This posting from Will Richardson I found interesting.
Last night at our Thanksgiving get together, I got into a long conversation with a family member who is a long-time high school English teacher and who has begun dipping his toes into the Read/Write Web. (I had nothing to do with it, I swear??almost.) While he has been impressed with the work that his students have been doing on the blog, he???s said he is feeling conflicted at many levels about the ways in which traditional literacies are changing, lamenting the fact that by and large, his students have no interest in reading traditional texts. At one point, he looked at me and said, ???You know, it???s like reading is dead to them.??? As two people who grew up loving books, I know we both found that statement unsettling. But I???ve gotten to the point where I rarely look at these changes as being anything more than just different at this point, that labeling them ???bad??? or ???good??? denies the complexity that goes with the discussion.
We talked at some length as to whether reading for our students is much different than reading was to us. Whether they are reading in different ways, specifically through video or other media, and whether those reading literacies are equally as important as text literacy. Whether we are just chained to our old definitions of what reading should be because that???s how we???ve experienced it. Whether now that we can connect to so many different texts we shouldn???t be surprised that most students find Of Mice and Men irrelevant and uninteresting. Whether we should be rethinking what reading literacy means.
I watch my own kids developing as readers and I believe in my heart that it???s a crucial step toward their literacy. But I wonder how much textual literacy they are going to need in their futures when so much more of what they create will be done in non-textual terms. And to be honest, my brain is still very muddled about all of this. But it could be an interesting discussion??
Sorry, I don’t get the issue …. how can children function in any world, let alone an on-line or net one without being able to read the written word? I am often struck with how the blogosphere seems to assume that the interesting and creative things are only happening with bodies Y8/9 and above. There also seems to be the assumption that the children ALREADY have basic text literacy adn numeracy skills and that Web2.0 apps (etc) only kick in when kids are older. As a primary school person I see this as definately NOT the case. There are heaps of fabulous things happening in ICT to instruct the children in these skills.
Reading is NOT dead, it is an essential life skill. We need to recapture (if necessary) literature. You can’t cuddle up in bed with your laptop or ipod, not the same as a good book. Lets not loose this!
For me a key outcome of any literacy programme in a primary school is to create passionate readers. The content/medium is not as important as the passion, but books are still very much part of what I believe we need to be concentrating on.
your thoughts??
Chris Sessums has a lot of fantastic material and this one provides a good framework and rationale for using Action Research to promote school change.
Action research provides a model that allows educators to experiment with different approaches to teaching and learning. If framed in the right way, action research offers a safe-to-fail methodology that essentially says ???here???s what I tried and here???s why it did/didn???t work.???
When we frame our actions in terms of experimentation, we can be somewhat relieved of the burden of being perfect. Experimentation is an opportunity to try out ideas, activities, ways of seeing and doing in a controlled way that allows us to document and critically reflect on the results. Educators experiment all the time in the classroom; however, the action research model provides a set of disciplined guidelines that offers the potential to generate genuine and sustained improvements in schools.
I also like this one using the metaphore of Weightwatchers for school change
Weight Watchers is an organization/model built on helping individuals make the positive changes required to lose weight. It guides and supports individuals in making positive behavioral changes in their life. It provides inspiration in supporting the belief that individuals have the power to succeed and it provides motivation every step of the way.
lifestyle venn diagram
Weight Watchers is successful because it is built on the notion of sustainability and realistic expectations. It uses sound principles of nutrition that focuses on a balanced lifestyle and an individual???s health and well being. Participants in the program share a common goal (losing weight via adopting a healthy lifestyle) and there is a mutually supporting social network of people and technology that is non-judgmental.
There is a lot of good discussion out there about the instructional/learning value of IWB’s at the moment.
Graham Wegner has a really good post on the topic here.
I especially like this quote:
I would be worried that any school that is deciding to put an IWB in every classroom all at once could be setting themselves up for difficulties in addressing teachers??? needs in terms of training and movement through Marc Prensky???s four stages of technology implementation. I would not like to be that coordinator as he or she tries to move … teachers towards full and effective use of this tool. There could be quite a few still stuck permanently at Old Thing In Old Ways without timely guidance and support - something that is hard to give when one is at full stretch. As Derek pointed out, then you do have classrooms trapped in an instructivist environment
so …. does this sound like any school you know of ??
It is NOT about the ’stuff’, it is about what you do with the stuff!
Love it or hate it, you and I both know that Microsoft Windows is the world???s #1 desktop operating system. Today Windows turns 21 years old and to celebrate, we???re taking it out to the local pub to get hammered. Connected Internet has put together a great list of facts about Windows to celebrate its birthday. Some highlights include:
# ???Between 1986 and 1996 Microsoft???s stock soared hundredfold and it was estimated that Microsoft had created 10,000 millionaires by 2000.???
# ???An estimated 250-300K applications have been developed for Windows.???
# ???If Bill drops a thousand dollar bill, it???s not worth his while to pick it up, as he???ll make the same amount in the time it takes him to pick it up.??? source
Another in the market of search engines especially designed for kids is ZOO.COM.
It is built on the Google Coop search engine and the interesting thing for me is the way any school or organisation can do this for themselves.
I am in the process of building one for teacher resource sites at the moment. I subscribe to the delicious tag ‘teacherresources’ in my Bloglines and each day I get a gem site or two. My plan is to use these sites as the ones to create a search-engine for teacher resource sites that uses good teacher resource sites only …
Watch this space as I will be keen for others to add to it! All I need now is to get a couple of free hours to set it up
I have read somewhere that children laugh 25+times a day and adults about 5. What happens to us as we get older to take the laughter out of our lives?
We all need a good laugh! Patch Adams and plenty of research tells us about the beneficial nature of laughter.
I am feeling a bit sober today having attended the funeral of a 15 year old this morning who I taught as a 5 year old in my first position as a principal. He took his own life last weekend.
Lets enjoy life and laugh a bit … life’s too short.
Enjoy the video!
We found that:
1. Teachers continue to be centrally important in designing and supporting learning with ICT across the curriculum.
2. The potential of new technologies was still not being fully realised . Despite the government???s ??1bn commitment to increase the use of information technology in schools, few teachers made full use of computers and other technologies in the classroom. Our findings confirm recent reports by Ofsted and OECD, which indicate that the use of ICT in schools was ???sporadic??? and ???disappointing??? in the UK and internationally.
Our findings indicate the reasons behind this situation
Hardware and infrastructure are necessary but not sufficient
Our research found a significant gap between policy and practice. Most schools responded to the government???s strategy for embedding information and communications technology in classroom teaching in terms of buying basic hardware and infrastructure. This is necessary but not sufficient to ensure full integration and exploitation of the investment.
Teachers lack confidence to take risks with ICT in teaching and learning
We know that ICT is more likely to be incorporated into classroom teaching in schools where there is a body of skilled knowledge. However, much of the training that has been available has been of limited use in achieving this goal. We found that many teachers lack the confidence to take the risk of using technology in their subject areas. This is not a result of lack of personal experience with computers: at home many teachers use computers and other new technologies confidentl: in school they use ICT for administration. What few teachers have is knowledge and understanding of how effectively to incorporate ICTs into teaching and learning.
Teachers need to understand more about how to put ICT to use in teaching and learning
When teachers did use computers in the classroom (in may cases because they were required to do so) they often underestimated their role in directing learning, appearing to believe that knowledge was embedded within the software and that ICT would somehow replace the teacher.
The video data gave us insights into the relationship between learning processes and outcomes when computer technology was included. The technology often increased learner autonomy and control. This could be productive. However the learning that resulted was often ???idiosyncratic??? rather than ???intended???. Teachers needed to orchestrate learning so that micro or individual learning was tested, challenged and extended in larger contexts.
Teachers question the relevance of ICT-based learning to achieving in the current assessment regime
We also found that many teachers feared that computers would interfere with ???genuine??? or book-based learning, particularly in the humanities and creative subjects. Connected with this, teachers also articulated their sense of a tension between the kinds of teaching and learning they saw as best suited to the national assessment regime and those that were associated with new technologies. The result was that many used ICT only for administration and routine tasks.
The impact of out-of-school learning is underestimated
Teachers often underestimated the impact of students??? out-of-school experience of technology on the way they learn in the classroom. Our study highlights the two-way traffic between home and school.
Developing differentiated instruction strategies takes significant time and effort, but the payoff can be huge, particularly for students with special needs, says Carol Ann Tomlinson of the University of Virginia. According to Tomlinson, teacher leaders should focus on helping educators focus hard on four basic fundamentals to achieve success in their classrooms:
*View students as individuals.
*Be clear about what students should know.
*Master instructional practices that “invite student-centeredness and flexibility.”
*Develop classroom management skills that facilitate flexible teaching.
So …
Engagement and knowing the strengths of your class as individuals
Clear learning intentions (and I would add SHARED!)
Effective and skilled pedagogy (’knowing your stuff’ as a teacher)
Effective classroom management
Remember, if a test fails to supply evidence that???s used to alter what???s going on in class???either by teachers or by students???and such evidence doesn???t arrive until the relevant instructional segment is over (or almost over), then that test should not be regarded as a formative assessment. Formative assessment should be regarded not as a particular test but, rather, as a process that???s dependent on its impact on the instructional decisions made by teachers and/or the learning decisions made by students.
I like the focus on formative assessment being a PROCESS not a one-off that does nothing to inform subsequent leaning and teaching. I believe some of the testing and assessment we are calling formative is not TIMELY enough to be formative.
In this definition some of the the best formative assessment may well be the well-informed judgment of the teacher made on the fly in the classroom …. source:
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