learning.21st: the class

This quarter I am teaching a new course to 9th graders. It is a first run (with 18 students) and so far it has been very successful. Over the next few blog posts, I want to highlight a few activities from the class and post some of the student blog posts related to the course content.

Here is the official first draft overview...

The course, learning.21st, is a nine week elective designed to directly address the use of technology in the classroom and help the students become proficient with a suite of web-based applications and model skills that will help them become better 21st century students.

Students are largely on their own when applying online skills and resources to school because they are not covered in the traditional classroom or are addressed at drastically different levels. Students may be well versed in the standard suite of education applications, like Microsoft Office, but technology is quickly moving away from such programs to a more user driven, free, and non-licensed platform. Although the computer has been a mainstay in the schools since the early eighties, the web and user defined content is pushing technology from something done in the computer lab to a integral part of the classroom. This course would deliberately teach 21st century learning skills to a population that is increasingly living online but never had a forum to apply knowledge to the academic setting.

The Day After...

I have not been able to stop thinking about the ideas that were hatched in Chicago. I know most of the Google tools and the applications of them, but the GTA connected me to the people to implement my ideas. Naturally, you drink a little Kool-aid and get excited about all that Google has to offer, but the thing I really walked away with is the instant network I became a part of and the potential for more in everything I do.

One thing that I want to work on is my 20%. What can I do for an hour a week with my kids that is outside the box and will better prepare them for the world they are entering? I am kicking around an interdisciplinary online collaboration around the idea of place. I would naturally throw in some earth science but I would want it to be accessible to other disciplines too. I already have four burners going so my 20% might be on top of an already full plate. I'm sure most other educators are in the same boat so maybe I ought to just jump in.

Stay tuned for more on The Place Project! Anyone interested?

Google Teacher Academy - Chicago

Back from Chicago and looking forward to implementing some of the ideas and plans that were hatched in Chicago.

Details to follow...

Update: The New Book of Knowledge

"All books on this cart are garbage. Please throw away."

Apparently there was another set of The New Book of Knowledge floating around the school. What amused me was these books are not just headed to the garbage, they are garbage.

I'm inclined to agree, but the wording is a little strong. I would offer an alternative. "All the information in these books is already on Wikipedia, please recycle."

tweet tweet!

School starts in a week and I will have to adjust a few of my habits. For one, I am addicted to Twitter. My school blocks Twitter, which may be a good thing, because I'm not sure I would get much done. Twitter is a way to post stream of consciousness thoughts limited to 140 characters. Here are some sample tweets from my last week of summer.

can you eat sukiyaki one-handed?

making enchiladas and looking at a 3lbs bag of tortilla chips!

i won a $25 dollar prize in a raffle! success!

Now, there is a community of people that actually collaborate and effectively use Twitter for professional reasons. I'm not sure I could do that, or be that committed to keeping up. There are actually entire conversations that play out using less than 140 characters at a time. Check out the example of a Twitter feed from the Cool Cat Teacher Blog where good things are happening on the professional development scene.

What I will miss is keeping up with friends and tracking the minutia of daily life. I have friends that don't have phones, but I could send them a tweet and they would be able to meet me for lunch. I actually...gulp...twittered throughout the first 16 hours of my wife's labor. We had friends and family on both coasts tracking the tweets for news of a baby.

If you haven't checked it out, you should. If your school hasn't already blocked it, tweet like its going out of style...because it won't be long.

The New Book of Knowledge!

I found this set of "knowledge" while cleaning out cabinets that are slated for renovation. I wonder if they have ever been used? I had a flashback to 1994 when I sent my first email and began using Gopher and clicking through menu-based links and Netscape. Just a little show and tell for the last post of the school year.

It's a good thing Pluto was demoted!

WARNING: Grumpy Blogger Alert!

I'll tell you what, it was a good thing Pluto was demoted as one of the nine planets because I won't have time to teach about it because of the mandated MCA tests (Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment). The Science MCA is a computer-based test and is spread out over two class periods. While I am being dramatic, the amount of time spent gearing up the MCA tests results in less time for just about everything else. I lost seven 88 minute classes this year because of the MCA. I thought I would just bullet a few of the frustrations.

• Ummmm.... I lost seven 88 minute classes this year because of the MCA.
• The tests need to be cached. This means that before the test is given it is grabbed from the testing site and put onto the district server. This can take over an hour. While you can plan ahead the success of the testing should not fall on an overworked tech support person to show up on Monday at 5 am.
  
• The technology support people have the worst computer to tech support ratio in the business. These poor people have to maintain computers for users that by their nature want to pluck out keys and wallpaper the desktops. I heard someone say that this should have been done on Sunday. I disagree.
  
• Our school gave students water and mints for the Reading and Math MCA. I think this is a good idea other than the huge volume of plastic bottles in the garbage. For the computer-based MCA the students didn't get the same treatment because water and computers don't mix.
  
• I was told that Monday was a bad day for testing because so many schools are doing the test on Monday. Well, Friday was a field trip and there is something else on Tuesday and Thursday is a bad day too. There are no good days for these things but the point is that if you are going to do it then it has to work. If you can blame it on a Monday, you should question whether you should be giving it at all.
  
• Our school has done a great job of preparing kids to write constructed responses. Not that it is always done well, but there has been a school-wide effort to focus on writing skills. There have been a number of students over the course of the MCA who have not been able to type a full answer for a constructed response because there is a limit on characters. I feel like they should let you know there is a limit like on those online customer comment forms. I also feel like the students should be able to write at least two sentence before being limited. Who knows, maybe it is a computer issue....
• Luckily we have decent computers. Can you imagine the chaos of a school where there are 36 in class with 27 working computers.
  
• Insert your frustration here!

Does what happened today in Lab 611 determines whether my kids learned this year? I sure hope my kids got all those fossil questions right because I cut that unit as a result of losing so many classes to the MCA's (this is just an example...I did sign the non-disclosure form).