Creating a Voice

I'm up at TIE - Copper Mountain - this week and having a great time. There's a lot of learning going on, tons of smart people that care about learning, and it's a wonderful experience to be attending this conference.

Back in April I posted about leadership at all levels with our school walls and came to the conclusion that every student can and should be a leader. Now I've hit upon a bit of a snag in this idea and it's what I want to discuss in this blog post.

The problem I'm having with this fine idea is HOW to you get kids to create their voice? How do we as educators get a student to be a self-leader?How do you get them to care about their education and life-long learning?

Maybe I'm missing something? Perhaps our students are already "there" and just waiting for an opportunity to prove themselves to us? It actually wouldn't surprise me and it might be an approach to address this question of mine - just let them show us basically. What tools (tech tools?) can enable this style of learning for our students?

So rather than asking more questions I'm hoping a few of you who are reading this post will comment back and let me know what you think...

Day 1 with Netbooks

Our district is rolling out a plan to introduce Netbooks to all 5th, 6th and 9th grade Language Arts students in the fall. Today we started a week long course that introduces the Netbooks we will be using to our staff. It was wonderful that we will be able to use these tools next fall and that our district has given our staff the Netbook to use for the summer.

What better way to get the adults up to speed?

I'm anxious to see how this will evolve over this week as we learn together how to use the Netbooks. Stay tuned.

Summer Plans

I thought I'd write a post to let any readers out there that I'll be posting a bit less over the summer. On June 1st I'll be at a 5-day district training for Language Arts that incorporates literacy, writing and Netbooks all togethe. Near the end of June I'll be attending TIE (Technology in Education) at Copper Mountain Resort in Colorado.

I may have some insights that I will blog about here during the summer months, but mostly I'll be trying to ride my new Giant OCR3 road bike or my mountain bike in the mountains!

Web-olution --> Wolfram Alpha

Get ready to be stunned! Wolfram Alpha will be brought online later today: May 15th, 2009.

Please watch this 13 minute introduction of Wolfram Alpha in action and you'll get a glimpse of a different way we will be using the web to learn and question. Could this be a research tool, YES? I can't wait to start using it. How would you cite it? One thought and concern I'm having about the information it returns is that it might be different over time if you are researching something that's not changing.

With tools like Wolfram Alpha, Wikipedia, Google, and other search engines available what are the essential tools you need to be able to learn from them? If these are in your toolkit are you ready to use them with these essential skills?

• Good spelling ability,(does that even matter anymore?)
  
• ability to come up with essential questions,
• a desire to learn,
• thirst for knowledge...

So do you have any student prodigies, Stephen Wolframs in the making, in your classroom now? Can you forsee a future product they might create one day?

Some background - I remember back in the 1980's a very cool math program called Mathematica. It was available on the Apple Macintosh (maybe other platforms too) and it could do so many mind-blowing things graphically to represent data. I only played with it a small bit on a friend's computer, but I was impressed. The author of that program was none other than Stephen Wolfram.

I titled this post "web-olution" because I thought it captured the BIG STEP that Stephen Wolfram has taken with his project Wolfram Alpha. It's using the information on the web in a way that is quite evolutionary; thus, webolution! (I considered wevolution, but it sounds too much like Elmer Fudd - hehehehe).

MAPS Reports Reveal?

I'll give this post another title: "Summer Braindeath"

Each spring and fall our students take the MAP test. The MAP test is a computer-based testing system developed by the non-profit NWEA. MAPS stands for Measures of Academic Progress. It is a series of state-aligned computerized adaptive tests that accurately reflect the instructional level of each student and measures growth over time.

It's actually a pretty cool system in that it increases the level of difficulty (grade-level) of questions just to the point where students are able no longer able to correctly answer questions. Using this adaptive approach towards leveling off the questions the program determines the actual grade-level that a student is currently learning.

We completed our school-wide MAP testing for the spring and I was able to view some reports that our Media Specialist, Carol, generated. The particular report I looked at was for reading and it revealed something that is obvious to most of us, but it reinforces something that is good to consider as we head towards our out-of-school summertime... Our students at Euclid showed excellent growth in reading from fall to spring each year, but the progress they make during the school year is lost during the summer months. It's almost like starting over with kids when they return to school. Sure the students are one year older so they should be challenged with harder material than in the spring - I get that, but the number of kids that are considered advanced and/or proficient falls off each year after summer break.

I have a son with autism. He attends a year-round school. For him it is paramount that he receive a steady and uninterrupted stream of instruction year-round. His rate of learning is consistent, but slow. I have to think that our regular education students (and all students) would be better served by a year-round school - if one is to consider the rate of learning only. But of course many people before me have suggested this approach. I'll just start rambling and ranting if I continue with this point, so I'll leave you all with this urgent suggestion and the lesson learned from the MAP test.

Make sure you and your kids are engaged in some kind of reading over the summer. Read a book, go to the library, read magazines, read a newspaper (remember them?), read to your kids, do anything to try to stave off what happens each summer with the gains they made in the past year. The lesson here is that each of us is responsible for our own learning. If we invest some time in the summer months (when it's not "REQUIRED") reading we become active learners. Our minds become engaged in the process and we ourselves start to take responsibility for our own learning. Isn't that what it's all about anyway?

Elementary Laptop Visit

It's been several weeks since our visit to three elementary schools. The purpose of the visit was to get a first-hand glimpse of the pilot schools where 5th grade students were given netbooks to enhance their language arts skills.

Well, there's a lot more to it than that. It's not as if the netbooks were just plopped down without guidance, support and training for the staff and their students. I'll not dwell on that part of the task, but sufficed to say that the students and teachers are showing proficiency and expertise. There seems to be a general enthusiasm for the tools and the expanded emphasis on writing for these students.

We were able to chat with students at each school and observe their writing. It was a fantastic opportunity for our 6th grade LA teachers to get an advance look at the project AND the students who will be attending our school in the fall. I found the trip to be rewarding for many reasons. It got us talking together as a team about the netbook project, it gave us an opportunity to see it in action, and it helped our teachers to bond with other teachers who have been doing this and paving the way. In a way it showed our teachers, who are already doing a lot with their smartboards, other ways in which LPS is making 21st Century Learning a possibility for all students.

Here's a few pics taken during our visit. If you click on them, they will get bigger.

Vision

On my bike ride yesterday I stopped along the Platte River at a bench and saw the following sign on a rock. I snapped a photo with my cell phone, emailed it to me work account and went on my way. This rock seemed to be telling me something with the sign and I'm glad I saw it when I did. The message on the rock is: "Vision without action is merely a dream".

I believe the message on the rock was meant as a follow-on message to my prior post on this blog about our Mission at EMS. As our plans for the fall solidify we definitely have a mission and a vision for where we want to be in years that follow.

Have you ever had something cosmic like this happen? A coincidence that seems like it's more than just happenstance. That's how it felt when I leaned back on the bench and saw this rock.

Finally, I'll ask the obvious question: What is your vision for education in this 21st Century?