Words, in education, to live by.

Ayn Rand  writer and philosopher,^[2] playwright, and screenwriter. The Fountainhead &  Atlas Shrugged and developed a philosophical system she called Objectivism.

In 10 Depressing Ways America is Number One by David Morris, one gets an understanding of why education isn’t really getting a fair shake. Thanks AssortedStuff for the link.

Click the slideshow below for a taste:

The more I read about Education Reform, the more I believe nobody in that “field” knows what they are talking about. Larry Cuban of Stanford is one historian who was also a teacher and superintendent. Most others have never, once, sat face to face with a nine-year-old and gotten something completely unfamiliar across to them.

It is a very rare occasion (like once or twice in a lifetime) in a family situation, that a parent teaches their child something completely unrelated to the child’s experience, and unrelated to immediate experiential need (meaning, “I’m going to teach you to fish because we are arriving at the lake and are going to be fishing for the rest of the day.” type of immediate experiential need). No, the parental “teaching” that goes on in the family is always immediately related to something.

Anything else (like sex education) is immediately farmed out to schools, where professionals can do the work.

So the vast body of “Education Reform” is touted by Politicians, University Professors, Think Tank Wonks, and Vendors with a financial interest. In other words, people who have never actually felt what it’s like to cause a child to learn something they are only learning because they have to. It’s harder than one might think.

Of course there’s the argument if you’ve been educated, you know Education. Which is as ridiculous as saying if you can drive a car, you can design and build a car. Or if you can eat a gourmet meal, you’re a great chef. Or if you’ve been sued, you are an expert in tort reform.

Many of the folks in Education Reform are looking to the intersection of online assessment and remediation as the key. Henry Ford’s model, for Education.

Many of us who are actually Educators, look at this video and shake our heads.

Click below to watch video:

The reason Education Reform rarely works, is because it’s usually a bad idea, badly implemented.

Dear All (This impacts you):

The Department Of Information Technology sent me an email at noon today with the following information:

“Deployment of Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8) will begin on April 5, 2011 and run through April 22, 2011.”

This means starting today, your computer might act funny when you turn it on over the next few weeks. Don’t worry, it’s not a virus from some sinister outside source. It’s more like a virus from somebody you know.

During the first week, you’ll get an “optional advertisement” that IE8 is available. My advice is, go ahead and download it.

The second week, any computer that doesn’t have EI8 will have it automatically loaded when the computer is turned on. I think they should call that the “optional is optional” plan. You can stop it during the second week by pushing the “restart now” button while it is automatically downloading.

On the third week the “restart now” button goes away. Much like every radio tuner had to be licensed by the Soviet Regime, all computers which are turned on will have EI8 downloaded on them immediately, like it or not, no options to stop it.

So my advice is go ahead and download it when it is “offered,” optionally, the first week. At least then you’ll have the illusion you have freedom of choice.

Thanks,

I’ve written about the perils of web filtering just 15 days ago: http://clairvoy.com/2011/02/09/the-best-use-of-web-filtering-system/ and it looks like the man has caught up with me.

God forbid if teachers want to get together and discuss how they can better their practice.

Who the hell is making these decisions?  What goes in and what stays free?  Not a thinking person, we know that much.

Currently I’m reading Diana Ravitch, and all of Che Guevara.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clairvoy/5227016296/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clairvoy/5226419701/

I think my brain is working on something my mind isn’t telling me …

In our newly constructed edu-corporate climate of “collaborative teaming” there will be, at first, too many meetings for any one teacher to have.

Time will be better served with an online collaborative component. It will save time, and allow people to “process” collaboratively at a time of their choosing, without being face-to-face.  Most importantly, it will allow the time spent face-to-face to be well spent and at a higher level.

Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch is a thinker and writer about Education without any need for reelection or selling standardized testing or programs to help student pass standardized tests.

She speaks the truth to the motley crew of Education (and I do use that term loosely) experts. The dialog going on in Washington between the Democrats and Republicans is ludicrous, and Diane debunks the foundations on which it is based, item by item, in a research-based, data-driven way.

Every teacher should take the time to watch this video. Take notes. These are our talking points in the war of ideas taking place in Education policy. These are our marching orders.

I’ve become a big fan of Diane Ravitch. Expect to hear more from her.

Fast Forward through the first 10 minutes of introductions, and start listening when you see Ravitch.

Diane Ravitch

Diane Ravitch
New York University
82 Washington Square East
New York, New York 10003
E-mail: gardendr@gmail.com

http://www.dianeravitch.com

Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (New York: Basic Books, 2010).
Buy/read more about this book:
Amazon.com

HIRING GOOD PEOPLE: A father who on Christmas Eve puts into one son’s stocking a fine gold watch, and into another son’s, a pile of horse manure. The next morning, the first boy comes to his father and says glumly, “Dad, I just don’t know what I’ll do with this watch. It’s so fragile. It could break.” The other boy runs to him and says, “Daddy! Daddy! Santa left me a pony, if only I can just find it!”

MANAGING PROCESS: In a college in a cold flat state, new buildings were being built. Students would take the shortest route between classes. When a path was worn in the grass, no warning signs would be hung, no cease and desist memos would go out. Instead the college would pave a proper pathway over the worn grass. Afterwards, everyone would be following the rules.

150 or so technology teachers gather once a month for a meeting … an old fashioned, analog, meeting.

Announcers announce announcements (which were sent out in email beforehand). Managers manage.  Specialists present their specialities.  Pointers point at points with pointers. Counterpoints are made.  Facsimiles of discussions are had.

Askers ask questions.  But in the active engagement of an analog meeting, many times no answers are available. “That’s a great question, and I’ll look into it, and get back to you.”

Days later, a singular answer is delivered to a singular asker. But we all did get to hear the question posed, and that is certainly something. But what? I don’t know, I’ll have to look into it and get back to you.

One of my cohorts, a jocular and intelligent fellow, posed the idea of USING the technology we are teaching to somehow facilitate the meeting. “It has to be better than sitting around a table while people shamelessly check their email and rudely interrupt the presenter?” he said.

Heresy you say? Perhaps. But if one believes less in a religion that worships the gods, than in one that feels sorry for them. (I mean, they created all this, and can’t possibly feel good about it.) One might venture to noodle on such a concept.

BUILD A MEETING:

A little like ‘build a bear’ shops found in malls across the country, there should be some structure (or the children wouldn’t be able to start), but enough freedom (so when they are done they feel like a creator).

Here’s one way, using a wiki.

(For those technology teachers among us worried about new technology, see a multitude of wikis done by 2nd graders on wikispaces.com)

1) Create an “Agenda Page” (a central directory page) for the upcoming meeting (perhaps months in advance).

2) Create “Issue Pages” for each item on the agenda. (Hyper-link from the Agenda item to it’s corresponding Issue Page and back to the Agenda page)

3) Anyone involved in the meeting could create an agenda topic and corresponding issue page prior to the meeting.

4) Anyone could add their questions, thoughts, ideas, solutions to issue pages.

The value of this would be as follows. The meeting would be about things of interest to the people attending the meeting. They came up with them. Most of the hard questions and issues would have been hashed out, discussed, answers researched and delivered, all before getting together at the meeting.

The meeting itself would be shorter, more on point, more poignant to the participants.

NOTE TO THOSE ADDICTED TO OUTLOOK PUBLIC FOLDERS FOR GROUP COMMUNICATION:

Pros: You already know how to use this technology.

Cons: Information is not collected, not key-word search-able, information does not get compiled into a group edited document, it is more like confetti–scraps of errant information floating without structure and no good way to search it. Heck even Microsoft is talking about getting rid of this Outlook public folder technology in the next few years.

Solution: Put an RSS feed on the wiki so all changes are sent via email to the outlook public folder at which everyone is used to looking. Remove write privileges for everyone so the only way to “post” in public folders is to add or alter the wiki. Eventually, everyone will start using an RSS reader and the Outlook Public Folders will have no use and go away.

Life After Wiki: Then, all the information collected in the dialog will truly be collected and key-word-search-able available ongoing in a quickly reference-able format for when one needs the information sometime in the future, or not.

This would be using the technology we are trying to get teachers to use in the way we are trying to get them to use it.

There is a proposal to our School Board that recommends extending the school day for a half hour from March 8, 2010 to June 21, 2010 and converting the April 12th teacher workday to a regular school day for the kiddos.

This was my facial expression upon hearing that proposal ...

I can’t begin to tell you what a negative impact that will have on learning, with the students, parents and teachers in psychological free-fall after the storm. We still can’t park, and folks can barely drop off and pick up their kids.  I can assure everyone, absolutely NO learning will take place during that 30 minutes at the grade school level.  Kids below the age of 12 are maxed out in school as it is.  They are burned out by 3pm.  It will tire out the students and teachers and reduce teacher planning time.  The additional last half hour to make up for snow-days will just be baby sitting to cross off a bureaucratic check box.

Our Hero:  In steps the newly minted president of the local union who points out the law clearly states if the Governor declares a state of emergency (which he did) the law says the school board can request a waiver from the state Board of Education.  A fact oddly missing from the proposal memo, in part, titled “Key Points.”  I mean, I would call that a “Key Point,” wouldn’t you?

The union is urging everybody (parents and teachers) to contact their School Board representative and tell them how this decision would impact them. I say, why the heck not.

1. Avoid

Doing nothing about something, is doing something. Do something else, clean the kitchen, back-up your data, do errands…(This gives you time to do the other nine strategies.)

2. Think

Sit back and think about the issue, just let your mind go…

3. Research

Look up stuff, go through your old projects, but avoid Google if it takes too long to find anything useful…

4. Collect

We all have lots of stuff; there must be something in there that is waiting to be used…

5. Sketch

Drawing is great, even if you have no talent. Just visualizing the simplest things makes them come alive…

6. De-construct

Take the problem apart, look at the parts and then put them back together…

7. Transcend

What larger thing is the problem a part of…

8. Perspective

What does your perspective on the problem add or detract, and the perspectives of others…

9. Connections

What can the nature of the connections between all the parts tell you about the problem…

10. Act

Sitting on your duff never got anything solved…

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”-Winston Churchill

Karen Gerstner is leaving a school district outside Washington, D.C.. She had a “small” job, as central office manager for the elementary Information Technology Resource Teachers.

She did what many in central offices don’t. She told the truth. She spoke truth to power. She advocated for “reason” and “rationality” and “helping students” even when it wasn’t popular to do so.

Other central office types have told me, “Oh, she would have gotten much farther if she hadn’t ruffled so many feathers.”

Really! That’s how you measure success? Not bothering people? That’s the wider problem with modern Education. We promote people who wear nice sweaters, have expensive readers, and don’t say anything to anyone that might mean anything, thereby ensuring they don’t say anything anyone might find objectionable.

Karen was different. If something was wacky, she would raise her hand and point it out. A radical idea, I know. But a function greatly needed in Education. In private industry, malarkey doesn’t last long. It gets killed by people who are better than it. In Education, that’s not the case. The bull wins too much of the time.

Karen was one of the things that made me think there was hope. She was the Jiminy Cricket at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Someone to say, “Now Hold On Now!” Someone with enough gravitas to be listened to, and the chutzpah to call people on their bull.

I, for one, will miss her greatly. And hope someone else will step into the role of adult in a swirling sea of Educational Executives working more to cover their asses than doing their jobs.

I’m talking about Education in general. Of course, if you are an executive or work in a central office and are “good,” well then, you know I’m not talking about you in particular.

One of the many hats I wear is that of an Information Technology Resource Teacher (ITRT) at a Title One elementary school outside Washington, D.C.

It’s a little break-fix, a lot of training teachers how to use their tools in teaching and with the kids.

Jenny said yesterday she could never do my job because “the job description sucks.”

My response was, “Wait a second! There’s a job description?!?!”

I don’t mind. I like it this way. It’s more like the journalism career I had. My favorite job in news is working the editorial desk. Like any good job, being an ITRT it is defined by the person who fills it and the needs of the environment in which they work.

The mission statement is simple. “Get teachers and students using more technology to reach their goals.”

This means:

1)Everything’s got to work, 98% of the time.

2)And as a separate issue, Teachers have to trust everything is going to work 98% of the time.

3)Teachers have to work in a constructivist teaching model in which the students can bring their spectacular background knowledge in personal technology to bare on their learning. This means teachers taking the role of guide rather than expert.

4)Create professional development environments through which teachers use the technologies one wants them to use in the classroom.

Simple, n’est-ce pas?

Of course, to get working gear in this financial environment there’s a LOT of administrative behind-the-scenes shenanigans one has to paddle through.

Here’s the thing. The more the teachers start to use advanced technology in their teaching, the more there is to do. Small-minded people think ITRTs who work hard are “working themselves out of a job.” I’ve found it to be quite the opposite. Teachers learn to blog, then they learn wikis, then voicethread, and before you know it, they are Skyping with a classroom in another state or country using voicethread to critique one another’s art. Get 10 classrooms doing some version of this and the day of an ITRT is never slow.

A disgusted 4th grade teacher in Massachusetts sent in this parable.

THE SETUP: It is easier to create one software configuration and copy it onto all the computers in a school, rather than loading all the separate software programs on each computer individually.

However, creating the master software configuration in this way is not an “out of the box” solution. Like teaching, one must know the technology, the ability of the staff, and the proclivities of the students.

And here begins our story in a small New England public school system…

THE STORY: In any school system there are maybe one or two people who really know how to create a software configuration and do it well. Folks are naturally drawn to and follow these thought leaders.

Then, in steps the central office.

It’s called “creating a process” or “defining best practices.” A noble intention when it is indeed the intention.

However, in this case the central office was trying to cast their influence.

This type of central office cube-troll had made their career by not saying anything to anyone that might mean anything, thereby ensuring they would not say anything objectionable to anyone.

When “thought leaders” raise their heads in this school system, this type of central office cube-troll runs around in front of the parade and starts tossing around a baton as though they know what’s going on behind them.

What came from this was a “best practices” document which was wrong. When the two people who knew what they were doing tried to correct the document, the central office dismissed them, because, well you know, the folks in the central office believe they got there because they know more than everyone else, right?

The result was the “best practices” document remains at best a factory second, a bastardized facsimile of the correct way to create a software configuration, and the central office has proceeded to train the whole county with their version.

Now nothing works well in this New England school system. Teachers are dismayed by technology and less of it is being used.

THE MORAL: Central office figures are at their best when they are pushing the thought leaders into the limelight rather than pretending they are experts.

The Challenge:
Our 4th and 5th grades (12 classrooms, 230+ some students and 17+ teachers and specialists) want to start a single school newspaper.  They are requesting an online work-flow allowing students to write but not publish, teachers to approve and publish.  The look and feel should be of a newspaper, not a blog.  They at first want to print the paper to distribute to students and families, rather than it being an online publication.

Draft Solution:
We can use the work flow process provided by the blogging software WordPress. Students would be given the role of “contributors” and 20 teachers and specialists “editors” or “administrators.” We could use a newspaper looking theme (14 different options can be perused here.) The newspaper could be viewed online or printed out and distributed.

To Publish Online or Not Online:
The 5th grade does a long-form research and publishing project each year which employs all sorts of social and publishing mediums such as blogs and wikis.

We have an Internet Security Protocol which has three components:

1)Don’t provide any personal details (name, school, county, state, country).
2)Don’t allow any incoming communication channels (no comments or text surveys) the only exception being radio button surveys.
3)And we tell students, “Never meet anyone in real life you only met online.”

Thus having students work in a “live” online environment is not a stretch.  Research two years ago found a majority of 4th grade students were actively publishing online (Facebook, MySpace) on their non-school time and equipment.

However, most of the teachers engaged in this project are viewing this as a traditional printed newspaper.  They seek to print the document and distribute a printed version.  This provides another layer of security because nothing will go out unless it is printed and copied multiple times.

Summary:
1)Blackboard is difficult to use and has none of the work-flow needed for this large-scale project.  Blackboard forces students to have their name or student id number on everything they publish (which in violation of our safety practices).  The blog and wiki elements of Blackboard are not viewable by families.

2)Wordpress is a solid solution from a work-flow standpoint and allows teacher and different groups of students to have different roles in the editorial process.

3)Installing WordPress inside the firewall will make it more secure in the short-term to make sure nothing is published without being scrutinized by a teacher.  It gives teachers, especially those with no blogging experience, more comfort to know nothing will go out that is not printed first.

4)However WordPress inside the firewall is not future proof.  It doesn’t allow for a change of heart which would allow for the paper to be published online.  This option of online publishing is one all real newspapers are now engaged.  The backup of data on an internally running installation of WordPress would be dodgy.

5)Wordpress outside the firewall has all the benefits of WordPress inside the firewall and allows for future proofing in several ways:

a)It allows students to access the newspaper’s editorial features from anywhere.

b)It allows the published items to be viewed by anyone anywhere.

c)It requires students adhere to online safety publishing guidelines listed above.  Students could use pen names and the school’s nickname could be used in lieu of the school name.  Everything else could be open.

We will be thinking on this over the next few weeks with the teams in question.

Folks we really need to lighten up.  That was the subject of that blog post.

Sometimes a good story is just a good story and there isn’t any there there.

OK, we’ll all button up our Victorian collars and get on with it.

Where We Came From:

Clairvoy (now Traditional Clairvoy) started out as a blog with five teachers giving advise to other teachers who submitted questions.  We still get messages from teachers all over the world. We’ve grown to a site with blogs, wikis, forums, articles and file sharing.  More than 1000 pages of different content and nearly 800 registered users.  We have a new site for teacher research called Education Study Group.  However, most of our visitors don’t sign in. People just read.

On commercial sites like YouTube and Wikipedia, less than 3% of users post content.  A much larger percentage (but much smaller number, of course) of our users contribute content.

For instance, as I write this 75 people are visiting Clairvoy (much the same as any time of day-even at 3am!). I can’t see who you are or what you’re doing (which drives me crazy) because most folks don’t login. Most just read.  But you all seem to be getting some benefit, and that’s great.

We’ve been focused from day one on the content, “Teachers Trading Strategy in Bite Sized Pieces” and that’s not changing.  But since we started (at a time when “what?” was the only response we ever got to a sentence containing the words ‘blog’ or ‘wiki’) we also functioned by default as a “sandbox” mashup of all the available technologies for teachers to learn how to use these new web2.0 thingamajigs.  Things have grown up around us.  With the right safety training, Wikispaces is great for teachers and students as are Google Sites, Blogger, and WordPress.com.  You all know more today than you did just a few years ago.  Even Twitter is now a household word.

Where We Are Going:

We are staying focused on trading educational strategy, The “what we do” and “our values” pages will not change.  Our strategy is to better harness contributions of our users and create more meaningful and useful content. As a result, we have made some improvements to Clairvoy which will be steps toward the goal of better serving your needs:

One: The first step is an improvement to the search function with Advanced Clairvoy Search.  It’s up in the right hand corner.  It’s simply Google’s engine focused and targeting Clairvoy’s sites, blogs and features. (I’ve never said we’re creating a new wheel here folks.)  There’s an even more advanced targeted and detailed search available on the main menu under “Search.”

Two: The second step is a stronger editorial process on the wiki.  Everyone will still be able to contribute. This feature has been implemented.  The details of how that works are below.

Three: The third step is we have introduced an “Articles” feature for documents and reviews of scholarly articles. These differ from wiki pages in that they will not be changing.  It is a process for educators to provide peer reviewed information in longer format. As well as to collect reviews of scholarly papers which could help educators. This feature has been implemented.

Four: The forth step will be making the Clairvoy Blogs more robust.  We have recently employed the same technology used by WordPress.com.  Over the coming months we will be adding all the features and functionality available.

The Editorial Process:

I wrote recently about the Writing Process and Open Collaborative Internet Tools.

MOZILLA, the folks behind Firefox browsers, use the same open source technology Clairvoy uses for their wiki: see http://support.mozilla.com.  Mozilla developed an easy to use editorial system which we are going to employ.  Any wiki page created or edited is not displayed to the public until it is looked over first.  The original page remains viewable until the updated version is approved and it is replaced.

If you login, you can see all the “sausage being made” with all the immediacy as always but with better labeling.  If you are not logged-in, you only see the finished product.  This simply will make a “drafting” area (for those logged-in) where contributions are welcome, but at the same time have the “published” knowledge base (for those not logged-in) that is extremely stable.  The difference being a day or two and, we hope, greater quality and better organized content.

We’re going to give it a try.  It means the pages you contribute to our wiki will be delayed for users not logged-in.

This new editorial process is just for wiki pages, not individual Clairvoy Blogs which have secondary logins for their owners to control more of the features within their own blogs.

Our values will not change and contributors who are unsure of the technology but have something to say will be helped through the process – not flamed.  That has been the case and will not change.

Contact Us:

The “Contact Us” function works now if you logged-in or not. We’ll try and be responsive to you (our readers and contributors) as we try to grow what we are doing to best serve you.  Let us know what  you think.