Author Archives: Mark

Education Loses a Lioness

“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.

Interactive White Board and Joint Computing

Tim Stahmer over at Assorted Stuff has a lot of bad things to say about Interactive White Boards (IWB) being “wastes of money and time.” Pointing to the teacher just using the IWB while students watch. I would agree in this instance there is a problem with the teachers, not the technology.

But there are many classrooms here in this Title One K-5 school outside Washington, D.C. where I teach, using IWBs well.

I’m a big believer in letting groups of kids work together using technology.

The killer app for IWB is the fact that groups of students can easily cooperate using a single GUI.

A video worth watching (you can skip the first 7:30 minutes and still get the point):

See Sugata Mitra’s explanation of his “Hole in the Wall” project. Young kids in this project figured out how to use a PC on their own — and then taught other kids.

In K-3, Interactive White Boards are a tool with which the whole class can do joint computing.

*1st graders using the edit function in MovieMaker to order the elements of a story and produce a video – together as a group of five. Some pushing the video around, some giving advice.

*K group of students building a photostory, for creating stories with a middle beginning and end. The group includes a special needs student who can interact using the computer running the smartboard and intellikeys – so they’re an equal in the process.

*1st graders Skyping as a class with another classroom and jointly doing voicethread.

Kids naturally work together and learn from one another. The tactile nature and large screen of IWB are ideal for fostering sharing of tech learning in the K-3 environment.

Tim is correct, there are many bad uses, but let’s not throw the babies (K-3) out with the bathwater (IWBs).

And perhaps, if teachers in middle school can look away from the worksheet model for just a moment, they might come up with some good uses too.

The Grumps are Starting to “Get It”

Principals are starting to ask their Information Technology Resource Teachers for a list of what children should know regarding technology at each grade.

My answer, “Well, it’s changing every six months. Children are learning this stuff at earlier and earlier ages. Two years ago, there were perhaps one or two 3rd graders who had created a MySpace page at home and three or four 4th graders who worked with online communities on gaming or other interests. Last year that type of skill set climbed into the double digits among 3rd and 4th graders. It is increasing exponentially in 4th and 5th grade and getting pushed down into 2nd and 3rd grade.”

I continued by saying, “I’m teaching them as fast as I can. Every year we are pushing what we teach down a grade level. Typing classes start in Kindergarten. So every six months such a list would change, because we are bringing our kiddos along so fast.”

I know, a bit of an ego, but it works at this school where everybody is a bit of a type-A …

Howard Rheingold brings us an expert.

Here Mimi Ito talks about her findings of interviews with hundreds of students on their use of technology in such a detached way. “Theoretical” and “academic” are words that come to mind.

Yet, we are doing much of the advanced stuff of which Ito talks here at this little K-5 Title One school outside Washington, D.C.. For the last two years we have had 5th graders creating webpages, wikis, blogs, social bookmarking and using photosharing sites, producing video and audio media and embedding that media into their webpages.

Ito talks of a small minority of kids who “geek out” using media tools to fashion their own statements and expressions in an interactive way.

We just call it Social Studies.

Other Duties as Assigned

Arriving to work in the am.

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.