Technology in Education

I started my career with Teach For America as a band director in Louisiana.  TFA sends recent graduates to districts that are under-resourced and cannot fully staff their schools.  TFA has become the “it” placement for college grads, but back then there was a feeling that we were on the frontier of something big.

 The school I taught at had class pictures in the lobby.  The school pictures were all-white until 1971.  Then it was abruptly all black.  This is when I learned that Brown vs. Board of Education did not have an immediate impact in schools in the South.

The neighboring high school had been the segregated school for African-Americans.  When desegregation was ordered all the white students fled to the catholic schools.  By the time I arrived the schools were largely desegregated, as was my band.

 The neighboring school had a very strong marching band.  It was a show band, in the FAMU or Grambling style.  This meant dancing on the field.

The band I had inherited was NOT a show band.  It marched with straight lines, did not dance, etc…  Our band had maintained its focus since the 1960’s.

There was intense interest when I arrived about what style of marching I would use.  I didn’t quite get it at the time.  I wrote drill that maintained the traditional corp style.  However, there was a moment in the middle number that I saw an opportunity.

 It was only a shuffle step.  Four steps to the left, four steps back to the right.  But it was definitely dancing.  The crowd went wild.  I maintained the “dignity” of the corp style, but made huge inroads with all members of the community by recognizing the diversity of the community.

And really, I had no clue what I was doing.  I was 23.

I wonder how much we lose by not knowing the “backstory” of our community.  Many of us teach in very homogeneous communities, some teach in communities “in transition”, and some teach in classrooms with 25 kids and 25 languages.

Does our community drive our curriculum or do we?  Do we really understand how “minor” choices can have huge impacts?

Technorati Tags: teachforamerica TFA diversity

The cool use of technology that I am thankful for is that we can swipe our credit card at the pump when we get gas.  Now that I have a child I can’t imagine having to wake her up, carry her into the gas station to pay cash, and carry her back out again.  She is invariably asleep when we drive and this would make her miserable.

 Now, I would probably buy the same amount of gas either way.  But it might be an example of making life SO much easier.

I was trying to think of a similar thing I use in the classroom and it might be  teacherease.  Students and parents have online access to view my gradebook.  They know exactly where they stand in real time.  Grades 1.0 would be the paper grade book with calculator at end of semester.  Grades 2.0 is the desktop based computer program or spreadsheet.  Grades 3.0 is the online system that allows full analysis and access.  It saves A LOT of time and effort.

Yesterday’s tragedy in Virginia outlines this dichotomy between school and student life.  Students needed access to information and used their laptops to access Facebook, wikipedia, and other user edited sites.  The growth of the wikipedia entry about the massacre is amazing. Serious discussion about sources, citations, resources is going on in real time.

Students used their phone to videotape the incident.  Journalists from around the world used these websites and video as primary sources.  Anyone, anywhere, at anytime can be a journalist, editor, and creator of documents.  In almost all high schools today we ban phones, Facebook, editing wikipedia, even though society recognizes these skills as essential.  This is how schools are risking irrelevancy.

Have students become the educational leaders? Have they left us behind?

Technorati Tags: vatech wikipedia education k12

This is a long story that I will shorten considerably.  My school did not have a wikipedia entry.  We created one as a class project.  One specific editor became very concerned with the page development.

I am now in a dispute with him about including a link to ratemyteacher on the school wikipedia entry.  He insists that it is a “uniquely powerful aggregation tool”.  I disagree.

A good project for us bloggers/editors may be to visit the wikipedia entry for rate my teacher and chime in and improve this entry.  Just a thought…

Technorati Tags: wikipedia ratemyteacher

More thoughts from my paper…..

Schools are burdened by a century old system of age based competency that was put in place during the Depression. One quarter of the American work force was out of work and became a political necessity to mandate schooling for all children until the age of eighteen. Before then American education was largely competency based. Students were required to attend school between the ages of 8-14 unless they demonstrated competency in the subjects that were taught.

Today we have little, if any, incentive for a student to excel and to move at their own pace. If a student is a junior they take chemistry. They simply cannot take physics until their senior year, no matter how fast and proficient they become. Student are sheperded from class to class. They must take chemistry for 180 days.

Contrast this with the skill based world of video games that students are so familiar with. Gamers start on level one and often progress through strategy, collaboration, and goal setting through dozens of levels. They simply can’t move on in the game until they demonstrate competence. They could achieve the top level in days, weeks, or months. Most games require collaboration in order to move on. If we can do this for World of Warcraft why can’t we do it in Chemistry? Would your students be excited if they had a “game” to play in chemistry and you told them first day “Finish the game and you can immediately get to play Physics, which I hear is really cool”. Currently we say “Play chemistry, but you can’t play physics until this day next year, it doesn’t matter how fast you understand the content, you simply can’t move on until then”.

I’m tackling a paper about Building 21st Century Schools this weekend so I might post some thoughts looking for feedback.

Question 1:“If a student brought his laptop to school would he be applauded…or suspended?”

Scenerio 1:
“You are not allowed to use your phone, iPod, laptop, watch youTube or send email. Please use only this pencil and paper. No you may not use the computer. We are scheduled to use the computer next Thursday for 45 minutes. You will have to pair up as we only have 24 computers and there are 32 of you.”

Sound familiar?

Technorati Tags: technology Brandt_Schneider

My students have been working on videos about cyberbullying and Darfur.  I have been working on integrating web design, writing, oral communication and video production.  It has not been easy but I see a lot of growth in the students’ skills.  Most are telling MUCH better stories.  The collaboration and the ability to view each others work has definately increased the intensity. 

I do think that video is very under utilized in schools.  We all recognize that almost 100% of the information that students and adults consume is video based, yet we almost never teach video technique–or we separate it into a class for “video production”.  It should be completely integrated.  I shouldn’t get seniors who have never made a video before.

Technorati Tags: cyberbullying Darfur video Schneider education

A teacher asked me today:

“The school is requiring me to post my lesson plans on the school website.  Who holds the copyright for the lesson?  Does the school, or does the teacher?”

An interesting question.  Can a school publish what you do in the classroom?  Should the teacher be able to choose who they collaborate with?  Or are all teacher lesson plans “open source”?

 Any answers?