzles—puzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well. Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, “You must be smart at this.” Other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.” Why just a single line of praise? “We wanted to see how sensitive children were,” Dweck explained. “We had a hunch that one line might be enough to see an effect.” Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck’s team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The “smart”kids took the cop-out.
Later, when given a much more difficult test, these results were magnified. It really is worth reading the whole article, but here is a key point about the research above:
Dweck had suspected that praise could backfire, but even she was surprised by the magnitude of the effect. “Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”
More food for thought from the article:
Psychologist Wulf-Uwe Meyer, a pioneer in the field, conducted a series of studies where children watched other students receive praise. According to Meyer’s findings, by the age of 12, children believe that earning praise from a teacher is not a sign you did well—it’s actually a sign you lack ability and the teacher thinks you need extra encouragement. And teens, Meyer found, discounted praise to such an extent that they believed it’s a teacher’s criticism—not praise at all—that really conveys a positive belief in a student’s aptitude. In the opinion of cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham, a teacher who praises a child may be unwittingly sending the message that the student reached the limit of his innate ability, while a teacher who criticizes a pupil conveys the message that he can improve his performance even further.
In a nutshell, praise effort rather than intelligence. The article goes on to mention the value this has on developing persistence when faced with failure, while praising intelligence increases the stress and reduces the desire to face such challenges. I will be thinking about this a lot over the next few days both at school with my students and at home with my own kids. – - – - – Po Bronson’s blog, “How Not to Talk to Your Kids” Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. From Part 4:
“A common praise technique that people use (I know I did it with my tutoring kids… up til a few weeks ago, that is….) is to use a present success to control future performance. For example, if a typically-sloppy child writes an essay that’s atypically legible, a parent or teacher may say, “That’s very neat: you should write all of your papers like this.” Even if it’s meant as sincere praise and encouragement, the research shows that’s not only an ineffective way to praise. In fact, like praising for intelligence – it can actually damage a child’s performance.Here’s what is going on…”
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3. THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMMMM…
Clarence Fisher, a brilliant Canadian teacher and blogger, wrote this short paper (4 easy-to-read pages), Changing Literacies (PDF).
Being literate is so much more than being able to understand a written text on a piece of paper.
Here is a quote from his section on Access,
“Fast forward to our society and the ability we now have to drown ourselves in
cheap, disposable information from books, television, the internet, radio,
magazines, video, etc. In our time, one of the major skills of being literate is
the ability to access texts in many different forms from many different sources.
Importantly, it is not about searching for texts, it’s about finding them.”
In this article, Clarence describes why I became a ‘technology guy’. Actually, I don’t really care about technology… I just see how these tools, like wiki’s, can engage students in meaningful ways, where they create and share what they have learned in new, interesting ways.
NOTE ON THE USE OF THIS RUBRIC: [Check out the link before reading this!]
“Habits of Mind are the characteristics of what intelligent people do when they are confronted with problems, the resolution(s) to which are not immediately apparent. These behaviors are seldom performed in isolation. Rather, clusters of such behaviors are drawn forth and employed in various situations.”
(Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick: 16 Habits of Mind) The purpose of a rubric when assessing student work is to provide benchmarks of achievement based on these habits which allow a student to understand their current level of mastery and discipline in order to set goals for future drafts, assessments, or marking periods. For as long as possible we will refrain from discussing grades, per se, and focus our discussion on achievement and progress. As long as a student continues to set goals, reflect and evaluate their work and habits, set new goals and modify their work, habits and effort accordingly, they will realize increasing success and achievement as the year progresses. Thus, rather than penalizing a student who begins the year as a believer and ends the year with nothing compared to them by averaging a lower earlier grade with a later higher one, the student is evaluated according to mastery and achievement as demonstrated by their ability and mastery by the end of the year. However, a student who may begin the year with the drive and motivation to knock on heaven’s door, but who then slacks off, loses focus and discipline and ends up wondering what they did to deserve this, will not be boosted from a D to a C because first quarter was strong when it is not reflective of the ability or master he or she consistently demonstrated.
Could you use this rubric or parts of it?
How important are these ‘Habits of the Mind’?
What does this rubric look at compared to what our report cards look at?
Do you ‘average’ previous terms or give ’snapshots’ of where students are now?
This blog post is written by Darren Kuropatwa, a brilliant high school Math teacher.
Here is an excerpt:
“You can require your students to demonstrate their understanding of what they are learning by having them apply their knowledge analyzing and evaluating relevant novel situations or problems. Better yet, get them to create content that educates an interested learner and they will automatically incorporate all those levels of engagement while they make their learning sticky. I don’t need to tell you that there’s nothing like having to teach a thing to make you really learn it.
Darren walks the talk! His students will go home and spend hours helping to teach others, when it is there turn to scribe the class notes and post them on a blog for the other students in their class. You can see this in his Scribe Hall of Fame… or if you aren’t into Math, just check out the link to the article.
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6. THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMMMM…
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Video’s are a great teaching tool! One way to start collecting them is to sign up for a free YouTube account. When you are signed in, and you find a video you like, just click ‘Favorite’ and you can collect videos there. Then from any computer you can sign in and find all your favorites.
You can also make Playlists, which lets you create video players, like the one seen on this wiki.
I like this because you can show a number of videos without students seeing the comments under the videos (which can sometimes be very inappropriate for classrooms). You can also use playlists to separate your favorites for different uses.
Start with the simple task of signing up for a free YouTube account, and then I’ll be glad to help you.
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7. THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMMMM…
The purpose of homework…
Is homework an effective practice?
What is it intended to accomplish for student learning?
How do you use it effectively?
How do you deal with homework that isn’t done? Is this the same as others on your team?
What feedback have you had from students? Parents?
What I’ve read recently to get me thinking about homework:
In this approach students are part of the system itself. They participate in decisions about what is taught, what they would like to learn, and what strategies and tools they would like to use in the learning process. Some may decide to work more independently, some in groups; but they are part of the process of deciding what goes on in their own learning.
As we head into June, what can we do to help students leave our school feeling like they are empowered learners?
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9. THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMMMM…
Teaching gifted students compared to teaching every student.
No link for this one, instead, here is a reflection Kari did on having a SHARP, gifted cluster, in her class this year. I thought this was very insightful and also thought about just how much this applied to every student, not just gifted ones!
Top 10 Lessons I Learned Being Involved in SHARP
1. Different is Good: Strategies for differentiation help all students be successful: Gifted, LD, ESL, Non-Categorized.
2. Free Birds Soar: Given the freedom to choose how to present their learning, Gifted students will surpass your, and their own, expectations.
3. Stimulation is Mandatory: Gifted students need to be challenged constantly, or else boredom sets in.
4. Knives and Spoons: Gifted students are not necessarily “gifted” in all areas of the curriculum.
5. Fun and Games: Gifted students are still typical kids- they need to have fun and be accepted by their peers.
6. Be Comfortable with Uncertainty: Gifted students ask lots of questions, but it’s okay if you, the teacher, don’t have all the answers.
7. Stars Are Part of a Larger Constellation: Gifted students need to be recognized for their uniqueness, but still fit in with the rest of the class.
8. Heads May Butt: Your cluster may not always get along or work well together all the time!
9. A Watered Flower Grows: Being involved in SHARP helps you to evolve as a teacher.
10. Hear Me Vent and Brag: Having conversations with other SHARP teachers is valuable and gratifying.
I chat with some ‘familiar’ people, Alec Couros and Kelly Christopherson, and ask them to help me out with a Pro-D session I’ll be running with student teachers on the 25th. Chrissy says to ‘Twitter’ her and she will help out. (She actually says, “Twitter us and we will help”). I don’t follow Chrissy on Twitter so I go to my open Twitter window and request to follow her.
I see that I have a new Gmail message in my inbox so I open another window to find out that it is Kris. She is asking if I had seen her new post, which is titled Web2.0 Compatible.
I’m listening to the meeting, I postpone popping open windows to the links Vance is referring to, or checking the live chat on uStream so that I can read Kris’ post. I notice a small typo in Kris’s second paragraph. I also notice a green dot by her name in Google Chat indicating that she is online. I open a chat box and quote her typo back to her.
Kris replies back minutes later that the typo is fixed, (I hit refresh and it is). Kris’ post is about how ‘her generation’ is totally web2.0 compatible.
I continue following the meeting where a participant is talking about how these new applications are now ‘net’ applications and not ‘pay-for’ software. I realize that other than my computer and Internet connection, all this linking and watching and listening and engaging is free.
The most amazing part to all this: It was almost midnight here and I was ‘chatting’ with a student, reading her writing, and offering (minor) feedback… while ‘sitting in’ on a staff meeting at the International School Bangkok, Thailand… ‘talking’ to Kelly in Saskatchewan and Alec in Regina, as well as others in Australia and The UK… and ‘meeting’ Chrissy, a new connection from New Zealand, who has offered to Twitter-in and help demonstrate networking/connectivity at my Pro-D session next week in the suburbs of Vancouver.
All this happened in a shorter time than it took me to write this post!
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Postscript:
While getting links for this post, I discovered that Chrissy also wrote about this experience. Here is a great image she uploaded. Click on it to get to her post.
…and back again moments later. Apparently this was not a staff meeting, but a session in an un-conference. Kim just linked to the conference wiki page via Twitter.
Originally posted: January 16th, 2008
Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:
This was a very powerful expression of how my learning has shifted from searching for information to seeking interaction. It also speaks of ‘richness’.
I want students to know this kind of learning… in school. I want them to be active members in a global learning network. I want them to follow their own interests, to make choices about what information they will choose to pay attention to, what to check later, and what to filter out. I want students to be 21st Century learners.
We are influenced by so many things in our lives. Identifying what has a significant influence on us can be difficult. Here are two things that I believe can be categorized as most influential… and they both happened Monday.
1. Fifteen year old Kristine wrote a very influential blog post last May. It coincided with a lesson I was doing in my class for our school’s Renaissance Fair. The post, “How to Prevent Another Leonardo da Vinci“, has made the finals for the Edublog Awards ‘Most Influential Post ‘. She is the only student to make the finals in this category. Furthermore, the post has had an impact on me, and many teachers that I have shared it with. Thinking back now, as I write this, I realize that Kris has influenced my blog posts, time and again. (The student as teacher, or at least as an influential node in my learning network:-)
As I told Kris in my comment months ago: “You are, and always will be, a lifelong learner who engages in a quest to meaningfully exploring your world, (dare I say like da Vinci)… I guess one would argue despite your education rather than because of it… so there is hope, and there is potential for us to find our next da Vinci… perhaps SHE is within our midst today:-)”
As edubloggers I think that it is great to recognize students like Kris who deserve more recognition than they usually get at school. We should also recognize that although we strive to give students the best possible experience in our classrooms, Kris’ message holds more truths than most would like to admit. May her blog influence many learning discussions in the months to come.
2. Two good friends, Dave Sands and Gary Kern came to my school Monday night and did a presentation with me on: Technology, Your Child, and You. Twenty seven parents braved the threat of the first snowfall of the year to participate in the presentation. On a personal note, I felt a little like a rookie called up to the majors to help out with this presentation. Dave and Gary have given it many times, and they had a ‘flow’ about them that I lacked. Overall I think it was great to be part of the presentation and it was fun to see my Batman/Borg metaphor being used (though they use the more recognized Terminator rather than the Borg).
Dave was very impressed with the parent’s involvement and interest. The most vocal of them wanted answers about what to do about Facebook and all the screen time kids have. This presentation however was much more about asking questions than giving answers.
The presentation delivers a number of key ideas: Technology feeds student needs. Technology isn’t going away. Parents need to figure out what they value, and they need to understand and engage with the technology their kids are using. If parents want influence with their children, they are far more likely to get it engaging from the inside rather than policing from the outside.
A simple example: a kid that won’t phone a parent from a friend’s house to say they are changing locations, might not think twice about texting a parent while in the back seat of a car heading to the new location… if text is a mode of communication that the kid already uses with their parent.
The presentation is very well designed and parent feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with several of them wishing more parents showed up, “Parents need to hear this!”
It was a most influential Monday!
Originally posted: November 29th, 2007
Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:
A look at some amazing students and teachers.
Kris is now my blog-hosting techie, I provide her with free hosting (Bluehost gives me more space than I’ll ever use), and I get step-by-step help with things like upgrading to the newest WordPress version. She has also been invited to post on Students 2oh, although she hasn’t done so yet.
Mr. Mak was the second of two teachers at our school to get the computers for his 1-1 class, so he had to wait until late February to have them passed on to his students. I arrived at the school in February, showed Mr. Mak Wikispaces and gave him some suggestions about how he could use it. Since then he has blown me away with his fearlessness.
Check out Mr. Mak’s Class Novel or his ToonDoo Anti-Bullying cartoons (note that Raj helped with the instructions), or his Career Research assignment (where 1 person from each of 3 different classes shares a page). Discussions get posted by students late at night, and I see students in the computer room at lunch working on their wikipages. This isn’t a wiki, it is a learning hub!
Also, our computer teacher, Mr. Yuen, jumped onto wikispaces too! His students aren’t just using wiki’s, they are also using tools like: Slideshare, Screencast-o-matic, Dvolver, Jing, Flickr and Audacity, (links to these are on his wiki’s navigation bar). This is a teacher who asked me “What is a wiki?” when I got to the school! Since then he has leaped into the world of web2.0 and has not looked back. I’ve had skype conversations with him well past midnight: I suggest some tools and links and then he shows me some fantastic things he has tried out.
Next year Mr. Yuen will be our afternoon librarian and we are revamping the Library’s outdated computer lab. I can’t wait to see how influential this amazing teacher will be when he starts collaborating with teachers coming to the library to do projects!
So there you have it: Two amazing students and two amazing teachers that are lifelong learners. Four ‘most influential’ people that inspire me with their passion for learning and sharing with others.
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Comment from the original post:
David, what a way to start the week! I just finished reading Kristine’s post, and I absolutely agree! I think every educator needs to read and talk about this post. We have young DaVinci’s sitting in our classrooms ready to be developed. Let’s hope her well deserved recognition for this post will influence many!
Angela Maiers on Thursday, 29 November 2007, 23:58 CET
“You know the No. 1 complaint about school is that it’s boring because the traditional way it’s taught relies on passive learning,” Mr. Noguera said. “It’s not interactive enough.”
How are we going to make that work in our school?”
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“When someone wants to ban something, I ask myself,
how can we use this to help us in education? ‘It is a new tool’. Not obstacles but opportunities.”
Chris Kennedy
Which takes us back to the New York Times Article:
Ms. Poli said her Spanish-speaking students — known around the school as Pod People — have been able to move out of bilingual classes after just a year of using the digital devices, compared with an average of four to six years for most bilingual students.
Winnie Hu
Access
We have the capability to access like never before! Recently I have thought a lot about how things have changed, about how we digitally engage and interact in our world. There are so many opportunities available to us.
• Our lives are open, public and on display.
For under $100 you can have iLife ’08 and produce, publish, print and share what ever you want with the world. Fifteen years ago $10,000 couldn’t have given you the same opportunities… and there are free versions of similar (and some better) tools popping up all the time.
• Online networks help to define us.
My Blog, My Flickr, My Space, My Facebook, My Friends, My Profile, My Second Life, My del.icio.us, MyBlogLog, My Ning Network, My Twitter, My-Whole-Life-Connected-and-On-Display-For-Anyone-And-Everyone-To-See…
• Growing access to customizable tools and networks.
Maps of the future are being used as a catalyst for conversation. As Mark Van’t Hooft of Ubiquitous Thoughts notes, the map “…lists half a dozen external forces that will affect education in the next decade in the areas of family and community, markets, institutions, educators and learning, and tools and practices. With regards to digital tools, it is noteworthy that the focus seems to be on mobile and connected devices, in an environment that favors personalization/customization AND networking/connectedness at the same time.”
• Personalized learning that responds to a learner’s needs.
Machines are finding creative answers to problems… This site, Think Artificial, also introduced me to Virtual Tutors: Launched in March, uMind “…employs AI to create a virtual tutor that recognizes and adapts to the student’s limitations and emotional distress. The instructor knows when a student is stumped and activates extra teaching modules on the specific subject.”
• Life extended beyond the physical world.
Moving beyond just Web2.0 sharing. The first time I saw Gary Hayes‘ “THE CHANGING INTRAWEB – FROM 1.0 to 3.0” was the first time I considered the possibility of Web3.0. Today there seems to be a very real weaving of real-life and virtual realities for more than just entertainment. We will find ourselves engaging in, and fully integrating with, a digital universe — a metaverse — “This ubiquitous cloud of information is like electricity to children of the 20th century: essentially universal, expected and conspicuous only in its absence.”
Obstacles
Yes there are Obstacles … and they aren’t going away fast enough. The most basic one is once again access- (or at least lack there of). Carolyn Foote‘s post on The disconnect notes the many roadblocks teacher face, (“the disconnect between “the possible” and what’s permitted in schools”).
Here is what I said in a comment on Carolyn’s post:
I’ve been limited by the technology my school can provide time and again:-(
About a year and a half ago, I got out of Plato’s cave, saw the vibrancy technology can provide in a student’s learning experience and I have been constantly thrown back into the cave to watch the technology-less shadows… A disconnect indeed!
For me the (hardware) tools are computers, ideally wireless laptops.
For many others, as I have been learning, the (web2.0/software) tools themselves are unimportant compared to access, opportunity, and COLLABORATION TIME. Tools are getting so much more user-friendly, but using them for learning (rather than just to teach old things in new ways), that is the trick. Case in point: I have seen a few blogs where students answer a teacher question, but don’t interact with each other in any meaningfully way.
So for many teachers collaboration time, or training, or professional development opportunities are more important than tools (in my humble opinion).
Put 2 or more well-intentioned teachers in a room and practice will improve. Don’t offer specific tools, offer opportunities for people to Connect & Collaborate & Creatively engage with tools of their choice.
Oh yeah… but make sure they have the technology available to make this time useful when they get back into their classrooms!
Access Granted
On many levels, ‘access issues’ are key obstacles. Yet, opportunities abound! The web lets us collaborate in manydifferentways! So now I have to wonder: Do we want our discussions to be around what we can’t do?
It isn’t so much about ‘New Boundaries‘ as it is about removing boundaries. There were holes in the Berlin wall for years… innovative teachers today are escapees from behind similar walls. It is time to tear the old ideological walls down. Teachers and students need access granted!
Originally posted: October 9th, 2007
Comment on the original post:
I’m just discovering this post after you shared it on twitter during Educon! It is such a fresh way of looking at the issues involved. I’m going to add it to the wiki for reflection.
I think identifying this as an ideological battle is significant. It’s about the difference between fear and opportunity. I think we have to be informed, and inform our districts as well, and we each have to help on the front lines by spreading hope not fear.
One of the most amazing things about our district is how open it is… and we are building an infrastructure designed for our students to be able to bring their own hardware!
In 5 years, a teacher won’t need a 1-1 laptop program, but instead just 2 or 3 ‘computers’ for those that do not bring their own to class. Why? Because I figure in 5 years instead of carrying around an MP3 player and phone/camera, almost every student will have a jazzed up iPhone or equivalent tool. They will be bringing their own tools to class. With the hardware obstacle out of the way, we can start focusing on the use of technology to Connect & Collaborate & Creatively engage the learner… allowing our student to Construct their learning and Create meaning.
I’ve seen a real shift in my own thinking recently. Forget whining about access, disregard the slow speed of change, get over the obstacles! Go after meaningful results. Engage and empower students. Be a leader and a role model.
“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).
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.
“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.
We are definitely out of the cocoon, and although we still aren’t sure where our wings can take us, we are beginning to fly.
I think the transformation has been from groups of educators going in similar direction to a single (loose) network of learners helping, and connecting to, each other.
Comments on the original post:
Here is the cookie-cutter email response. I guess with it being a ‘business’ question I should not have expected any significant mention of education.Barack Obama wrote:Hi Dave-Thanks for participating in Barack’s question on LinkedIn Answers – our campaign will review all of these answers in the days ahead.Barack is committed to helping small businesses and believes they are at the heart of the American economy. He is committed to expanding opportunities and easing the everyday pressures so many businesses face by cutting their health care costs, improving access to capital, and investing in innovation and development.He plans to fix our health care crisis and enable more small businesses to provide affordable care to their employees. He will expand loan programs for small businesses and create a national network of public-private business incubators. He also will invest in women-owned businesses, increase minority access to capital, increase supports for businesses in rural areas, and work to close the digital divide that limits the growth potential of many urban and rural small businesses.
In addition, Barack will support entrepreneurship and spur job growth by creating a national network of public-private business incubators. Business incubators facilitate the critical work of entrepreneurs in creating start-up companies. They offer help designing business plans, provide physical space, identify and address problems affecting all small businesses within a given community, and give advice on a wide range of business practices, including reducing overhead costs. Business incubators will engage the expertise and resources of local institutions of higher education and successful private sector business to help ensure that small businesses have both a strong plan and the resources for long-term success. Obama will invest $250 million per year to increase the number and size of incubators in disadvantaged communities throughout the country.
We appreciate immensely your willingness to share your insights and suggestions on these issues and your help in achieving these goals.
For more information on Barack ideas for improving America visit: www.barackobama.com/issues
Thanks,
Scott & Becky @ Obama HQ
David Truss on Friday, 14 September 2007, 21:46 CEST
Your blog is inspiring, and can serve as a resource for teachers in the trenches. I teach 3rd grade, and I am seeing the differentiation of technological literacy…some are learning what an icon is, some can navigate to a research link, and others are making amazing connections. It is frustrating to have a curriculum that includes just “keyboarding” and it starts 1/2 way through the school year. Student need to engage in critical thinking and be able to read and think across several technological literacies. I plan to really explore what you have here and find ideas for implementation. -ABC Coach
ABC Coach on Saturday, 27 October 2007, 17:59 CEST
To ABC Coach,Thank you for your kind words.I’m beginning to think that it is time we threw the curriculum out the window and rebuilt it from scratch. Start with the ‘end in mind’ and meaningfully engage students in critical thinking and 21st Century Literacy, rather than just creating a series of patchwork adaptations and solutions. -Dave
David Truss on Saturday, 27 October 2007, 23:07 CEST
I think this post should be mandatory for every student teacher to read before they graduate.
I can hear the rebuttals, and yes there are some sweeping generalizations made… but rather than being defensive, I think it is our duty as educators to make things better… in EVERY classroom. We have the tools, and the understanding of pedagogy to make things better even though logistics, economics and circumstance can impede us. What we need are the exemplars, the role models, and the educational leaders to help us get where we need to be.
Today I went to a Learning Team Celebration where everyone on learning teams shared their successes with regards to action based research, done with colleagues, to explore areas of interest. Learning teams (as described here) promote dialogue among peers looking at areas such as the use of reading strategies, social responsibility programs, numeracy initiatives, and integrating technology to engage students in more meaningful ways. I have realized over the past few months that it isn’t technology per se that will change education. Instead, it is collaboration of teachers using best practice, and of students interacting with us and each other, that will truly and meaningfully change education. Technology, such as web2.0 tools, will help make the process easier, and speed the process up.
Consider this: I have had the honour of teaching with some truly amazing teachers, and yet I have spent little or no time observing them teach. I have not been able to tap into some ‘masterful’ resources just a few classroom doors away from me. Collaboration is key! Is it ironic or apropos that a post about da Vinci, a recluse that hid his work, is a post that highlights the value of collaborating?
This is how we kill each trait that may yield another Da Vinci:1. Curiosita (fromHow to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day) What: Intense and insatiable curiosity; constantly learning due to a desire to ask and answer questions The Murder: In schools, for the most part, students learn only what the teacher decides they will learn. Student questions will often go unanswered if they lead away from the material (go off-topic), or if there are time constraints on what must be learned that leave no time for these questions in class.
7. Connessione (from “How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci”) What? Acceptance and appreciation for the interconnectedness of everything in life; interdisciplinary approaches and thinking The Murder: Facts and concepts are taught in specific classes that are independent of each other, and students are moved from individual class to individual class without knowledge of how the two might be connected. Boundaries like that between art and science are rarely crossed or their connectedness even explained. Facts and ideas might be taught with no explanation of the links between them (ie, learning individual details and facts but not the big picture).
Read the whole post! If you are an educator, then I challenge you to do two things:
Congratulate yourself! Recognize that your are a good teacher, and that you do things within your classroom that do not hinder your students as some of these generalizations do. See the positive. Noticing the good that we do, and acknowledging it as such, encourages us to continue and improve.
Challenge yourself! Recognize that you have the opportunity to challenge students in new ways, and know that you too are learning… share your challenges with your peers, seek out opportunities to collaborate, with your colleague across the hall or your web friend across the world. WE will make education better than it ever has been!
Originally posted: May 30th, 2007
Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:
Kris is not just a former student, she is a current teacher… my teacher. I would not have this blog up-and-running if it were not for her tech support. Also, her del.icio.us links are fodder for many of my posts.
Learning is a journey best shared, not led. We are nodes in each other’s learning networks…
Two weeks ago I bought a Wii Remote to create a Tim Wang Multi-touch Whiteboard. I’ve been talking with our computer teacher, Stan, about getting this going and then on Tuesday a student, Raj, caught wind of what we were planning to do. Wednesday morning Raj was downloading software from his phone to Stan’s computer, he also created two infra-red pens out of highlighters and push-button switches. Thursday morning before lunch I walked into Stan’s class to find Raj demonstrating the multi-touch whiteboard to his class. This morning he perfected an adjustable stand to hold the Wii Remote, (it was his second prototype).
I’m going to make a very harsh statement here and I’m going to stand behind it:
STUDENTS ARE CAPABLE OF FAR MORE THAN WE GIVE THEM CREDIT: SCHOOLS WILL BETTER MEET THE NEEDS OF STUDENTS WHEN EDUCATORS DO A BETTER JOB COLLABORATING WITH STUDENTS TO CREATE MEANINGFUL LEARNING EXPERIENCES.
Here is Carolyn Foote’s comment on my original post. I love the line: “I think with enthusiasm, innovation, and collaboration that we can make a difference for students.” See Carolyn’s recent post: Empowering ourselves to empower our students.
Thank you for sharing that incredible post. I’ve already emailed it to several people at my own campus.
I also appreciate your response.
A group of us read Whole New Mind this year, and I think more than anything I’ve read in a long time, it really conveyed to me the “boat” that we too often miss as educators, in terms of supporting the creative thinking of our students.
And on a site visit that my campus made to schools in California, we visited High Tech High and saw the power of cross curricular connections. We’ve sent a team of our teachers there for a summer workshop on interdisciplinary connections, and I can’t wait until they get back (wish I was going too, but it’s during NECC).
I think with enthusiasm, innovation, and collaboration that we can make a difference for students.
And I agree that the web 2.0 tools can make that process so much easier. And we as educators, like this student, need support and encouragement, and the community that many of our interactions over the blogs or on sites like Ning offer, help us “keep the faith” as well.
Here is the write-up for the 2 hour Professional Development seminar that I ran today for 9 dedicated teachers who showed up on a sunny Saturday, after a full day of Pro-D on Friday.
Start Your Own Blog A practical session that will introduce you to blogging.
You will see how others use their blogs and you will get a chance to create your own blog.
You will also learn just how easy it is to create links, add pictures and even movies to your blog.
Also, you will learn a bit about web2.0 and very easy to use tools that make your time on the web faster and friendlier.
I did my best to make these resources that could be: a) used by others to structure their own Pro-D sessions; and b) used as a self help tutorial.
… any feedback would be appreciated.
The session went very well with the teacher participants asking great questions and showing enthusiasm. Overall, I spent too much time talking about the tools, and didn’t get onto creating their blogs until we were rushing against time. Feedback from one participant was that we should build the blog first, then talk about the tools- an excellent idea, and I will change the wiki sometime soon (well, not too soon, I’ve spent enough of my life collecting resources and building these tools over the last couple weeks!)
The power of WE: Special thanks goes to a few people who saved me hours of time by helping me out, and by having great resources already built, so that I didn’t have to create them myself.
• Kris (Wandering Ink) for helping me find worthy links for my example page: A variety of bloggers, blogging mostly about blogs and blogging. Kris also edited my ‘Making a Splash‘ post. I hadn’t published it yet so I threw it into a Google Document, where she edited it. We chatted on MSN throughout and then I cut-and-pasted the edited sections back into my post. It was easy to do – especially with our dialogue via chat. A teacher and a former student collaborating, (late on a Friday night), to create a tool for teachers, in a way that was impossible not too long ago… very cool!
• Mike Temple for his blog Edublog Tutorials. This blog linked to another great resource: MSU (Michigan State University) video tutorial. Mike has done a great job with this blog!
Thank you to these people, and all the wonderful people that I linked to in on the wiki.
Personal Reflections:
-This was the first time I tried to do technology based professional development, beyond introducing a few tools to my staff, and I am happy with how things went.
-We only had about 1:45 minutes and this would be a great 3 hour Pro-D. A typical teacher blunder when trying something out of your comfort zone… pack too much in!
-As a mac user, I need to be a little more familiar with a pc lab.
-I really should have them make their blogs first, as was suggested.
-I only got the e-mail address of 4 of the participants and none of their new blog addresses- I’ll have to hunt these down for a feed I created. I think this is a good idea to offer support and community for new bloggers, and I should make the collection of this information more formal.
* I invite feedback on the Start Your Own Blog tools… and I hope that others will find them useful!
Thanks,
Dave.
Originally posted: April 22nd, 2007
Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:
Why on earth did I do a Pro-D on ‘start your own blog’ instead of on ‘start blogging with your students’? Of the participants, one started a blog with her students in an elementary school (in the interior of BC… I offered her some help last year, but have lost touch this year. I don’t think any of them maintain their own personal blog.
In the post Darren asks a few questions including:
How do we transform OpenPD so as to attract the kinds of teachers that aren’t the most technologically savvy?
How do we garner the participation of additional groups of teachers? Sure, individual participation from wherever you may be is fantastic, but a class of multiple classes would be ideal.
Here, in my comment, is one possible direction I could see Pro-D going if we want more people to engage meaningfully with technology:
If you want to capture a ‘new’ crowd then you need to offer them low-hanging fruit. Twitter has a difficult introductory stage. RSS takes time to develop… why not just have a few educators sharing with Google Reader on a resource wiki and let that be an initial introduction to RSS… challenge participants to add to the resource page.
I think wiki’s are a great entry point. They are easy to use AND when students begin to learn from their peers, or take responsibility for their own learning on a wiki that excites the teachers to want more!
Give them a project with easy-to-find success within reach. For example, a fully developed 2-3 week student project with rubrics they help develop (with your help too) – something with a start, and a finish, and a lot of opportunity to build student buy-in, to get support and to find success.
It is a fallacy to say that a networked teacher does less, or has an easier time engaging students… that takes hard work and good teaching. So, don’t pump-it-up as the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Instead, provide an opportunity for teachers to see and experience the transformative nature of these tools on LEARNING (as opposed to ‘teaching’). Once this happens it is difficult for a teacher to go back into their pre-technology cave of shadows… they’ll be hooked and they will seek out the new tools, and take the time to develop their own network.
A Feature in the The New York Times, By Po Bronson.
Thanks to Kris from Wandering Ink who sent me this link.
I will let the article speak for itself:
Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York fifth-grade classrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzles—puzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well. Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, “You must be smart at this.” Other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.”
Why just a single line of praise? “We wanted to see how sensitive children were,” Dweck explained. “We had a hunch that one line might be enough to see an effect.”
Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck’s team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The “smart” kids took the cop-out.
Later, when given a much more difficult test, these results were magnified. It really is worth reading the whole article, but here is a key point about the research above:
Dweck had suspected that praise could backfire, but even she was surprised by the magnitude of the effect. “Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”
More food for thought from the article:
Psychologist Wulf-Uwe Meyer, a pioneer in the field, conducted a series of studies where children watched other students receive praise. According to Meyer’s findings, by the age of 12, children believe that earning praise from a teacher is not a sign you did well—it’s actually a sign you lack ability and the teacher thinks you need extra encouragement. And teens, Meyer found, discounted praise to such an extent that they believed it’s a teacher’s criticism—not praise at all—that really conveys a positive belief in a student’s aptitude.
In the opinion of cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham, a teacher who praises a child may be unwittingly sending the message that the student reached the limit of his innate ability, while a teacher who criticizes a pupil conveys the message that he can improve his performance even further.
In a nutshell, praise effort rather than intelligence. The article goes on to mention the value this has on developing persistence when faced with failure, while praising intelligence increases the stress and reduces the desire to face such challenges.
I will be thinking about this a lot over the next few days both at school with my students and at home with my own kids.
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Po Bronson’s blog, “How Not to Talk to Your Kids” Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. From Part 4:
“A common praise technique that people use (I know I did it with my tutoring kids… up til a few weeks ago, that is….) is to use a present success to control future performance. For example, if a typically-sloppy child writes an essay that’s atypically legible, a parent or teacher may say, “That’s very neat: you should write all of your papers like this.” Even if it’s meant as sincere praise and encouragement, the research shows that’s not only an ineffective way to praise. In fact, like praising for intelligence – it can actually damage a child’s performance.
Last year I cleaned up this post (just used the text, and no reference/sidebar of my blog), and sent this to staff via e-mail. I’ve never been thanked so much for passing on information!
On a more personal note, my wife and I struggle with this, especially when our kids come home feeling proud about what they did/created. A year later I can tell you that this approach takes practice. Part of the difficulty is that praise of intelligence and ability so pervasive in our society… it is almost expected.
“Daddy look what I made!”
‘Wow, look at the detail on that, you really put a great effort into it, didn’t you?’
{I was just chatting on-line with a past student, telling her that I was having difficulty writing this post. As it turns out, she wrote a similar post just hours ago. Rather than continuing my tedious process of writing, deleting and re-writing a mediocre introduction, I thought I would start, and finish, with her eloquent words… and I shall say very little.}
“The creative work that came out of the arts in [past centuries] had to be excellent, because each individual’s standard of living depended on it. Nowadays, I would argue, creative work need not be excellent–just acceptable.”
Are we willing to ‘settle’ for less? What about The “Dumbness” of Crowds? I think it is wonderful that anyone can have an audience (see Numa Numa), and share their creativity, but how much must an uninterested audience wade through to find something meaningful?
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“…there’s a lot of flotsam and jetsam in creative work floating around today–or should I say, dotsam and netsam, a term we’ll probably be hearing a lot more of in the near future.”
I find that this post brings out a melancholy feeling in me. I’m not sure if it is because it doesn’t necessarily portray the message I wanted it to, or if it is because it is about mediocrity and our willingness to accept it.
That said, I attempted a couple things here worth mentioning. First of all, for the first time in this blog, I tried to use imagery to make a point. Secondly, I believe that I was frustrated since i was trying to understandThe Long Tail but lacked both the language and comprehension that such a thing existed. How does a guy holding a video camera and talking about mundane things get over a million views of his videos? If you want an audience, you can find one… in fact, they will find you.
But the real challenge is battling mediocrity! When Gary Kern was my Vice Principal, he would often say, “Good is the Enemy of Great”. If something is good (enough) then there is no need to make it better. It seems today that even the standard of ‘good’ is being lowered to acceptable. Now let me pause here and say that this is not about how ‘kids today’ are lazier or less caring or…
What this is about is how we as a society are being trained to ‘settle’. Of course I’m talking about the proverbial ‘we’ here:
• We don’t fix our lifestyle, we take antacid pills.
• We complain about how much longer commercial breaks are, but watch them anyway.
• We watch predictable tv and horrible Youtube videos.
• We watch the news and complain about how bad things have gotten.
• We create multiple choice tests because they are easy to mark.
• We don’t get rid of graffiti.
• We don’t vote.
• We buy cheap things, and we don’t care when they break.
Accepting mediocrity is a national pastime. If ‘Good’ is the enemy of ‘Great’, then ‘Mediocrity’ is the enemy of _____________.
Two Wolves Which wolf will you feed? A Remembrance Day Post
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Warning! We filter websites at school. Filters filter learning!
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My blog is my PhD I have given myself a Blogtorate of Philosophy.
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Bubble Wrap What we are doing is creating a facade of security, nothing more than an illusion of bubble wrap.
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Who are the People in Your Neighbourhood? My (digital) neighbourhood spans the globe.
In his recent post, “
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Personal Reflections:
Background
Angela Maiers on Thursday, 29 November 2007, 23:58 CET