Newsweek cover on "Cheap Oil Forever" by nitot

Teachers, I love you. I don’t think we’re doing everything we can for kids yet. I think sometimes the system is to blame. I think sometimes we’re to blame. I think that sometimes we face challenges of our own design, and that sometimes we face challenges over which we have no control. I never think kids are to blame, though I think we can all share responsibility for learning. Teachers, I love you. Hear that. I love working with you and writing with you. I love sharing ideas with you here and at http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com. I love you for all the help you’ve given me and challenges you’ve posed for me.

Administrators, I love you, too, for the same reasons.

Newsweek, not so much.

Here goes:

MEMO

To: Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert, c/o Newsweek
From: Chad Sansing
Re: “Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers: In no other profession are workers so insulated.”

Great article. Hey, have you seen my research lying around? I think I left it in the same place as my integrity. I know I sometimes launder my cell phone (sorry, students!). Could you check Arne Duncan’s washing machine for me?

Anyway, me am teacher, and I went to public schools and to grad school, so of course I have, like, 2014 to the little 3 reading comprehension questions about your great article which I am going to tell you about here.

Title: Do you mean, like, the evil ones or the ones with low test scores, or is there some kind of correlation? I’m getting a little correlation vibe here. Nice.

Paragraph 1: What is “the relative decline of American education?” How well does Lithuania do? How well does America do against learning benchmarks, rather than against other countries’ results? Where is the Achievement Gap? What has happened to it since Sputnik? Since the Nation At Risk report? Since we started No Child Left Behind? Since President Obama took office?

Paragraph 2: Has education failed “to achieve significant or lasting improvements” at all?  Is there no hope? Are all pedagogies failed? Should students be in charge? Are there any other common factors at play in students’ lives besides the nature and quality of their schooling? Has education given up on finding the right pedagogies and methods? Has education ceded that there can be only one right pedagogy or method?

Paragraph 3: What research? How recent is it? For how many years have we ignored teacher effectiveness? Who denied that teachers made a difference? Which graduate schools are insipid? Don’t stop blaming now! In fact, do any of them offer theorizing or pedagogy that is even quasi-semi-demi-half relevant? Don’t ask me!

Paragraph 4: How true is it that the weakest teachers are relegated to teaching the neediest students? What numbers can you cite in support of that claim? Who can you cite anecdotally on that? Why aren’t we firing administrators who make those staffing decisions? What is a strong teacher? What does it mean to excel? What does it mean to recover? If it’s true that a student who has two weak teachers in a row can never recover, can we get in line to fire pre-emptively the teacher who has them during their third year since he or she won’t be able to do a damn thing with them, you know, according to the research?

Paragraph 5: Is nothing really more important than hiring good teachers and firing bad ones? Not even ending poverty or providing adequate health coverage for uninsured children? Are you suggesting we pay teachers more or fire them here? STAY ON MESSAGE.

Paragraph 6: Is there any connection between Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Chicago? Do you have any numbers for “Right to Work” states, or are all teacher unionized? What is your definition of accountability? By, “in no other socially significant profession are the workers so insulated from accountability,” do you mean teachers need some more ad hominem attacks in weekly “news” magazines to scare them straight? Are teachers alone in the “dance of the lemons?” Are we also firing the administrators who may or may not have “danced” with them? Does something about the way lemons smell insulate people from dancing?

Paragraph 7: Are we still blaming the teachers or is it the superintendents now? Again: message. Look at your hand.

Paragraph 8: By “don’t cherry pick,” do you mean that KIPP schools take anyone and don’t turn anyone away or kick them out after they arrive? Do you have the numbers on KIPP elementary and middle school cohorts, including educational outcome data for those students forced out of the program? By “parental involvement” are you insinuating there are other factors in student achievement outside teacher control? Isn’t that dangerous to do? Don’t you know the current administration will disappear your funding for that? By “they far outperform the local public schools” do you mean that KIPP isn’t public? How far do they outperform public schools? Do they outperform public schools or student cohorts with similar demographics and levels of parental involvement? What do you mean by “better teaching?” Is it better to publicly shame students or treat them as equals? Is it better when to punish and reward students or teach them to self-direct their learning? Can we run an experiment on that? By “longer school days and a longer school year,” do you mean to suggest, again, foolishly, that there is more to this school stuff than teachers?

Paragraph 9: What do you mean by “certain kind of teacher.” If my students can email me or leave a Google Voice message at any time, and I check those things on my cell phone, does that mean I am a KIPP teacher, or do I have to burn out, too? I was not in the Special Forces, but I work with students of exceptional needs at a public charter school: can I be one of the chosen some, or perhaps one of the not chosen last at teacher recess?

Paragraph 10: What is a “real impact?” If a teacher in the 90s heard a student say, “Man, Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so, that lesson was unreal,” should he or she be afraid for his or her job today? Does this have to do with math? Sweet 7th cup of coffee by 8 AM have mercy. How many TFAs will it take to cover Boomers’ retirements? Can we just fire everyone now, and then pre-emptively fire all the new TFA teachers before they burn out? I mean, that’s got to be easier than figuring out how the hell to keep them growing as teachers. How effective are TFA teachers anyway? By what measure? Is there no one else complicit with teachers in “the highest costs and worst results in the nation?” Are TFA alumni like the Army Reserve? Can we call them up to teach? Would they come back because of their quality? Do they have anything better to do that’s – you know – more socially significant?

Paragraph 11: By improvement, do you mean that students are learning more or that teacher performance can be measured more? What numbers do you have?

Paragraph 12: What happens to struggling students, teachers, and communities in states that won’t be funded by #RttT? Other than in New York, have any principals used student performance or feedback in evaluation – or even in coaching or mentoring – teachers? You know, like, ever?

Paragraph 13: Could we not have a louder revolution about reforming assessment so our kids can do something other than pass a test?  I like the loud noises.  It reminds me of the unruly din of a classroom. Could it be that our students are losing their collective globally competitive edge because students in other countries learn differently than ours? How do the countries in Europe ahead of us teach reading? When? What about math? Problem solving? What are their poverty rates? What percentage of their populations do they enroll in universal pre-school? In what what we consider to be college-prep secondary schools?

Paragraph 14: What they hell are we going to do with loyal, hardworking teachers who are nevertheless reasonable and educated critics of pubic education, including #RttT? How can we suppress them so as not to complicate public education? I mean, can you imagine if Donald Trump engaged in sustained civil discourse with contestants at the end of The Apprentice? Where the hell would we be then? We’d be in a little place I like to call Complicato-town, that’s where. Population: You’re fired!

Paragraph 15: By “regain its lost crown as the envy of the world,” do you mean that better test scores will reconcile the West with all forms of Islam? Or will that take problem-solving and collaboration, which are not tested in public schools because vendors tell politicians to tell teachers not to? Do Secretary Duncan and President Obama have a hotline teachers can call for help with the challenges they face at school, or would teachers who call just be fired? Is Central Falls typical of American public schools? Are we still attacking the Northeast for being a hotbed of elitist intellectualism, or have we switched to attacking the Northeast because its schools aren’t successfully replicating its intellectual elitism? <pinkie>Or are them…?</pinkie>

Paragraph 16: By “breakthrough” and “long way to go,” do you mean we should just fire all teachers at all failing schools? You’re fired! By suggesting that 4 of every 4 teachers are lecherous crooks still licensed by state bureaucrats, do you mean teachers are to blame for evil teachers, too? That would make sense, given the rest of your argument.

I really like how you end the article. It totally rings true.  I have no problem with society paying respect to athletes, celebrities, and politicians despite the number of alleged and actual felons and child-predators in their professions, but for some reason – maybe it’s because I’m a teacher – I just can’t stand teachers that prey on kids. Call me crazy.

Sincerely,
“Crazy” Chad

PS – You’re fired! ROFL ;-p

Tullner Action Tage 2007 by wassergasse

The longer I teach and work for change within my system, the more I try to speak less and listen more in hope of becoming more effective at both.

I also love parallel structure and repetition in rhetoric, so it’s no surprise that this post from Tom Vander Ark (@tvanderark) caught my eye this morning.

I think we need to say for ourselves what we stand for before we act in pursuit of it. So, in homage to Tom’s post and following its rules, here goes:

• I like schools that stand for democracy.
• I like teachers that can’t sleep without thinking about how to stop stopping kids.
• I like parents that love their children no matter what.
• I like edupreneurs with concrete ideas for classroom reform now – you know, students and teachers.
• I like leaders who push others to lead.
• I like inventors who make tools that let others invent.
• I like seeing kids designing their own learning.

Tag @mbteach, @tonnet, @jerridkruse, @peoplegogy, @chadratliff, you’re it. What do you like?  I would love to hear from each of you, but, of course, you’re under no kind of pressure or obligation to respond.  If you choose to respond, please tag others, as well!

LittleBigPlanet is a platformer.  A platformer is a game made up of levels that require  players to pass obstacles using timing, accuracy and  leaping.  Most Super Mario Bros games are platformers.  LittleBigPlanet provides players with a suite of level construction tools and the ability to upload player-created levels to the PlayStation Network (PSN) for other owners of the game to play.  Since the game’s release in 2008, players have uploaded over 2 million user-generated levels.

Two million isn’t a big number compared to, say, 400 million: the number of Facebook users worldwide.  Two million isn’t a big number compared to, say, 32 million: the number of PlayStation 3 owners worldwide (both figures found here).  However, LittleBigPlanet encourages player creativity and modding in ways collection games like Farm Life and proprietary hardware like the PS3 do not.  There are very few games that offer as robust and attractive a set of tools as LittleBigPlanet does for creating such varied levels.  To wit, check out these two user-generated levels. Everything in them was assembled by players from the tools and behaviors included in the game’s level design suite.

Museum levels in Little Big Planet typically show off the art and machines players have made for use in their other levels.  The PlayStation Eye, a peripheral camera for the PS3, also lets users take pictures of themselves or their own and-drawn art for use in museums-as-photo-albums.  The museums collect and share the resources with other players. Inside the museums players can use capture tools to grab images.  The museum’s creators can also make their displayed objects and machines available to visitors either as prize-bubbles in the museum or as rewards earned at the end of the level for visiting the museum.

So far, we’ve imagine making a level of captioned sculptures and art that provide the unit’s information, interspersed with short gameplay episodes that are meant to capture the points of view of people involved in the war in different ways.  As the girls move through the tutorials, and as I back out of the project, I’m really eager to see what they make to share their learning.  I’ll defnitely tweet out whatever safe account name we come up with when we’re finished so you can find the level on the PSN, and we’ll record a play-through video and post it online somehow.

I don’t know that every piece of authentic work will change the world, but I think this one might open up some students’ eyes to the possibilities of school and interdisciplinary work in gaming.  Even if we’re not changing the world, I’m eager to see what we learn by making our own little one. We should get a developers’ diary up on a blog so they girls can share their learning and ask for input about what to include in terms of content & gameplay, too.

What other tools are your students using to create “museums” of learning?  How much control do your student shave over those tools? How interactive are the finished products?  What do you think of investing class time into gaming for learning? How could we be doing this better?

PS: I am kind of falling for STEM – science, technology, engineering, and math learning. I would love to teach geometry, concepts like frequency and proportion, or simple machines using LittleBigPlanet. Anyone using off the shelf video games and/or consoles in STEM classrooms?  If you are, please comment below to share your work and/or provide a link to it!

Thank you for this opportunity to give input on the budget. My name is Chad Sansing. I teach at the Community Public Charter School.

We know as an audience, school system, and community what we have asked of you.

We know that as things stand, there is not enough revenue to truly move students’ learning forward into a world fundamentally different from the one in which we went to school.

We know that these are unprecedented times and that we share a common financial burden. I see it at school every day.

What I’d like for you to do with the rest of our time together is to put taxes aside and to put the idea of schools aside and just ask yourself what it is you want for the children in your lives.

Then I’d like to know what you expect from us with the revenue you plan to give schools.

I’d like to know if what you want for kids and what you’re willing to fund are one and the same.

I’d like to know that if they are not the same, that you’ve done everything you can to take extraordinary action on our students’ behalf during extraordinary times. I’d like to know that if we can’t fully fund the schools, it’s because we’ve exhausted our resources, and not our will.

What you can do, do.

What you want for our children, tell us.

What you expect, fund.

If any of the rhetoric is useful, rip, mix, & burn it into the conscience of your local funding agency.

Results of our strategizing were mixed with only half the groups improving from last week to this week. At this point I’m wishing I had taken a research-design course sometime in the past decade so I could present you with better conclusions from my too-small-a-sample action study. Regardless, here goes.

Group 1 stayed at 10:1. Group 1’s goal was “to not die a lot,” and their strategies included, “work together, not leave people behind, not trash talk, go fast…[and] not jump big jumps.” We need to write more specific goals next week – I’m not sure of the group thinks 10 lives per level is a little or a lot. However, the group did follow its strategies.

Repeat champs group 2 improved from 2:1 to 1:1. Group 2’s strategy was “beat 8 levels…lose less than 10 lives.” The group’s strategies were “bubble, [save] lives, and speed.” I don’t know either, but it worked. Group 2’s most effective strategy is to play levels it knows from past experience rather than to attempt brand new levels. I wonder why they didn’t list it.

Group 3 decided on these goals: “not to hit, or push people off ledges [and] not to leave people behind.” To meet its goals, the group adopted these strategies: “work together, share shrumes [sic & middle school], be nice.” The group followed its strategies and wound up turing in its best performance to date. Since the group began by spending 50 lives per level last month, I call this significant progress in teamwork.

Group 4 spent the same amount of lives per level this week as last despite meeting its goal and following its strategies. The group tried all new levels – the highest levels unlocked in the game so far, and I think it’s likely that this is what kept their ratio from decreasing. They spent their time sight-reading the levels like gaming musicians. However, as I said, they met their goal – “not killing or eating each other” – and they used their strategies – “not yelling and not telling each other that you suck[...] everybody agree on a level, don’t give attitude [and] don’t force people to do stuff that they don’t want to do.”

Group 5 wanted “to beat as many levels as possible.” That’s too nebulous a goal for us to measure and we need to work on setting more specific and attainable goals for our work together. Group 5 wound up with a higher lives lost to levels won ratio this week than last; however, group 5 did beat 2 levels after beating only 1 1/2 each of the previous 3 contests. Group 5’s strategies were “bubble up, try not to argue, help each other [and] try not to be competitive.” By my observation, the group used it’s strategies, but may or may not have reached it’s goal. We need to debrief next week.

Group 6 tried “to win as many levels as possible without losing any lives.” The group wound up spending 16 lives per level, and so it did not meet its goal. The group’s strategies were “try not to yell at each other, practice outside of school, try not to be jerks [and] wait for each other.” In this group, a student got a little bit bossy with the other group members. While this didn’t constitute yelling, it did frustrate the other players. I wonder if all group embers have the same conception of “yelling” or “jerks,” or if they could set a more attainable goal for the next contest with more positive steps to take in terms of pro-social behaviors and effective game-play.

I might change up the rules next week and require all groups to sight-read a series of levels unlocked and selected by me. I’m curious about whether or not groups will change their strategies to play brand new levels rather than levels they’ve seen before.

Look for student responses to these results next week after our debriefing. Please suggest any questions you’d like me to ask them or any games we could use to develop and transfer our soft skills in the classroom.

pieces of the puzzle by mikelietz

Virginia Secretary of Education Gerard Robinson visited my school today to see it in operation and speak with division personnel, school leaders, and teachers about how we can work together to met students’ needs. I appreciated the visit, the attention to our school, and the time we spent talking as a group about how to raise up education for all students using the charter movement as one lever to do so. Secretary Robinson is well informed and experienced in education and policy. I really look forward to seeing how our school and division’s experience with Virginia charter schools and policy helps the state use charter schools as part of a tool set to reach learners at risk of complete disengagement with schooling.

Secretary Robinson speaks eloquently and directly for himself, so I won’t report out on his positions here or try to recount a play-by-play of our heartening conversation about supporting start-up schools in fulfilling students’ needs. Instead, I’d like to talk about what it’s like to work at a charter school that is entirely distinct from KIPP and the other name brands of the charter movement. I’d like to talk about what’s happening below the radar of politics. NB: The rest of this post reflects only my own opinions.

Below the radar, we are you.

• We are trying to design and implement individualized literacy interventions.
• We are trying to develop and enact an arts-infused, project-based curriculum.
• We are trying to teach students the habits of quality work and the intrinsic rewards of mastering and sharing their learning.
• We are trying to teach students personal responsibility without using a carrot or stick.
• We are trying to integrate instructional technology and applications with opportunities for authentic and social learning.
• We are trying to unlearn traditional instruction and traditional discipline.
• We are trying to pass all the tests.
• We are trying to fulfill our students’ learning needs.

Why are we necessary? For the same reasons you are. Our children need teachers dedicated to helping them connect their lives to learning. We have banded together as a small school rather than a department, team, or PLC so we can move more quickly together as a unit in finding what works for our learners thanks to the vision, mission, and flexibility our charter details. We try to act more like a classroom teacher than an entire traditional middle school in terms of knowing our students and reacting to the shifting circumstances of their lives and learning.  Not every student needs us, but we’re convinced that ours do.

I understand why educators discriminate between charter franchises and public education. Large-scale charter operations want money so they can self-replicate. The point of their programs is the perpetuation of their programs. They need customers who fit their programs for their programs to succeed. They need their programs to succeed to get “results.” They need “results” to get press. They need press to attract customers – divisions and families – to get money. They believe in what they do. They are businesses.

We are a school. We are learners. We are classroom scientists testing our hypotheses about how to rekindle the love of learning in students who have learned not to love school. The point of our endeavor is to graduate students who have connected school to authentic learning and expect that connection to continue.

We are you.

When you think of charter schools, by all means, question anyone who tells you that they have it right.

Please also think of schools like ours as we try to serve our students, our division, and public education by creating a safe place for resistant learners to unpack their incredibly complex and complicated lives in pursuit of changing, growing, and learning into the brave and generous people they want to be.

We are you. Our students are yours. Whenever we take it upon ourselves to make learning better for children, we are all of us charters.

Or, really, do we? If we had a social network (or better used our existing Edmodo network) or virtual day set up, couldn’t student teams compete with one another on a FaceBook game? On a prompt or menu of activities left as a message on our class Google Voice line? I have to sit down and make a contingency plan for the next snow day, publish it, and distribute it to students, and I need to design it so we somehow have at least the opportunity to keep our classwork and cooperation rolling.

In contrast to the slide in cooperation several groups evidenced while playing together last Friday, students’ individual analyses of their group’s growth in cooperation continue to improve in quality – you know, qualitatively speaking. Here are some of our debriefing questions and students’ answers to them:

Wii by swannman

Question 1: How do you know your group’s cooperation has improved since we first started playing?

• “We have completed more levels.”
• “People are calmer.”
• “We are learning from each other.”
• “Now I enjoy playing with my group.”
• “We know what to do and say.”
• “We have a strategy.”
• “We won every time.”

Question 2: What have you learned about cooperation so far?

• “That you can’t yell at other players.”
• “Cooperation makes things go better.”
• “You need a lot of it to do work.”
• “You need a leader, but not everyone can be a leader.”
• “It’s not that hard and it helps you get further.”
• “It’s fun and frustrating to work together.”

Ambiguity rears it’s ugly head in schoolwork. Awesome.

Question 3: What is a strength that your group has that helps group members cooperate?

• “Confidence.”
• “We stay on task.”
• “We are nerds.”
• “Talking.”
• “Speed and communication.”

Question 4: What is an area of cooperation in which your group can improve?

• “Not cuss.”
• “Friendship.”
• “Helping one another.”
• “Strategy.”
• “Nerdiness.”

What else can we do to make school be a place where students feel confident, stay on-task, feel good about being nerds, and participate as equal partners in communication for learning?

I think it’s probably time to hand the small-group gaming commentary off to student guest bloggers or else have students create their own blogs ASAP so they can share their learning directly with you. I’m a bit behind the times this year on the student blogging front; this could be the impetus for getting back into the swing of it.

I’m thinking about bringing in Kodu Game Lab and Little Big Planet to add a game/level-creation tier to project menus. For example, a student could create a level in Little Big Planet with platforming metaphors for the major events of the 1930s (can’t you see a series of rising platforms filled with prize bubbles representing the Roaring Twenties before the Great Depression drops the bottom out of the level?), or use Kodu Game Lab to write a game with branching paths that simultaneously summarizes a story and speculates on its what-ifs (Pac-man vs. The Maze Runner mash-up?).   I hope, too, that the co-op levels of “Game 3,” a.k.a “BattleBlock Theater,” will offer opportunities for teamwork and reflection like New Super Mario Bros. Wii that can compete with the slapstick lure of its other modes. I suppose that where the learning design comes into play.

Dreaming about work by Claudio.Ar

As a husband, parent, teacher, and blogger, I’m always thinking about second chances. What do I believe? What did I say? What did I do? How did it all end up? How would I have done it differently if only given the chance? If given the chance, would I behave differently?

As much attention as I pay to learning objectives and processes and products at work, I don’t know that I use backwards design nearly enough in my life. I have gotten used to reacting – the fridge needs food; the car need gas; the kids need out of the house; (ZOINKS I need to collect and submit my recert docs).

Candidly, even at work reaction often wins the day. There’s data that needs a response. There’s a blown lesson or scrapped project that needs salvaging. There’s a relationship that needs attention. There’s a student that needs something other than school work today. There’s the budget.

Then it all ends and begins again. Every Autumn feels like a second chance, but really, it isn’t. When I say I never want to teach the same year twice, I’m being disingenuous. I want to riff. I want to tweak. I want to perfect. Really, in my teaching so far, the new school year hasn’t been a second chance. It’s been a proxy for the past with revised goals, new props, and a new cast. A revival of an old show. A re-telling of a classic tale. A reboot of a classic franchise. A cover of a genre standard.

If there’s a second chance to be had in my teaching, it’s in beginning again, building up from the ground floor, and breaking with the past.

I think this is my second chance. This is my opportunity to innovate and collaborate and co-learn with kids and colleagues across the country. This is something new, something different, and something daring.

Paula White (@paulawhite) invited me into this Reimagining Learning grant application, and I’m grateful for it.

I want to take this opportunity and run with it. I want to plan a break with my classrooms’ past. I want new goals that look nothing like the old. I want to innovate through “transmedia” collaborations that help us transform the warez that we view as our competition for kids’ attention into learning tools. I want to offer my students new kinds of leadership true to a vision and not so beholden to reaction. I want to document our work to reimagine learners as designers. I want to share it. I want to celebrate its successes and analyze its failures. I want it to be of use to you. I want to run a middle school class that feels like it belongs to the future problem-solvers of the world, and not to outmoded ideas about the inviolability of content-areas and fallacious limits of what should be learned when. I want to make Joe Bower (@joe_bower) proud.

I want to use this opportunity to hold myself accountable to creating a second chance for teaching and learning in my classroom. I want to stop covering the same old ground. I want to bring down the curtain on my own personal run of Cats. (NB: awesome writing & design assignment embedded in that link.)

We have until Monday to collect all the comments and questions we can. Please visit the application, take a moment to register, and comment. Ask questions and we will answer. Challenge us. Push us further ahead. Take a stake in our work and we’ll do everything we can to return on your investment for kids and their learning.

Grant or no grant, I want to do something new. I want to make a second chance and not wait for one to appear from thin air. Maybe something serviceable. Maybe something edible. Maybe a little big humanities project with help from DonorsChoose.org. Something that values little big minds. Something novel. Something good.

What are you going to do?

What should we do together? Let’s dream up a second chance and take it.

And don’t forget to comment.

Day 223 - Learning to use computers by LShave

Here is today’s leading #edchat question:

How does the internet change the role of content and prior knowledge?

It doesn’t. Kids still need a personal stake in both to create meaning.  While everyone can learn content and has prior-knowledge, school-valued content and prior knowledge remain commodities that some have and some do not.  I would further argue that how kids access that information outside school has changed a lot more than classroom practice inside school. Think about the types of information students pursue on their own time in accordance with their own interests. They know where to go and what to search for regarding their passions, hobbies, interests, and fads.  I think kids are used to learning at a faster pace outside of school than inside.  The relevance of what students are learning and their specialization in search tools speeds up the pace of learning for them. Because we still insist on a curriculum being a curriculum and a school year being a school year (and a $14.95 unit is a $14.95 unit, and a mini-lesson is 5-15 minutes, dammit!), we educators often keep ourselves from re-imagining learning through personal, rather than curricular, connections at a different pace. It’s like when Vger DMed Earth and it took an outsider like Spock to realize humanity’s “child” was on Twitter, not email.  See scene 175.  I mean, obviously. K1RK GOT PWNED, NOOB! FAIL! I was totally ROFL.

At school, however, most students are still told what to research and how to research it. They’re told what to learn and how to learn it (Question: in paragraph 3, is the underlined phrase ROFL figurative or literal, and how does the reader know?). Choice of browser, search tool, and/or subject can sometimes cloak schoolwork in relevancy, but I don’t see many teachers, myself included, radically changing classroom practice specifically in response to the amount of information and access points provided by the Internet and associated instructional technology. I still struggle to balance inquiry and test prep in making design decisions.

Then again, while I encourage students to Google it whenever possible, I’ve never been a fan or practitioner of the research project. Teachers who have incorporated the Internet into research projects, what’s worked for you and your students? How have new opportunities to find information changed the way you teach students how to gather, analyze, and use it? How has the Internet changed student research habits?

I wonder if a next step isn’t to elevate the search to an art form complete with peer critique. How much more would students learn about the what and the how if we ran conversational search seminars? What if students brought stuck or failed searches to the table and then talked or messaged with one another about the best ways to find relevant information? What if we crowd-sourced both the relevance and the rigor of search lessons to students and their relationships?

I don’t think technology has changed to role of content or background knowledge in learning, but I think it continues to change how we collect information and what we do with it. How else should I look at the question, PLN? How do you think the role of content and prior knowledge have, indeed, changed? Has access given them a new primacy? Has standardized testing? Or is the purpose of instructional technology to package content and prior knowledge for quicker assimilation into more rigorous work?

How do we get better at helping students learn how and why? How do we take advantage the ways that technology speeds up the what? How do we involve students in all this content and prior knowledge?  The questions remain the same.

Disclaimer: I still want my giant iPhone.

(Answer: figurative or literal – either way the question is illogical.)

Techno-Teenagers by Leonard John Matthews

What’s the goal of differentiation? Mastery of a curriculum? Inquiry-based life-long learning? Relationship building?

Can we ask the question another way: what is school?

Is it 1:1 learning? Is it 1:1 curriculum? Is it 1:1 access to “the best of what’s been thought and said?” Is it the 1:1:1:1:1… replication of workers or citizens?

We have the tools and access to information about learning to differentiate school for students. We can provide 1:1 rigor, relevance, and relationships. We can go F2F, blended, hybrid, dual-enrollment, CTE, charter, magnet, specialty center - we can go anywhere we’ve made something. Can we go anywhere students want? Should we in public education customize teaching and learning? Should we student-source curriculum?

I think so. The faster the better. Why keep spending money building things and places that some students will use? Why not build an infrastructure all students can use to learn a 1:1 curriculum and produce a unique product – an app, a book, a business, a charity, a machine?

Could we save money and increase learning opportunities by adopting an inquiry-based, electronic, student-created and/or micro-transaction secondary curriculum and creating an “All-But-Graduated” (ABG) designation for students who assess out of class requirements for credits? If a 14 year old can learn to write/produce about what he or she loves and score a 5 on an AP exam, should we ask that 14 year old to take more HS classes when the AP results net college credit? Could ABG students be funneled into “primary” school volunteerism, professional CTE, entrepreneurship & service labs, community colleges, local universities, work experiences, and/or internships? Could we save money by housing