Come back often!

« September 2006 | Main | November 2006 »

October 23, 2006

An amazing class blog

I just stumbled across the most amazing blog I've seen in quite awhile. This is a team blog known as Smith's 9th Honors Class Blog. What's amazing is that it is used as part of the classroom discussion process. While students are using the fishbowl process to discuss the novel, others are using the blog to post comments and additional questions. In fact, in the single class period I just observed, there were 201 comments!

I just posted a link to this blog posting into their class site and invited them to help me understand the process a little better. What an amazing time to be in school!

Posted by Pat on 11:46 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Information overload

The other day I came across this new study, How Much Information 2003. The authors attempt to measure how much new information is created each year. From their site, here is the definition:

"Newly created information is distributed in four storage media: print, film, magnetic, and optical; and seen or heard in four information flows: telephone, radio and TV, and the Internet."

Today, I'm in my office all day and I'm trying to make sense of all of the media that is piled up in the past few weeks. I have 64 podcasts, about 20 journals, four large texts, and about seven the e-mail messages. Of course, while I'm writing this more of each of those are arriving. And this count doesn't even include all of the blogs and webpages that are on my list to review.

If there is 5 exabytes of new information every year, how much of it is "new information?" Much of that reading that is piled up for me is repetitious. But I don't have any good way to ferret out just the great stuff that is working in each of those individual podcasts or journals. Beyond that, even if I'm conscientious in keeping up with this reading, what does it mean? Am I able to retrieve the information when it's needed? I'm hopeful, we are teaching students to ask these questions, and I'm really looking forward to a time when I can google my own brain!

Posted by Pat on 11:27 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 17, 2006

Conferences

In the past two days, I've attended to conferences. Today, I was at Delaware's kick off for Vision 2015. This is a 10 year plan to turn Delaware public education into a world-class system. Today's event was preceded by a number of mail packages and e-mail, as well as some glossy material presented as we entered the hall. About 300 people attended a two-hour presentation by the steering committee. Then everyone went back to their jobs. The next follow-up will be some meetings at the end of this month and into November.

The conference I attended yesterday was the K12Online conference. I attended the keynote sitting in my office and doing other work at the same time. Last night, there was an online meeting using videoconferencing software. Then to continually there is a wiki where conference attendees can record their notes and impressions.

Both conferences have lofty goals that I subscribe to. I am hopeful that both can maintain the momentum that started with these kickoff events and I hope that we can find ways to harness technology to move both of them forward.

Posted by Pat on 2:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Alternative Homework

Here's an idea for homework. After thinking about the value of homework and the problems that current strategies introduce, I stumbled across this site. It's part of The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. In the Invention Playhouse, visitors to the site can experiment with words, drawing or simple engineering. How about if we assign students 15 minutes at that site for homework? We make sure that they are thinking for 15 minutes and have some great starting points for conversation the next day in the classroom.

Posted by Pat on 12:37 PM | Comments (1)

October 16, 2006

Homework???

Finally, the debate is heating up again over the value of homework. Over the past few days I've seen a number of articles referencing new books and articles on the value of homework. Some of them talk about the value of homework in terms of the number of hours of homework different grades are required to do. There are anecdotal studies and a few scientific studies. However, most of them miss what I consider key issues in homework or any other assignment.

First of all, if their aim is to have students become better critical thinkers we need to make sure that all of our assignments encourage and support critical thinking. Too much of school and too much of homework fills time rather than pursuing goals. It's pretty easy to spot these kinds of things when you hear teachers talk about “sponge activities.” When I ask students about homework or even class work, many of them can't distinguish one class from another; they simply say “we did a worksheet" to describe math, social studies or English classes.

Second, it seems dangerous to me to send students off to complete tasks by themselves that they couldn't do well in the classroom. Under the watchful eye of a teacher, and veering off-track becomes a teachable moment. When left to themselves or assisted by parents who don't understand what is happened in the classroom, these same experiences become breeding grounds for incorrect strategies or misconceptions.

Wouldn't it be better if we all worked toward a time when school time was maximized to engage students in activities that really did move them forward in critical thinking? And, we made sure that all teachers were able to provide great assignments and great support.

Posted by Pat on 11:44 AM

Persistent Blogging

Well, I'm ashamed to say that I've missed almost a month now between postings. My goal was to post 200 words every day. Then I gave myself a break and said 200 words every work day. And, as you can see, I did that for a short while.

Seems to me, the trick is really to find one topic every day. So here I am making my next attempt at 200 words a day.

Posted by Pat on 10:44 AM