Wiki Educational Sites

For creative ideas on how to encourage teachers to use Wiki's, use this site:

http://educationalwikis.wikispaces.com/Examples+of+educational+wikis

dyslexia

Saturday brought a new adventure in dyslexia presentations for me. I presented for the Parent Awareness Day. Surprisingly, I had a full house for both my presentations with a mixture of parents and teachers. Everyone was engaged and interested in learning more about this learning challenge to help their students or their own children. One mom brought her darling 5th grade daughter who was reciting the lesson components, cards, chants, and strategies right along with me. Actually, my husband was there as my videographer, and he said she was the icing on the cake for my presentation. I thought her interactions were the perfect proof of the effectiveness of the DIP program. I asked her for a quick testimonial about the effectiveness of the DIP training that she's received and she very positively stated how much it's helped her read and learn. That's what training our teachers in the DIP strategies is all about. The payoff is priceless when you see how it empowers these bright, creative students.

Twitter put to new use

So you thought Twitter was only for twits? A substantial use of it that I heard of this morning was that the surgeons are twittering the world (at the family's behest) about the moment to moment progress of a kidney transplant from a dad to his three year old son. The family is already a twittering kind of clan and wanted to use the Twitter platform to promote the need for organ donations around the world. The public relations division of the hospital jumped on the idea and have it all going this morning. So, let's think of other relevant ways to use Twitter to make learning links of substance.

Excitement is in the Air

One small step for Palooza, one giant leap for HISD. That's my thoughts about this morning's tuning session. How great it was to be in a room full of folk who were using the language of Web 2.0 and stepping forward together into the digital world that we must embrace to engage our students and teachers. We're definitely headed in the right direction, and it's nice that we're all headed out together with stable folks at the helm. Way to go, C & I.

Free Courses at MIT

Diametrically opposed to Sheneva's posting about schools paying students to attend school and learn, is an approach by MIT. Again, from the book "Wikinomics" I found that MIT offers open source courses that can be downloaded for free. They offer these courses to the world's family of self-learners in order to advance knowledge and educaiton and to serve the world in the 21st century. The readings for one course that I peeked at had exceprts from the Gutenberg Bible right there for me to download and interact with the course material. How tempting is that for life long learners? How available to all those students who cannot afford to attend MIT, yet have brains that can handle this challenging material to enrich themselves, and hopefully the world through their new understandings? I wonder if we hook students by paying them to learn at first, if they will ever want to avail themselves of these rich resources? What about you? The web site is: ocw.mit.edu

Wikinomics

I'm presently reading a book recommended by Ian Jukes called "Wikinomics." I love how it builds upon global collaboration, but not in the sense of everyone being face to face - but through the blososphere. The authors, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams refer to this as "peer sharing" of just "peering." One example cited was how Rob McEwen, the CEO of Gold Corp, a large gold mining company put all of their geological data from the past 50 years on an open source web site in order to get the thinking from many sources around the world to solve the critical need for his company to discover at least six million more ounces of gold or risk bankruptcy. Since gold mining is a highly secretive operation, McEwen ran into great resitance, but went ahead with his plan anyway. Virtual prospectors from over 50 countries collaborated through a virtual medium. The participants in this contest ranged from students to mathematicians, to military offices.Their ideas lead to a discovery of over 8 million ounces of gold. The bottom line on the gold mine's profit margin went from $100 million to $9 billion and changed them from a company on the brink of closure to an innovative, cutting edge, highly profitable company. (Stock purchased in 1993 for $100 is now worth $3,000.) So, McEwen harnessed the collective genius of folks outside the boundaries of his company to make a huge impact on his company. This is the concept behind Wikinomics -global collaboration. Pulling from the minds of the best,no matter who or where they are and doing it in a way that is so open and easy to access that leads to greater success and creativity than any one (or any one company) can create on their own. This is the collaborative world we need to prepare our students to interact in. This is the collaborative world we need to participate in to make our business cutting edge and to challenge our thinking to new heights.

Bacteria Talk to each Other

I'm a big fan of the TED Talks (Technology Entertainment Design)web site where the most knowledgable people in a wide range of fields are invited to give their best 18 minute talks. The talks range from ant research over a 20 year period to how writers bring their real lives to the page. Today I watched Bonnie Bassler, a Princeton mircobiology professor describe how bacteria, a one celled organism, "talk" to each other using chemical language. In fact, she presents the social aspects of bacteria as both inter and intra species. Her presentation was so down to earth, funny, and amazingly informative. She makes it so easy to understand how virulent bacteria communicate and know when they've amassed enough of them to overtake a giant species like a human. On the flip side, she explained what good jobs bacteria do in all species. After all, we are about 99% bacteria, most of which are good she reminds us. At the end of her engaging talk, she showed a picture of her research assistants at Princeton, all of whom are under 30. These could be some of our future students if we can engage them in science by 4th grade (that's from other research I've read).
So, my advice to you is watch this engaging talk by going to the link below:
Use this to inspire you as a scientist. You'll never see yourself under the microscope in the same way again.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/509

Encouraging Feedback from the Cracks

I recently interviewed ten struggling readers for an action research project. Nine of these students did not pass the recent state reading test. However, all nine still expressed a desire to get better at reading. I'm totally impressed that they still have the drive and the dream to see themselves moving into the winner's circle. This is such a tribute to them as learners and to their teachers for keeping that hope alive.

Testing has stripped learning of its intrinsic value

Excerpts from:

Education as Ritual
Uncovering Standardization's Depths
By Christian M. Bednar (former high school English teacher; not owns a tutoring company in Marblehead, Mass.)

We're on a mission. And whether or not the student is a failing Johnny or an A-plus Sally, he or she is suffering infinitely at the hands of an educational environment armed with more research than ever promoting the importance of critical thinking, yet ignorantly content to wallow in a basal-reader mentality.

Accordingly, learning has effectively been stripped of both its beauty and its intrinsic value.

Eliminating our present evaluative system would do much to reverse the suffocating climate in many of our schools. This change requires neither an exceptional degree of innovative thinking nor a supplementary allocation of funding. What it does demand, however, is the recognition that the process of learning is intangible and immeasurable. When we attempt to quantify that which is unquantifiable, we destroy.


http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/04/08/28bednar.h28.html?tkn=YPMFOz8s0F4pOIsuA4CP6l0RhGjHZ9QQPAfm

More time in School Proposal

Well it seems as if the secretary of education agrees with me that in order to compete globally, we need to educate our children longer. I think I posed this comment to one of Dan's querries. I know it will be a cultural war as summer vacation, and short school days are so embedded in who we think we are as a society. Yet, how are we to catch up on teaching children how to think deeply in a global arena if we don't make systemic changes? I say as inconvenient as this will be, that we must enbrace it to get to the front of the line of competitors. Otherwise we're going to wind up on a very long summer vacation while the students from India, China, and other nations are working all the available jobs around the world.

I see the stimulus money may somehow be tied to these changes. Now, that's a way to get buy in.

Anyway, read all about it at the following link: http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=113300&provider=top&catid=188

Inspiration from the Grave

Sadly, I received notification from my alma matta of the death of a beloved young professor, Dr. Gustavo Wensjoe, the head of the International Studies Program there.
I didn't know him. Yet in reading the Face Book posts, he was a sublime educator who pushed when students needed to be pushed, consoled when students needed to be consoled, and taught global students global concepts with such depth and passion so as to make the world a better place. One student quoted him as saying, "Live like you'll die tomorrow. Learn like you'll live forever." This is actually a Mahatma Gandhi quote, but so appropriate to the way Professor Wensjoe modeled his brief life - based on the comments of those who knew him. God bless you and your family, Dr. Wensjoe, for what you brought to the world.

Coincidentally this quote makes me feel as if I knew Dr. Wensjoe as I do live my life this way. I thrive on learning. Learning makes me feel alive. I'm a better person within and without because of learning. I bring the passion generated from learning to my every day living and to the people I cherish. God bless you, Dr. Wensjoe, for connecting with me beyond the limits of conciousness we call life as knowledge knows not the boundaries we call life and death.

Blogging Builds Students' Writing Skills

http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el200903_davis.pdf

A good article that specifically outlines a teacher's use of blogging to build writing skills, choice, and relevancy of learning.

Blogging Recommended on the Today Show

This morning's Today show featured out of work writers. It turns out that they are working as unpaid interns at various organizations so they can learn today's technology. It seems the only market currently generating work for writers is the online market. Even though they have more writing experience, they are being mentored by paid writers in their 20's and 30's because these youngsters have the technology skills that they lack. What was the number one way recommended through this piece on the Today Show to begin getting caught up in any field? Blogging? Find blogs in your field of interest and begin by reading them, then posting to them. Start your own blog. Get people interested in your ideas. Become reflective and invigorate that inquiring mind of yours. I wonder how far behind educators are in being left behind by the tech savvy? I wonder what place blogging can play in beginning to close that gap? Valuing the recommendation of Ian Jukes who said start with "Baby Steps" -make one small change in your technology skills - would lead one to begin blogging. Wouldn't you think? Blogging is not just a passing time waster. It's opening a door to the future.

Technology and the Dyslexic Students

I attended an amazing presentation on Tuesday from a group of teens and their dyslexia teacher from a Texarkana school district. What was amazing was the empowerment and academic success these print challenged students achieved by using a computer program (much like Microsoft Reader) that can read selected text to the students. The students can also download books, lessons, essays, etc. to their ipods, iphones, MP3 players, etc. to constantly review their material in preparation for tests and class discussions. In addition, students can create their own essays, have it read to them so they can see where it needs to be revised by listening to it. These wonderfully gifted, right brained dyslexic students are earning scholarships to well respected universities like SMU, are presenting and teaching summer classes to other dyslexic students and their parents at SMU and at Yale Univeristy. These are just kids, like our HISD dyslexic kids, who are maximizing their potential by plugging in to the digital world proving once again, how right Dan Pink's "Whole New Mind" can be.

Socrates and Plato address the Digital Dilemma

In progressing through my current favorite book, "Proust and the Squid...," the author references how Socrates opposed the writing down of stories as he felt it would undermine the depth of the oral culture dominant at that time. Plato on the other hand, rebelled by writing down every word. The author goes on to point out what a contemporary parallel we are witnessing as our students move from a print to a visual world of information. This really intrigues me to realize the relevance of this ancient debate that up to now was unknown to me.

The Networked Student

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=4f87f85779e13b83d412

I just watched this Teacher Tube video addressing the teacher's role in advancing 21st Century Literacies for our students. I think this simple video clarifies our role, the students' role, and the excitement that makes learning alive and relevant through digital means.

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain

This is a book you going to want to read. The author, Maryanne Wolf, presented at the dyslexia conference Janice and I attended last weekend. The title itself is intriguing: she chose Proust as a metaphor to represent all that we hold most dear -as in reading isn't that the interaction we have with the reader through print and the interaction we have with new ideas? She chose the squid as a metaphor for brain research. It seems the squid has one central neuron running along its entire body. Therefore, the squid's neuron was used to study of how neurons work just as today's cognitive neuroscienctist use reading to study how the brain works. I think this is a pretty clever title. Of course she had to add a subtitle to get folks to understand what the book is really about.

Dr. Wolf fears that with the bombardment of digital technology and online reading we are all becoming reading skimmers. As such, she fears we are missing out on the deeper relationship we can have with authors and ideas and that our students will be even more impacted by this survival method of reading all that's out there in the digital world. She, like the author of i-Brain, realizes that this kind of learning is rewiring the way the brain is mapped with its intricate web of neurons. This researcher, who is the director of the Center for Reading and Language Research in Boston, believes that part of our job as educators will be: to teach our students to slow down; to create images from text; to preserve the moments it takes to make connections between the words on the page and your imagination, your insights, your experiences so that these parts of our brains don't atrophy. She wants us to help develop these skills in digital readers so children can think original thoughts in an automatic way as they skim through the digital world. This sounds like quite the challenge. I know we're not going to stand in the way of technology. In my opinion we just have to continue to get kids to fall in love with ideas so they will explore them more deeply.

Live Link to "Writing in the 21st Century"http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Press/Yancey_final.pdf

http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Press/Yancey_final.pdf

Writing in the 21st Century - An NCTE Report

"WE NEED TO BECOME SERIOUS ABOUT HELPING STUDENTS BECOME CITIZEN COMPOSERS INSTEAD OF GOOD TEST TAKERS!" says NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) past president Kathleen Blake Yancey, Floriday state University, Tallahassee in her newly released report http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Press/Yancey_final.pdf
Finally someone of influence supports what's happening with real writing with our students.
This document traces the history of writing instruction through the 20th century through today where students are teaching us about real writing by the writing they're doing outside of a classroom. Online writing, energizes and brings rebirth to the power of writing like never before. Students' real writing is driving us to face real challenges in writing - to develop a curriculum that will support what students are already doing with writing and to help them learn how to communicate well via online interactions. Online writing, live writing will be the source of their power in their future workplaces and lives.

I'd love to have a C & I discussion of this powerful newe document.

Students are writing more now than ever

Students are writing more today than ever. In fact NCTE the Age of Composition according to Kathleen Blake Yancey, past president of the National Council of Teachers of English and Hunt professor of English at Florida State University. Evidence of increased writing is all around us in text messages, blogs, emails, and Wiki's. (In fact, my husband was just fussing at me last night about our cell phone bill as we got charged .20 cents per my text messages above 200.) Why would I need to write so many text messages. Simple. It serves a purpose. It connects me to other human beings. It conveys my meaning in an efficient format. It saves me time. It allows my vote to be heard along with so many others as I vote for my favorite American Idol contestants. It allows me to respond to surveys on radio and TV as I connect to others.This is exactly where are students are. They are using writing to serve the purpose of connecting to others The bonus for writing as an art form it that the more we get people to connect with us through this medium, the more we use the medium. The more students find a willing audience for their writing, the more they write.Is this the 5 paragraph essay kind of writing? Well, duh. That's a fake writing style. Don't they need to know how to write a 5 paragraph essay for college? The writers of this article state that that's "fake writing for a fake audience" and kids who are used to real responses from the real audiences to whom they are constantly writing know this and are turned off by it. Sure we can provide guidance in this kind of writing, but shouldn't we as educators be focusing on teaching students 21st century writing skills? What if we focus on teaching them about voice and audience in no matter what writing venue they choose? What if we model for them how creativity generates a deeper response from a larger audience? Won't that still be teaching the foundations and structure of writing? What if we share with them the intensity of a creative moment and how it feels like the inspiration for it came as a gift from a greater life force? Wont's students be able to relate to all that's powerful about writing because they are now getting closer to experience its power in real time, in their real lives and not just by hearing about "famous" authors' works? We have such an opportunity at our fingertips - to build on what the students find worthy about writing. Let's not isolate their real writing experiences from what we do in classrooms.(Watch the TED video from Elizabeth Gilbert the author of Eat, Pray, and Love, a recent best seller, as she speaks about how creativity comes into one's life much like the Ancient Greeks believed it did. Go to: http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/elizabeth_gilbert.html

In theme for the December/Jan issue of Edutopia Magazine is on the Collaboration Generation. An article of particular interest is "World Without Walls: How to Teach when Learning is Everywhere." It begins as an 11 year old community volunteer was asked where she gets her project ideas, and her response was, "I ask my readers." This 11 year old routinely blogs about her community service work with people all over the world. They exchange ideas, successes, and failures as they inspire each other to continue to carry the torch of volunteerism that makes a real difference. This is but one example of the power of collaboration and its global strength in numbers. We as teachers need to empower students to find these global connections by becoming their connectors and making our classrooms into hubs of global connectivity. We need "to teach students to see themselves as connectors and teach them to get better at learning from each other." Think of the power in learning that students would experience by Skyping, blogging, adding to a class Wiki, etc. that is shared with fellow students around the world?We need to teach students to find their writing voices so they can really connect with the millions of voices online. Can you imgine the global competition out there for your online voice to be heard? Can you imagine the power of capturing an audience that will commit to reading what you have to say on a blog or to contribute to a Wiki on a topic you've selected? To be a true collaborator, one has to be "freely willing to share ideas and to share these ideas on a daily basis, not just at the end of a semester for project day or open house. " True collaborators are driven by a passion to learn from each other. True collaborators are not limited by the walls of a classroom or the boundaries of a city or nation. This is where education needs to travel. This is the strength of future learning and power. This is the learning we need to pass on to our students so they can be successful collaborators in the 21st century.A link to the magazine can be found at: http://www.edutopia.org/collaboration-ageHowever the current articles are not posted. I do have a hard copy of this magazine which is published by the George Lucas Foundation.

The National Day of Writing comes up October 20, 2009 to celebrate the role of writing for our nation. Everyone can participate by sending in their writing whether in whatever format they choose. Text messaging, email, stories, biographies, poetry, reports, blogs, journals, and even hand written entries will be accepted. These writings will be posted in an online Gallery in the spring of 2008. What kind of writing would you post?

To learn more, visit NCTE's National Day of Writing page.

6 word love stories

Today being Valentine's Eve, the Washington Post served this treat.

We called for six-word love stories, and you answered in droves. More than 300 exclamations and lamentations of love arrived just in time for Valentine's Day. Read on, and contribute your own in the Comments box at right.

Craigs List. True love. Who knew?
Why did I stay for decades?
Submit to passion, never go back.
Lover breaks mold, none can compare.
Mid-life brings love without fear.
Past gone, future unknown, present bliss.
Love's never perfect. Experience brings forgiveness.