Advice at the Beginning of a Journey

So I'm not quite at the pursuing-a-doctorate-degree level yet, but Mark Wagner, Ph.D. gives some great advice for an Ed Tech Newbie (like me) on his blog post this week on his "Educational Technology and Life" blog.  He was responding to an e-mail from someone pursuing a Doctorate Degree in Educational Technology.  Some of the phrases that stuck out to me were:

"Research something you are passionate about."

"At the start [...] you don't know what you don't know."

"Any program is only as good as you make it."

These out-of-context phrases meant a lot in his e-mail to that student, but they also mean a lot to me as I am still at the beginning stages of this journey.

"Research something you are passionate about."  - I have found that in this first two semesters of Pace's Educational Technology Specialist Masters Program, I have really found my passion.  Never before had I desperately wanted to learn, read, tweet, and blog about something in education.

After watching The Road to Nowhere (see my last blog), I got on the phone with my mother to ask her some questions about my childhood and all she had done to protect me throughout my educational career.  We got to talking about how with this new surge of technology, there are so many who want to become Luddites - working to destroy the technology, instead of embracing it.  In the end, we agreed that technology should be integrated into classroom lessons.  But more so, we need need to teach effective uses of these technologies, so the benefits will far outweigh the negative aspects of technology.  It became so heated at some points - something I can only attribute to my passion.

"At the start [...] you don't know what you don't know." - Once I began this course in particular, I didn't know that I didn't know a thing about wikis past using Wikipedia.  I also didn't know that I didn't know what an augmented reality was.  There is so much to learn that it can at times become overwhelming, but I absolutely love it!

"Any program is only as good as you make it." - I certainly learned this in my undergraduate work at St. Thomas Aquinas College.  I was able to become involved to a ridiculous level, but it certainly made my experience.  I think this is absolutely relevant to my coursework so far in the Master's Program because I am truly making my learning my own with the online courses I have taken so far.  I am reaching out past the material presented to me (with the help of the material, of course) and exploring my passion.

Thanks to Mr. Wagner for his wonderful advice!  Maybe I'll look into Walden University when I am at that pursuing-a-doctorate-degree level. :-)

So as to use my previous advice: What do you think makes a good educational program?  Did any of the phrases in Mr. Wagner's advice mean anything to you? What is your passion and how did you discover it? I look forward to hearing your responses!

Race to Nowhere and What We Can Do

So I did something out of the ordinary today. I actually went to the Grad school I am enrolled in (I have been taking all online courses so far) and attended a screening of Race to Nowhere.  From my viewpoint, this film is about the U.S. Educational system and how it affects children.  It talked about pressure, homework, stress, suicide, adolescence, teaching to the test, the value of education in our society, No Child Left Behind, standardized testing, and so many other critical issues that we need to look at.

I highly suggest seeing the film.  Here’s the trailer:

At one point in the movie, it shows the concrete steps everyone in the system can take and I’d like to share them with you:

Students:

• Speak to the adults in your life about how you are feeling.
• Make sure you get plenty of sleep.
• Unplug and slow down.
• Make time for things you enjoy.
• Limit AP classes to subjects you enjoy.
• Limit extra-curricular activities.
• Seek colleges that use a comprehensive approach to looking at applicants.
• Learn about the long-term impact of caffeine and performance-enhancing medications.

Parents:

• Discuss what success means to your family. Do your actions as a family reflect your values?
• Reduce performance pressure.
• Avoid over-scheduling.
• Allow time for play, family, friends, downtime and sleep.
• Ask your children how they are feeling.
• Allow your children to make mistakes and learn from them.
• Dialogue with your children about their experiences in school.
• Know the signs of childhood depression. Follow your instincts.
• Attend school board meetings and other venues where education is discussed and policies are established and reinforced.
• Form alliances and organize other parents to join you. As a group, talk to your children's teachers, school administrators, and attend School Board meetings.
• Challenge accepted homework practices and policies and the imposition of state and national standards that have narrowed curriculum.
• Advocate for a later start time in high school.
• Eat dinner regularly as a family. 

Teachers:

• Become knowledgeable about research in the area of homework and the importance of play and downtime.
• See what happens when you assign less homework.
• Empower students with more voice and choice in the classroom.
• Find opportunities to evaluate children aside from tests.
• Share your voice on policies impacting education in your school community and at school board meetings.

Administrators:

• Develop a “plan of action” to create a positive and healthy educational environment that supports the “whole child”.
• Support "multiple pathways" in school integrating academics with career and technical education.
• Consider a later start time for the school day in high school. 
• Address sources of stress for children, educators and families.
• Set expectations with faculty at the beginning of the year: ie. if homework takes longer than a set amount of time, child should not continue to the point of frustration and should not suffer any consequences at school.
• Make sure that elementary school students have recess and older students time for lunch.
• Consider the way your school recognizes students and include opportunities for a broad range of young people to be recognized.
• Consider block schedules which reduce the number of transitions and contacts for students and teachers.
• Re-think AP programs. Work closely with college admissions offices to share how your students are evaluated. 
• Ensure that school websites are focused on school communications rather than grades.
• Create calendars to reduce overlapping demands and establish guidelines for tests and projects immediately prior to or after holiday breaks.
• Provide opportunities for open communications between teachers, parents and students.
• Create a vision for change with the emphasis being on engaged learning rather than teaching to a test.

Teacher Certification Programs

• Include classes in child development and the importance of relationships and how to develop them.
• Include classes on how to create engaging lessons.
• Include classes on different intelligences and how to develop curriculum that includes social and emotion learning.
• Include education on the research around the issue of homework and educate teachers on how to assign high quality homework that is meaningful and on the importance of downtime for children and adolescents. 
• Take the lead in putting research into practice.
• Offer continuing education courses for educators in your area.
• Include classes/information re: family engagement --how to enhance family/parent engagement; how to establish and maintain supportive and positive communication; and cultural responsiveness.
• Include classes/information re: identifying and understanding the pros and cons of different ways to assess and evaluate students; understanding what type of assessment is appropriate for garnering what type of information; and the uses and misuses of assessments.
• Include classes/information re: resilience of teachers: maintaining your own resilience in a job that is known for high-stress and high-burnout.

It seems difficult to do some of these things, but if something is not done, we’re going to have to pay as a society for it.

To Question or Not to Question: That is the Question?

So I may be pushing my theater background a bit to much in my titling word play. I was thinking about questioning on blogs. I was looking at my blog and hoping for responses from my classmates. I then was reading my multitude of other blogs I am attempting to follow on my Google Reader when I realized what elicited responses on their blogs - questions.

It is rather simple to respond to a blog post with "That's superb" or "I had never thought of that before" but when a question is posed it elicits a deeper sort of responses and creates a *gasp* discussion.

I went through all my Delicious bookmarks reading all I could about blogging and looking through all the blogging rubrics - like this one which I particularly enjoy (due to the Bloom's Taxonomy tie in), but I couldn't find anything on including questioning in the blog posts.  Should we include questioning in our blogging rubrics or rules?

Until I was re-reading the article I linked to in an earlier post, where I came across two statements that made me think:

"When we publish on our blog, people from the entire world can respond by using the comments link. This way, they can ask questions or simply tell us what they like. We can then know if people like what we write and this indicate[s to] us what to do better."

and:

"But more important, it is about reading what is of interest to you: your culture, your community, your ideas. And it is about engaging with the content and with the authors of what you have read—reflecting, criticizing, questioning, reacting."

Questioning, in my opinion, is a great tool to elicit conversation, allow readers to think more deeply about an issue or information presented, and can create the larger amount of responses that I am looking for.

Then, I was also thinking about using questions as a blog commenter.  Is it rude to ask questions in a blog response?  Does it create more work for a blogger?  Or does it encourage more dialog, creating an online community of learners?  Or perhaps something I had not thought of?

I would love to hear your responses - and please - feel free to shoot some questions my way...

Venturing Out on a Technological Journey

Wow. Just wow.

I started this course as I start many others. I need to get in, get out, get my grade.  But this class has drawn me in to another level of learning.

I think I have finally found something that I truly enjoy learning about - technology.

I created my Delicious account, my Twitter account, my Blogger account, my Google reader, and who knows what's next.  Everytime I log in to any of these, I find myself spending hours exploring, clicking, gasping, and reading about things I had never imagined.  I see a tweet, which links to a blog, which links to an article, which links to resources, which of course links to a massive amount of websites.

I am old fashioned and linear with my thinking in that I must follow every link and when I reach dead ends I go back and click the next link.  It's my own personal treasure hunt.  While I have 15 tabs open in Safari and it's 2:00am, I do drive myself slightly nuts.  But it's worth it!

I know that one day when I get in front of a classroom (but let's face it, not much is taught exclusively from the front anymore), I will have millions of resources at my fingertips to dazzle, impress, inspire, and motivate my students.

On my journey, I came across ClustrMaps - a pretty neat "hit counter map widget and tracker" that "shows locations of all visitors to any site."  What better way to show students who is reading the classroom or student blogs, how the world is slowly shrinking into the palm of our hands, and how influential we can be in our writing, media, and actions?!

I am in love with this journey and I know it will never end!

Enjoy:

To Blog or Not to Blog...? THAT is the Question!

I am a repeat offender of starting blogs and then leaving them in cyberspace untouched for years.  Every time I started my blog, from LiveJournal, Xenga, Myspace Blogs, Facebook notes, to the most recent endeavor of Apple's iWeb (starting a written and/or video blog series to let my friends and family know what I was up to), I would write on it religiously - every day, if not more than once a day.  After about a week or two, it spanned between weeks, then once a month, then I all of a sudden a few months to a year would go by and I'd re-read my previous blogs posts thinking how silly and immature I was and how much I've grown since I wrote those posts.  So the question I ask myself - is it worth it? Or since I am a thespian, more appropriately, to blog or not to blog? <- That is the question!

However, this is not why I am writing my first post on the next chapter of my blogging ventures.  In studying at Pace University in the Educational Technology Specialist Grad Program, our online class was posed the question: "Why could blogging change, or not change, the traditional classroom?"

Initially I thought it would be revolutionary, classrooms of the past never had this capability because of the lack of technology.  After reading this article, I realized just how revolutionary it could be!  I had not thought about the students' writing - with the added element of their writing being seen by the world.  I believe some may have the fear that increased technology use strips students of interpersonal contact.  However, this article made me realize that we are possibly shifting to a different kind of interpersonal contact.  One of the students explains, "the blogs give us a chance to communicate between us and motivate us to write more."  The article also made me think about the dangers of a public forum for a private classroom.  We need to protect children from the dangers of cyberspace.  Monitoring posts and protecting students' identities are of utmost importance.  But I believe with resources such as Miss Brunes' 5th Grade Class' Rules and the extensive list found on Bud the Teacher's Wiki Page we can proactively handle any sticky situations.

This article also opened my eyes to why blogging in classrooms can be so beneficial.  We need to have the students practicing what we are eventually going to be testing.  As the article states, "Educators cannot teach one way, test another way, and expect positive outcomes."  If students are blogging, students will certainly be prepared to enter answers to tests online in an even simpler format than blogging!

I am so glad I came across one resource in my clicking around in research.  I got to hear it straight from the horse's mouth. These students give a very compelling argument in the video posted by the students of Miss Baker's Biology Class in Why Blog? Science Online Students Answer.

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So to answer my question - To blog or not to blog? - I lean very heavily towards blogging in the classroom.  I also lean more towards blogging in my life again...in case you were interested...