MI-LIFE

Never2old2learn

Making sound decisions about teaching and learning substantiated by the fact that you use data from assessments is only partially true if you do not also take into account the information you can gather from directly experiencing what your students are experiencing. Do you Twitter? Have you created your avatar in Second Life? Are you a member of an online social network like MySpace or Facebook ? If your answer to these or similar questions is a resounding NO, then you're missing out on an important source of information about 21st century administering, teaching and learning.

I have always been of the mind set that if you want to truly relate to kids, understand them and make good decisions about their learning, you have to directly involve yourself in the things that they are doing. To that end, I started out in my earlier administrative years as an avid arcade game player (PacMan) and then moved on to video game playing. For one thing, I wanted to understand the video game language but, more importantly, I wanted to understand the process of video game playing to determine 1) if/how this could be used in the instructional delivery of lessons and 2) what skills were needed to navigate through the video world.

More recently, I created an account in Second Life where I created my avatar. Of course, I made myself much younger, thinner, and blond! However, I had a difficult time maneuvering in this huge 3-D virtual world and found it to be overwhelming with the millions of residents moving around. I got very confused by the buy/sell/trade opportunities and just couldn't wrap my mind around the concept of living in a digital continent. On the other hand, there were similarities to video game playing in that the control of actions occurred by manipulating the mouse or hand control.

Being married for 43 years, I was very hesitant to join Match.com, the online dating service, so I asked my daughter if I could log in to her account. You can imagine what her answer was to that. The compromise was that she let me view her account while she stood over me watching. In both the Second Life and Match.com networks I learned that one can be anything or anyone they want to be. And in Match.com, my take away was that I am glad I'm not single!

I graduated to more sophisticated endeavors when I joined the world of online social networking and created a Facebook account. An estimated 300 sites make up the social network universe according to an article in Knowledge@Wharton.

MySpace, with 70 million visitors, has become the digital equivalent of hanging out at the mall for today's teens, who load the site with photos, news about music groups and detailed profiles of their likes and dislikes. Other social network sites include Facebook, geared to college students, LinkedIn, aimed at professionals, and Xanga, a blog-based community site. In all, an estimated 300 sites, including smaller ones such as StudyBreakers for high schoolers and Photobucket, a site for posting images, make up the social network universe.

So, how does all of this apply to making decisions about 21st century administering/teaching/learning? This is best summed up in a study conducted at the University of Minnesota

Educational Benefits Of Social Networking Sites Uncovered

"What we found was that students using social networking sites are actually practicing the kinds of 21st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today," said Christine Greenhow, a learning technologies researcher in the university's College of Education and Human Development and principal investigator of the study. "Students are developing a positive attitude towards using technology systems, editing and customizing content and thinking about online design and layout. They're also sharing creative original work like poetry and film and practicing safe and responsible use of information and technology. The Web sites offer tremendous educational potential."

Greenhow said that the study's results, while proving that social networking sites offer more than just social fulfillment or professional networking, also have implications for educators, who now have a vast opportunity to support what students are learning on the Web sites.

"Now that we know what skills students are learning and what experiences they're being exposed to, we can help foster and extend those skills," said Greenhow. "As educators, we always want to know where our students are coming from and what they're interested in so we can build on that in our teaching. By understanding how students may be positively using these networking technologies in their daily lives and where the as yet unrecognized educational opportunities are, we can help make schools even more relevant, connected and meaningful to kids." Greenhow suggests that educators can help students realize even more benefits from their social network site use by working to deepen students' still emerging ideas about what it means to be a good digital citizen and leader online.

As administrators and teachers, it is important to have a clear understanding of how students are engaged outside of school and in their use of the digital world. The only way to truly understand this is to experience it first hand. Regardless of your age, you're Never2old2learn.

Highly recommended reading:

• "Has social networking technology (blog-friendly phones, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) made us better or worse off as a society, either from an economic, psychological, or sociological perspective?" question posed to experts in a Freakonomics article by Steve Dubner in the New York Times
• The Benefits of Facebook "Friends:" Social Capital and College Students' Use of Online Social Network Sites, a research study conducted at the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media at Michigan State University
• Social Networking Can Have Educational Benefits, Survey Finds, article in Education Week

--Marion Ginopolis - Cross posted on LeaderTalk Blog

Technorati Tags: Social_Networks_benefits Facebook 21st_century_learning

Meme: Passion Quilt

  I have been challenged (tagged) by my colleague, Jane Perzyk. This challenge began with Miguel Guhlin suggesting the creation of an online Passion Quilt meme by posting a photo representing what I most passionately want children to learn in school.

The photo I selected was taken of me hiking, for the first time in my life, on the trails of the San Jacinto Mountains in Palm Desert, California. I call your attention to the size of the palm trees (relative to me) that appeared at the start of the trails. My initial thoughts when I saw them were that this was going to be an overwhelming and risky endeavor. On the other hand, there was a sense of excitement mixed in with the fear of the unknown. The anticipation of the positive feeling I would have after accomplishing such a daunting task is what compelled me forward.

I'll let the reader draw her/his own conclusions about why I selected this photo to represent what I most passionately want children to learn in school.

Miguel asks that we share post our photo, share with others in our network, and then sit back and see what shape this Passion Quilt meme will take. Here are four people I will tag:

David Sherman

Scott McLeod

Bruce Umpstead

Michael McVey

Link back: http://www.edsupport.cc/mguhlin/archives/2008/02/entry_6578.htm

--Marion Ginopolis

Superintendents in the Trenches - First-Day-Back Stories

Story telling never goes out of fashion, and when the stories are humorous and relevant and generate a few brief moments of reflection, they are all the more valuable!

Two such stories appear in a blog written by Tom Hanson, a former school superintendent, in which he describes his encounter with two students in the grade 2-3 wing of one of his schools, and the other, in a first grade classroom. Reflecting on his two embarrassing encounters, he comments:

. . . I have learned that if you work with children sometimes you do the teaching, but there are many, many other times, when we actually do the learning. That’s how it works with kids, if you pay attention you do a lot of learning. . . . I have also come to realize that if you keep learning, well then you have a chance to be truly someone special, someone who makes the difference in the lives of children.

Do you have a first-day-back story (or maybe one after months in the trenches) that you'd like to share? Just hit the Comments button below and start your tale!

Extreme Makeover - School Edition

The original Extreme Makeover was a television program from ABC in which individuals volunteer to receive an extensive makeover in Hollywood involving plastic surgery, exercise, new hairdos and wardrobes. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition began broadcasting in 2004 as a regular TV series in which a family's house, including all rooms, exterior and landscaping, is made over by a team of builders and designers in seven days while the family goes off on vacation.

The idea behind EM: Home Edition is to put together a very run-down house, a deserving family, a team leader and several opinionated designers to build a new house, all in a race against time. The end result is that the lives of the lucky families are forever changed.

I am advocating for a spin-off of this series titled Extreme Makeover: School Edition where the makeover doesn't just change faces or facilities, it pushes the limits of what's possible in transforming education and the lives of the lucky students are forever changed.

We have all the necessary "ingredients" to validate the need for Extreme Makeover: School Edition -- outdated systems and deserving kids. We also have a ton of experienced (and, yes, opinionated) educators. And we certainly are in a race against time. Graduation rates are falling, we are losing our edge internationally, and evidence suggests that schools are a long way from leveraging technology's potential.

Our current system of education is not meeting the needs of our students. Statistics show that students dropping out of school don't do so because they are failing; they do so because they are disengaged, disinterested, and see their time spent in school as irrelevant.

We are in a state of urgency to provide 21st century solutions so our children can successfully compete in a new global economy. Here’s my challenge: If you could contribute to the new series, Extreme Makeover: School Edition, what would you recommend for the next-generation school and why?

--Marion Ginopolis

Cross-posted on LeaderTalk

Technorati Tags: school_reform Extreme_Makeover_School graduation_rates dropout_rates

Creativity at the Top

Yesterday's School Improvement Conference in East Lansing, MI, began with a humorous yet perceptive oral mind-reading of a variety of fictional attendees at the conference, soliciting laughter from the crowd and lots of heads nodding in agreement. Instead of a PowerPoint with a bulleted agenda which most conference attendees expect as pro forma, this unusual performance by Wavelength touched a chord with everyone in the audience, all of which brings to mind the reworking of Bloom's taxonomy. What's the connection? Well, the peak of the Bloom's pyramid is now creativity, touted as a necessary skill of 21st Century learners.

While thinking about the increased importance of creativity in our students' skillset, I came across a video of Ken Robinson discussing creativity in education, a topic so dear to his heart that he was recently knighted in England for his work on a "massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy." The video is posted at the Classroom 2.0 website, but originated at the TED website which is a repository of speeches by hundreds of luminaries in the fields of technology, education, and design (hence TED), but recently broadened to include the thoughts and words of some of the world's most fascinating thinkers. Click on the arrow below and take 20 minutes to laugh, ruminate and become reinvigorated!

--Jane Perzyk

Image Citation:

www.coe.uga.edu/epltt/images/bloomold.gif

Technorati Tags: MI-LIFE School_Improvement_Conference TED_Talks Bloom's Sir_Ken_Robinson

Laptops vs. Librarians

In a recent 2 Cents Worth blog posting, David Warlick expresses his outrage, "They are laying off librarians in Michigan, and BUYING LAPTOPS!" citing his source as one Michigan librarian with whom he talked, who as it turns out, is the president-elect for MAME, the Michigan Association for Media in Education, at whose October 27-28 conference Warlick was a presenter. MAME is a professional association of library media specialists.

What is misleading here is the implication that Michigan prioritizes the purchasing of things over the retention of critical staff positions. Further, it implies that there's a correlation between buying laptops and laying off librarians and that this is a cause and effect relationship. (Actually, classroom teachers are being laid off also here in Michigan.)

Nothing could be further from the truth! The funding for staff positions and Michigan's 1:1 Laptop initiative, Freedom to Learn, are from two completely different sources; the first from the school district's general fund and the second from federal and state allocations that are specifically dedicated to this initiative. In other words, the money to purchase laptops can not be used to pay for staff positions.

The importance of librarians is not my issue here. I certainly support Warlick's contention that "both are important." In fact I believe both are critical and I'm sure there is more current research to support the importance of school librarians than the 14-year old citations in his posting.

My concern is misleading information from which readers draw inaccurate conclusions and, in this case, negatively view our state and perpetuate dissatisfaction with the "system." Perhaps the culprit in this instance is the school district for not properly communicating with staff the reason for layoffs and clarifying the differences in funding sources for equipment purchases and personnel.

Regardless, as educators, we continually whine about the media dragging us down with misinformation, partial truths, and negative press. I would hope that our valuable educational blogs don't begin to do the same.

--Marion Ginopolis

Technorati tag: warlick

Netsavvyness for Lifelong Learning

A website devoted to improving the accuracy of news stories about medical treatments and to helping consumers evaluate the evidence for and against new ideas in health care emphasizes the importance of being able to evaluate information on the Internet. The site, Health News Review, rates health articles on accuracy, balance, and completeness because so many misleading articles about medical advances and cures are being published, sometimes offering false hopes to readers.

This skill is exactly what our neomillenial students need--the ability to validate information. With the exponential growth of information, they need to be able to find, validate, and use wide varieties of information for all kinds of purposes. We think our "net-savvy" students know their way around the web, but, let me tell you, they don't!

For example, in a Comp II course which I taught at Oakland Community College, I offered a section on information literacy in which students learned search skills and evaluated the credibility of a variety of websites. One of the sites they reviewed was Don Descy's website for the city of Mankato, MN which he created to teach information literacy to his students at Mankato State. The landing page of the site lauds the city of Mankato, about 80 miles southwest of Minneapolis, for its tropical winter climate:

Mankato has everything thanks to a freak of nature: the Sclare/Far Fissure. This fissure in the earth's crust takes water seeping through the earth, heats it to well over 165 degrees, and sends it back up to the surface
in steam pits and boil holes. The heat from these pits and holes heats the valley air to such an extent that the winter temperature in many Mankato neighborhoods has never dropped below a balmy 70 degrees!!!!

The students, of course, did not know this was a faux site and several began "sidebarring" about how much cheaper it would be to go to Minnesota on spring break instead of Mexico! They had fallen prey to the urban legend that "if it's on the web, it's true." However, after an hour or so of vetting a variety of websites, disaggregating URLs, practicing search tips, and learning some Boolean language, they felt much more confident (and frankly amazed at their earlier ignorance of the basics of information literacy; they had considered themselves experts.)

Are you an expert? Alan November recently posted a "Board and Trustee Websavvy Quiz" in his blog in which he asks seven questions on Internet searching. Answers are not provided, but it will take less than a minute for you to determine your "netsavvyness." (I scored "Moderately Savvy"...sigh.)

But what's the point of all of this? Information literacy, media literacy, websavvyness--whatever you want to call it--has become a bedrock skill for our knowledge economy. We have to become lifelong learners and to do that, we need to be information-literate. A newly published report by Educause heightens our concern about this topic. Titled "Ensuring the Net Generation is Net Savvy," the report constructs a compelling argument for the increasingly important role of information literacy in critical thinking and why it should become embedded in our K-12 curriculum. Fortunately for us here in Michigan, many elements of information literacy are already included in the Michigan Educational Technology Standards. (See Michigan 8th Grade Technology Literacy FAQs.)

--Jane Perzyk

technorati tags: information literacy; Alan November

Who Has to Know How to Read?

A recent blog posting by David Warlick brought our attention to an MSNBC article reporting that adult literacy is on the decline. The MSNBC article in turn referenced a Washington Post article titled "Literacy of College Graduates Is on Decline: Survey's Finding of a Drop in Reading Proficiency Is Inexplicable, Experts Say."

We decided to avoid secondary sources and went to the heart of the matter by locating the actual survey, titled "2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) Results." It was published in December, 2005 and was based on interviews with more than 19,000 people 16 or older, who were asked to read prose, do math and find facts in documents. The results were reported in four reading levels: below basic, basic, intermediate, and proficient. In the proficient category only 31% of college graduates can read a complex book, analyze it, and understand it.

Based on her research, Lois Romano, the author of the Washington Post article, offers several scenarios as reasons for this low literacy rate, one being that state universities were not particularly selective in their admissions and that low literacy rates in high school are the real elephant in the living room.

MSNBC responded to the survey results with a tongue-in-cheek futuristic opinion piece suggesting that because of technological advances, reading be taught to only 10% of the population. Looking ahead 20 years, the author, Michael Rogers, surmises that technology will obviate the need to be able to read anything more than 100 words at a time and most entertainment and information will come through multimedia channels where text is an option. As a result, Rogers adds, "The nation’s leaders must be able to read; for those who follow, the ability should be strictly optional."

His closing argument follows:

We have made at least two generations of American children miserable trying to teach them a skill that only a small percentage of them really need. A nd we have wasted billions of dollars that might well have gone for more practical education and training.

In 2025 it’s time to put reading into perspective for the remainder of the 21st century: it is a luxury, not a necessity!

---

Reminiscent of Charles Lamb's essay, "A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig," but with a much more serious topic, the article does force one to wonder what is the cause of the reading proficiency decline. What do you think?