The Whole Tim

The Role of the Internet in Fostering Democracy and Capitalism

2009-11-19T04:30:00.001-06:00

With the state of democracy and capitalism these days, the Internet is a place of hope. As it is now, the Internet is increasing becoming an open town hall and marketplace with increasing low cost to enter. This means that people with ideas have a chance to present them to a larger audience and the ideas that are found to be more valuable get more attention and raise to the top. If this environment is maintained, there is hope that the days of government for sale will come to an end.

Perhaps you had a more straight forward way of saying it:
At Google: Nov. 14, 2007 Mountain View California (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-mW1qccn8k)
"The Internet is perhaps the most open network in history and we have to keep it that way."

And you recognize the same troubles with Democracy and Capitalism that I share
At Google: Nov. 14, 2007 Mountain View California (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nnj7r1wCD4&feature=channel)

4:15-4:40 (my best attempts to transcribe)
"I have taken on the special interests in the past and won. And I have an instinct, a bias to push against the status quo which I think is really needed right now to because Washington has become captive because of special interests that are making decisions not based on reason, not based on competition on innovation but often based on who has the most juice, who has the most clout."

What we publicly know about The ACTA Treaty (my points derived from the Nov. 4, 2009 BOL Podcast # 1099 (6:00-14:30)

Main Points:
-Global copyright
-current administration involved in secret discussions
-Proposed 3 strikes, French style system w/no judicial process, ie 3 accusations from right's holders = no internet for life
-ISP required to police; no more safe harbors; ISPs serving executive and judicial roles
-will stifle user generated content

You really should listen to this yourselves. Either they have big misunderstandings and you should make public comments to make things right OR you don't understand the way the Internet works OR special interests have gotten to you too.

How is this treaty consistent with your position?

I can live with a government at war, with no universal health, with a poor economy and that is unwilling to make changes to improve our environment. All of these things will follow if we keep improving openness and democratic discussion on the web.

Get this right and the rest will follow.

My vote depends on it.
Your legacy depends on it.

---

You can post a comment for the Obama Administration at http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/

The Soda Fountain Model

2009-11-15T14:19:00.006-06:00

While sitting at a once local sandwich restaurant earlier today, I reflected on The Soda Fountain Model of distribution. This model relies on the efficiency of allowing the customer to serve themselves. It is based on the assumption that the customer can be trusted to be responsible with a resource (soda) that is being provided in a way that they can choose how much to take. This model rejects the idea that customers can not be trusted. The reassuring thing is that business chooses this model meaning that in the current environment it is more cost effective to accept the loss that might be generated by irresponsible customers than to pay the wages of an employee filling up that soda.

I believe that this model can and should be applied more often in education and in raising children. Instead of focusing our time on micromanaging tasks, we should guide our children through these tasks and leave them to manage themselves. This is not done in a haphazard manner. We must place the figurative soda fountain in a public place, hand out the cups and be ready to step in when (and only when) extreme abuses occur. We need to have an environment where our children see others respecting the "soda fountain" on a regular basis. And we need to be sure that they have enough of what we need, often the child who cheats the soda fountain is not being as much deviant as reflecting a skill set that is often necessary for survival. This is not an excuse, but as a reason why I have seen less well off children abusing soda fountains.

What Anti-Regulators Aren't Complaining About (and more)

2009-11-14T05:58:00.002-06:00

A letter to:

Planet Money Staff,

Show #116, like many others had plenty of mentions about the troubles of regulations. With the high degree regularity of that we hear free market and (de)regulation mentioned one might forget the other major way that sweeping government policy effects markets, creating incentives, "picking winners". We don't hear these free market, deregulation self declared fiscal conservatives ranting about how corporate welfare has created monopolies. We don't hear about how these monopolies stifle regulation, buying up patents and shelving them, creating an environment where new ideas don't have a chance to rise to emerge in the form of new business. Is it not true that If a business spends money on it, they must offer value. Shouldn't lobbing expenses be an indication that big business is pulling big brother into the market too much.

Currently I see the Internet as the largest engine of innovation. I have been watching the discussion about Net Neutrality carefully. My opinion is that it is the wrong fix for the right problem. What we really need is simpler policy that makes fiber work like other public resources. Perhaps the public street model. The trouble is that the industry is happy with it's corporate welfare. While it asks not to be regulated, it takes money. I like the argument that we should do with telecommunications what we did with banks that took bailout money. We should say, "If government programs create favorable markets then you also must accept regulation. Give up the government programs and you will no longer be regulated."

These ideas connect with a few topics that I would love to hear discussed on planet money:
Copyrights vs. Creative Commons (open source) - Copyrights promise an innovator the rights to make money from their innovation for a reasonable amount of time. If they are necessary, why have Creative Commons licenses been adopted by many innovators.
Google - A new (GenX) model for business. The Google innovation is much more than its founding idea, index the whole web. Google captures creativity in the way they structure work and their workplaces (20% time). Crowd sourced ideas. Google gets the larger public and smaller developer communities to participate in improving their products. We can all see the "Big" in Google, but I have yet to find the "evil". Has the promise of the human potential movement in HR arrived?
Charter Schools - As a teacher, I have done some digging, looking for signs that charters are solvent and providing quality innovation with little to say for it. Is the market capturing innovation as promised here?
Thanks for providing short, simple and powerful content,

Tim Patterson

A Comprehensive Model of Change

2009-10-25T20:58:00.006-05:00

These ideas are evolving as I consider the current government and market environments in the US and the world. This explanation is part of a bigger pie
ce that I am writing about the role if market forces and the government in the discussion over Net Neutrality. Look for it soon.

Recently was presented with some compelling arguments for more free mark solutions (Greg Myers, Financial Advisor and Scout Master). After consideration and discussion (Lewis Blevins, Geek and long time friend) I have begun to add free market ideas to my understanding of the world. I see it as fitting in with other ideas including, physical evolution, market evolution and governmental evolution. I want to suggest that these ideas all fit under a larger umbrella that I will call A Comprehensive Model of Change. I am sure that I am not the first to come up with this. I hope to find writing about it.

I suggest under this model that as changes, perhaps innovations, occur those changes are tested by the current environment which either rejects them and they become extinct, or accepts them and they become part of the environment. I believe that while some of these changes are not forward moving, in the long run they lead to a greater good. In the area of physical evolution, we have the evolution of legs to walk on land leading to land based animals. In the area of market evolution, we have the invention of money as an efficiency over barter. In the are of governmental evolution, we have democracy raising above monocracy. In all these examples, we have agents of innovation (I-Agents) who act to change the current environment. The environment which includes consumer/citizen agents (C-Agents), passes judgement on the innovation determining it's future.

It is valueable to consider some factors that effect the decision of C-Agents. While many of the models (free market, evolution) present short term (greedy) gain as the primary criteria, there are increasingly more theories (Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel Prize for her critique of the Tragedy of the Commons) that suggest that people often decisions based on collective, long term and altruistic principles.

Information flow plays an important part in this process of change. As If there is not enough information or if there is misleading in the environment about a given innovation it is possible that the Innovation will be rejected by C-Agents in the environment. More interactions, more exchange of information allows agents to come to more informed opinions leading to the selection of innovations that move the greater good forward more quickly. On the other hand if there is an abundance of quality information including history, C-Agents will make fewer greedy decisions, favoring the greater good. The perception of scarcity and adundance have significant and often negative effects on the decision of C-Agents

Choice, Motivation and Higher-Level Thinking

2009-07-28T16:55:00.000-05:00

Tim Patterson
EPSY 1530
July 27, 2009
The Effects of Choice on Motivation and Higher Level Thinking
Introduction
The assumption that students cannot be given choice in the direction of their schoolwork is one that is widely accepted. To be sure there are advocates for offering students more choice, but the pendulum has swung far to the other extreme as policy makers and the public embraces standards and accountability. When pressed, educators will explain how they allow students to choice the topics of their papers or what book to read. In this age of high stakes testing and teacher proof curriculum, few educators have the time or freedom to offer choice. While schools of education (at least the one that I know best), write visions, missions and philosophies that reflect choice centered learning; they cannot or have not been able to effect the realities of student choice that most school settings present. This leaves educators in the position of abandoning student choice (if they ever sought to offer it) as their pay and jobs increasingly count on the performance of their students on standard tests.
It is my assertion that student choice is one of the key factors that we need to include in education to increase student motivation and to help them develop higher-level thinking. As I explore these issues in a select setting, I will look for aspects of choice that can be generalized from a high choice explorative summer school into an elementary classroom.
Lewis & Clark Summer Institute
The Lewis & Clark Summer Institute (LCSI) is a private summer that has offered classes to kindergarten through eight grade students to children of St. Louis for twenty-eight years. Throughout it's history, it's founder and director, Pat Dugan, has put choice at the center of the school. Teachers offer courses based on their special interests. Each student graduating the 3rd through 8th grade (the younger students participate in the Young Explorers program) chooses three 1.5-hour classes from an offering of twenty or more classes. If a chosen class is not available, Dugan works hard to find another class that the student is interested in. Dugan also works hard to help parents to understand that their child needs to make their own choices about what class to take. This choice is a key element in creating the explorative learning that Lewis & Clark's name implies.
When presented with the opportunity to teach at LCSI I proposed two course offerings. The first would be a beginning programming class. Initially I thought that I would base the class on two free programs, MIT's Scratch and Alice. Both of these programming environments offered graphic user interfaces that were designed with young users in mind. As the first day of class arrived it because clear that Alice would not be stable enough for students to work with, the frustration of the persistent bugs would not be outweighed by the power of 3D graphics that it offered where Scratch falls short with 2D. The second course, HTML, Blogs, and Wikis (I wish I had the insight to call it the more simple Web 2.0 when I wrote the course description), would engage students in the new web paradigm of collaboration through the use of email, chat, blogs, wikis, website builders and other tools that are part of the web movement from publisher as content controller to user as collaborator in providing web content. I picked up Creative Writing for the second session when another teacher could not teach it. While I feel that I am doing well with the course, I believe that the matching of teachers to courses that they did not design and choose is one place where the school falls short at times. With a choice centered model, it is important that teachers come to each course with a deep understanding of and passion for the subject. I knew that my passion for programming and web design would serve as a model for enjoyment for explorative learning that would not otherwise be present.
As this is my first summer at LCSI, I knew from the beginning that I would be learning and adjusting my teaching throughout the two three-week sessions. I knew that the traditional model for teaching would not work well in this environment, as students would not be receptive to direct instruction. Anything that I offered for students to work with would have to meet a simple criteria, “why should I want to do this rather than X other entertainment media?” While I would need teaching objectives and methods, these would not be means to “teach them” as direct targets of a set of specific information, rather the information would have to be “offered” to them. While I did not know this at the time, these ideas would later be reinforced by negative reports of students being bored with a class that were presented as lectures and another that did not offer enough interesting content for the full 1.5 hours.
It is important to explain the future plans of Pat Dugan and LCSI before I go much further. For a few years now LCI has been planning to start a charter school. It is our hopes that we can find a way to offer the unique learning environment found at LCI’s summer school in a general public school setting. As a founding teacher and a believer in explorative models, this research is prudent and practical, much more than a paper, assignment or grade.
My Teaching Model
As with most of my endeavors, my planning for these classes involved considering ideas and discussing them with others. Before any other element, I came up with ideas for bits of information that I picked up along the way in my own informal education. I saw these as “geek” skills, things that geeks understand about technology that applies in a wide range of situations to help solve problems. These include games, videos about technology and the opportunity to make a network cable. I would always have these ready to fill time as needed.
As I tried to find a balance between the chaos that critics point to in many constructivist environments and teacher focused, high structure classes that would drive students to boredom and stifle innovation (read: motivation and creativity), I remembered a workshop model that learned about in Reading and Writing as Cognitive Processes, taught by Dick Koblitz. I had the opportunity to visit Mr. Koblitz's multi-age classroom to see this model in practice as part of literacy time. Koblitz started with group time as he read a poem and pointed out language structures in the content of genuine text. Students joined in, sharing their ideas and insights about the poem. Then he let students work individually or with partners reading. He asked them one by one what they would be reading or writing and whom they would be working with before sending them on their way. When Koblitz discussed this in class at Webster, he made the point that he was intentional about how he did this, as it was both a social contract committing students to focus on specific work and an opportunity to match students with others in ways that he thought beneficial. During this work time, he would call students over to have one-on-one conferences with him. Self directed students would not need this as often, allowing him to spend more time with struggling students. After 30-45 minutes the class would meet together again, where students would share their insights on the work. This allows for reinforcement of desired behavior and skills as Koblitz commented on student work. This is the model I would attempt to use for my classes.
With a model and some extras worked out, I decided that I would present the core tools of each class as they became relevant to the student's projects.
Much of this would be ordered intuitively with one skill needed before another could be presented in a meaningful way. This became the fuzzy area that I have struggled with as I will explain later.
Data and Observation Methods
As I had access to students throughout the two three-week sessions, I have extensive informal data with a variety of students in three classes. Additionally with the two initial classes I would be able to make adjustments and see how they lead to different results. Through continuous discussions with students, I found that most students chose my classes because they had an interest in technology in general. Many of them took at least one other technology class, either my other class or an animation class offered by another teacher. Over the two sessions, three students transferred out, one of which reported that his mother made his class choices. An additional three students transferred into my course, with mixed results, I believe due to limited choice or a greater desire to leave another class than to choose mine.
The formal data that I collected was far from ideal. I surveyed fewer than half of my students with questions designed to be accurately self-reported by students while offering insight into student choice and technology background. I did not have a control group of students who did not choose my class or the means for truly getting at the extent to which each student made choices vs. parent directed choices. I wonder whether students understand course descriptions enough to understand what a each course is about. I also would like to measure the student's exposure to choice and explorative learning models as I notice that many students don't know how to act responsibly when given choice.
My measurements of outcomes, while informally adequate, could benefit from a more formal rubric. My informal means for measuring motivation is time focused on task. While this means for measuring motivation could be skewed by learning style, student disability, or any number of things including the factors that I would like to measure formally (mentioned above), I believe that the workshop model addresses student differences by allowing for additional one-on-one time with select students. Higher-level thinking can be measured by examining the range and depth of tools used in each student project. Higher levels would be defined by the ability to combine a number of tools together to solve complex student-defined problems. My evidence in these areas is purely anectdotal, and outside observation or video recording classes to review later then applying a rubric would greatly improve the quality of my data.
Insights and Adjustments
For the most part the insights and adjustments that I made over the course of the two sessions fall into the categories of content and structural issues. During the planning of my classes I knew that students would have to bring their ideas to offer as content for their projects. This was a challenge that I did not always handle well. I often found that students did not know that they wanted to do after I presented new tools. For the web design class I came to understand that writing skills had a lot to do with this content challenge. If students did not have practice in writing or if I did not find a way to help them to find a voice, they would not have meaningful content to put on their websites. One of the first adjustments I made was to have students sit with paper, pencil and clipboards away from their computers while they brainstormed lists of topics that they were interested in. Often the focus would not last long and I tried to include more refocusings as often as it was bearable. Fortunately in a general school environment other curricular areas will often provide content for sites and projects. Any science topic could become a multi-page wiki entry for a class to split up and author.
Content for programming was not as difficult to come by, but was troubling in different ways. As a gamer myself, my perspective on how to tap the full potential of MIT’s Scratch was in game development. In the first session this single-minded focus that left out the five other explicate areas defined by MIT: animation, simulation, music, slide show, and movie, led to far too many minutes of “research” time spent playing browser games. The second session yielded a wider range of projects as I ban the playing of browser games in the daily free time at the end of class and exposed students to a wider range of projects in all six of the areas. While the skills used to make Scratch projects is not as generally applied, I believe that it can find a place in future classrooms where it can be used as an interactive multi-media presentation tool that allows students to present their knowledge of a topic in many ways.
Even as I made adjustments as I went and between sessions, I feel that structure is still an area that I need to work on. This is where the critiques of constructivism ring true. While I understand the workshop model and I think it works, I often failed to follow through. While I still think that I should be ready to adjust teaching daily, I need to have a clear plan for assessing what instruction students need on a given day. I failed to follow through with the check in and group discussion parts of the workshop model. These elements help students to focus their choice in a way that leads to successful projects. Successful projects in turn feed motivation to try more challenging projects. While the idea of offering tools as they became relevant to students needed a bit of adjusting. I think that addressing the individual’s inquiry as they faced the problem is the most important thing to do, and I that is what I most often did. To capture the energy, I think that I should have had the student discuss the solution that we developed and the tools used in the group time following work time.
One piece of structure that I did successfully add was a bulletin board to track ideas and items in a chronological fission. Each board had a column on the bulletin board that included the fixed events during the class; workshop time, work time, cleanup time and free time. Then as students or myself came up with ideas to focus on we put them on a piece of paper and tacked them up at the bottom of the board. As I planned for each class I took these ideas along with areas that I knew I wanted to cover and arranged them within the schedule. As each student saw that his or her idea was addressed, they understand that their interests and problems are important to me. I think that this concept can be central to the way I run a general classroom as it shows the student’s place in choosing the direction of the class.
Conclusion
While many have not been able to find a place for choice in the current educational environment, I am determined and perhaps uniquely positioned to explore the possibilities. The LCSI model starts with choice and adds academics. Few teachers have a chance to consider teaching in an environment like this. Contrary to critics, I have find that my students choose academics when presented with structure and content in mind. I do not have a definitive solution, for making this kind of choice work in general public classrooms, but I am certainly on the way.

Google Chrome OS Video

2009-07-21T23:35:00.000-05:00

I tried to post this comment about one of many Google Chrome OS videos. For some reason it would not post so I am parking it here for now:

You have to catch up on your Google I/O to know what they are really doing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5aJAaGZIvk
It is not about the OS, it is about the browser. In Google's world that is all the user needs. They can give it away for free because Google makes 90% of its money on Ad Words. As long as users search they will make their money. With revenue flowing they give employees time to play. It is called “20% Time”. fun+work=inovation

Should Schools Embrace Technology

2009-07-20T21:45:00.000-05:00

I wrote this as a 2 page reflection for class, but realized when it got over five pages that it belonged here where I write about things that I think most about. When I read two sides of this issue presented through two articles, I realized as so often is the case that both sides had a point. The Yes side spoke of the potential of technology and the No side spoke of wasted money. Within lies my reasoning on the pitfalls that lead the No side to turn away and a model for responsible and effective use of technology in schools.

Introduction
The role of technology in schools has been has been challenged for years. Frank Smith raised concerns about the possible impact of videos on teaching as far back as the 1970 (I cannot recall the article that he raises this concern in) and I am sure he is not the first. As we moved from chalkboard to quill, led pencil to ink pen, the introduction of mimeograph and the transition to photocopiers, film to VCR, the list continues. I do not know how much debate these changes in technology brought about, but I think it is safe to say that the changes brought about by the availability and accessibility of computers since the invention of the personal computer have by far out weight all other changes.

Defining the Issue
I use the term Technology Programs intentionally for a few reasons. One is to remind us that we should have a well thought out plan, a program, that computers fit into. We have to know when, why and how we are going to use them. We have to use them with purpose. The word “program” as used interchangeably with software is also intentional. It is notable that I do not endorse software. Most of what we need for classroom use is free or web based. With new directions of Web 2.0 we should be moving from the publisher model, where only high skilled users made content, to the collaborative model where our we participate in creating content. Every time I typed (and you now read) the more clunky “Technology Program” I intended these meanings.
To effectively discuss this topic I will use two questions to help define the topic. About each technology program we must ask:
1.Do we adopt this technology so students will be exposed to the technology that is used in society as a whole?
2.Do we adopt this technology because it helps in teaching more effectively or efficiently? (time and money are acceptable criteria)
When we ask this of earlier technology we find that the technology, especially writing technologies would meet the criteria of the first question because they were used widely in society. Many of the more recent technology uses can be debated under the second question. For example: When is it efficient to make copies for students and when does the cost of those copies outweigh the value? I think that there are hints about the answer to computer use in the ways that we have answered this question for copiers in a range of ways in different school settings.
It is my belief that for the most part technology programs that can pass the test of the first question are the ones that should be accepted and they are the ones that have been more effective. Technology programs that are adopted because they meet the criteria of the second question are often expensive, too focused to be valuable, supported by questionable research and easily sold to school districts who like the idea of easy, silver bullet solutions.

Everyone is using it
The first group of programs that I think is no brainers are the ones that everyone in our society already uses on a daily basis. Word processing is a no brainer, with web browsing close behind. The important thing to realize about both of these programs is that the basics have not changed for about 10 years. This means that we don’t have to upgrade our computers to use them (though we still need to upgrade out teachers). While older computers do have some troubles with image/video rich websites, media can often be presented to the class as a whole on slightly more advanced teacher computers. Spread sheets certainly have a place and should be used in math and science to record data and perform large scale math. PowerPoint is intentionally left out here. While widely used, is just a fad that is being replaced with more flexible and available presentation media.
Enhancing participation
With the competitive pricing of Electronic Whiteboards, projectors and “clickers” (small student held devices that allow immediate student feedback), the potential of technology programs that improve students participation is increasing. In the hands of skilled teachers these tools seem to add great value. But beware, low skilled and disinterested teachers prove these flashy technology to often be little more than flash. Also on the level of technology programs that allow teachers to work with the class as a whole, I think that district wide subscriptions to video databases like united streaming can prove valuable.
Note that I do not care for tailor made technology programs that focus on specific subjects and are paid for on a per seat basis. These programs have many flaws, most notably that they are costly. They are also used inconstantly, as teachers have to find the time and accept the value of each one. Finally I do not see these programs as capable of encouraging and assessing the higher levels of Depth of Knowledge that we need to increase in our schools.

“Invest in the tech not the technology”
For me the bottom line way that schools can get the most out of technology is to invest in the tech not the technology. In my experience schools do not pay competitive wages when it comes to hireling technology staff. If they shifted money away from new shiny “silver bullet” solutions and instead sought out high quality staff, they may discover what I have: some of the best solutions are free or very cheap. It is well known that school districts have lots of money to spend. Businesses have been founded and expanded the acquisition of big school district contracts. With more knowledgeable techs, school districts would have the ability to assess the value of technology programs.
These techs, should be educated as teachers and geeks so they will be able to do more than keep technology working, they will be able to understand how technology programs can work to improve educational goals. They should spend time in classrooms working with teachers, helping them to integrate technology programs into their lessons. These techs will choose cheaper solutions as they use their adaptive technology skills to fit and even modify technology programs to meet classroom needs.

Integrating Technology Programs
The ways that technology programs best improve education are when students use technology that they see in the rest of their lives in classroom settings. Too often we are behind the curve or afraid to go there. Why not use chatting to give students a reason to learn typing skills and get students talking about school? Why not use cameras and gps devices that are built into students' phones as part of field based projects? Why shouldn't we use browser games as models to encourage students to engage in programing? Why don't we use blogs to get students writing? Website building to give them a way to present their work to the world?
While we are at it, we can help them to learn ethical and wise use. Instead of being afraid of of them going off course on our watch, while they send pictures to each other leading to criminal prosecution. (think about the number of cases involving teens sending pictures of each other nude; pornography) Where was their schools? I am sure they were thankfully saying, “not on our watch!” instead we should take charge, lead the way and help them to learn life skills. Do some character education that is more than a word of the month.
With such programs we can redirect even more of our resources away from text books and into teacher salaries as we research and write, teachers and students, our texts. Perhaps some of that money would go to more periodicals and online subscriptions to scholarly resources. I see a new role for a library/research-tech too. The outsourcing of curriculum, texts, and technology (in terms of purchasing of custom software) is not needed in this model.

Teaching Programs
We also need to improve our educational technology programs to include more application of technology. As they are now, they are laughed at by employers as they prepare you for little more than teaching a technology class.

Maybe ED is right for me!?

2009-05-16T22:49:00.000-05:00

Since working with a student a few days this week, I am thinking of studying and possibility working with emotionally disturbed children. While I know that this could be one of my "the answer is so easy" moments, I think that I have an idea of what these children (or this child at least) needs. My 2 cent analysis of this child is that his troubles are with lack of secure attachment, basically he has not had stable adults in his life. Furthermore he has been exposed to adults who use carrots and sticks to try to get what they want from him, more likely more of the later than the former.

I stand by Alfie Kohn's assertion that punishment and reward are not sustainable means for building teaching relationships. The reason in the case of ED children is more clear than with any other cases. With this student and I would bet with most ED children, all the sticks are broken and the carrots needed are too sweet for school. We do not have the means to punishment enough(nor would we want them) to be significant for this child who seems to shrug it all off. Likewise, the only carrot sweet enough seems to be excessive free time. We don't want to be in the business of babysitting.

I think that what these students need(and all students for that matter) is a reduction in the use of carrots and sticks and more of what Alfie Kohn calls Caring Communities and more interesting approaches to teaching. The Caring Communities concept is basically about building relationships that connect students to others. Defining interesting approaches to teaching is a bit harder, but a good starting place is answering the question "why do I want to be here?" from the perspective of a student is a good place to start. While most of us did not rebel against our teachers, I am sure that we all have examples of boring and interesting teachers.

If school for this student was a place where he learns interesting things and where he is connected to others in meaningful caring ways, perhaps this student would prefer school and reduce escape/avoid behavior. At least that is what I attribute my small successes last week to, my attempts to show the student that I genuinely care about him.

It is very important that I mention that others who had worked with this student did not have the one-to-one time that I had with this student. Fortunately, if I were to get a job as a certified ED teacher I would have that one-to-one time.

It's Magic

2009-05-16T08:40:00.000-05:00

To be true to the name I share my Friday ritual of playing Magic the CCG with friends at St. Charles' Fantasy Shop game store. After going about two months with and even split of 1-2 and 2-1 records I went 3-0 last night.

While I am a moderately ranked member of St. Louis' Magic community, even more than the competition I look forward to using Magic as a teaching tool. For years I have been saving cards to start a Magic club for students. I might get my first chance next fall. If you talk to Aidan you will know that this is not quite true. While trying to instill my geekdom on him, I have learned my first lesson in teaching Magic. In terms used by Magic developers, flavor before function. Teaching the function, the rules, of the game must come after he gets into the flavor, the fantasy genre, of the game. This idea hit me in the face like a stack of cards with 2 rubber bands around them when 2 fellow Cub Scouts showed up to a Scouting event with rubber banded Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. I realized that at his age showing off what you have is more fun than winning with it. To help with this I have brought him to 3 Magic events with me where he runs around the store looking at all the games while I play.

...maybe a few more years.

It is all in the habit!

2009-05-14T22:29:00.000-05:00

To give another try at bloging I am going to work on shorter ideas and posts. So here are some things on my mind:

I just looked at a video about The Generation www.Y program that involves students teaching teachers how to use technology. I think that aside from turning to the people who are flexible enough to keep up with technology for help, this program has huge potential of getting students involved in learning. I hope that I will find a place where I can work with this program.

Speaking of habits, I certainly have a habit of working in my yard and on my garden. I often will check even in a quick moment when I am on the way out of the door.

Binary code and outliers

2009-03-30T21:38:00.000-05:00

!!warning, I wander!!!

It started with the pizza, at least the binary code part did. Boy Wonder and I were sitting at the table eating a pizza after volunteering at Centenary this afternoon. I cut it in conventionally into 8ths and had handed a plastic container to Boy Wonder after finishing my dinner so he could pack his lunch for tomorrow. I told him that he could have one or two or even one and a half. He told me that that a half of a piece was one 16th. After asking him what half of that would be, I began working on a song as I often do, using the Yankee Doodle tune. Encouraged by Boy Wonder's giggles, I worked to find rhymes for 32, 64, 128 and 256 and I started to build the song around whole numbers instead of fractions. To add context I began to add computer/binary references. This is a sample, not an actual line, I did not manage to write them down, though I did use the door/four rhyme as in this sample:

"these are the powers of 2, the key to a computer's door, to begin with you must remember that 2 times 2 is 4"

Often as I make up these songs I find the teacher bumping heads with social norms. Just as I like to skip and yo-yo as I walk in public (the later much easier to pass off than the former), this type of singing enriches my life and my teaching, but I am reluctant with it still as it confuses people and inspires odd looks. As I see the value of these practices in education, my confidence overcomes the social norms and I even have felt that I can start to have a positive impact on colleagues with these lighthearted and fun teaching practices.

After the song, I started to explain bits and bytes and before long I introduces the idea of how a byte can represent a number. I got out graph paper and we began to make a character map so we could write his name in binary. His excitement rose as he began to catch on after I modeled the translation of "A" into binary and I guided him as he encoded the "i".

Later as he explained it to Caryn, I told him that he was an "outlier", not quite a genius, just someone who had opportunities that could put him higher on the curve than others.

This leads to the segment that I started writing earlier today about "outliers".

~~~

Yesterday I heard about Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers. It describes conditions that are behind the most successful people around the world. One study that it sights is that of schools that tested students using standardized tests in the fall and in the late spring. They tracked students of different SOE classes who scored in the same range in the fall and found that their progress throughout the school year was similar. However when their spring scores were compared to the scores of the next fall, students of low SOE classes scored the same or below the levels of their scores from the previous spring. Gladwell's conclusion is that low SOE students do not benefit from enrichment activities during the summer (not summer school; activities as simple as talking with parents). The High SOE students were exposed to more interesting and academic non-school content and often their scores were higher in the fall than in the previous spring.

...which links in my attempts to understand the rational behind my districts outsourcing of summer school to the private Edison company. Where does the funding come from for Edison to cut a $100 gift certificate for every student with 100% attendance, along with $75 and $50 certs for students with 1 and 2 days missed. If the success of this program is merely keeping the kids in school where they are asked to think and play (the afternoon sessions are based around fun activities) with educators for part of the summer, then Malcolm Gladwell may be bursting their bubble by suggesting that it's not the bells and whistles or the rewards for that matter. These students are being invited to be "outliers" instead of couch potatoes.

I am trying to do the math on the number of eee pc 901s (I do my work on one) that I could buy at $280 each for the schools and/or students instead of tossing out carrots. Lets take $100 from that cert, $90 from textbook money and toss in a fund-raiser that the kids can get hyped on because it is to raise money on their very own netbook for the other $90 and you got a great set of education tools. There is no buy out on this fund-raiser, only opportunities for parents to donate to the general netbook fund. Students learn and earn responsibility.

Make it a program that kids work up to, spread across a few years... a little 1st/2nd grade JA (Junior Achievement)/economics lesson to link in with the fund raiser, leading to a late 2nd grade typing curriculum (that is when motor skills start kicking up for typing), kids collecting credit w/summer school all along... teachers hyping the netbooks by using them, showing off student projects made on them. Students use lab computers throughout 3rd grade, encouraged with "these are the programs/skills you will need to know to use your netbook". In art class they design their own netbook sticker for the backside of their screen, desktop wallpaper, etc.

They learn the importance of school community, with a wireless internet network ala. MIT's One Laptop Per Child program, they will share a connection that originated from the school and jumps from member computer to member computer extending across the student population. With parent support this community learns the important of helping others as students continue to earn credits beyond their quota and gift them to a common fund. The larger community is invited to give to buy shares in the program. These donations are in part stock as students are responsible to show their learning progress to shareholders regularly.

Raising third graders are handed their netbooks by their teacher/principal as they cross the stage. It is a right of passage, they will keep these at school and learn how to respect and use them. Fourth and fifth graders continue to use them at school as they develop projects and interact with curriculum.

Their teachers have entered the information age. They know how to find and organize information, they are connected to larger networks of educators who share online texts in an open library.

As these students enter middle school they are entrusted to take their netbooks home. In art class they craft a carrying case or bag. Their credits continue to accumulate. They learn give to an insurance fund, they pay for maintenance, accessories are offered/required, they sponsor younger students who have not earned their netbook yet.

As high school, they are free to take their netbooks to and from school. They visit elementary classrooms and teach younger students how to use their netbooks, modeling computer literacy. They present to local businesses and organizations to sell shares in the program. The presentation is a portfolio of their years of work. They are offered computer shop class where they learn hardware maintenance, programming classes that began in middle school lead to software development and web design classes. Again they participate in JA style activities, designing, manufacturing, packaging, marketing and selling products (some to be given free to stakeholders).

Did they earn their $100 cert?

Did they get what they wanted?

Did they get what they needed?

eee new start

2009-03-29T23:26:00.000-05:00

I am giving the blog thin a new start. I will likely work out the import tool and bring over the hand full of posts that I made on the other blog. Why change? ...I realized that using my name was a bit odd and possibly a privacy issue and I saw a blog with a nice simple layout, thanks http://goatinacoat.blogspot.com

I have had my eee pc 901 link for almost a week now. I came across the above mentioned blog while searching for patterns for a leather messenger bag to carry it, books and materials. I also reasearched the master plan for internet through my cellphone. When my plan is up in October, I will be able to upgrade into a full internet inabled phone that will be set to teather to my netbook. Internet will cost $25 a month and it will upgrade to 3G internet next winter, spring at the latest when the network finished.